I was feeling really lazy today so I decided to use a can of chickpeas instead of cooking lentils to prepare tomorrow’s lunch box. I feel that chickpeas go really well with cumin seeds.
Preparation time
I’d say 15 minutes. This is super easy to toss together as the ingredients don’t need much preparation; it’s just a matter of washing and slicing.
Ingredients
- Chickpeas (obviously); you can make about 2 salads with one 400 g tin
- Salad leaves – any type you like, although I prefer a crunchy sweet romaine for this
- Tomatoes
- Cucumber
- Sweet red pepper (raw)
- Olives
- Feta cheese
- Cumin seeds ~about half a teaspoon
- Pine nuts
- The best olive oil you can find
- Salt
- Pepper
of course, feel free to add or remove whatever you like or dislike… this is a salad, not a cake! For example, remove the feta cheese if you want to make this vegan.
Preparation
- Wash and shake the water off the ingredients
- Slice lettuce in manageable sizes but don’t go too thin or it becomes too bland
- Slice the tomatoes in half (if they’re cherry), or a bite sized portion if they’re bigger
- Slice cucumber, red pepper…
- Add olives and feta to taste
- If you have mortar and pestle, you could smash the cumin seeds a bit as that opens up the flavour, otherwise I often don’t even bother and just add them as they are. Be careful to not to add too many or you’ll end up annoyed by their “crunchiness”
- Sprinkle with pine nuts if that’s your thing
- Generously add olive oil
- And add salt and pepper to taste
- Mix everything nicely!
Note: If you’re preparing this for the next day, don’t add the oil yet, or it will make everything mushy. Wait until when you’re actually going to eat the salad to then add the olive oil.
Other options
This also goes nicely with some sliced parsley, if you have it handy.
Also, if your partner is on a business trip (like mine) and you really want some kick in your taste buds, you could [sort of finely] slice a garlic clove and mix it with the salad at the time you add the olive oil. You might need to add a touch more salt to make the garlic really stand out.
It really makes the whole experience quite… intense. I really like the combination of cumin seeds, olive oil and chickpeas with the garlic.
I only do this when I’m home alone, and I’d never bring a garlic salad to the office out of respect for my coworkers. Who knows, someone might be a vampire and my post-salad breath would knock them out! ?
Who wants to ingest garlic pills to boost your immunity when you can just eat a garlic clove? ???
