Chickpea Salad

I love anything that involves chickpeas.  They are the perfect texture, shape, and flavor (not too bean-y) and provides so many good nutrients.  Here is a wonderful side dish that is easy to make because it takes very few ingredients, so it can be whipped up real quick if you're needing something to go with your entree.  At the same time, it is hearty enough to be the main star in a lunch, like stuffed in a pita.

Ingredients:
-1 can garbanzo beans (=chickpeas), rinsed and drained
-1/2 cucumber
-1 lemon, juice and a little zest
-1 tbsp olive oil
-1/2 tsp salt
-a few good twists of fresh ground pepper
-1 tsp garlic powder
-a handful of parsley

First of all, can i say how excited i am to use a big girl cutting board instead of the little college student board i've been using all these years?  Anyways, here are the basic ingredients that you'll need.

Peel the waxy skin off the cucumber, and chop half of it up into small bites.

Rinse the canned chickpeas and allow to drain.  You don't want to add the gunky bean water to the salad, right?

Finely chop the yummy parsley next.  I liked using flat leaf parsley for this dish, because it seems less dry than curly parsley to me, but you could certainly use curly.

Okay, let's add those three ingredients to the bowl now, and toss together.  Yum! 

Now the fun part!  Take a lemon, kinda roll it around on the counter to release the juices inside, then cut in half and squeeze into the bowl.

If you have a citrus reamer, you could certainly use it here.  I just squeeze the crap out of it with my own womanly power. 

I love lemon.  I just finished watching Battle Lemon on Iron Chef America and got some interesting ideas on how to incorporate it more in my cooking.

Okay, enough squeezing pictures.  Next, zest a little bit of lemon and add to the mix.  Really, i should have zested first, but oh well.  You might just zest like half a lemon, a whole lemon yields too much zest.

4.  Add olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  I highly recommend fresh ground pepper.

Okay, time to toss!

Like i said, this salad makes a very easy, 5-minute salad, but also tastes great in a half pita!  By the way, in case you missed it, here is a great recipe for homemade pita. 

Enjoy this easy salad, and have a wonderful week!  Thanks for being back and reading :)

For a printable version of this recipe, please click here.