Chickpea Summer Salad

I hate summer potlucks when you're expected to bring a side.

I'm not good with healthy sides. I do desserts. The issue with this is that I really don't want to turn on the oven in the summer either because it's damn hot. This presents a problem.

A few years ago were at Geeky Dude's sister's house, (Garden Goddess for future reference) for a weekend of gardening and partying when we came across a delicious chickpea salad from a local co-op that we fell in love with.

Sadly, Garden Goddess lives in another state and this co-op does not exist where we live, so we went home sad and pouty because we could not buy the tastiness that was this delicious salad side-dish. While we don't have the amazing reverse-engineering tasting powers of Garden Goddess, it did occur to us after the fact that we could just copy down the ingredients list and experiment with quantities until it tasted right.

So we did this and now we have a pretty amazing summer side-dish that we can not only make for ourselves, but bring to potlucks, picnics, or as this past week may have had it, our neighborhood's annual block party.

It's super tasty, healthy and gluten free. You should make it, and then thank me when you're utterly and totally addicted.

Chickpea Salad

Yield: A little over 3 qts

Ingredients

• 3 cans chickpeas/garbanzo beans
• 1 medium bell pepper
• 1 zucchini
• 1 pint grape tomatoes
• 1 bunch of scallions
• 4 Tbsp tahini
• 1 Tbsp honey
• 1-2 Tbsp tumeric
• 1 Tbsp dried parsley
• lemon juice
• olive oil
• salt & pepper
• cayenne pepper

Directions

Drain and rinse garbanzo beans and place in large bowl. Chop all veggies and mix with garbanzo beans. Add enough olive oil to just coat all items in bowl. Add tahini, honey, turmeric, parsley and mix well. Add enough lemon juice so that the sauce is thin and pools slightly on the bottom of the bowl. Mix well. Adjust seasoning to taste with salt, pepper and cayenne pepper and mix well.

Salad should be yellow-orange in color. 

Notes: My zucchinis were teeny tiny, so I used two. Also we like ours to have a bit of a kick so we add quite a bit of cayenne, but if you aren't into spice, just a bit of a sprinkle should be adequate to add to the flavor of the dish.