We’re grieving the loss of summer potlucks, picnics, and days at the beach with friends. Normally we would bring this chickpea salad, a bag of local cherries, and some chips to the river and just relax all day. With COVID, we’ve been traveling less but we still enjoy eating this delicious salad. I like to toast bread, cover it with mayo and then add this salad for a chickpea salad sandwich!
Serves: 4 as side
Time: 20 minutes + chickpea cooking time
Ingredients
3/4 cup halved red grapes
2 cans chickpeas (1 1/3 cup dry*)
for the sauce:
1/2 med onion (1 cup) chopped
2 tbsp cooking oil
1 1/2 tsp curry powder
1/4 cup vegan mayo (soy-free option)
1/2 tsp salt
juice of 1/2 lemon (2 tbsp lemon juice)
Slice grapes in half and chop the onion. Saute the onion in oil until it’s starting to be translucent, about 10 minutes.
While the onion is cooking, mash the chickpeas in a medium bowl. When mashing, the texture is important. You are looking to crush the chickpeas into a meaty texture but you do not want to over-mash as you could end up with hummus! Toss the chickpeas with the lemon juice and salt and set aside.
Once the onions are translucent, add the curry powder, stir for an additional minute and then remove from heat. In the pan you cooked the onions in, add the mayo, stirring to combine. Pour sauce into mashed chickpeas and stir to coat. Fold in the grapes and enjoy!
*Cooking Chickpeas from dry:
In the Instant Pot:
To cook the chickpeas, in an Instant Pot, add 1 1/3 cup of dried chickpeas to the pot. Cover the beans with water (in the small Instant Pot this is about 6 cups of water), season with 1 tbsp kosher salt, 1 tsp turmeric, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, and 1/8 tsp cayenne. Set the Instant Pot to pressure cook for 35 minutes letting depressurize naturally. Drain and rinse before adding to the dish.
On the stove:
If you don’t have an Instant Pot, you can easily cook chickpeas from scratch with a little planning. First you will need to soak the chickpeas which can be done one of two ways. 1. you can soak them overnight making sure they have enough water and space to double in size or 2. you can put them in a pot and bring to boil, then turn off the water and let soak for one hour. Again, make sure you have enough water and space that they can double in size.
Once you have soaked your beans, rinse them and then put in a pot with salty water. These will be cooking for about 2 hours so you don’t want as much salt as you would use for pasta, but you do want to add enough that you can taste the salt. The best way to get good at this is to practice. Each time you salt the water, taste it and when the beans are done taste them to see if they are well salted. A well salted bean should taste flavorful but not salty. If it tastes like you are eating salt, you added too much. If the bean lacks flavor then you didn’t have enough salt.
For this recipe, also add 1 tsp turmeric, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, and 1/8 tsp cayenne to the chickpeas as they cook. Cook the chickpeas until they are soft but not falling apart (this will take 1.5-2 hours). We recommend checking the beans at about an hour and then every 20 minutes until they are soft but not disintegration. Make sure your pot has enough water as I have definitely cooked all the water off before and burnt the beans! This may seem like a lot of work, however once you get the hang of it the work is almost all passive and the reward is high: chickpeas cooked from scratch taste much better and are much cheaper!