Lazy Saturday lunch - Spiced Chickpea Salad

This week I was in bonny Scotland visiting my grandparents - also known as "spend 4 days eating your own weight in cakes, biscuits and tea". So after gaining about 15 stone, and eating a lot of sweet and sugary foods, I was craving something savoury, fresh and healthy. But left to his own devices Mr Veggie Store Cupboard had only been eating pizza, beans on toast, and whatever his mum made him when he went begging. And he certainly hadn't been to the supermarket. So what to make for lunch?

I always keep various tins of pulses and beans in the cupboard - they are cheap and can bulk out a meal perfectly. Fresh vegetables like lettuce or spinach tend to get bought and used at the beginning of the month, but heading towards payday I can't always afford to replenish the fresh supplies. This is when I turn to the store cupboard for salad ingredients. Chickpeas can be the saviour of any lean looking salad! Without them this salad would just have been tomato, cucumber and onion - nothing too much wrong with that, but not particularly filling. The beautiful little chickpea is also a great source of protein and fibre, and half a tin is one of your five a day too!

So this is what I had to work with, plus the tomato, the end of the cucumber and a pitta bread. When I buy pitta bread I will always freeze it, that way they will keep even after opened and can always be used when you run out of bread. The cumin seeds can be expensive when you buy them, but they really are an investment spice. This bag will last me quite a long time, and I can create a whole variety of dishes with cumin seeds in the spice rack. If you have an Asian supermarket nearby then you can pick up spices super cheap too!

This makes enough for a good lunch for two people. I have also made this as a selection of salads for a healthy dinner with friends, and it always goes down a treat.

Ingredients:

1 can of chickpeas - drained

1 tspn cumin seeds

1 chilli - sliced

1 large clove garlic/2 small cloves - sliced

1 red onion - halved and sliced into half moons

1 tomato - cut in chunks

Cucumber

1-2 pitta breads

Olive oil

Lemon juice (if you have it)

Heat a glug of olive oil in a pan. Add cumin seeds and heat gently until they start to pop. Add the chilli and garlic and heat for a minute - be careful not to burn these as they will become bitter. As with everything I make that involves chilli, I leave the seeds in...but do remove them if you don't like anything too hot! Add in the chickpeas and heat until warmed through. 

In the meantime grill or toast your pitta bread, then cut into chunks. I quite like them to be bite-sized, but also a bit uneven and rustic looking.

Once the chickpeas are heated and the pitta bread ready, combine with the other ingredients and another couple of glugs of olive oil. Mix together well so that the pitta bread soaks up some of the flavour. I would also have added some lemon juice for acidity and coriander or parsley if I had them - but as this is an end of the month lunch I was sadly without. I added a couple of mint leaves from my mint plant though. Serve still warm!