Chickpea & Lentil Salad

Chickpea and Lentil makes colorful summer salad with crunch vegetables and unfussy dressing. It tastes refreshingly good and satisfying.

We enjoy waking up with the splendid sunlight in the morning. It sets a great energy to start a day.

We don’t always think of food when we get up since we have lots chores to take care of in the morning. We, however, had yearning of an unfussy salad that we can use the ingredients we already have in our kitchen – – something light and refreshing without too much work of making the fancy dressing.

We always keep a few cans of beans and lentils, and we also happened to have some cucumbers, tomatoes, red cabbage, and goat cheese. How convenient!

So here is our chickpea and lentil salad with various crunch vegetables and cheese. We think this is a steady vegetarian salad if the cheese can be part of the vegetarian diet, and it is also gluten-free.

It is an unfussy salad dressed with lemon and olive oil. We also have mint growing in our backyard, so we added a little bit. Oh, the fragrance! If you don’t have mint or you don’t like the fragrance of mint in your salad, you can substitute with fresh parsley. That would be equally tasty.

How the dish comes together

Rinse and drain your chickpeas and lentils.

Combine with chopped tomatoes, cucumber, red cabbage, green onion. We like to remove the seeds from the cucumber and tomato.

Add some fresh mint or Parsley. Too much mint can overpower the salad. About 1 tablespoon should be enough. You can add more amount if using parsley.

Add some lemon zest, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and olive oil. Toss gently.

We also added some goat cheese. Feta cheese would be good as well.

A bowl of colorful salad is ready!

Chickpeas and lentils are quite filling and we love the fresh taste of lemon and mint combination. This is not only a steady salad to eat as is for an unfussy meal, but will serve as a great side salad for a main course. We had a visitor last week, so we served this salad with dry rub grilled chicken breast as a dinner and it was a big hit. We realize that people do love chickpeas and lentils these days. That’s a cool thing!

• Yield: 4 people
• Prep: 15 minutes
• Total: 15 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 15 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1 15 oz can lentils, drained rinsed
• 1 cucumber, seeded and chopped
• 1 tomato, seeded and chopped
• 1/4 small red cabbage, shredded
• 2 green onion, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint or 3 tablespoon fresh parsley
• 2/3 cup crumbled goat cheese or feta cheese
• zest of 1 lemon
• 3 tablespoon lemon juice
• 2-3 tablespoon olive oil
• salt and pepper, to taste

Method

1. In a large mixing bowl combine all the ingredients and toss well. Serve immediately or chilled.

Notes

If need to prepare in advance, combine all the ingredients except the lemon zest & juice, salt and pepper. Chill them in the fridge before ready to serve. Toss in lemon zest & juice and season with salt & pepper right before to serve.