Beans and Chickpeas Salad

Apologies to all for subjecting you to my bad photos in my previous posts. Today I found out that one of my younger troops had changed the settings in the camera and the results are – well you have already seen them. To be fair, bad photographic skills run in my family line. My dad took pictures of my mom in London with her head cut off. We ended up with many pictures of my mother from neck down. Till date I am not sure if my dad has poor sense for photography or if he did take those pictures on purpose. Anyways back to food it is salad time again. There was a warning in my previous post about S wanting to eat salad everyday (before you get all the wrong ideas, let me clarify that salad is considered a snack by S and not a meal). Now that the purpose is clear, I can go ahead with the recipe

Salad

• Chickpeas – 1 can
• Haricot beans – 1 can
• Onion – ½ sliced
• Carrot – 1 (cut in the middle and slice into thin half moons)
• Cucumber – ½ cut thinly
• Lettuce – ½ shredded
• Sesame seeds – 2 Tbsp (dry toasted)
• Green chillies – 2 (slit in the middle)
• Jalapeno peppers – 10 pieces (optional).

Salad dressing

• Sesame oil – 2 parts
• Olive oil – 1 part
• Soy sauce – 2 parts
• Lemon – 1 part
• Salt as required

Drain the peas and beans from the can and run them under cold water. Warm them up in a microwave and mix with other salad ingredients. The Jalapeno peppers are optional, I added them as I wanted to finish off the bottle. For the dressing combine all the dressing ingredients and whisk until an emulsion is formed. Since soy sauce is salty and hence less salt is required for this salad. This dressing is simply delicious. I am planning to make plenty of it, store in the fridge and add it in small amounts to any salad I make. Pour the dressing over the salad and mix it well. Since this is a warm salad, it is perfect for those cold winter evenings as a snack. As an after thought I added some dill to the salad (for no particular reason) and the dill actually went very well with salad. In retrospect, a pinch of the fennel falvour with fennel bulbs and/or seeds would also lift the salad. That is an idea for my next recipe.