This week I have definitely experienced a writing block. It was potentially because we ran out of coffee at home (disaster!) but probably because I am still exercising this muscle called writing. Blogging is completely out of my comfort zone and I am still very much learning about it. Cooking and photographing the recipes come a lot more naturally to me than writing about them. I haven’t been writing with my own voice, about my experiences and myself since I the diaries I kept until I was 15.  On the positive side, writing this blog has already been super rewarding. I love getting text messages from friends who tried my recipes, showing me their creations. It makes me the happiest person on the planet. So with a little delay this week, I am back to writing and I have an amazing chickpea salad to share with you.

This chickpea salad is adapted from Sevtap Yuce’s cookbook Turkish Meze. The book was a gift from my mom for  that I can make the recipes whenever I crave a meze spread. I modified Sevtap’s chickpea salad recipe and added some other ingredients I had in the fridge. It is an extremely easy salad to fix up and it makes the perfect lunch or a light dinner.

I feel like chickpeas don’t get much attention unless they are turned into hummus. Once someone asked to me, when they heard that I am from Turkey, “you must eat hummus almost everyday in Turkey, right?” Ummm no. I actually think hummus is so much more popular in the US than it is in Turkey because it is marketed as a healthy snack option. In Turkey, chickpeas are used in so many different dishes in addition to hummus. Don’t get me wrong, I love a well made hummus but chickpeas are so versatile, it is sad to limit their use to just hummus.

Roasted chickpeas, also known as leblebi, is probably a more popular way to consume chickpeas in Turkey. Leblebi has a smoky taste and a crunchy texture. You can get them hulled or dehulled and you enjoy them just like nuts. Instead of buying packaged trail mixes, people go to nut shops and buy nuts by the pound. My mom always used to have a jar of nut mix at home for snacking. She kept it in a cupboard right above the stove and we would snack on the nuts whenever we are drinking a glass of wine or just looking for something healthy to munch on. I would cherry-pick the chickpeas (and the hazelnuts) from the mix all the time.

I can never find leblebi in the United States so I try to incorporate chickpeas into different dishes all the time. They work amazingly well in salads, curries and stews. Whenever I am in a time crunch I use canned chickpeas (my mom would shake her head) but, obviously using dried chickpeas is the best. For this recipe, I used dried chickpeas and soaked them overnight. If you use canned chickpeas you can reduce the time of this recipe by 45 minutes.

Yields: 4-6 servings Time: 1 hour (15 minute if you use canned chickpeas)

Recipe adapted from: Turkish Meze by Sevtap Yuce

Ingredients

1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked overnight (or 1 15 oz can chickpeas)

1 heirloom tomato, diced

1 cucumber, diced

6 scallions

16 black olives (I used cured black olives)

1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled

1/2 cup fresh mint, chopped

1/2 cup fresh Italian parsley, chopped

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Preparation

1. Start by cooking the soaked chickpeas. Put the soaked chickpeas in a pot and fill the pot with water. Bring the water to a boil and simmer the chickpeas until tender, for about 45 minutes. If you are using canned chickpeas, rinse them well, under cold water.

2. Chop off the root bit of the scallions and slice the rest. Dice the tomato and the cucumber. I use the cucumber without peeling it.

3. Combine chickpeas, scallions, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, feta cheese, and the fresh herbs.

4. Pour in the apple cider vinegar and the extra virgin olive oil and gently toss the salad.

5. Serve with freshly ground black pepper sprinkled on top.