Chickpea Salad

Nobody makes food look as good as the French.

I have had my share of veggie plates at home where the cook at the restaurant is offended by someone who won’t eat a medium rare steak (because that is the only way to have a steak, according to the Greek culinary god, Tartarus) and can’t be bothered to cater to someone who won’t eat any steak at all. Don’t get me started!

These so called veggie plates are usually comprised of overcooked vegetables.  Period.  Steamed, droopy, unflavored veggies.  Makes me want to run right back there for the next meal.  Not.

But I was in Paris recently, and in skilled hands, those veggies take on a magical quality called flavor.

I got veggies with truffles, lemon sauces, seasonal fruits, nuts, seeds and edible flowers.  It was…heaven.

Of course, life was not all zucchini flowers and herbs de Provence.

I was there with my sister to celebrate a milestone birthday (hers).  I had asked her what she wanted to see.   Notre Dame? Caught on fire a few weeks before, so that was a nonstarter. The Louvre?  Workers went on strike the week before and they had to close.  Suddenly, this trip was like boarding the Titanic with Molly Brown.

Fortunately (for her) someone told her about the war museum.  Unfortunately (for me) she really, really wanted to go. Try though I might, I couldn’t convince her to tackle one of the smaller, more manageable museums that would take an hour and then we could eat again.

And so that was three hours sucked out of my life that I will never get back.

Seen one cannon?  Seen them all.  Not her.  We looked at 17th C cannons, 18th C cannons, 19th C cannons 20th C cannons. For the record, cannons have not changed all that much through the centuries.   Gun, guns and more guns.  Big guns, little guns, guns that it took several men to fire (Can’t for the life of me understand what they were thinking with that one…line up 4 guys, so when the first one gets shot, there are three more left to reload and fire? And so on, till there was only one?)

I hung in through most of the four floor that made up the first wing of the building, but by the time we started on the second of three wings, I was confusing my bowman with my musketeers and my Napoleons with my de Gaulles.  Too.  Much.  Information.  This was usually the point at the Louvre where I pointed people in the direction of the Mona Lisa, gave them a survival pack, last rites, wished them luck and headed for the coffee shop.

In the end though, we did spend more time in Paris eating than we did bonding over tanks.  I also came back with some inspiration for a few dishes (but not from the war museum).

Here is one of those dishes: a lighter twist on chickpea “tuna” salad, served in its very own “bowl” that will have you getting your serving of greens, easy peasy!

Ingredients:

• I can chickpeas, drained
• 1 teaspoons lemon juice
• 1/3 cup diced red onion
• 1/2 teaspoon brown mustard
• 1 Tablespoons sweet relish
• 3 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 roma tomato, seeded and diced
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 head of butter lettuce (optional)

** you might want to double up on the dressing to drizzle over the lettuce, but do not add the whole double batch to the chickpeas. Trust me, it won’t end well. A single batch as written above will yield about 1/4 cup of dressing.

Directions:

1. Put the chickpeas in a medium bowl and smash them up, leaving some larger chunks
2. Add the red onion and tomato, stir well to combine.
3. In a small bowl or small jar, combine the lemon juice, mustard, relish, olive oil, salt and pepper and shake or whisk until all ingredients come together and emulsify. It should look like a smooth (not counting chunks of relish), darker yellow, thick liquid.
4. Add the mixture ( makes a scant 1/4 cup) to the chickpea mixture and stir to combine.  Adjust the salt and pepper here as the chickpeas are very bland, you will definitely need to add more.  So as not to oversalt the dressing, we are adding the additional salt here only.
5. To serve, wash the lettuce head and cut a bit off the bottom if necessary to make it stand up in a bowl.  If it is a large head, you might want to remove some of the outer leaves as well so that it is not so overwhelming.  Gently open the center of the head and spoon the chickpea mixture inside (well, maybe not all of it if you are the only one eating it.  Save some for those extra leaves to make chickpea tacos!  

Enjoy!