Purple Chickpea Salad | Nest and Nook

I love the colour purple in food! Especially in salads and desserts. This salad makes a humungus bowl, like enough to serve 20 people- so uh… if you don’t have latent Italian-mama tendencies or a wacked-out sense of proportion (*cough*cough* like me sometimes! ), um….reduce the ingredients by about half …

I had some friends over last night for dinner, and D and C seemed to like this salad :) or maybe they were simply basking in that wicked endorphin high called “we just got engaged”… which was also lovely. And if it made them like my food, then, hooray for me! haha :)

Note: The filling chickpeas are really well ballanced by the strong crunch of the purple cabbage, and I’m a big fan of the spicy kick. If you don’t have cilantro, substitute parsley. If you don’t have spicy eggplant, substitute spicyhot pepper olive oiland if you are a carnivore, throw in some chopped hard boiled eggs, or feta, or even some tuna, maybe?

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Spicy Purple Chickpea Salad

Ingredients (Feeds 10! this is a big salad!)

2 cups chickpeas, still hot from being cooked (or fiiiine. use the canned kind. just let the salad sit a few hours for the flavours to meld)
2 cups romano beans (see above comment)
1 cup spicy pickled eggplant, chopped. Include the hot oil that comes with them
3 cups chopped cilantro (or 1 bunch)
1 head of purple cabbage finely sliced
1 cup green onions, chopped
1/4 cup red or white wine vinegar (Try making your own. The store bought stuff tastes mores like water.)
Juice of 2-3 lemons (to taste)
1 tsp salt (or to taste)
1/2 cup olive oil

Directions

The best option is to cook the beans yourself so that when they are still hot, you toss them with the spicy eggplant and the hot pepper flavour soaks into them. If you use the canned beans, you may wish to let this salad sit a few hours to get a bit of melding of the flavours.
Add all the rest of the ingredients once the beans are cool. Toss. Adjust seasonings as desired.
Yum!

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