Tinned Tomatoes

Chickpea Salad with Tomato Sauce and Wakame Seaweed

A cold chickpea salad in a tomato sauce that's packed with veggies and seasoned with wakame seaweed

Chickpeas

Chickpeas are just great, It doesn't matter if they come out of a tin or are soaked over night and cooked. They're always rather wonderful.

Mind you if you are buying tinned, look in the world food aisle of your local supermarket, you'll find the chickpeas there are cheaper and better quality. I like East End Chickpeas. They're big and creamy, just as they should be. I can eat them like sweeties.

This chickpea salad with tomato sauce and wakame seaweed is a great lunchtime salad served cold or you could serve it warm as a side dish. It's packed with protein and lots of hidden veggies, so it's super healthy too.

Wakame Seaweed

Wakame is a sea vegetable and edible type of seaweeds. It is farmed in Japan and can often be found in stir-fry, rice dishes and miso.

It has a strong distinctive flavour, salty, but it also has a slight sweetness. It is a great alternative to salt and unlike salt it is packed with nutrients, both vitamins and minerals.

Wakame Nutrients

Iron
Calcium
Iron
Phosphorus
Potassium
Zinc
Magnesium
Vitamin A
Vitamin C
Vitamin D
Vitamin E
Vitamin K
Vitamin B2
Vitamin B9
Omega 3 Fatty Acids

You can find it in most supermarkets in their world food aisles and in health food shops. Buy some and start using it to season dishes and cut down on salt.

The Greenwich Market Cookbook

I can't take the credit for this recipe however, it comes from The Greenwich Market Cookbook, which is full of recipes from the traders at Greenwich Market in London.

As you can imagine the recipes travel around the globe and back again from empanadas to ravioli and burritos. It's not all veggie but it has a great veggie and sweet thing section.

It's a rather nice cookbook. The photos are all matt and each recipe is given a page and lots of room. I hate when recipes are crammed in.

It's also full of photos of the dishes, the market and lots of illustrations that bring the book to life. The recipes are simple to follow and make. Real comfort food.

This recipe comes from Emilia Silvas from Return to Shashamane.

Emilia is from Romania and she takes her inspiration from there. Her recipes have middle Eastern influences but with added superfoods.

She makes lots of salads and mezze and you can try her food all day Saturday and Sunday in Greenwich Market.

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Chickpea Salad with Tomato Sauce and Wakame Seaweed

Written by Jacqueline Meldrum with kind permission

March 31, 2016

A cold chickpea salad in a tomato sauce that's packed with veggies and seasoned with wakame seaweed. An easy recipe that's super easy to make and healthy too. Serve it for lunch or as a side salad.

Ingredients

250g dried chickpeas (or 2 × 400g tins)
1 bay leaf
3 peppercorns
2 red peppers
2 large carrots, chopped into large chunks
1 tbsp tablespoon sunflower oil
1 onion, finely chopped
½ paprika (sweet or smoked)
1 tsp coriander seeds
300g tinned chopped tomatoes
1 strand wakame seaweed (optional)
1 tsp mustard seeds
a good grinding salt and pepper

Instructions

1. If using dried chickpeas, soak them in plenty of cold water overnight or for at least 8 hours. Drain, and put into a large pan with the bay leaf, peppercorns and a pinch of salt. Cover with water, bring to the boil and simmer until absolutely soft – this can take 1–2 hours depending on the age of your beans. 2. While the beans are cooking, make the sauce. Preheat the oven to 200c /180c fan/400f/ gas mark 6, and put the red peppers on a baking tray. Roast them for 30 minutes, turning every so often, until they are soft and slightly charred. Put the peppers in a bowl, sprinkle with salt and leave them until they are cool enough to be handled. Then peel the skin off, remove the stalk and seeds and blitz them in a food processor. Boil the carrots in plenty of water until very tender, then drain and finely chop. 3. Put the sunflower oil in a large pan over a medium heat. Add the onion and fry until soft but not coloured, then stir in the paprika and the coriander seeds – Emilia keeps them whole for a bit of texture, but if you want a stronger flavour you could grind them before adding. Add the peppers and carrots, then stir in the tomatoes and leave it all to simmer on a low heat for about 30 minutes. Add salt according to taste and leave to cool. 4. Drain the chickpeas and stir them into the tomato pepper sauce. Put the wakame seaweed and a pinch of salt into a small bowl and cover with water. Leave to soak for 10 minutes or so, then take out the seaweed and chop it roughly before mixing into the chickpeas. Just before serving, stir in the mustard seeds. 5. Enjoy!

Details

Total time: 60 mins
Yield: Serves 4-6

The Greenwich Market Cookbook

ISBN: 978 0957 0373 73
Published: 22 March 2016
Publisher: Kitchen Press
RRP: £15.99
Paperback
176 pages

Vegetarian recipe count: 48
Vegan: recipe count: 24 (and a few more if you substitute with honey, dairy free spread and nut milk)

Disclosure: Kitchen Press sent me this cookbook to review and gave me permission to publish the recipe. I like to promote Kitchen Press as they are a small (but award winning) Scottish publishing house based in Dundee. They did not expect a positive review and any opinions expressed are my own.