Fun With Chickpeas, An Easy Party-Ready Salad.

   This has been quite a week around here. In  the midst of recovering from Film Festival Fun, Monday morning saw my stove hiss and spark at me and then drop dead. With a final Sssssssss it just went black. All the blinking lights flatlined, no alarm, no clock, it ceased to cook. It was no more. Now help is on the way via Sears, coming on Saturday to fix it. So, it's all good.
   Meanwhile while I wait for the repair person, all the cooking plans I had for this week are out the window since I'm left with a microwave and a gas grill. Luckily I'd fixed an amazing salad for my birthday party a couple of weeks ago that could almost be prepared with no cooking at all. Almost.
  This salad can be served hot or in my case cold, and it works great as the centerpiece of a vegetarian feast to accompany any grilled fish or meat at summer potlucks or cookouts. There are two ways to go with this dish. You can either go canned or fresh with the chickpeas. Broken stove Kathy says canned chickpeas would be perfect, but when I made the dish, the stove was working so I used fresh chickpeas.
  Chickpeas or ceci beans as I grew up calling them are a cute little lentil that suffer from some serious shrinkage. 1 and 1/2 cups of dried chickpeas don't look too imposing. Hardly a crowd pleaser. Before a bath they're these tiny little wizened brown beebee looking thingies. But after a good overnight soak....

Voila! Fat, round, golden chickpeas! Yum!

   Now this same effect can be achieved by opening a couple of cans of chickpeas, but I love to see the metamorphoses of chickpeas in the pan, and yeah, I was also the kid who sent the box tops in for sea monkeys too. So if you are going the non-canned route here's what to do:

Chickpea Mango Salad

Drain the soaked chickpeas
Pour 1 quart of water into a large kadhai or skillet
Add the chickpeas
Bring the water to a boil.
Once it's boiling, reduce the heat to simmer, and simmer the chickpeas for about 2 hours or until they're tender. After the chickpeas have been simmering for about 1 hour and 45 minutes add in about 1/2 tsp of salt.

When the chickpeas are tender and cooked through, drain them.

 Here's where the two track chickpea salad gets back on one track again.
  Here's how to put it all together.

 In a large skillet heat 2 tsp of vegetable oil
 When the oil is hot toss in:
  1 tsp of mustard seed
  1 tsp of urad dal

When the mustard seeds start to pop and the dal turns color add in:
 1 dried red chili pepper
 1 tsp of chopped curry leaves

 Stir it all together and cook it for about a minute or so.
 Add in the cooked chickpeas and saute them for a couple of minutes.
 Now take the pan off the heat and add in:
 2 Tbs of fresh grated coconut
 1 finely chopped green chili

 Stir everything around again and add in the zest and juice of 1 lemon

1/2 of a mango cut into strips

Mix all these ingredients together and sprinkle 1 Tbs of chopped fresh cilantro over the salad, and boom, you're done!

   Now this salad involves a teeny weeny bit of cooking (especially if you use canned chickpeas) and could even work with a skillet and a gas grill if you're in my stoveless condition.
   Coming up next, a steamy treat... no not that kind of steamy. .. from South India. I'm also involved in my first Vook experience which I'm going to be sharing with you. If you haven't Vooked yet, you're gonna love it!  Follow along on Twitter @kathygori

Meatless And Heatless, Raw Foods Are Cool..Literally! An Easy Summer Salad.

 Even though it's Wednesday, I can't stop thinking about Meatless Monday. One factor that's got me thinking about it is the approach of warmer weather, though one would hardly guess it from the way things look around here. Just as I was about to step outside for proof, it darkened and began raining.

 We've been having a cool, damp Spring here in Sonoma and even though it's not warm or dry enough to put up the dining tent outside..in my head it's already Summer.
 My mind has turned to salads. Indian salads. Cooling salads that require no cooking. These salads were made for warmer days than we are having right now, but they taste so good I couldn't resist waiting for Monday and made another one for lunch this afternoon.
  One of my birthday presents from Paula Wolfert was a small paperback cookbook that she'd had for many years. It was by Varsha Dandekar and was titled simply Salads of India.
  The book is a mix of a number of things, raitas, fruit salads, dal salads and of course my new favorite, the raw vegetable salad or kachumber.
  These are fast and easy to make and absolute naturals for all Summer cooking and cook-out needs.
 The salad I fixed today involves cucumbers and fresh tomatoes. I used Roma but as the season progresses here in Sonoma I'm looking forward to trying this with all sorts of different heirloom varieties.
 The other thing I love about this dish, it is low calorie and low fat. Each ingredient is kept apart in separate bowls and then mixed together right at table just before serving. It makes a great show.

  Here's how it goes.
 Peel and finely chop :
 3 cups of cucumber
 Place the cucumber in a separate bowl and set aside
Finely chop:
 2 cups of tomato
  Place the tomato in a separate bowl.
 Cover and refrigerate the cucumber and tomato until it is time to serve the salad.
 Finely mince:
 1 Tbs of serrano chili.
Mix it together with :
1 tsp of salt
1/2 tsp of sugar
1 Tbs of lemon juice.
  How To Mix the Salad.
  In a salad bowl combine:
 The cucumber and the chopped tomato.

  Next toss in:
 2/3 cup of peanut powder Peanut powder can be found in Indian and Asian Markets. You can make your own as I did by shelling, peeling and roasting raw peanuts and grinding them up to a powder or grind them to powder first and roast them in a cast iron pan after.
1/2 cup of grated unsweetened fresh or frozen raw coconut. Dry coconut can also be "reconstituted" by adding a tiny bit of water, which will give it more or less the texture of fresh.

                          
 
Next add the chili , lemon juice, sugar and salt mixture.

Moisten the salad well  and then finally toss in:
3 Tbs of finely chopped fresh cilantro.

Serve the dish right away for the best flavor and texture.

 This is going to be on my table for all the Summer get-togethers we have and it's definitely a take along dish. Just bring your chopped ingredients in baggies or small containers and mix 'em up on site.
Easy, delicious, fast and healthy...this meatless, heatless thing could catch on around here.