Chickpea, Tomato and Cucumber Salad In Citrus, Herbed Avocado Dressing

Sometimes you are lucky enough to stumble across something that brightens your day, changes the way you see things and enhances your life.  

While skipping through fields of culinary web sites, I recently chanced upon one of the loveliest homages to the world of gorgeous food I have ever seen in my life. I was looking for inspiration for a bag of dried, organic chickpeas that I purchased for a couple of bucks.  

The photos taken on vegeyum.com are breathtaking. The recipes are to die for. The language and the spirit of the author (I still cannot make out who that is!) are delightful. 

After swimming in cookery heaven for 20 minutes, trying each photo on and whistling through the images of Australia, India and beyond, I whipped up this salad and thought I would share. 

I would be grateful if one day I could be even a tiny fraction as gifted as the food writer-author-photographer at vegeyum.com. Enjoy and thank you for the inspiration, Ganga108! 

Chickpea, Tomato and Cucumber Salad

• 1 pound dried chickpeas, soaked, cooked and drained. (Cans are fine, but the taste of freshly cooked are amazing!)
• 3 plum tomatoes
• 1 english cucumber
• 1 avocado
• 1-2 lemons
• 3-4 spring onions or scallions
• big handful of your favorite herbs (I used basil and Italian flat leaf parsley)
• olive oil
• sea salt and black pepper

To cook dried chickpeas, soak in abundant water overnight. Rinse and cook (without salt as it will make chick peas bitter and hard) in twice as much water for about an hour or so or until tender.

Place in largest bowl and let cool.

Meanwhile, start chopping avocado, english cucumber, spring onion and herbs and place on top of cooled chickpeas. 

Before squeezing fresh lemons, grate their zest into your salad. Combine all ingredients, then squeeze juice of both lemons and add generous sea salt and black pepper.

Some of your ripe avocado will mix through with the olive oil and herbs to create a creamy, herby, lemony dressing that will become enhanced if you leave this in the fridge for a day or two.

This is an outstanding source of protein for the athletes in your family. Leave in the fridge for snacks after training, or with whole grain, crispy crackers for lunch. Or, serve as a main dish. It's loaded with vitamin C, Omega 3's, protein and fiber.