Chickpea tomato salad

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Chickpea tomato salad with feta cheese, parsley and red onion. I’m not going to lie, chickpeas are my everything. The chance to make a dish entirely of chickpeas made me far more excited than it should have. So, instead of making another tub of humous, I decided to be more adventurous and try something completely different. Needless to say this dish is far better than a tub of humous.

I’ve never actually cooked cherry tomatoes before, I had no idea their flavour changed completely! Everything about this dish just screams flavour. It’s a really quick dish (that seems to becoming a theme at the moment), depending on whether or not your chickpeas are cooked. If you’re using uncooked chickpeas then you’ll have to soak them overnight, so you may have to plan this one in advance!

INGREDIENTS

• 15-20 CHERRY TOMATOES
• 2 SMALL RED ONIONS
• ROUGHLY 450G COOKED CHICKPEAS
• LARGE BUNCH OF PARSLEY
• 100G FETA CHEESE
• OLIVE OIL
• SALT AND PEPPER TO SEASON

Firstly, place the cherry tomatoes on a baking tray, cover with olive oil and a little salt and pepper then place them in the oven. These take a good hour so make sure you do this step first or you’ll be waiting forever and your chickpeas will go stone cold!

When the tomatoes are almost ready, wash the chickpeas thoroughly. Chop up the onion and fry on medium heat. Then place the chickpeas in with the onions for a couple of minutes, along with a dash of olive oil and some seasoning. I didn’t want them to go extremely crispy, just warmed and ever so slightly crunchy (though it’s completely up to you – you may prefer them cold).

So, when that’s all done just cut up the parsley very finely, and crumble the feta with your fingers. Place everything in a bowl oh so decoratively.

That’s pretty much it! We actually had this as a main meal, though it would be perfect as a side salad or an accompaniment to a picnic. The flavours are so simple but they go beautifully together, especially the gooey tomatoes. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat uncooked cherry tomatoes ever again.

Also, you could alternatively pop the chickpeas in the oven until they go wonderfully crispy if you want a lot of crunch.

bon appetit