Early Spring Salad with Roasted Chickpeas

While spring may not be in full force everywhere, an Early Spring Salad with Roasted Chickpeas will be a welcome alternative to comfort food, at least for me and I hope for you as well. Featuring ingredients that even late blooming spring lovers will like: avocado, butter lettuce, tomato, cucumber, mozzarella and crispy chickpeas.

I don’t know about you, but I always welcome a simple salad, especially when it is made with ingredients that are so easily available and that you can eat in abundance, without anything to worry about. It’s what I call a comfort salad.

The ingredients for this Early Spring Salad with Roasted Chickpeas are:

• Butter lettuce or Boston lettuce. You can use any type of lettuce, all depending on what you can get or what you prefer. The butter lettuce does go very well with the mild flavors of the rest of the ingredients.
• Tomatoes. Any type or any size will do.
• Avocado, diced or sliced.
• English cucumber, sliced or diced. You can use zucchini instead, less juicy but equally tasteful
• Pearl mozzarella, or feta or goat cheese.
  • If you want to go vegan, you could opt for white beans instead

• Vinaigrette with basil, or with balsamic vinegar, or honey lime or honey mustard.
• Oven roasted chickpeas – click here for recipe.

How to prepare this Early Spring Salad:

This is a very simple preparation, as with so many salads.

• Chop, dice, slice or cut the vegetables (avocado, lettuce, cucumber, and tomatoes) in the sizes you prefer. You can cube the cucumber and slice the avocado or slice the cucumber and dice the tomatoes. You get my drift.
• Mix the vegetables with the cheese. If you prefer the chickpeas the way they come in the can, add them now as well. If you like your chickpeas crispy, please DO NOT mix them with the salad as yet.
• Mix everything gently. You know when you mix avocado with lighter colored ingredients, the green ‘rubs’ off and you have a rather bland looking salad.

• Prepare you vinaigrette; mix olive oil and vinegar (ratio 3:1) and mix in salt, pepper and basil, cut into chiffonade, which is basically the same way as cutting carrots into julienne, creating long strips.
• Drizzle the vinaigrette over the salad, mix and divide over plates. Alternatively, serve the vinaigrette in a pretty pitcher, bottle, or jar and allow everybody to add as much as they like at the table. You may need to make a little more vinaigrette in this case.
• Now it is time to sprinkle the oven roasted chickpeas over the salad and you have a lovely light lunch or dinner.

Enjoy!