Crispy Chickpea Salad

Crispy Chickpea Salad

We’d been looking through the Dishoom cookbook for inspiration and saw a lovely chickpea recipe. However, it was way too involved to cook for our lunch. I, therefore, used it as inspiration and came up with this recipe. 

Instead of deep frying the chickpeas in batter in oil, I just shallow fried them. It worked a treat. 

We added some mint sauce to our yoghurt, another idea I got from a mint dip from Misty Ricardo’s Curry Compendium. This isn’t an Indian dip, it’s more Mediterranean. 

Method

For the sautéed onions

1. Set up your Big Green Egg for a direct cook at 220°C.
2. Preheat a cast iron skillet on you Egg.
3. Add the oil and your chopped onion, and allow to sauté, stiring occasionally. You want the onions to soften and start to caramelise.
4. Set aside to cool on some kitchen roll to drain the oil.

For the yogurt dip 

1. Into a bowl, add the yogurt, mint sauce, crushed garlic and lemon juice and stir together.
2. Season if needed with a little salt. I usually crush my garlic with some salt and use the side of a knife, so my garlic already has salt in it.

For the chickepeas

1. In a bowl mix the chickpeas, corn flour, salt and chilli powder, coating the chickpeas.
2. With you Egg still at 220°C, add 3 tsp oil to your cast iron skillet.
3. Add the coated chickpeas and fry for about 4 or 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. They will start to become golden.
4. Remove them from the heat and set aside on some kitchen roll to drain the oil.
5. Sprinkle over some korean red pepper flakes and toss together.

To assemble

1. On a side plate, add some rocket leaves to create a base.
2. Spoon over a couple of generous spoonfuls of the yogurt dip.
3. Sprinkle over a couple of teaspoons of the sautéed onions.
4. Top with the crispy chickpeas and sprinkle with additional red pepper flakes.
5. Serve with a flatbread.