Saturday, June 7, 2008

Salad with Chickpeas, Couscous and Soft Boiled Egg


Hello, God, are you there? It's me, Salty Girl. And I'm really, really hot. Not like, go on with my bad self hot, but like sweaty, salty, filmy and swampy hot. I know I'm just a grain of salt down here, but I just wanted to remind you that it's only the first week of June.... and it's ONE HUNDRED DEGREES HERE IN DC. Thank you, that is all. 

Times like this call for a nice, clean, satisfying salad. Luckily, before going outside here felt like walking on the surface of the sun, there was a nice period of ark-necessitating weather. Hence, the lettuce in the garden is going bonkers. Bonkers, I tell you! And lettuce is a use or lose type of produce. I mean, what are you going to do, freeze it? Not likely. So my family is eating a lot of salad these days. 

This week we had a lovely salad with some colorful vegetables (and even some fruit).  I used arugula, red lettuce, and a few other types of lettuces.  In an effort to make eating salad for dinner less, um, emasculating, I topped each portion with warm chickpeas with onions, garlic and red pepper, some couscous, and a soft boiled egg. A lot of components, but very easy, and tasty.  It's no manwich, but it'll do the trick.

Salad with Chickpeas, Couscous and Soft Boiled Egg

Ingredients:

1/2 Granny Smith apple, thinly sliced
1/2 red pepper, thinly sliced into strips
1/2 red pepper, diced
1/2 white or yellow onion, diced 
1/8 red onion, thinly sliced
6-8 radishes, thinly sliced
10-15 ounces lettuce of your choice
1TB olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
salt and pepper
1/2 c water
1 c chickpeas, drained and rinsed
2 c prepared couscous
2 soft boiled eggs (recipe follows) 

Dijon vinaigrette dressing

Ingredients: 

1TB Dijon mustard
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 TB extra virgin olive oil
salt 
pepper 

Preparation:
In a small bowl, combine ingredients for Dijon vinaigrette dressing. Mix with a fork or whisk, set aside.

In a large bowl, place apple, red pepper strips, red onion, radishes, and lettuce.  Add dressing.  Toss to combine. Set aside. 

In a medium sized skillet, heat olive oil.  Add white or yellow onion dice, garlic, and red pepper dice. Saute over medium heat for about 7 minutes, until all ingredients are soft.  Add chickpeas to skillet, and saute for about a minute.  Then add about 1/4 cup water.  Stir to combine, and cover.  Cook over low-medium heat for about ten minutes. Check mixture periodically, and add more water if needed. Chickpeas should be slightly softened, and water cooked away when you serve them. 

To plate salad: put about 4 cups of salad mixture on each plate. Place 1 c of couscous, and 1/2 c chickpea mixture on top of salad. Top with a soft boiled egg. Serves 2. 

2 Soft boiled eggs:
Preparation: 
In a small saucepan, boil enough water to cover 2 eggs.  Add eggs to boiling water, taking care not to crack them. Use a large spoon to lower them into water if necessary.  Cook eggs in gently boiling water for 4 minutes. Remove using a large spoon, and run under cold water for a minute. Use a spoon to crack eggshell, and peel.  Serve immediately.  





9 comments:

Lisa Turner said...

This sounds delicious! You should submit this to No Croutons Required. Details here.

blighter said...

Ha! Suckers! It's only 97 in NYC. Not quite enough to make me get air conditioning, though I might cave and get a fan that isn't broken.

Went to a movie yesterday to bask in the twin pleasures of blasted AC and Robert Downey Jr. Sadly, only Robert Downey showed up. Not sure why they decided to let up on the AC on the hottest day of the year so far but I think it prob. had something to do with making me suffer.

Oh yeah, the salad looks delicious but I don't know about the egg. I have a very love-hate thing going with eggs. One of my many, many colorful peculiarities.

eatingclubvancouver_js said...

I love chickpeas. I usually eat them straight out of the can with some olive oil and lemon.

I would love to have more chickpea recipes so I can enjoy their garbanzo goodness more often. I would love to have recipes where I can convince the rest of my family that chickpeas are great!

Hmmm. . .maybe a soft-boiled egg is part of the process. . .

Anonymous said...

OK YUM

saltygirl said...

Lisa- Thanks! I will submit the recipe.
Bob- Embrace the egg!
Eating Club- I love chick peas, too. But the addition of egg is so decadent, it really makes beans seem like a treat.
Tenina-Thanks for reading!

Anonymous said...

Hey Bob--not to push you over the edge with the eggs, but your comment reminded me of this article about a guy who starts a farm in his Brooklyn back yard. Very cool and funny article, but there's some fucked up shit in there--I don't think I'll be able to look at eggs or chickens (page 5) the same way again.

Anonymous said...

Wowzers. Just when the world seemed a zany kaliedoscope of 4th of July kitchen creativity...then came this recipe. Are there any left-overs?
Surfs Up,
John G

Ivy said...

I saw your recipe from the round up. Sounds delicious.

blighter said...

That is an awesome article, Tom.

I'd quibble only with his cite of "sunk costs" which he uses in almost precisely the opposite way as economists generally do and his use of "The Farm". As everyone knows, The Farm is the CIA training ground.

I feel I might have actually read it before, though I'm not 100%. Parts of it seemed familiar, but right around then there were kind of a rash of articles about people trying fairly extreme environmental stunts in NYC.

You should read about the folk who started the compost heap in their Manhattan apartment, stopped using the water heater or washing machines and swore off toilet paper and disposable diapers for thier kid. One wonders what the place must have smelled like.

I have a techy question for you but in the interest of keeping the sanctity of this food-related space... uh... sanctified, I'll email it to you. When I get home. If I remember. (Thank you corporate overlords for no personal email access...)