Chickpea salad
Insalata di ceci e cipolle
Chickpea salads can be found in a number of varieties all over Italy. Mostly they are made with white onions, peppers, anchovies and eggplants, but during winter when there are no eggplants growing on this side of the globe I prefer mixing the boiled chickpeas with a spicy sweet and sour onion marmelade as suggested by the celebrated Danish food entrepreneur Claus Meyer in his cooking encyclopedia Almanak.
Real Italofiles prefer using the red onions from Tropea in Calabria that come with a DOP certificate, but outside Italy these can be hard to find, and I don’t think anyone would be able to blind taste the difference.
Ingredients
100 g soaked chickpeas
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
3 red onions
2 tbsp sugar
100 ml white wine vinegar
1 tbsp Balsamic vinegar
1 tsp coriander seeds
1 anis star
Fresh rosemary.
Preparation
Drain the soaking water off the chickpeas and cook for 1 hour until tender with a spring of rosemary (save a little fresh rosemary for later).
When the chickpeas are done and drained mix them with a dressing of 2 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp vinegar and some chopped rosemary.
Melt sugar and spices in a saucepan over low heat till you have a light brown caramel.
Add the finely sliced onions and stir for a couple of minutes until they have softened.
Add white wine vinegar and cook under low heat and under lid for 15 minutes.
Remove the lid, taste the onions to make sure they are not too sweet and adjust the taste and colour with balsamic vinegar.
Mix the sour sweet onions with chickpeas and serve as starter or sidedish.
More on chickpea salad and other recipes
Delectable and healthy mixture of chickpeas and Tropea onion marmalade.
Oh, that looks lovely – and doesn’t sound and look so much better when written in Italian rather than the English?! :) We love chickpeas so we’re always looking for something different to do with them.
Julia