Balila -Lebanese Chickpea Salad

This is a simple salad made with chickpeas and mostly nothing else.Balila is a Lebanese style salad and is basically cumin flavoured chikpeas with outher optional ingredients like tomato,cheese,onion,pinenuts etc .Another general Mediterranean version called Balela includes blackbeans as well.I made a simple version found here which has chickpeas, cumin and uses butter fried pinenuts for an exotic touch.

Ingredients:

Chickpeas: 1/2 cup presoaked and cooked till done. OR Canned chickpeas

Olive Oil

Cumin powder

Garlic: 1-2 small cloves minced/crushed

Salt as per taste

Pine nuts: handful

Butter:1-2 tbsp

Preparation:

Cook chickpeas till done .Drain the chickpeas and mix it with salt,cumin powder,crushed garlic and olive oil.This is actually a dressing to the chickpeas.Melt butter in a pan,add in pinenuts and saute till golden brown. Pour this pinenuts along with the remaining butter on top of the chickpea mixture as a garnish.

The salad is spicy and pinenuts add a different crunch.Chickpeas is something that is always there in my pantry.The salad also makes use of pinenuts which I had hoarded from US and so this simple salad goes to NCR:Store Cupboard hosted this time by Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes.