Tuesday, October 13, 2009

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.

14 Comments:

Priya Suresh said...

Protein packed salad, that too with simple ingredients,looks great CL..

lubnakarim06 said...

That's an super simple recipe with chickpeas...looks yum....

prasu said...

yummy recipe dear.....

Tina said...

Healthy salad.... looks yummy.

Shama Nagarajan said...

nice healthy salad

Cham said...

Simple and tasty salad!

Sanghi said...

Salad looks yummy!

Sum Raj said...

looks yummy and healthy version..

Lisa Turner said...

Thanks for this tempting entry. You never disappoint!

DK said...

Now you are talking right up my ally! I love legume based salads! Add greens to this, I would gobble it up - But just give me a platter of even the most beautiful and fresh looking greens for salads - I will catch the next available X-43 and fly the other end! :) Lovely salad

DK
Http://chefinyou.com

Bombay Foodie said...

I love chickpeas just by themselves, so I totally love this salad :)

Cynthia said...

Very similar to how we make it in these parts too. Looks good.

Lo said...

I love chickpeas... doesn't seem to take much to make them taste great. Does it?

Yasmeen said...

Chickpeas sure are one of the most nutritious and affordable foods..love the cumin flavor in the salad :D

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