Over Easter when we were away with my family, my sister made a delicious salad to accompany our Good Friday fish feast. The perfect combination of crunchy baked chickpeas with creamy avocados, crisp cucumber and capsicum with a lime juice zing and chilli flakes to boot.
I shared a photo of the salad from Easter over on my Instagram, and promised the recipe (lots of you have been hankering for it!) Truth be told I bought some avocados to make the recipe, shoot it and get it up on the blog but… I had to wait for the avocados to ripen up. Story of my life.
This was the perfect accompaniment to our fish (I also did some crunchy roast potatoes too) but can be served for a Mothers Day lunch this weekend if the mood strikes to make something delicious for your mum…
Spicy Chickpea and Zesty Avocado Salad
Ingredients
2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp dried onion
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1/2 tsp chilli flakes
Shake of pepper
1/4 cup avocado oil
1 cup cooked chickpeas
1 cucumber
1 capsicum
1/2 cup chopped fresh coriander
1 avocado
1 tbsp olive oil
Sea salt, to taste
Cracked pepper, to taste
Juice of 1 lime
Method
Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Add all spices to a bowl and stir to combine, add avocado oil and mix until creamy. Coat chickpeas with spice and oil mix and spread over an oven tray. Bake for 20 minutes.
Dice the cucumber, capsicum and avocado and add to a bowl with chopped coriander. Add olive oil, sea salt, cracked pepper and lime juice and toss to combine.
Let the chickpeas cool before adding to the bowl to mix through.
You can adjust the chilli flakes according to how hot (or not at all) you would like it, but the general consensus was that the combination of the chilli and paprika with the cucumber and avocado was perfect. I would even up the chilli content and then serve with a cooling yogurt raita on the side as a dressing. Yum!
Reminiscent of a bit of a salsa, I can also see chargrilled corn off the cob being added to this. Really, you can add anything you like with the chickpeas and avocado being the base, marrying perfectly with that spice mix. And if you can’t justify the cost of avocado oil (it’s exxy!) I do really think it makes the difference to this recipe – it’s really creamy and balances the dish. I rarely use the avocado oil so an $8 bottle sits in my pantry for a long while!
Have a lovely weekend, I hope it’s full to bursting with delicious food memories with the mums who make the world go around…
