Chickpea Salad

With interesting ingredients and salad dressing, a simple salad can turn out tasty.  Sharing with you a simple  salad using chickpeas.

Ingredients :  (serves : 1)

1. Boiled Chickpea - 1/2 cup
2. Yellow Bell pepper - 2 tbsp
3. Red Bell Pepper - 2 tbsp
4. Green bell pepper - 2 tbsp
5. Onion - 1No. sliced
6. Coriander leaves - 1 tsp
7. Olive oil - 1 tsp
8. Garlic finely chopped - 1 tbsp
9. Lemon juice -  1 tsp
10. Salt to taste
11. Pepper powder - a pinch
12. Ice berg lettuce leaf  (optional)

 Procedure :-

• Soak & cook chickpea adding salt, till tender

• Dice the bell peppers

• Slice the onion thinly

• Finely chop coriander leaves

• Heat oil in a wok, add finely chopped garlic and fry it for 30 seconds in low flame.

• add the cubed bell peppers, boiled chick pea and toss it for a minute in medium flame. switch off the flame.

• Add onion slices, lemon juice, pepper powder, salt. Mix well

• Place a iceberg lettu leaf on serving bowl / plate

• Transfer the chickpea mixture to the lettuce leaf, sprinkle coriander leaves on top and serve.

Fruit Salad for Ganpathy

This flavourful fruit salad is also made for Ganapathy Homam but with certain fruits (Havan performed for Lord Ganesha). It goes well as an offering, dessert and a nice fruit salad. You may add the fruits of your choice with the basic apple, sweetlime, Banana, Ghee, Flattened rice, Lemon juice and few Lemon pieces.

Ingredients :-

1. Apple - 1 No. (medium size)
2. Guava - 1 No. (Small size)
3. Banana - 2 Nos. (small elaichi variety)
4. Sweet Lime - 4 Pods (Mosambi)
5. Pear - 1 No.
6. Pomegranate- 1No.
7. Lemon juice - 1 tbsp
8. Ghee - 1 tbsp
9. Jaggery (shredded) - 2 tbsp
10. Cardamom powder - less than 1/4 tsp
11. Coconut pieces - 1 tbsp (finely chopped)
12. Flattened Rice (poha) - 2 tbsp

Procedure :-

• Chop the fruits (apple, pear, banana, sweet lime) and put them in a bowl. Add the pomegranate pearls, Lemon juice, Ghee, Shredded Jaggery, Cardamom powder, Finely chopped coconut, Flattened Rice. You can add even finely chopped lemon pieces to it as they make it more interesting with their citrus flavour when chewed on. Otherwise you can even add lemon rinds along with lemon juice.

• Mix everything together.

• Let it rest for  minimum 10 minutes, covered.

• Mix and serve.

• You may also serve this chilled as a dessert.

Enjoy!

Healthy Mixed Salad

Summer is on so as usual I try to cut down my time in kitchen by including some raw vegetables into the diet. It is good to control the appetite and healthy too.

Vegetables for salad to be washed thoroughly, peeled (wherever necesssary) and used. You can even blanch them for 5 minutes in hot salted water. Because while eating raw salads, we should be very careful about the parasites.

Salads with variety of dressings changes its taste & make it more interesting.

starting with sharing with you a simple mix veg salad

1. Grated beetroot - 2 tbsp
2. Shredded cabbage - 1 tbsp
3. Grated carrot - 1 tbsp
4. French beans - 2 tbsp
5. Lemon juice
6. Pepper
7. Salt to taste

1. Parboil the french beans after cutting it into 1" pieces
2. In a bowl, put all the above ingridients, parboiled french beans and mix well.

• You can crush some basil leaves to it before serving. (optional)
•  As per your preference you can alter the combinations by adding or reducing the mixing quantity.