6

Chickpea salad with

tahini dressing

SERVES 4 AS A LIGHT MEAL // PREP TIME 15 MINS

A creamy tahini dressing will enhance many salads, but it’s a

perfect match with the crunchy radishes, chickpeas and herbs

in this bowl. Use hulled or unhulled tahini to suit your taste.

300 gm cooked or canned

chickpeas, drained

and rinsed

250 gm (1 punnet) cherry

tomatoes

½ red onion, finely chopped

4 radishes, coarsely chopped

1 bunch flat-leaf parsley,

coarsely chopped

¼ cup roasted almonds,

coarsely chopped

TAHINI DRESSING

1 tbsp tahini

Go-to seed

Tahini is the magic ingredient in many Middle

Eastern dishes, from halwa to salad dressing.

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 For tahini dressing, combine

ingredients in a bowl, thin to

desired consistency with a little

water and season to taste.

2 Arrange salad ingredients

in a large serving bowl,

separating each ingredient.

Spoon dressing over, season

to taste and toss to serve.●

Eating clean

I

magine where we’d be without tahini. Hummus

would be a one-dimensional chickpea dip; baba

ghanoush would be no more than grilled eggplant.

Think of what tarator, the tahini-garlic sauce,

brings to fried cauliflower and falafel, to kofta and

calamari. Consider a world without halwa.

Tahini is also often an undertone, adding a back-

note of nuttiness and richness where it would otherwise

be lacking. When used in a simple dressing – whisked

with olive oil and lemon juice or vinegar – it can

transform a chopped Israeli or Turkish-style salad into

a standout meze plate, a substantial side to a pan-fried

fillet of fish, or even a meal on its own.

Organic tahini, found in good health food shops,

is tahini at its best; it’s just sesame paste, sure, but a

good example will taste creamy over bitter. That said,

unhulled tahini will have a slight bitterness to it, and

a darker colour than hulled, which tends to have a

more straight-up nutty flavour. A final tip: tahini lasts

for a long time, but the longer it’s kept the higher the

risk it’ll turn rancid, so apply often for best results. RECIPE LISA FEATHERBY. PHOTOGRAPHY ALICIA TAYLOR. STYLING ROSIE MEEHAN

Chickpea salad

Bowl from Grit

Ceramics. All

other props

stylist’s own.

Stockists p192.

38 GOURMET TRAVELLER