Edamame and Chickpea Salad with Olives and Citrus Vinaigrette

Yesterday, while browsing through the Olive Bar at Whole Foods, I found the most unusual combination of flavors. It was pickled Green Olives that were combined with raisins, dried cranberries, peeled almonds and the dressing was an orange peel vinaigrette. At first I found it a bit odd because olives have such a distinctly tart taste and combining it with a sweet and sour vinaigrette and that too with a dominantly citrus flavor felt quite weird but the more I ate it, the more I liked it. By the end of the evening I had eaten the whole tub that I had bought that afternoon – the darn stuff is addictive! So inspired by it, I made an Edamame and Chickpea salad which had olives and a lemon peel vinaigrette (I didn’t have any oranges at home or I would have tried that). This made for a healthy and filling salad. I use organic and non GMO Edamame (so it’s actually good for you) and combined it with chickpeas, sweet peppers, cherry tomatoes, chopped flat-leafed Parsley, dried cranberries and a little bit of raw onion to add some punch to the flavors. The dish was easy to make and needed no cooking because I used organic canned chickpeas and the Edamame were already blanched. It made for a VERY colorful and delicious bean salad.

Ingredients:

1. 2 cups of frozen, blanched and shelled Edamame
2. 2 cans of chickpeas
3. One whole fresh lemon
4. 1 small onion
5. A handful of chopped flat-leafed Parsley
6. 1.5 tablespoons of honey
7. 2.5 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
8. 6-7 small sweet bell peppers
9. 10-12 cherry tomatoes
10. Salt and pepper to taste
11. ½ cup of dried cranberries
12. 1 cup of olives (I used pitted green and Kalamata olives)

Directions:

1. Open the two cans of chickpeas and pour the chickpeas in a colander
2. Pour the frozen shelled Edamame into the colander too and run cold water over the chickpeas and edamame for about a minute or two.

3. Let all the water drain from the beans.

4. Wash and slice the peppers into bite sized pieces

5. Peel and thinly slice the onion.

6. In a large mixing bowl, add the following: washed and dried chickpeas and Edamame, sliced onions and sliced peppers

7. Chop the tomatoes into halves and add to the mixing bowl.

8. Slice all the olives into small pieces and add to the mixing bowl

9. Wash and coarsely chop the parsley and set it aside.

10. Add salt and freshly grated pepper to the mixing bowl

11. Zest the lemon peel and place the zest in a small bowl to make the vinaigrette.
12. Juice the whole lemon into the small bowl

13. Add honey and olive oil to the small bowl and with a small whisk, mix everything together to make the vinaigrette (make sure the oil and the juice and honey get emulsified).

14. Pour the vinaigrette over the large mixing bowl and gently toss the salad

15. Add the Coarsely chopped Parsley to the mixing bowl.

16. Also add the dried cranberries and toss the salad thoroughly.
17. Taste the salad and adjust the salt, sweet and tart balance according to your preference. Serve chilled or at room temperature. This could be a great side dish or by itself it can be a whole meal. A bowl full of it was my lunch today!

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