I was taken by this recipe for lemon-roasted chickpea, silverbeet and red onion salad, but got home tonight to discover that my red onions were sprouting magnificently large green topknot-shoots and I’d also run out of cumin. Even modified, however, this was a good dinner. I particularly liked the chickpeas (though when do I not like chickpeas?) – roasting them makes them ever so slightly crisp and seems to infuse the flavour of the lemon and spices into them. I at this with a spoonful of yoghurt on top, and I bet it would be even better with the roast red onions as well.
1 tin chickpeas, drained and rinsed
olive oil
juice of a lemon
1 heaped teaspoon cumin (I used garam masala, also good)
sea salt and black pepper
garlic-infused olive oil
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
1 bunch silverbeet, stemmed and roughly chopped
Heat the oven to 180C. Line a baking tray with paper, and tip the chickpeas onto it. Drizzle with olive oil, lemon juice, spice, salt and pepper, and toss well. Roast for approx 15 minutes, until golden and slightly crispy. Remove from oven.
Heat the garlic-infused olive oil (or plain olive oil with some crushed garlic) in a pan, then add the fennel seeds and sizzle for a minute. Add the silverbeet, and cook until wilted and soft. Taste it to make sure – it wilts quite a bit before it becomes sufficiently soft.
Toss the chickpeas and any remaining roasting liquid through the silverbeet, and taste for seasoning or more lemon. Eat warm.
Serves one extremely hungry chickpea-and-silverbeet fiend to complete satiation.