I seem to be constantly posting 'easy' recipes these days. I think I am overdue for an afternoon in the kitchen with a complex, multi-step dish. For now, though, easy seems to be it.
Fortunately, I think some of you appreciate easy recipes as much as I do. Also fortunately, this salad is easy and delicious. After all, can you go wrong with chickpeas, sweet potato and balsamic vinegar? I don't think so.
This is more of a recipe concept than a strict step-by-step recipe. I guess that's what happens when you do easy meals - they're easy to tweak, tailor and adapt to what suits you. What I did is outlined below, but please feel free to modify to taste and convenience.
Chickpea salad with balsamic roasted sweet potato and carrot
About as easy as you can get when factoring in oven roasting!
Vegan.
Serves 2 as a meal serve, or more people as a side dish.
Ingredients
1 large sweet potato, peeled and sliced into rounds
1 large carrot, peeled and sliced into rounds
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 cup cooked chickpeas
2-3 cups shredded lettuce
Method
Preheat your oven to 200'C.
Place the sliced sweet potato and carrot in a roasting dish and drizzle with the balsamic vinegar. Sprinkle over the herbs, and toss to mix through.
Roast for 1.5 - 1.75 hours, or until the vegetables are fully cooked. Check after 1 hour and cover the roasting dish (with foil or a lid) at that point.
Allow the vegetables to cool, and then combine with the chickpeas and lettuce. Toss, and serve.
I don't think I'll ever get tired of chickpeas or sweet potato.
Are you into easy dishes or do you regularly schedule more advanced meals / cooking ventures?
Easy meals like this sound good to me - I do some more complicated meals but often they will make the next few nights easier with leftovers - last night I had leftover rice and vegan cheese sauce and fried onions and roasted beetroot - only had to fry up a bit of rainbow chard and I had a very nice easy meal. I don't have sweet potato as often as I would like but like to have a can of chickpeas always on the ready for a low energy day
ReplyDeleteI would like to use leftovers more than we do - Mr Bite seems to view the same meal (or variants thereof) 2 nights in a row as a very odd thing! Most unhelpful. I use leftovers more for lunches, but it does make a week of dinners hard to think up sometimes.
DeleteI have been craving veggies lately and I love sweet potatoes. I am going to have to try this recipe sometime soon. Thanks for sharing it! I usually do easy dishes during the week and leave the more complicated ones for the weekend when I have time. I even spend Sunday night doing meal prep to makes the weekdays less stressful.
ReplyDeleteI am definitely a fan of Sunday meal preparation for the week ahead - it makes such a big difference :)
DeleteThis is EXACTLY the kind of thing that I should be eating the lunch.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't it be nice if it could just appear before you at lunch time? I wish that would happen often!
DeleteI love easy recipes (well that's pretty much the bulk of what I write about on my blog, haha.) This one looks fabulous and so easy to put together. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteThanks for supporting my easy approach!
DeleteI am all for easy - life doesn't give me time to do complex too often. This looks delish!
ReplyDeleteTHanks Cakelaw, I'm glad it's not just me who struggles with the time for complex dishes.
DeleteLove your combo of sweet potato and vinegar! yum! yum! yum!
ReplyDeleteShashi @ http://runninsrilankan.com
I also like it with apple cider vinegar :-)
DeleteI've been doing a lot of fairly easy recipes too. I think that's okay though because really, who has the time to do complex recipes! I'm a big fan of chickpeas so this salad is a winner for me xx
ReplyDeleteEspecially in your household! I imagine complex gets hard to justify when a young adult child might eat the whole dish in one sitting ;)
DeleteEasy meals and freezer friendly meals are my go to all the way :)
ReplyDeleteNow I've appropriated my parent's cast off big freezer, I need to get into the freezer approach too!
DeleteSounds delicious. I enjoy anything drizzled with balsamic, a perfect salad.
ReplyDeleteIt took me a long time to catch on, but so do I now :)
DeleteLooks lovely! I'd definitely need to add some delicious fat to make this a proper meal for myself, though, specially as you don't even put oil on your roasted veg! I'm a fan of North America's obsession with candied walnuts or pecans in salads, for example... :)
ReplyDeleteI must confess, I only ate this as a side so I might have felt the same way if I'd eaten it as a main meal. Knowing me, though, I'd have eaten it as is but followed up with dessert.
DeleteI ate some tiramisu almonds yesterday and thought of you :-)
Dude, were those from Woolies? I remember seeing those at the shops across from my house, and always MEANT to buy them.
DeleteBut you probably got them from some classy joint, actually..!
Nope, Woolworths is my kind of place :-) These were actually from an IGA though...and one which is about 30 seconds walk from one of my workplaces, so I can sense what snacks are going to be filling my work days in the near future.
DeleteI totally forgot about sweet potatoes all summer then got a sudden craving recently so I bought 3 enormous ones! This looks like a lovely way to enjoy them :)
ReplyDeleteI do that too! For a vegetable I love a lot, it's odd I can sometimes forget about it :)
DeleteI never get tired of roasted sweet potato in salads, never! Or of easy dishes...far more appealing than complicated ones :-)
ReplyDeleteThat's definitely the way in this house :)
DeleteI like easy, it's too hard to cook complex meals on a week night when you have a child, full time job and the laundry has piled up! Bring on easy ;) this salad is perfect Kari
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't even have a child!
DeleteI peeled sweet potato strips over pizza the other night and have been trying to think of new ways to use it up. Love this salad. So healthy and filling.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a great pizza topping :)
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