Thursday, October 28, 2010

Ezekiel's Wheel Salad- from Aarti Paarti (Vegan, GF)

You may have already noticed, but we are huge fans of Aarti from The Next Food Network Star and she won! So now she has her own show on the Food Network called Aarti Party. Unfortunately it is not being aired in Canada as of yet but when it does you can bet we will be following her wonderful Indian food adventures religiously! We've been watching her video blog (before she was famous) for some time now, and her videos are just so silly! But also informative; AND a lot of the recipes she makes are vegan, like this salad! You can watch Aarti make it here, and I bet you will be tempted to watch more you'll see! Aarti also explains in the video why she called it Ezekiel's Wheel Salad if you are curious :)

So onto the salad, it features so many yummy components it's hard to believe that it would taste anything but delicious! It's also very filling which is important for vegans, and it has pomegranate seeds in it! which are in season right now and apparently they go really well with tahini. Also, a side note about the spices: I was unable to find Zaatar, the middle-eastern spice blend, so I looked it up and all it is, is ground sumac, oregano, marjoram, thyme and toasted sesame seeds, I couldn't find sumac so I substituted lemon zest and put in a little extra salt. Enjoy!


1 shallot, minced
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt
3/4 cup tahini
1/2 cup or so of hot water
1 clove of garlic
Splash of extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp pine nuts
2 cans chick peas, drained and rinsed (2 small or 1 and 1/2 large cans)
3 roasted red peppers
Handful of pomegranate seeds or 3-4 pickled beets
Handful chopped parsley
Zaatar (3/4 tsp oregano, 3/4 tsp marjoram, 3/4 tsp thyme, 1 tbsp lemon zest, salt)
Ground black pepper

Combine shallot, lemon juice and salt in a large bowl, let sit while you toast your pine nuts. Add tahini and water until you have a dressing that is not sticky but the consistency of a cream-based salad dressing or yogurt. Combine everything else in! Mix until combined. It gets even better if you leave it overnight.

4 comments:

  1. YUM! Gosh I sure wish this was my dinner tonight instead I am having a plain old boring salad, nothing blog worthy ; )

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  2. That looks amazing! I love chickpea salads! Beautiful!

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  3. so i bought all of the ingredients to make this because it just looked too good, and when i got home realized i forgot the most important ingredient - the garbanzo beans! i was quite upset, but found a can of sweet peas in my pantry and subbed for those, adding more pomegranate seeds. it still turned out pretty well, but i will have to do it again with the garbanzo beans :)

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  4. @ Amanda: Hmmm that sounds like an interesting flavour combo...very christmas-y lol

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