Description
This spoonable cherry tomato chickpea salad takes full advantage of summer produce and is perfect for when it’s aggressively hot out.
Ingredients
Scale
- 1/2 cup (90 g) dry pearl couscous
- 1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 20 (150 g) cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered*
- 2 tbsp mint leaves, finely minced
- 1 tbsp dill, finely minced
- 3 tbsp (25 g) olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves, finely sliced
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tsp za’atar
- 1 tsp sumac
- 1/2 tsp coriander
- Diamond Crystal kosher salt (used a total of 1 tsp)
- Finish with a drizzle of pomegranate molasses**
Instructions
- Cook the couscous. Fill a medium-sized pot with water and bring to a boil. Dump in the couscous, along with a large pinch of salt. Cook the couscous on medium-high heat until soft. Drain and rinse the couscous with cold water to stop the cooking process. Add the couscous to a large bowl. NOTE: Cooking the couscous like pasta is so much easier and prevents it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Plus, rinsing the cooked couscous prevents it from clumping together when it cools.
- Prep the chickpeas. You have two options here: you can either make a cold Middle-Eastern pasta salad situation (my personal favorite) or a cozy warm chickpea salad (also amazing). For the cold pasta salad situation, drain and rinse the chickpeas and add them to the bowl with the couscous. For the cozy chickpea salad, add the chickpeas to the spiced oil along with the cumin seeds and let them fry off a bit to heat up and absorb the flavors of the oil.
- Prep the tomatoes and herbs, and add to the bowl of couscous.
- Make the spiced oil. Add the oil and garlic to a skillet (I use the same pot I used for the couscous to minimize cleanup), and fry on medium heat until the garlic begins to turn golden. Regularly toss the garlic to ensure it browns evenly. As soon as the garlic reaches the golden stage, add the cumin seeds (and chickpeas if you’re making a warm salad), and fry off for an additional 1 minute. Remove from the heat and sprinkle in the remaining spices.
- Toss together and serve. Pour the spiced oil over the bowl, along with 1/2 – 1 tsp kosher salt. Toss to combine and adjust salt as needed. When you’re ready to serve, drizzle each individual bowl with pomegranate molasses (don’t skip this).
Notes
*If your cherry tomatoes are on the smaller side halve them, if they’re bigger, quarter them. The goal is to have all the ingredients of this salad more or less similar in size so it’s easy to spoon up!
**Love this pomegranate syrup from Just Date – it’s interchangeable with pomegranate molasses but with better ingredients.