Mediterranean Salad with pulses and belly tuna, a cool summer dish
Yes, we really fancy salads at this time of year. The worst heat of the summer has arrived and nobody would ever think of making a stew or similar, the types of dishes that warm you up in winter. But even if it is hot and we’ve started preparing salads, that doesn’t mean to say that we don’t have to eat properly.
For example, eating pulses which are recommended for a healthy balanced diet. Pulses which, incidentally, form one of the basic elements of the Mediterranean diet, the best diet in the world, the same as can be said of extra virgin olive oil. Today, we are going to prepare a really appetising salad with chick peas and belly tuna. So let’s get started.
Ingredients
- 300 g dried chick peas
- 200 g cherry tomatoes
- 6 small radishes
- 1 red onion
- 20 black olives
- 1 stick celery
- 250 g tinned belly tuna
Ingredients for the dressing
- 90 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 30 ml wine vinegar
- 2 tbsps Dijon mustard
- 1 tbsp honey
- Fresh thyme, chopped
- Salt
- Pepper
Preparation
- Soak the dried chick peas for 8 to 12 hours. It’s much better to do it overnight.
- Place them in a pressure cooker for 20 minutes with a little salt, 2 cloves of garlic, 2 bay leaves and pepper corns.
- Drain and leave to cool.
- Once this has been done and in order to enjoy these freshly cooked chick peas, it’s time to wash and cut the cherry tomatoes in half.
- Slice the onion as finely as possible and do the same with the celery and radishes.
- Once everything is cut up and washed, all we have to do now is mix all of the ingredients together and season.
- For the dressing, mix the mustard, honey and vinegar and when you have finished, add the best oil in the world. You will see that the oil gives a rustic touch to this summer salad. Don’t forget to add the thyme.
Two things we want to point out about this salad. We’ve used chick peas but we could also have used lentils or even a mixture of the two and the taste would be just as good.
And secondly, this salad allows for many variations. One of our favourite ones is adding a hard-boiled egg, chopped up very finely. The egg changes the taste and provides somewhat more nourishment.
As you can see, it is also a very Mediterranean salad due to the presence of olives and of that extra virgin olive oil which makes any dish even better. This is a salad which evokes the smell of the countryside and of freshly cut grass.