Contrasting pickled beet salad with a lemony chickpea mash, the combination delivers zest and comfort in one bite. Perfect for a light lunch or to share with your friends.
Place beets in a medium saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring pot to boil and cook for about 30 minutes or until beets are tender. Drain water and set aside to cool. Peel beets and cut up into approx 1 cm cubes.
Peel and thinly slice red onion into half moons.
Wash a few sprigs of lemon thyme.
In a small saucepan, combine red wine vinegar with water, white sugar, salt and pepper. Over low heat, stir until sugar is dissolved.
In a bowl, place cut beets, thyme, red onion and red wine vinegar pickling liquid together. Cover and place in fridge to pickle. Leave for at least 30 minutes, overnight even better.
Drain and rinse chickpeas from can and place into food processor. Add 3 tablespoons of yoghurt, garlic cloves, lemon juice, lemon zest and salt and pepper to taste. Blitz until you get a semi coarse texture.
Wash and shake dry rocket leaves.
Assembly
On a large plate, scoop chickpea mash and spread across the plate in a circular motion.
Add 1 tablespoon of Greek yoghurt on top of chickpea mash.
Next, layer rocket leaves.
Finally, top with pickled beet salad.
Add cracked black pepper and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil to finish.
Serve.
Video
Notes
For a vegan salad, omit Greek yoghurt in the chickpea mash and when assembling. Add 1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil to the chickpea mash before blitzing. This will help it to combine and not so dry. Adjust as required.
For this recipe, I am not using a lot of lemon thyme, so you can use either thyme or lemon thyme, depending on what you have available.
You can use white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar if you don’t have red wine vinegar in the pantry for pickled beets.
I have used red beets in this pickled beet salad, but you can also try different varieties like golden beets, baby beets or even candy striped ones.
You can substitute canned chickpeas for dried chickpeas. For one can of chickpeas, use ½ cup of dried chickpeas.