Lemony walnut chickpea salad with goat’s cheese

I’m back on dry land, hurrah! However I now go by the name ‘captain’ (or just cap’n to those who know me well) and I smoke a pipe. I’ve also been trying to grow a beard, but so far no luck.

With minimal cooking facilities on the boat (an oven that barely worked, and about six inches of worktop), we were forced to be a bit creative, or resort to cheese sandwiches three times a day for a week. As much as I love cheese, even that doesn’t appeal to me. So instead, I made a chickpea sandwich filling that vaguely resembled the one I posted last year. And I guess I’m now on a bit of a chickpea salad kick, because it’s only taken me two days to make another version – this time a lemony walnut chickpea salad with goat’s cheese, red onion and rocket (that’s arugula to some of you, and ‘that frilly green stuff’ to others).

This salad / sandwich filling has a little bit of everything – sweetness, tanginess, crunchiness, pepperiness (are these even words?), and it all goes together perfectly. Just a couple of tablespoons of mayonnaise holds it all together nicely, but if you’re one of those (weird) mayonnaise haters, you could always experiment with using yoghurt or sour cream instead. I served mine stuffed inside a pitta bread, but you could have it plain or with salad leaves if you prefer. It’d pack up nicely into a lunch box too.

A quick question: does anyone here soak and cook their own chickpeas? It seems like an awful lot of hassle to me so I’ve only ever used tinned chickpeas, but I wonder if I should give the dried ones a go. Do they actually taste much different / better? I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to convince myself to do it unless they’re significantly better…

Anyway, enjoy the recipe!