Sweet potato, chickpea, and tahini salad

Winter is a time for warm salads, an underutilised part of the dinner menu. Warm salads are beautiful and use the produce of the season: tubers and roots, beets, turnips, parsnips, and sweet potatoes, as in this case. They are fried or roasted and served to warm you up on chilly nights.

This salad does just that. The ingredients came together beautifully; the spice-roasted sweet potatoes were crisp, the tangy chickpeas added texture, and the fresh greens a crunch, all mixed with creamy feta and nuts. This is a complex salad, but the mild tahini dressing combines everything beautifully. This salad disappeared fas,t with guests digging in for seconds till the bowl was empty.

Yasmin Khan lives in the UK and has been a human rights activist fighting for displaced refugees from the Middle East. This is her third cookbook—I have to get the other two now—and explores the influences on the cuisine of Turkey, Cyprus, and Greece from the Ottoman period to the influence of the refugees fleeing to those countries today. This is beyond a cookbook; this is a story of the people, their lives, and their uncertain fates.

For more recipes from this cookbook, click here.

Ingredients:

For the sweet potatoes:

2 lb sweet potatoes

Olive oil spray

1 teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed lightly

1 teaspoon dried thyme, crumbles

Salt, to taste

1/2 teaspoon pepper

For the dressing:

4 tablespoon tahini

4 tablespoon water

Juice of 1/2-1 lime

For the chickpeas:

1/2 cup chickpeas, soaked overnight in 4 cups water

1 small bay leaf

5 black peppercorns

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cloves garlic, sliced

5 cups water

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 garlic clove, minced

Juice of 1/2 lime

For the remaining salad:

2 heads lettuce. gem of other

Parsley, roughly torn

Mint, roughly torn

2 tablespoons pumpkin seeds

1/4 cup feta cheese, crumbled

2 teaspoon sumac

Preheat the oven to 375° F.

Peel and cut the sweet potatoes into wedges. Layer on a lined baking sheet. Spray with olive oil and sprinkle with the fennel, thyme, salt, and pepper. Bake for 40-45 minutes until the potatoes are soft and charred in spots. Remove and set aside.

Rinse the soaked chickpeas and add them to a pot with the bay leaf, peppercorns, salt, garlic, and water. Bring to a boil and simmer gently for 30 minutes until cooked through. Do not overcook the chickpeas; they should retain a good bite.

After the chickpeas are cooked, drain and discard the bay leaf. Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the cumin seeds and garlic. Sautè for 30 seconds, then add the chickpeas. Cook until the chickpeas are warmed up. Remove the pan from the stove and toss with lime juice. Taste for salt and lime and adjust as needed. Set aside.

Layer the greens in a wide bowl to assemble the salad and top with the sweet potatoes. If you want to, you can roast them for 3-5 minutes to get the potatoes to crisp up. Arrange them on the leaves and scatter the warmed spiced chickpeas all over. Top with parsley and mint, pumpkin seeds, feta and sumac. Serve immediately.