Do you like chickpeas? I hope so, because in this summer dish they are the true stars. Let’s prepare the Chickpea Salad with arugula, tomatoes, primo sale cheese, olives, and carrots!!!
I prepared this dish for the first time for a summer dinner at my place, with Gianluca and Marzia, to whom I clearly said: I have to take photos and make a video for a new recipe, so we’re having this chickpea dish, and they gladly accepted.
The recipe is very simple, you’ve probably already seen it on the social media of many other food bloggers, but I still wanted to offer you my version. I’ve added many ingredients I love that I’ve used over the years for many other easy and quick summer recipes. You’ll find tuna, arugula, carrots, primo sale, tomatoes, and pitted green olives, a rich and tasty dish, perfect for lunch on the go. We enjoyed it for dinner, a light salad best enjoyed cold!
I haven’t indicated the preparation time for this recipe, but trust me, if you can, prepare this recipe in the morning to serve it in the evening. Keep it in the fridge the entire time, stirring it maybe mid-afternoon, to allow the ingredients to marinate.
Below, I leave you other recipes you can find on my recipe blog where I’ve used canned chickpeas, from Falafel to Hummus. You’ll also find Chickpea Farinata with the traditional Ligurian chickpea flour recipe that I’ve preserved for years in my recipe book. If you like chickpeas, don’t miss the Espinacas con Garbanzos, a traditional Spanish recipe, a side dish rich in spices and flavor!
I also leave you the two Collections I’ve created: Pasta Recipes Easy First Courses, Quick and Delicious, and Summer Recipes only cold dishes with plenty of recipes to enjoy in summer!!!
I’ll see you every morning in the group and on the Facebook fan page of Le Ricette di Bea with the Recipe of the Day!
- Difficulty: Very easy
- Cost: Very economical
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 4
- Cooking methods: No cooking
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Summer, Spring
- Energy 347.78 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 18.28 (g) of which sugars 3.30 (g)
- Proteins 18.36 (g)
- Fat 22.56 (g) of which saturated 2.44 (g)of which unsaturated 2.86 (g)
- Fibers 5.92 (g)
- Sodium 316.54 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 200 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients for Summer Chickpea Salad Recipe
- 10.6 oz cooked chickpeas, boiled (in my case in a glass jar)
- 3.5 oz tuna (in water)
- 3.5 oz arugula
- 1.75 oz carrots (in my case finely sliced)
- 1.75 oz green olives (in my case pitted)
- 3.5 oz primo sale cheese
- 3.5 oz piccadilly tomatoes
- tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 pinch pepper
- some fennel seeds (optional but trust me, everyone liked this extra touch)
- to taste parsley (in my case dried)
If you don’t want to use canned precooked chickpeas or jarred precooked chickpeas, you can easily use soaked chickpeas and then cook them, leaving them slightly undercooked so they don’t break apart when preparing the summer chickpea salad we’re about to make.
Tools to prepare the Chickpea Salad with arugula, tomatoes, and tuna
- 1 Bowl
- 1 Knife
- 1 Spoon
- 1 Colander
- 1 Cutting board
- 1 Wooden fork
- 1 Wooden spoon
- 5 Small bowls
Recipe Steps for Chickpea Salad light dish to enjoy cold
Let’s start by arranging all the necessary ingredients for preparing this summer chickpea salad on the work surface. Take the arugula, wash it, and place it in a small bowl. Then wash the carrots, in my case, I’ve also grated them into matchsticks, placing them in a small bowl. Next, wash the tomatoes and place them in another small bowl.
Drain the pitted green olives from their preservation brine and wash them too. Then, discard the oil if you haven’t chosen tuna in water, and pour the tuna into a small bowl. Open the primo sale package and place it on the work surface. Now we have all the ingredients ready to proceed.
Take a nice large bowl, one big enough for all the ingredients we will use. In the video recipe, you can follow all the steps of this recipe. Pour the arugula into the bowl, then the carrots, cut the tomatoes in half and then in half again.
Then add the tuna in water, cut the primo sale into pieces directly into the bowl. Then the pitted green olives, and finally season with extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and add the fennel seeds. A generous sprinkle of parsley, in my case dried. Using a wooden fork and a wooden spoon, mix everything to amalgamate well and flavor.
In the video recipe you find above the ingredient list, you’ll see that I added all these flavor enhancers twice because, after tasting, it was still a bit bland.
Then place it in the refrigerator until it’s time to serve our summer and fresh chickpea salad. As mentioned, I recommend seasoning the chickpea salad several hours in advance to let it rest and give all the ingredients time to marinate.
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Storage and Variations
You can store the chickpea and tuna salad in a container with a lid. If you have one, you can already prepare this summer dish in a bowl that already has a lid. The summer chickpea salad can be stored, already dressed, in the refrigerator for a maximum of two days, after which it becomes stale and should be discarded. My advice is to prepare the amount of chickpea salad with arugula for appropriate quantities for consumption in one go, so as not to have leftovers.
Variations: I can think of substituting primo sale with Greek feta, another cheese I adore that’s rich in flavor. We could then substitute, while still using a similar ingredient, the green olives with black olives. Then, if you don’t like the taste of arugula, you can use baby lettuce or lamb’s lettuce. Another change we can make is to vary the tuna with mackerel or salmon. If you can’t eat tomatoes because you might be intolerant, you can also omit them.
