Chickpea Salad Dressing

Have you checked out Shutterbean? I have me some ridiculous amounts of love for that blog, you don't even know, and it all started out with the link to some biscuits. I was like, cool, I'll bookmark that, you know, maybe even check out the archives a bit. BAM! Hours of life gone, loads of recipes bookmarked, lots of smiling reading through Tracy's posts.

As you have *probably* guessed from that intro, this is one of the aforementioned recipes.

I must admit, I'm not really one for salad dressings, but this one really bumped up the salad from a simple, chucked-together side dish to something a little fancier. Because I was literally scraping the jar of Dijon mustard to get the required amount, I poured the leftover dressing into the jar and shook it up so I didn't waste any Dijon. Resourceful, eh?

CHICKPEA SALAD DRESSING
Original recipe from Appetite for Reduction, adapted by Shutterbean
Serves 8 as a side salad or 4 as a main meal
Total time commitment: 15 minutes


SALAD:
400g chickpeas
2 cups pearl cous cous, cooked
Other salad ingredients

DRESSING:
1/4 cup cashew pieces
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tsp Dijon mustard

1. Place cashew pieces in a food processor & blend until chopped. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend until smooth - as you can see from the photo, I didn't have that sort of patience!

2. Toss dressing with salad ingredients and serve.