It’s [almost] summer and you know what that means!
Hot, hot, hot!
If you’re in Vegas you know our summer time temperatures reach 100+ every day until late September and the evening temperatures don’t cool off much. We’re lucky if it’s 90 degrees at midnight!
For those of you not in Vegas but are still dealing with heat and humidity, this great summer salad recipe will help you stay cool when you have no interest in turning on the stove. Seriously, I can’t blame you. I avoid cooking as much as possible as it is so something simple like this recipe is great.
Now, I need to point out where I got this: It’s from a book called Clean Food: A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source by Terry Walters. It’s an entirely vegetarian cookbook that focuses on eating clean, obviously.
My husband found this at the bookstore one day and wanted it but chose not to buy it. A week later I disappeared to the bookstore while he was at work and bought it for him.
A couple months later when we sat down and spent some time looking through the recipes, we chose a few we wanted to try in our quest to do something different and have a planned menu for the week. This was our lone meatless meal.
How to Make:
Total time start to finish: Approximately 30 minutes.
Ingredients
- 2 cucumbers, diced and peeled
- 1 mango (medium or large would be good), diced, peeled and seed removed
- 2 cups (or 1 can) of chickpeas. If using can, drain and rinse
- 1/4 cup of currants (we omitted these)
- 1/4 cup of dried apricots (recipe calls for them to be minced, we didn’t mince ours)
- 1/3 cup fresh mint
Dressing
- 2 tablesoons extra virgin olive oil
- 3 tablespoons of lemon juice
- 1 shallot, minced
- Salt and pepper to taste
Directions
Put cucumbers, chickpeas, currants, apricots and mint into a large bowl. In another bowl, mix together ingredients for the dressing and then pour over the salad. Mix together and then serve.
Suggestions: Use another dressing if it suits you. Friends on Flickr suggested a raspberry vinaigrette. I haven’t tried it so don’t take my word for it. Our salad was good but I felt it needed a tad more flavor so the vinaigrette idea seems like a good one. Also our mango wasn’t ripe enough so it lacked a little bit of sweetness.
I give this summer salad recipe two thumbs up despite the lack of sweetness and flavor. It just needs to be tweaked a little bit. 
Try it and enjoy! You won’t be disappointed!
