Chickpea and Cabbage Salad with Tahini Dressing

I've recently bought the amazing 'Appetite For Reduction' by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and honestly it is the best book she has ever written (except maybe Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, but that is in a league of it's own). The first section in the book is dedicated to the most amazing sounding salads and I am literally planning to make them all starting from the first and working my way through. Salad is something, however, that I find recipes are often basic, boring and something I could have made in my sleep and I often think they are a waste of space in a cookbook. However, there is something very exciting about salad recipes which make you drool just reading them - mostly because salad is so easy to make.

As a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, however, I am not an enormous advocate of salads and would strongly try to dissuade anybody thinking of going on a raw food diet against doing so. This is because eating a lot of salads and raw foods expends a lot of extra heat in your body in order to digest it and can result in cold in the interior. Cold foods can also damage the functioning of your Spleen Qi, and therefore may cause digestive problems, bloating, water retention and even weight gain. So - I advise salads to my patients only in moderation and when I eat salads I often try and make sure that at least some of the ingredients are cooked (see my Marinated Tofu, Broad Bean and Broccoli Salad, my Glass Noodle, Green Bean and Black Fungus Salad, or my White Bean Salad).

However, this salad doesn't involve cooking any of the ingredients, therefore I recommend not having it too often. Whenever I eat a salad like this I always drink a cup of herbal tea with it to help warm up my Stomach and aid in the digestion of the food. In this case the tea you should drink is my Cabbage-Is-My-Friend Tea, there are two reasons for this. As this salad contains raw cabbage I would recommend having a couple of cups of this tea with and after your salad for a carminative (anti-flatulent) affect. Secondly, it contains herbs which aid in digestion, therefore may help prevent any damage to your Spleen Qi caused by the cold nature of the foods. 

Ingredients

1 cup shredded iceberg lettuce

1 1/2 cups shredded green cabbage

1 carrot, grated

1 small cucumber, finely diced

1/2 punnet cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

1x 300g can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed

2 tsp pepitas

1/2 lemon

1 tbsp unhulled tahini

1 clove garlic

2 tsp soy sauce (substitute tamari to make this salad gluten free)

Cracked Pepper, to taste

To Make

1. Combine the lettuce, cabbage, carrot, cucumber and chickpeas in a bowl and mix well to combine.

2. Sprinkle the cherry tomatoes and pepitas over the top.

3. Add a little zest from the lemon.

4. In a small bowl or cup, combine the tahini, lemon juice (from the half lemon) and garlic and mix quite vigorously until the tahini is all smooth and has turned a paler colour (due to the lemon juice). Add the soy sauce and mix well to combine. Add pepper to taste (you will not need to add salt, as the soy sauce is salty enough).

5. Drizzle the dressing over the salad and toss to combine. Eat straight away.

Serves 2