I know the great press around Broccoli, being the wonder vegetable for weight watchers. But honestly sometimes I struggle to find it delicious enough to have huge portions. One way that I have started loving this veg is having it roasted. Slightly browned, a little crunchy and yet not mushy.
So my recipe today is another super healthy and lean salad. Roasted Broccoli, chickpeas and Ham salad with a crackling herb dressing made with greek yogurt and roasted garlic.
The best thing about salads is you can easily alter the ingredients and still turns out to be exactly how you want. So here you can replace Ham with anything else you fancy, add chunks of feta or any other vegetable raw or roasted, you can play around as you want. And yes this is super simple with only effort being to assemble everything, roasting broccoli (with apparently happens in the oven :)) and whisking the herb dressing. In my view the dressing is key to lift the otherwise bland mix of these ingredients so add as much punch you can to it.
So let’s dive in!
Ingredients
For the salad
- Broccoli florets from 2 small or 1 large head
- A can of chickpeas, drained water weight is around 200 gms
- Few slices of smoked ham, about 5-6 cut into strips.
- Finely sliced 1/2 red onion
- Handful of rocket/arugula leaves
- 3-4 large garlic cloves with skin
- Salt and Pepper
- Olive oil
For the dressing
- 3 tbsp greek yogurt OR you can use sour cream. To keep it healthy i used the former.
- 1 tbsp any good quality mayonnaise. I used Heinz.
- Handful of flat parsley OR coriander finely chopped
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 1 tsp honey
- 1 tsp whole grain mustard
- 1 green chilli (optional)
- Red chilli flakes (optional)
- Salt and Pepper
Method
- Place the broccoli florets in a roasting tray with the garlic cloves in the center. Keep them in their skin, Drizzle olive oil so they all get some bit of it. Sprinkle some salt and pepper. Heat the oven to 180C fan / 356 F. Place the tin in the center and set the timer for 20 minutes.
- While the broccoli is roasting, assemble build your salad and dressing. Drain the can of chickpeas. Ensure its free of water, if needed pat it with a kitchen towel. Slice the ham slices in strips. Slice the onions as well.
- In a large mixing bowl, add the chickpeas, ham and onions and mix well.
- Remove the broccoli from the oven and allow it to cool. While it cools down remove the garlic from the center.
- In a bowl add the roasted garlic flesh, it will be nice and squishy. Now add the greek yogurt, mayonnaise and whisk it together. You can use electric blender too. Now add the chopped parsley or coriander whichever you have, green chilli if you wish to use, ensure it very finely diced. Mix/Whisk again. Add olive oil, lemon juice, honey, mustard and mix it. Taste to check if you need to add anything to balance the flavours. The mayo will have salt so be careful with adding more of it.
- The consistency of dressing should be like caesar salad dressing, flowy but not runny.
- Back to the salad bowl. Add the cooled down broccoli florets and rocket and mix it all well.
- To serve, arrange the salad on a platter. Spoon the dressing on the salad mix. Sprinkle chilli flakes if you like.
Recipe variations
You can totally skip ham. Or you can replace it with grilled chicken or smoked salmon. For vegetarians you can try halloumi or Indian cottage cheese as well. Idea was to introduce a smoked and salty meat with the vegetables.
You can also use any type of beans or mixed beans in place of Chickpeas.
You can try different garnishes like scatter roasted pecans or pine nuts OR sunflower seeds or sesame seeds.
For the salad dressing, you can add mint as well if you have any fresh one or even dried mint will be good. As mentioned in the ingredients you can use sour cream instead of greek yogurt, just ensure you add less lemon juice to it.
I hope you would try this and I am quite sure you would love it too. Let me know how it turns out to be.
If you fancy some more salad recipes check my Curried Chickpeas and Apple salad or Zingy Prawn and Apple salad
Until next time, eat healthy!
