Chickpea Pita Salad

Light. Refreshing.

In Wisconsin, as spring rolls out and the sun shines down for a few extended days, those are the kinds of adjectives that come to mind to describe the types of meals I want to enjoy.

With those words in our mind and the sun kissing our cheeks in recent weeks, we pulled on our thinking caps and headed to Europe, where we channeled some Mediterranean flavors.

The result was a nice and refreshingly light spring lunch for those days when you just want to get out of the office and sit in the shade for a while. The chickpeas fill you up while the feta jams in some creaminess and the red onion and celery play along with that much-needed crunch. Simple, yes, but a nice balance of flavors and textures.



Chickpea Pita Salad
6 servings

1 cup light mayo
6 ounces 0% Greek yogurt
1 lemon, juiced
2 teaspoons dill
1/4 cup fresh mint, chopped
1 clove garlic
2 15 ounce cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 medium red onion, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
1 cup reduced fat feta
salt and pepper to taste
lettuce
6 pita halves

1. Mix together the dressing of mayo, Greek yogurt, lemon juice, dill, mint and garlic in a small bowl.

2. Combine the chickpeas, red onion, celery, feta and dressing in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

3. Open each pita half and line with a small handful of lettuce. Scoop about a cup of chickpea salad mixture into each pita half. 

Linguine with Lemon Ricotta

We headed back to the August 2011 issue of Cooking Light this week for a quick summertime dish: Linguine with Quick Lemon Ricotta.

This recipe was interesting in that you make a quick ricotta instead of buying the ingredient pre-made. The recipe calls for zucchini and yellow squash, but we went with all zucchini, since that's what we had idling in our fridge from our garden. (And we prefer zucchini over squash anyway.)

The dish was nice, light and definitely fragrant with lemon and mint. One thing I love about recipes like this is that you can easily increase portions to adapt if you have more zucchini or other fresh ingredients.

Greek-Style Chickpea Salad

A while ago (OK, a long time ago), we opened up our copy of "Cook's Illustrated Best Light Recipes" and opted to try out a chickpea-centric dish, Greek-Style Chickpea Salad.

The hearty, filling dish calls for chickpeas (obviously), red onion, cucumber, mint, feta, parsley, lemon juice, Kalamata olives, Dijon mustard, olive oil, garlic and black pepper. It's an easy and quick toss-and-serve dinner, and it's worth it.

Mediterranean Wrap

We somehow ended up with a recent issue of Eating Well magazine. We'd never really perused it before, so we did. And we found a couple of recipes to try.

The first one was a simple Mediterranean Wrap. It seemed like an easy worknight meal and we prepared it and ate it within 45 minutes.

We deviated from the recipe by buying a rotisserie chicken and shredding it; we combined the entire herb and lemon juice mixture with the couscous and cucumbers instead of reserving some for dressing the chicken before cooking it.

We used fresh parsley and mint from our herb containers. It was light and refreshing and generally a good meal. Maybe when our cucumbers and zucchini ripen in our garden, we can remake this as a vegetarian dish.

Greek Steak Salad with Sour Cream and Buttermilk Dressing

There's a reason (or several) that I love Melissa. And one of those reasons manifested itself recently. We were culinarily stuck and didn't feel like eating any of our leftovers. What's a couple to do?

Thankfully, Melissa had an idea to take ingredients from one of our recent meals, Greek Steak Pitas, and make a salad instead.

So we took some lettuce, which we had in abundance from my mom and from the farmers market, and added cut up flank steak, cucumbers, grape tomatoes and feta.

Melissa applied her culinary genius to prepare the salad dressing. She took some sour cream and added dried buttermilk mix (and water), some small bits of cucumbers and red onions and then some seasonings to taste. We didn't use lemon because we didn't have any, but she thought it would add a nice citrus touch.

Sour Cream and Buttermilk Dressing
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon buttermilk
2-3 cucumber slices, diced
1 teaspoon red onion, diced
1 teaspoon Greek seasoning
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
salt
pepper
lemon juice

Simply spoon some dressing over your salad and eat up. And if you have other items in your fridge -- maybe some olives? -- you could add those, too.


This was a great recipe for us because we had so much flank steak left over that we probably wouldn't go through on pitas alone. You might be well served cutting the dressing recipe in half; it makes enough for about 4 salads.

Nutrition Information
Servings: 4
Ingredients: Salad: red leaf lettuce, flank steak, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, feta, red onions; Dressing: sour cream, buttermilk, Greek seasoning, cucumber, red onion, lemon, garlic powder, salt, pepper
Calories: 230 per serving
Fat: 10.5 per serving
Fiber: 2.5g per serving
Price: $2.77 per serving

Greek Steak Pitas

It has been a while since we have had a meal that featured Greek flavors. So when we found this recipe for Greek Steak Pitas in Cooking Light's June 2009 issue, it was instantly on our shopping list for the week.

In addition, it allowed us to use flank steak, a cut that we rarely, if ever, have eaten.


Start by making the marinade, which is red wine vinegar, Greek seasoning and black pepper, and put it into a zip-top bag. Add the flank steak and let it sit for 3 minutes, turning once.


Take the steak out and sprinkle with salt. In a skillet over medium-high heat, add butter and olive oil and then steak. Cook for about 5 minutes on each side.


When it's finished, cut into slices. In the skillet, then cook lemon juice, garlic and spinach, take off from heat and add remaining salt.

For pita assembly, put in spinach mixture, red onion, cucumber and steak. Then sprinkle with feta.


The onion and cucumber had a nice crunch that is a delight to have in sandwiches. The steak was the perfect consistency and tore away just fine. And the flavors all melded together really nicely, topped with the feta. Overall, a fine and quick Greek-flavored dish.

Greek Chicken Penne

Tonight we ventured back to Greek dining with Healthy Cooking magazine's Greek Chicken Penne.

First, start by cooking the chicken; set aside and let cool for a few minutes. Then start the pasta.

In a bowl, pour the boiling water over the sun-dried tomatoes.

In a stock pot, stir in the butter and onions; add flour until blended. Then add the chicken broth and boil. Drain and chop tomatoes and add to the pot. Then add the remaining ingredients, including chicken, feta, olives and seasoning.


The flavors, particularly the seasonings, were good. Otherwise, it was uninspiring. But it was filling.

Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto and Feta Cheese

When we were going through and making our weekly grocery list this past weekend, I realized that we had feta cheese left over from one of the Mediterranean-influenced dishes we made last week, Herbed Greek Chicken Salad.

Because we had quite a bit of feta left over from that recipe -- only about 1/4 of the feta was used -- I figured it would be a good idea to find a recipe this week that used it. Otherwise, it would likely go to waste, which is not an efficient use of ingredients or money.

Cooking Light, thankfully, had a recipe for Pasta with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto and Feta Cheese.

Simply cook the linguine for a couple of minutes. While the water is boiling, make the pesto by combining the tomatoes, almonds, garlic, Parmesan, salt and pepper in a food processor and pulsing.


Then drain the pasta, reserving 1 cup of cooking liquid and add the liquid to the pesto. Then add the pasta. Once everything is combined, serve and sprinkle individually with feta.


This was really good, filling and flavorful. The garlic came through a little strong, mainly because we used fresh garlic instead of bottled garlic and didn't adjust the amount. No matter, it was still a great supper.

Herbed Greek Chicken Salad

We blogged last week about our first Mediterranean-themed meal and we ate the second one, Herbed Greek Chicken Salad, over the weekend.

Best of all, it's a salad recipe, which means making the dressing and then throwing the rest of the ingredients together. It's a good weeknight meal that comes from Cooking Light magazine.

First you will need to combine the seasoning mix and coat it over the cubed chicken pieces. Then place them in a pan and cook until done.


Then combine the ingredients for the dressing and let sit for a few minutes.


Then dole out the romaine, tomatoes, olives, chicken mixture and dressing and sprinkle some feta cheese on top.


The salad was, in a word, awesome. The romaine had a nice crunch and played well against the textures of the dressing, chicken and other vegetables. And the flavors were great, too. A quick and easy meal that we'll need to eat again.

Mediterranean Chicken Salad Pitas

It's Greek week in our household!

Melissa had found a few Greek recipes that she wanted to try recently, including one for Mediterranean Chicken Salad Pitas from Cooking Light, so we decided to try a couple out in one week. It helps maximize our grocery dollars as cuisine-specific ingredients (like Kalamata olives we got for a recipe later this week) do not linger around half-consumed after being used in just one recipe.

To top it off, this recipe is essentially chop, combine and toss with dressing, so it's a quick weeknight meal.

Mediterranean Chicken Salad Pitas
1 cup plain whole-milk Greek yogurt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
3 cups chopped cooked chicken
1 cup chopped red bell pepper
1/2 cup chopped Kalamata olives
1/2 cup diced red onion
15 ounces chickpeas
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
6 (6-inch) whole wheat pitas, cut in half
Romaine lettuce leaves
1 Roma tomato, sliced

Combine the yogurt, lemon juice, cumin and crushed red pepper.


In a separate bowl, combine the chicken, bell pepper, olives, red onion, chickpeas, salt and pepper. (The original recipe called for cilantro, but stores around our market did not have any this past weekend.)

Mix yogurt mixture into chicken mixture and toss to coat.

Line a pita half with Romaine and slices of tomato. Scoop 1/2 cup of


First thing: If you're making for only two people, you might want to half the recipe unless you don't mind having several more meals worth of food leftover.

Flavor wise, though, the cilantro was missed a bit, but the ingredients certainly were very good even without it. We found that salt and pepper were necessary in our interpretation. And the Kalamata olives provided a nice flavor burst, too.

Couscous Salad with Chicken and Chopped Vegetables

This is yet another of our quick meals; really, the longest part is prepping all the vegetables. That's why the Couscous Salad with Chicken and Chopped Vegetables was a go for us.

The first thing to do is chop up all the vegetables: 1 cup of yellow bell pepper, 1/2 cup of chopped zucchini, 1/2 of diagonally cut carrots, 1/4 cup of green onions and 3 tablespoons of mint. Also, cut up 1 1/2 cups skinless, boneless rotisserie chicken.

The dressing is pretty simple: Just combine 1 cup plain low-fat yogurt, 3 tablespoons lemon juice, 1 tablespoon honey and 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar and whisk.


Then, set up 1 1/2 cups water, 1 teaspoon olive oil and 3/4 teaspoon salt in a pot and bring to a boil. Then put 1 cup couscous in boiling mixture, take off from heat and let stand for 5 minutes.

In a skillet, add 2 teaspoons olive oil, bell pepper, zucchini, carrots and chicken (the chicken needed to be warmed up a bit).





(This is a test of video capability on our digital camera; there is no audio recorder on it, so there is no sound on the video.)

Then add that mixture to the fluffed-up couscous. Also add mint.

Toss the dressing over the couscous, chicken and vegetables. Add salt and pepper to taste.


Even omitting some ingredients (mushrooms because I'm not fond of them and currants because we didn't bother trying to find them), the meal was quite good. At first, I did not have enough salt. When I added a couple of dashes more, the flavors really stood out. The textures, too, provided for quite an array of experiences with every bite.