Vegan chickpea salad with bergamot dressing

For us, the key to successful plant-based eating has been keeping our taste buds stimulated with new combinations of flavours and textures. Certainly, this may seem like what you need to do in the kitchen generally. However, with plant-based cooking we think this is even more important. That is to say, new ways of juxtaposing ingredients can lead you into beautiful new worlds. This simple but unusual chickpea salad is great to keep in the fridge for work lunches, children's school meals, or quick bites after work. It's incredibly versatile and tastes better the longer you allow it to marinate in its dressing.

We've suggested rice cakes in this recipe, but you could pile onto fresh or steamed greens. Toasted wholegrain bread would be a natural companion if you are particularly hungry. Or, if you are eating it in the autumn or winter when you need a little more bolstering, you could try on top of your favourite whole grains or onto a baked sweet potato.

This dish can be enjoyed warm or cold depending on your mood and the temperature. It also makes a nice side dish, maybe to accompany a warm aubergine dish, or you could prepare a number of other small plates to serve with it.

Although this is a nice combination of a variety of vegetables with chickpeas, we think the dressing is the star of the show. Here, the mustard is slightly diluted by nutty chia seed oil and tangy bergamot juice.  We suggest wholegrain mustard for its earthiness and the plate-pleasing texture, but a sharper mustard could work well also. If choosing this route, you could top up the bergamot juice with a little lemon. That is to say, mixing citrus flavours is a wonderfully easy and healthy way to keep all types of recipes fresh and alive.  Further, there are many possible combinations that, in turn, work with a wide range of ingredients.

Herbarium

Fresh parsley is probably the herb we find the most useful to have in our refrigerator. Forget about the few leaves suffocating in plastic that you find in the supermarket, though. In other words, seek out a corner shop, health-focused supermarket, or vegetable stand where you can get a properly substantial bunch. Fill a glass with water and let your parsley drink thirstily while housed in your refrigerator.  Every time you open it, not only will you find something that can freshen and uplift all manner of dishes, but you'll feel like you have a living, breathing, dark green garden inside your fridge.

But we are straying from what we wanted to say. Once you have made this dish a few times, you may want to experiment with other herbs. Mint would be a lovely one to try. Parsley and mint enjoy one another, so you could add it right in with the parsley. Not only in the recipe, but also into that fridge garden.