Black Rice Salad with Curried Chickpeas, Squash and Swiss Chard

February 22nd, 2015

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I’ve been on a forbidden black rice kick this winter. I love its pleasant texture, mild flavor and sweet aroma, and it also makes for some very pretty meals. We’ve been living off of variations of this salad for our lunches, but this version, with curried chickpeas, toasted pine nuts, squash or sweet potato and chard is my favorite. This recipe utilizes chard stems as well as leaves – I always think it’s a shame when recipes instruct to discard the stems, especially when they are as beautiful as on this rainbow chard I picked up. The key is to cook the stems a little longer than the leaves, so that they are soft and not too chewy.

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For this recipe, I made my own curry spice mix from Amy Chaplin’s book, and I cannot recommend this enough. Homemade curry tastes worlds better than any store bought curry mix ever will. It’s just a matter of toasting, grinding and mixing fresh spices (a fun process if you ask me) and is completely worth the extra effort.

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I developed this recipe for Natural Vitality, a line of premium quality natural supplements, see the recipe here.

Tags: black rice, chard, chickpeas, curry, pine nuts, salad

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