Salted Zucchini with Chickpeas in Agrodolce

I got inspired to make this salad during my recent stay at Casa Bellavista, a beautiful vegan-friendly location on the Tuscan-Umbria border in central Italy. Simonetta takes care of the cooking at Casa Bellavista and offers a wonderful dinner 2-3 times per week. Luckily, we were able to sample her vegan creations that included an interesting salad of chickpeas, celery, golden raisins, lemon and deliciously fresh local extra virgin olive oil.

Further reading and research educated me further. Creating vegetable salads and mixing them with legumes is a classic Sicilian technique. The sauce is often slightly spicy and always sweet-sour (called agrodolce). The spices are typically North African, using anything from ground cinnamon to a touch of ground cumin.

My version is similar but I elected to replace the celery with salted grated zucchini, and I added salted onion slices. I used a variation of my standard lemon-caper vinaigrette to dress the salad and included golden raisins a la Simonetta…and perhaps a bit more chili pepper to create an interesting background heat. Finally, a gave the dressing an added punch of ground cinnamon to create a bridge to my North African roots.

The salad is simple to make, and I think it has many possibilities for variations…like sliced fennel instead of the salted onions. Find out how to make the original version if you happen to find yourself under the Tuscan sun – book a cooking class with Simonetta.

Difficulty: simple
Yield: makes 4-6 servings