Easy Chickpea Salad Sandwich

First full week of summer and the rhythm has shifted from school-year precision to summer-sprawl improvisation. The mornings are lazy. The afternoons are hot. The kids are in their zones: Amber reading, Tyler in the garage, Justin on the football field, Josie in the garden. The house has the particular sound of summer: screen doors slamming, sprinkler hissing, the distant shouts of kids who are far enough away to be someone else problem but close enough to hear if they scream.

I am on the road three days this week, standard summer schedule. The slow cooker has a new recipe: coconut curry chicken. Chicken thighs, coconut milk, curry paste, sweet potato chunks, chickpeas. Eight hours on low. The cab smelled like a Thai restaurant, which is a phrase I never expected to write about the inside of a Peterbilt, but here we are, in the year 2018, where truck drivers make curry in their cabs and blog about it, and the world has not ended.

The curry was good. Really good. The sweet potatoes got creamy and fell apart and thickened the sauce. The chicken was tender. The chickpeas held their shape and added protein without adding effort. I ate it at a rest stop outside Kearney and posted the recipe the same day, and it got more comments than anything I have posted in months, which tells me that people are hungry for something different, something beyond chili and pot roast, something that says you can be a truck driver in Nebraska and eat coconut curry for lunch, and those two things are not contradictions. They are just one life, being lived fully.

At home the garden produced its first cucumber this week and Josie carried it inside like a trophy. We sliced it and ate it with salt at the dinner table, and the crunch was crisp and cold and tasted like summer, and Josie said I grew that, and she did, and we ate it, and the growing and the eating are the same act of love, just from different sides of the soil.

The chickpeas in that coconut curry were honestly the surprise of the whole meal — they held their shape through eight hours on low, added protein without any fuss, and made me realize I had been seriously underestimating this little legume. So when I got home and needed a quick lunch between unpacking and catching up with the kids, chickpeas were front of mind, and this Easy Chickpea Salad Sandwich came together in minutes — no slow cooker, no curry paste, no rest stop outside Kearney required.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 10 minutes | Servings: 2

Ingredients

1 (15 oz) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3 tablespoons mayonnaise (or vegan mayo)
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 stalk celery, finely diced
2 tablespoons red onion, finely diced
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
Salt and black pepper to taste
4 slices sturdy sandwich bread or 2 rolls
Lettuce leaves and sliced tomato, for serving

Instructions

Mash the chickpeas. Add drained chickpeas to a medium bowl. Use a fork or potato masher to roughly mash them, leaving about half with some texture for a chunky, satisfying bite.
Mix in the dressing. Stir in the mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, celery, red onion, lemon juice, garlic powder, and smoked paprika until everything is evenly combined.
Season. Taste and add salt and black pepper as needed. For a brighter flavor, add a little more lemon juice.
Assemble. Pile the chickpea salad onto your bread of choice, top with lettuce and tomato, and serve immediately — or refrigerate the filling for up to three days and build sandwiches as needed.

Nutrition (per serving)

Easy Chickpea Salad Sandwich — The Ingredient That Made My Truck Cab Smell Like a Thai Restaurant