Chickpea “Tuna” Salad

I have all but given up eating fish and seafood, including canned tuna, due to overfishing, mercury, polluted waters, micro-plastics in fish… etc. I have also never been a big fan of mayo, so when I used to make tuna salad I would opt for a mustard base.  Discovering chickpea “tuna” salad was a pleasant surprise because it functions really well as a salad or sandwich, just like tuna salad, but is vegan (my version) or vegetarian if you choose to add mayo.

The ingredients are:

• 1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed.
• 1/2 shallot or 1 TB red onion, minced
• 1 celery stalk, chopped
• 2 TB dijon mustard
• 2 TB olive oil
• ground pepper
• pinch of salt
• 1 TB Bragg nutritional yeast (optional)
• 2 TB chopped/crumbled nori (optional)
• pinch of paprika (optional)

One thing I read the first time I made this salad was to mash or squeeze the chickpeas with your hands. It feels a little weird to grab handfuls of legumes and squish them, but I think the general idea is it allows the entire salad to come together more and stay together a little the way a tuna salad would. You’re not looking to completely mash them, but give them a bit of a squeeze.

Add your ingredients to a bowl and mix. It’s that simple. Use mayo if you’d like. The addition of nutritional yeast imparts a little more flavor of umami, and the nori gives it a little “from the sea” taste. They’re optional, but especially good if you’re on a salt-free diet.

I put mine on some freshly baked sourdough with avocado for an open faced sandwich… aka “fancy toast.”