Minted Chickpea Salad with Creamy Curry Dressing

I’ve been wanting to create a recipe for a curry-flavored salad for months. I’ve come to love Indian food over the past few years and have noticed that curry makes its way into a meal at least every other week in our house. A last-minute dinner date with our friends Lisa and Brody and a whole lot of quinoa and curry powder prompted me to come up with a new recipe.

As a total aside, Lisa and Brody have the cutest kiddos and just welcomed a little girl into the world earlier this month with the same name as my younger sister, Jane! Their kids are always up for trying anything, so that makes experimenting with new recipes that much more fun with their family. They’ve found that introducing their kids to a variety of foods from a young age without making a fuss about it has resulted in kids who aren’t afraid to try new foods!

Now, back to the curry 🙂 I didn’t try anything with curry powder in it until my mid-20s. I was too weirded out by the color and didn’t really know much about it, but since then, it has become a staple in our spice rack. We use it in everything from hummus and curry-roasted potatoes, to fancy pants curried cauliflower steaks and mash and one of my favorite dishes ever – this curried lentil and rice casserole.

Something I didn’t know about Indian food when I first started trying it (no small feat for a picky eater!) was that a lot of it isn’t spicy. Sure, it’s made with lots of spices, but that doesn’t mean that all of it is going to burn your mouth. Some Indian food is spicy and made with different types of peppers, and I’m not a big fan of those dishes, but this particular dish isn’t spicy and is full of flavor and a variety of textures.

Curry likely started as a combination of ginger, turmeric and garlic, the origin of a signature Indian spice blend that has been traced back thousands of years to the Indus Valley Civilization in modern-day India. Most likely rooted in the South Indian term for sauce (kari), British traders adopted the more familiar word curry to categorize these spice blends. It has evolved and been adopted by other cultures since then.

Curry spice blends vary widely, depending on which region they’re from and based on people’s personal tastes, but some of the most common ingredients include turmeric, ginger, fenugreek, coriander, and cinnamon. Other varieties include cayenne pepper, cumin, mustard seed, and cardamom. You can find curry powder in the spice aisle at your grocery store or make it yourself following this recipe if you’re feeling really ambitious.

You’ll notice that I used yogurt in the dressing instead of an oil to serve as the source of fat and a base. I used Forager Project’s plain, unsweetened cashew yogurt instead of a dairy-based yogurt, since dairy products trigger a lot of my past health challenges (allergies, reflux, ear infections, congestion). I wrote all about their dairy-free yogurt and milk products in this post!

Adding some lightly toasted cashews gives each bite a nice crunch. The fresh mint leaves add a pop of color and pair perfectly with the curry spices. The finishing touch, which my friend Brody said really completes the dish, is the raisins. Raisins are commonly used in south Indian cooking, and they round out the dish by adding a hint of sweetness.

I hope you enjoy this dish as much as we did! 🙂