I have not bought lunch a single day this semester. I am on campus for lunch four, or sometimes five, days a week. This is a difficult proposition, but I have been adamant. For one, I don’t really have time. But, more importantly, for two: I don’t really have the inclination. I think the situation may be worse in a location that is crawling with thousands of undergrads (pizza, anyone? and…more pizza? and subs), but maybe you experience this problem, too. Lunch is often time-consuming (lines); not really what you want anyway (pizza); not that healthy (most anything take-out); and very often quite expensive, at least for what you’re getting.

Hence, my fervency about bringing my own lunch. This isn’t always a perfect system; sometimes it ends with me bringing a sad little jar of soup and coming home ravenous at the end of the day. Those aren’t the good brown-bagging days.

This chickpea salad, though. This made for some good brown-bagging days.

I got the idea for this after eating at a new Indian/Nepalase restaurant, where they served us a warm chickpea salad as a free starter. All of the food was delicious, but as my dining companion noted, there are only so many ways to improve on palak paneer. This chickpea dish, on the other hand, was something entirely new, and was one of the best — or at least most memorable — things we ate.

It wasn’t chana masala, but what was it? I may never know, or at least not until I return and inquire. (Any ideas would be appreciated!) Instead, I thought I’d make my own version. For some reason, I thought I’d be able to replicate the dish. This chickpea salad, in fact, comes nowhere close, but is super delicious in its own right — where the restaurant version was complex and thickly spiced, this version has a freshness and a purity to its flavors that is equally enticing, and maybe actually better for a workaday lunch, when it’s not in your best interest to be lulled into a food/spice coma.

I had all these ingredients in my fridge/pantry; that’s why this came together exactly as it did. You could substitute lemon (or maybe even vinegar) for lime; other chilies for the jalapeños; cilantro for parsley; other onion-family members for red onion; other vegetables (red bell pepper?) for tomatoes. Really, this should require minimal thought and minimal effort, for maximum satisfaction.

The result is kind of like a chickpea tabbouleh, but with the flavors pumped up a bit. I had to restrain myself from eating the whole thing immediately, in order to have any for my week’s lunch.

This would go well with any number of grains, but particularly well with quinoa. I threw some salad greens in my tupperware for good measure. And, in no time, lunch becomes something to look forward to again.

Chickpea Salad with Lime and Jalapeño

Makes 2 lunch-sized servings, with grains and lettuce

Ingredients

- 1 15-oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

- juice of 1 lime

- 1/2 red onion, chopped fine

- 1-2 jalapeños, seeded (carefully!) and minced

- 1 good handful parsley, chopped

- 1-2 tomatoes, chopped

- extra-virgin olive oil

- salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1. Combine all ingredients in medium-sized bowl. (Combine everything except olive oil first, then glug in as much olive oil as you want.) Add salt and pepper to taste. Will keep, in a tupperware, in the fridge, for at least a few days.

Just in time for Memorial Day, an original knock-yo-socks off punch. This combo has been percolating in my brain for some time now — I think I had my first cucumber drink at Little Branch in December 2006. Since then, I’ve seen cucumber showing up in more and more drinks, but still not nearly enough for my liking. For me, cucumber juice is the perfect mixer (at least when it comes to gin, but aren’t you drinking your bourbon on the rocks anyway?). It cuts the alcohol, as a mixer is supposed to do, but in a complementary, rather than cloying, way. It’s a hint of crispness that really nicely sets off the slight herbiness of the gin. And it turns your drink a magnificent green!

If I were just making cocktails for a few friends, I would peel and slice a cucumber, muddle it with a little fresh lime juice and some sugar (and maybe some basil?!) and then stir the whole thing up with gin (resembling something like a Gordon’s Cup). Next time (and there will be a next time — I have cucumber juice leftover). This time, I was making drinks for a crowd, which meant punch, which meant I quickly realized that a bowlful of gin with a little cucumber juice was not such a good idea. Enter limeade, my next favorite mixer (a good one for vodka, too). Cheap, dilute, sweet, tangy. Great.

The ingredients here are of the make-your-life-easier variety: MinuteMaid limeade, presqueezed lime juice. With one notable exception: the cucumber juice itself. But until supermarkets catch up to mixologists, we at-home mixologists are just going to have to listen to some This American Life, and peel and food process and strain our own cucumbers. Try to do it the night before to avoid undue stress, and it’s not so bad.

From my cocktail glass (mason jar) to yours….(now might be a good time to mention that the party liked this drink so much they named it “the Claire.” aw, shucks.)

Cucumber-Lime-Gin Punch (“the Claire”)

Ingredients

- gin (I used Booth’s)

- limeade (I used MinuteMaid Light)

- lime juice (I used the presqueezed kind that comes in the lime-shaped bottle, but you can squeeze your own if you’re a purist/masochist)

- sugar

- cucumbers*

Proportions for one bowl of punch are roughly:

.75L gin + 1 carton MinuteMaid limeade + 1 bottle lime juice + 1/2 cup to 1 cup sugar (to taste) + juice from 5 cucumbers. Add ice to punch bowl and to glasses (this baby is strong).

* To make cucumber juice:

1. Peel cucumbers.

2. Slice cucumbers.

3. Put as many slices of cucumber as you can fit in your food processor (I fit about 2 cucumbers’ worth). Process until the pulp is whizzing around freely (about 2 minutes).

4. Pour pureed cucumber into a strainer set over a large bowl. Stir to force liquid through. Ta-da.

N.B. You can save the cucumber pulp and mix it with yogurt for a very saucy kind of raita.

I was raving just last week about my new-found love of citrus . Last week it was lemons, this week it’s limes.

Specifically, lime juice and jalapenos made into a dressing for this awesome salad. It’s sharp and spicy and piquant enough to cut through the winter malaise from which I, for one, am definitely suffering.

So I thought I understood the difference between yams and sweet potatoes. Evidently I did not. After some research, here is what I am pretty certain is the case:

Yams are a starchy tuber eaten in many different cultures in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania. They are difficult to find in the United States and chances are that vegetables you encounter called yams are actually a variety of sweet potato.

Sweet potatoes are a starchy tuber as well. They come in a huge number of varieties that can be orange or white. Color cannot be used to distinguish sweet potatoes from yams. In the US, the softer orange sweet potatoes have been called yams to distinguish them from starchier white varieties, but they are all sweet potatoes.

I share this information with you, because I was totally confounded when I bought vegetables labeled “sweet potatoes” and found they had white flesh once I peeled them. But I forged ahead, and I can now tell you that the white sweet potatoes are just as delicious as the orange ones. Yams be damned.

I was serving a crowd, so I doubled the recipe. I also made one small and one huge change. First, I skipped the cilantro, because while I am a cilantro lover I ate a lot of it with my CSA and also because it has this funny tendency to make everything you add it to taste primarily like cilantro.

Second, I cut the amount of olive oil WAY down. The recipe as written calls for 2 tablespoons for roasting and another six (!) for the dressing. When doubling the recipe, I probably used 3-4 tablespoons for roasting, but only about two in the dressing instead of the recommended twelve (!?!?!), which I think would have made this more of a soup.

Roasted Sweet Potato and Black Bean Salad with Chili-Lime Dressing
from the New York Times

4 medium sweet potatoes (about 1 1/2 pounds), peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 large onion, preferably red, chopped
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (ed. – more likely, less)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 to 2 tablespoons minced fresh hot chili, like jalapeño
1 clove garlic, peeled
Juice of 2 limes
2 cups cooked black beans, drained (canned are fine)
1 red or yellow bell pepper, seeded and finely diced
1 cup chopped fresh cilantro.

1. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Put sweet potatoes and onions on a large baking sheet, drizzle with 2 tablespoons oil, toss to coat and spread out in a single layer. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast, turning occasionally, until potatoes begin to brown on corners and are just tender inside, 30 to 40 minutes. Remove from oven; keep on pan until ready to mix with dressing.

2. Put chilies in a blender or mini food processor along with garlic, lime juice, remaining olive oil (ed. – probably less) and a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Process until blended.

3. Put warm vegetables in a large bowl with beans and bell pepper; toss with dressing and cilantro. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Serve warm or at room temperature, or refrigerate for up to a day.

Yield: 4 servings.