Roasted Vegetable and Chickpea Salad

I had a gourmet dinner last night. At home. Cooked by me! Well, mostly me--Ben grilled the fish.

It started with this warm vegetable salad recipe that I've been wanting to try--I found it on How Sweet It Is, one of the blogs that I follow. Then, I saw a flyer from our local HyVee that advertised blue marlin loins on sale (which I've never had before) and a recipe for grilling the blue marlin with an apple lime vinaigrette (which I'll post in the next day or so, I promise!).

But first, the vegetables! Roasted, then tossed in a sweet/sour vinaigrette, fresh herbs, creamy gorgonzola cheese and avocados. Mmmmm...

I followed the original recipe almost exactly this time around, but if when I make it again, I think I will actually cut out one can of chickpeas and one ear of corn and add in some cauliflower and zucchini or summer squash and possibly some bell peppers. My reason for this would be that many of the vegetables in this recipe are higher on the glycemic index, and therefore I consider them a little starchy to be my primary vegetables. Also, I'm not a HUGE blue cheese/gorgonzola fan (though it was delicious with this cheese!), so I might try to substitute feta instead, just to see how that tastes.

But even without my planned changes, this was DELICIOUS.


Roasted Vegetable and Chickpea Salad (from How Sweet It Is)

Ingredients
1 pint grape tomatos
1 poblano pepper, seeded and chopped
1/2 yellow onion, chopped  (the original recipe calls for red onion, but I hate red onion)
4 ears of fresh corn, corn cut from the cob
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
4 tablespoons olive oil
2 (15-ounce) cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
4 ounces gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
1 avocado, chopped
3 tablespoons freshly chopped basil
3 tablespoons freshly chopped cilantro
2 tablespoons freshly chopped parsley
1 tablespoon freshly chopped mint
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons honey

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil and add tomatoes, peppers, corn, onions and garlic. Drizzle with 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil (I just sprayed mine well with my Misto olive oil sprayer), then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 15 minutes, toss, then roast for 10 minutes more. Remove from oven and let cool slightly.
While veggies are cooling, add chickpeas to a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk together remaining olive oil, vinegar and honey. Set aside.
Add veggies to the chickpeas in the bowl. Add in fresh herbs, then crumble on gorgonzola. Drizzle with dressing, tossing to coat, then top with freshly chopped avocado. Season more if desired. Serve immediately!

Nutrition Information
I'm not totally certain of the nutrition information yet, as I didn't measure out how much this recipe made and/or how much of it I actually ate--my best guess is that it makes about 3 cups of vegetables total, and a serving would be about 1/3 to 1/2 cup (maybe?). I'm ballpark guessing (after entering the recipe into livestrong.com with those amounts) that one serving would be around 200 calories (which isn't bad if you consider the corn/chickpeas to count as your starch and you eat it with a lean protein like blue marlin, tilapia, or chicken breast!).