The sweet potato & chickpea salad that evolved into a dill & yoghurt dip in 4 steps…it’s all about leftovers!

This is the story of how I made a sweet potato and chickpea salad for lunch one day, and then pimped the leftovers over the next few days to create several reincarnations, the end result being a dip. 

This is quite a typical cycle of events in my kitchen, one dish becomes another, and the flavours develop and deepen, and it ends up being a million miles away from its starting form…so I thought I’d share the steps with you…almost like a window into my culinary brain…!!

So this was the starting point…the sweet potato, chickpea and herbs salad..

Chunks of sweet potato, skin on, steamed and cooled 

Chickpeas, a jar or can drained and washed 

Chopped parsley, a small bunch, leaves stripped from the stalks and roughly chopped

Chopped coriander, a small bunch, leaves stripped from the stalks and roughly chopped 

3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped 

Goats cheese, chopped into small cubes

Paprika, 1-2 tsp

Aleppo chilli flakes, 1/2 tsp

Roasted ground cumin, 1-2 tsp

Olive oil, 2-3 tbsp

Lemon juice, 1-2 tbsp

All in a big bowl and stirred well to mix it all together and spread the herbs and spices through the bowl…lovely lovely stuff!

With the leftovers, I prepared what would be the next incarnation…

…I boosted the leftovers with lots more chopped parsley (I had lots to use up!) and added some cooked and cooled mixed grains, and left it to develop for the next day..

…which I ate with lots of lettuce, dried barberries, sesame seeds & dried fried garlic…

With the leftovers of those leftovers…

…I added lots of chopped fresh dill and pomegranate molasses and once again left it all to brew..

…and ate it the next day with more goats cheese, dried barberries & slices of preserved lemon.

With the leftovers of the leftovers of these leftovers…

…I mixed them with lots of thinned yoghurt & more pomegranate molasses to create a different style of ‘salad’…

Very tasty! And it could have so easily all ended there..

But of course, I couldn’t leave it, I just had to try blending some of this into a dip to see how it would taste…

And it worked very well! Just imagine all of those flavours and how they’ve developed over the week, all in a dip, and that’s what I got 🙂 bingo! 

Leftovers of leftovers of leftovers…of leftovers!!! 😉 

Basically, everything can become something else…or…in the end everything becomes a dip!!! 

I hope you’ve all had a good week full of great food and lovely leftovers, see you at fiesta friday…the weekly blog party extraordinaire 🙂 

I’m also sharing this post with Corina’s June edition of Cook Once Eat Twice, as I think this perfectly fits the bill! More a case of cook once, eat five times!