chickpea salad & chicken rice curry

I didn't hesitate to try this fresh and colorful salad as soon as I saw the idea online. The colorful vegetables were enough to brighten my day. I was browsing my favorite website, Tastespotting, for dinner ideas when I found this. From what I learned, this salad is very popular in Israel where it's served as a side salad with everything from sandwiches to main dish meals. It had diced English cucumbers, canned chickpeas, chopped red onions, diced tomatoes and diced yellow peppers. For the dressing, just combine and whisk together red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and a little sugar. I made the salad ahead so the flavors will have enough time to blend together while it chills in the refrigerator.

Aside from the salad, I also found an idea for a chicken and rice dish that looks so exotic and different. I was so inspired that I tried making them both for dinner. The chicken rice curry was so easy to make in the electric rice cooker. This was the first time I used the rice cooker to cook something other than just plain rice and it worked great. The rice curry was so full of flavor that we couldn't stop raving about it. It may be too rich for some but we like full flavors in our meals so this was just perfect for our taste. Thanks to Appon Thai, one of my favorite foodblogs which was my source for the idea and recipe for this chicken rice curry. Letting global flavors meet, I served the colorful salad with the rice dish instead of cucumber and tomato slices as suggested. The salad went well with the chicken rice curry. The ginger dressing or dip for the curry was also important to complete the meal.