Black Bean and Black Rice Salad

I've been lacking the inspiration to blog lately - as you may have noticed!

To get me back on track, my friend Deb suggested a recipe. Excellent idea - thanks, Deb!

This salad has loads of ingredients but is healthy, dead simple (although you need time to cook the beans) and you can add any protein you fancy - chicken, salmon, even a poached egg.

1. Dried black beans take 55 minutes to cook at a simmer. You can substitute canned ones if you'd prefer. I cooked dried ones and threw the black rice in at the 20-minute mark as it takes 35 minutes to cook. They're happy co-cooking in the pot together!
   
2. I dry roasted pine nuts, hazelnuts, almonds and pepitas in a cast iron fry pan (that means no oil - if you ever toast nuts and seeds, know they produce enough of their own oil not to require any additional). You could use any nuts and seeds.
   
3. I drained a can each of green lentils and chickpeas (you could cook them from dried if you want to)
   
4. In a large, flat bowl, I threw in cherry tomatoes, torn up baby bok choy from the garden, diced red capsicum and celery - just because that's what I had to hand. You could add spinach, rocket, snow peas - anything really - then I added the drained lentils and chickpeas
   
5. Once the rice and beans were cooked, I drained them and put the colander under the cold tap to cool off - then popped that in the bowl too
   
6. I dressed it with pumpkin seed oil (this is so good! I hadn't used it in ages and stumbled on it in Aldi last week!), fig syrup (you could use pomegranate molasses or a vincotto), salt and pepper and some strips of fried chicken.

It'll last a few days in the fridge, will travel well for a work lunch and is filling and high in protein (so keeps you feeling fuller longer).

Enjoy!