Easy lunch with the vegan fregola salad

Toasted fregola salad with some pickled piccadilly, sautéed artichokes, fennel seeds, Taggiasca olives and parsley.


A dish that blends Mediterranean and more Nordic flavors.

Because the "scaldacuore" recipe is for me the shared dish, which weaves dissimilar culinary traditions at home to create a single meal to eat together, from the same pot.

Here in this dish you will find Piccadilly tomatoes preserved in brine, Taggiasca olives and fennel typical of Mediterranean cuisine, which are combined with artichokes, garlic and parsley, one of the culinary figures of Venice, passing through Sardinia.

I hope with this dish to do honor to fregola, a versatile ingredient that I am learning to love and which is traditionally served with fish in a sort of light soup, but which I use freely here as cous cous (in fact it can remember to form the Palestinian couscous).

Boil the toasted fregola in abundant salted water. Usually the cooking time is between 8 'and 10'.
In the meantime, wash and clean the artichokes, cut them into thin slices and pour them into a container with cold water and half a lemon squeezed in a good way (so they won't oxidize, but don't overdo it with the lemon ... unless you leave it as an aftertaste on the plate finished!). In a saucepan, preferably non-stick so you can limit the use of fat, heat 4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, 1 clove of poached garlic and fennel seeds. Add the well-drained artichokes and brown them until they begin to soften. Incorporate the pitted olives and some small tomatoes cut into quarters lengthwise. Let it simmer for a few minutes, then turn off the heat, remove the garlic, incorporate the drained fregola, add a nice chopped fresh parsley, 1 teaspoon of lemon zest (organic) to taste, a drizzle of raw extra virgin olive oil and serve hot or at room temperature.

Have a good heart warming lunch!

And if you want a recipe to preserve Piccadilly, I suggest you take a look here.