Here’s a nice, vegetable-forward salad with Middle Eastern inspired flavors that just happens to be !SURPRISE! vegan. I know, I know…I made a recipe without cheese?! Who am I becoming? (You could totally add some cheese to this.)
Caramelized roasted cauliflower takes center stage in this hearty salad, complemented with arugula, parsley, onions, pine nuts and crispy spiced chickpeas, all drizzled in a glorious lemon-tahini dressing. 
I kept seeing the recipe for this salad from Budget Bytes on Pinterest and was so drawn to it that I finally realized I had saved it 5 times in the course of a couple weeks. Every time I saw it on my feed, I didn’t want to miss out on it because it looked so appetizing so apparently I just kept saving it. Finally, I pulled the trigger and actually made it! 
I used purple and yellow cauliflower, in addition to white, in this recipe because I had never seen it in the stores and was curious how it tasted. Let’s be real…I mostly bought it for the color! It tasted just like the standard cauliflower we’re used to, so use whatever you can find.
One of my favorite side dishes is Caramelized Cauliflower, which is so delicious that it makes it easy to eat a whole head of cauliflower alone. Try to use a similar approach and get some good caramelization on your cauliflower while roasting for added flavor.
Tahini, a nutty paste made from ground sesame seeds, makes a wonderfully creamy dressing when mixed with a little water and lemon juice. Garlic and a few spices like cumin and cayenne are really all the dressing needs to come together.
It’s so good, universally friendly to all diets and keeps really well at room temperature, making this the perfect recipe for long, leisurely dinners, picnics, or big parties! Or you can hunker down with a big bowl of this for dinner!
[tasty-recipe id=”34871″]
[…] Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Crispy Chickpeas and Lemon-Tahini Dressing […]