Chickpea & Salmon Orzo

I know a recipe is a keeper when the hubby says mid chew "you should put a star next to this one", meaning, make this again.  You know, not every meal gets those high remarks - heck once I actually threw out a whole thing of soup because I couldn't even eat it... I digress, bottom line: this one was a hit! If you like dill, you will love this.  You can easily make it a vegetarian dish or side dish by leaving out the salmon, you can even leave out the salmon & orzo if making as a size dish.   The amount can also be adjusted as it's easy to scale up or down the ingredients.  Adjust to fit your needs! Without further ado, here's the recipe.  Side note: I went a little picture crazy while I was making it... you'll see what I mean below.

Finished product - delightfully yummy!

Chickpea & Salmon Orzo
Serves 4-6
Adapted from Cooking light Orzo Salad and Salmon, Asparagus & Orzo Salad

Ingredients:
1 cup orzo
1 lb salmon (you'll cut it up later so it doesn't matter if it's one large piece or small pieces)
3 large green onions chopped, green and white parts
1/3 cup red onion finely chopped
1/2 cup fresh chopped dill
4 oz or 1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
1 1/2 lemons juiced (use more or less to taste, I used one when I made it and had to add more - see pic and note below on juicer)
1 19oz can chickpeas drained
1 Tablespoon olive oil
Salt & Pepper to taste


Directions:
Turn broiler on.

Cook orzo according to package directions.  I've read before that you shouldn't rinse pasta after draining - but I've found that orzo particularly sticks and clumps together after cooking (not sure why) so I make sure to use oil in my boiling water and rinse after draining. 

While orzo cooks, chop ingredients and combine all ingredients green onions through salt & pepper in a large bowl and set aside.  Line a baking sheet with foil, place salmon on baking sheet and season it with salt & pepper.  Broil in oven 5-10 minutes (depending on size of piece) until the fish flakes easily with a fork.

Cut salmon into bite sized pieces as best you can.  The fish flakes and breaks apart so don't worry about uniform pieces.  Add salmon and cooked orzo to bowl and toss all together, here's where you can adjust the amount of lemon, salt and pepper. That's it - now enjoy!!! I served with garlic bread which was really just hamburger buns I needed to use up :-)  Oh, and another thing - you can serve the dish warm or at room temperature.  I even like the leftovers cold the next day - but I like cold leftovers and will eat just about anything...

And now for the pics!

Green onions - because they are pretty

Beautiful piece of salmon.  It was a little over 1 lb so it took about 10 minutes to cook through the thick end.  I bought it with skin on one side and the skin came right off once cooked.

My juicer - seriously, if you don't have one, think about getting one.  Makes juicing lemons and limes super easy and you don't have to worry about the seeds (most of the time)...

Mixture without orzo or salmon which you could also serve as

 a side dish.

Cooked salmon - YUM!

Time to eat! See my burger bun garlic bread? I'm a big proponent of using what ya got :-)