Chickpea Salad with Lemon & Parmesan

One of my New Year's resolutions is to try new recipes, and well... cook more in general. I find that we constantly make the same meals every week: tacos, fajitas, salmon, BBQ chicken... all accompanies by some easy veggie and rice. Occasionally I'll make a couple Japanese dishes, such as okonomiyaki and yakisoba. But variety seems to be rare these days.

Thanks to Pinterest, I have found quite a few new recipes that I want to try. Some of them will be challenging, as finding the right ingredients will be difficult. But the goal is to try. ;)

So I decided to start simple with an extremely easy side-dish recipe: Chickpea Salad with Lemon & Parmesan. It turned out pretty good and is so easy that I thought I would share. Here's the ingredient list:

1 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 tsp. olive oil
a pinch of salt (more to taste)
1/4 cup loosely packed shredded parmigiano reggiano (unfortunately I couldn't find this in Japan, so just went with grated Parmesan cheese)

All you have to do is combine all ingredients in a bowl, and gently stir to mix. Serve immediately or chill until serving (I like it better cold).

It would probably be better with the correct cheese, but oh well. Was still good, and even got Joe's approval!