Recipe for Tomato, Pepper, and Garbanzo Salad with Sumac

A delicious salad with marinated garbanzo beans, tomatoes, bell pepper, and a generous amount of parsley!

(Updated with new photos and slight tweaks to the recipe; April 2013.)   I first made this salad in the summer of 2006, and I'd had it on my list of recipes to update for a couple of years now.  Then recently my store had a great buy on gorgeous yellow bell peppers, which seemed like an invitation to make this salad.  Of course you can make this with red or green bell peppers if you don't want to splurge on yellow ones, but I love the color they add.  The salad was inspired by a recipe I found in Sunset Magazine but some changes I made really upped the flavor. First, I drained the garbanzo beans, and marinated them in balsamic vinegar while I prepped the other ingredients.   Second, I put a very generous amount of fresh parsley, (although if you're not a parsley fan I think chopped fresh basil would be divine in this too.) Third, I used a combination of balsamic vinegar and fresh lemon juice for the dressing, which made the flavor a bit more complex.  Finally, I sprinkled the finished salad with a generous amount of Sumac, which I think always adds flavor to ingredients like this.

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