Cicer arietinum, a small legume which was first grown in the Levant and ancient Egypt (the earliest finds date from c.8000 bc), but is now an important food in many parts of the world, especially the broad band of countries extending from India through the Middle East to N. Africa and the Mediterranean—where it was disseminated perhaps by the Phoenicians and certainly by the Romans. It also has some importance in Ethiopia. In Spanish-speaking lands, it is called the garbanzo, that name deriving from the ancient Greek erebinthos.
There are two chief types. The smaller desi is grown in Asia, Iran, Ethiopia, and Mexico, while the larger, lighter kabuli variety is preferred in the Middle East and Mediterranean. The seeds of larger varieties are curled at the sides and have been likened to a ram's skull. This accounts for the botanical name, arietinum (aries being ram). As for the generic name, Cicer, this was Latin for chickpea. It was the famous Roman orator Cicero's cognomen because, it is said, an ancestor had a wart on his face shaped like a chickpea.
The chickpea was certainly used by the Romans, but regarded as a food for peasants and poor people. Its rustic image is shown by the longing of the poet Horace, when sickened by city life, for a dish of chickpeas and pasta. That status seems given continuity by the chickpea as quintessential Lenten ingredient in Greece and Cyprus.
Much earlier, in the 2nd millennium bc according to Achaya (1994), the chickpea was one of the pulses eaten in India, where it is the most important legume, known as channa. It makes a popular form of dal (split pulse). Whole chickpeas are known as Bengal gram. Finely milled chickpea flour, known as besan flour, is used to make batter for pakora/fritters etc.; and there are similar uses in Afghanistan and Iran, including biscuits.
Despite its reputation, the chickpea is the basis of some of the most popular Middle Eastern dishes, notably hummus (sometimes given as hoummus), which is the Arabic word for chickpea but also signifies a ubiquitous paste of chickpea and tahini (sesame paste) with garlic and lemon; and falafel. Still in the Arab sphere, it is an ingredient in N. African couscous; and continues to betray Arab influence in many Spanish soups and stews such as, most importantly, the cocido. There are many chickpea dishes in Sephardi cooking, so gracefully described by Claudia Roden (1996). Some of these may depend on Spanish influence, as does the appearance of the Spanish tripe and chickpeas in the Philippines.
Spanish migrants took chickpeas to Latin America, but they have never been as important there as the native haricot beans. Nor are they much eaten in regions east of India, except by peoples of Indian origin in and around the Malay peninsula.
In the Balkans and the Near East chickpeas are toasted and sold on the street or at kiosks, much as is popcorn. They may be salted or, in Istanbul, sugared.
Chickpeas are almost always sold in dried form, whether split or not, and are of an ochre or pale brown colour in this form. However, they may be eaten fresh, as Patience Gray (1986) explains:
Gathered fresh in May, though no one will believe it, they are a short-lived delicacy, brilliant green, growing two to a pod; eaten raw they have a refreshing taste of lemon. Cooked in a dish of rice they delight the eye. But, as the May sun in southern latitudes quickly dries them, they are imagined, even by Italians, to be born brown and born dry.
The same author relates how:
In northern Italy, chickpea flour is used to make appetizing pizze, thin as flannel, in Carrara called Calda! Calda! The name arose from boys carrying them in covered baskets, shouting their piping hot wares, along the rocky torrent of the carrione, down which the famished quarrymen returned at evening on foot from the marble mountains.
Alluding to the notorious toughness of chickpeas (even when soaked, and cooked for a long time), Théophile Gautier is said to have written that ‘garbanzos … sounded in our bellies like pieces of lead in a Basque drum’. Fortunately, modern varieties are less intractable, although a preliminary soaking and relatively long cooking are still normal. Tom Stobart (1980) remarked that they ‘are almost impossible to overcook’. Channa dal, being split and skinned, cooks much faster than whole chickpeas.
Alan Davidson was a distinguished author and publisher, and one of the world's best-known writers on fish and fish cookery. In 1975 he retired early from the diplomatic service—after serving in, among other places, Washington, Egypt, Tunisia, and Laos, where he was British Ambassador—to pursue a fruitful second career as a food historian and food writer extraordinaire. Among his popular books are Seafood of South-East Asia, North Atlantic Seafood, and Mediterranean Seafood. In 2003, shortly before his death, he was awarded the Erasmus Prize for his contribution to European culture.
Achaya, K. T. (1994), Indian Food: A Historical Companion, Delhi: OUP.
Gray, Patience (1986), Honey from a Weed, London: Prospect Books.
Roden, Claudia (1996), The Book of Jewish Food, New York: Knopf.
Stobart, Tom (1980), The Cook's Encyclopaedia, London: B. T. Batsford. Also repr 1999, London: Grub Street.
