Recipes with chickpeas

The chickpea has been farmed in the Near East for nine thousand years, and it is the pulse that transforms most completely. Whole, crushed, soaked and ground raw, cooked then sieved, milled to flour: each of those states gives a different dish, and the nineteen recipes below cover them all.

Classic hummus wants an overcooked chickpea, almost falling apart, and a purée worked for a long time. Falafel demands the exact opposite: a raw chickpea, merely soaked for twelve hours, never cooked before frying — falafel made with tinned chickpeas disintegrates in the oil, without exception.

Flour opens a third family, that of flatbreads and set batters: Niçoise socca, Algerian karantika and Ethiopian shiro wat, where the flour thickens an entire stew.

Finally, whole and simmered, it carries complete meals all around the Mediterranean and across India: chana masala, harira, lablebi, revithia, koshari. A little bicarbonate of soda, in the soaking or the cooking water, softens the skins and noticeably shortens the cooking time.