Chick Peas

The chickpea (Cicer arietinum) - aka garbanzo bean, Indian pea, ceci bean, bengal gram, Kabuli chana, kadale kaalu, sanaga pappu, shimbra, Kadala - is an edible legume of the family Fabaceae, subfamily Faboideae, are high in protein and one of the earliest cultivated vegetables. 7,500-year-old remains have been found in the Middle East. The name chickpea traces back through the French chiche-Latin cicer (from which the Roman cognomen Cicero was taken). The Oxford English Dictionary lists a 1548 citation that reads, "Cicer may be named in English Cich, or ciche pease, after the Frenche tonge." The dictionary cites "Chick-pea" in the mid18th century; the original word in English was chich, found in print in English in 1388, and taken directly from French. The word garbanzo came to English as "calavance" in the 17th century, from Old Spanish (perhaps influenced by Old Spanish garroba or algarroba). The Portuguese arvançu has suggested to some that the origin of the word "Garbanzo" is in the Greek erebinthos. But the Oxford English Dictionary notes that some scholars doubt this; it also mentions a possible origination in the word garbantzu, from Basque - a non-Indo-European tongue - in which it is a compound of garau, seed + antzu, dry;. Mature chickpeas can be cooked and eaten cold in salads, cooked in stews, ground into a flour called gram flour (also known as besan and used primarily in Indian cuisine), ground and shaped in balls and fried as falafel, fermented to make an alcoholic drink similar to sake, stirred into a batter and baked to make farinata, cooked and ground into a paste called hummus or roasted, spiced and eaten as a snack (such as leblebi). Chick peas are used to make curries and are one of the most popular vegetarian foods in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the UK.