Chickpeas; Chickpea Flour

Cicer arietinum is a round legume that grows, as all peas do, in a green pod. When fresh it can be cooked and eaten like green peas. Most often, however, it is taken from the pod and dried. In dried form it keeps well. In India dried chickpeas are known as Bengal gram or channa; they may be whole or split. In Mexico they are called garbanzos, and that is the name many people in the United States know them by. In Burma chickpeas are cooked like dal, boiled in water until tender, and eaten for breakfast with flatbread, or turned into soup. Chickpeas are also ground into flour, one called besan in northern India; the Burmese name is pei hmont sein. The Shan stir chickpea flour into hot water to make a thick soup, which can also be set aside to firm up into a yellow, jelly-like food, Shan tofu. The flour is also used in Burma as a thickener and a flavoring, after being dry-roasted briefly to cook it (see Toasted Chickpea Flour).