Chickpea is erebinthos in Greek, which isn't particularly evocative in English. But the Latin for chickpea is cicer (hence the name Cicero). Now, remember that the Romans would have pronounced cicer more like "kicker" than like "sisser". The Wikipedia article borrow citations from the Oxford English Dictionary that show that cicer comes into English through the French word chiche. The word chich (meaning chickpea) appears in print in English by 1388, and of course sounds far more sophisticated as the Frenchified chiche pease - transmuted to "chick-pea" by the mid-18th century by folk etymology (i.e, "What's this chich? Never heard of it. Must be a mistake. They must have meant chick. Yeah, chick-pea. That sounds right.")
Siren Feasts by Andrew Dale is my favourite book on ancient Greek food; it combines archaeology with effortless-seeming classical erudition. Dale states that the chickpea came to Greece from the Middle East (where it was one of the major cultivated plants of the early Neolithic) relatively late - only around 4000 BC. Yes, that's six thousand years ago. The Greeks have been eating chickpeas for a *long* time. (They've been eating lentils even longer - a wild variety of lentil was being collected and eaten at Frankhthi by 10,000 BC.)
In classical times, roasted chickpeas, or tender young fresh chickpeas, were often eaten as part of dessert, with nuts, figs and other delicacies. (The only sweeteners available to the Greeks were dried fruit or honey, so sweets as we know them were far more rare. Kerberos could be bought off with honey-cakes because they were a rare treat.) The chickpeas of Miletus were thought to be particularly fine, like, for example, Coffin Bay seafood today. Chickpeas were also used in soups and stews, of course, as I often use them to add body, taste, fibre and good protein. Their sweet nutty taste is lovely in curries, as well.
The archetypal delicious chickpea dish, though, is hummous/hummos/hummus - a dip unknown in ancient Greece, but now popular there. I had many failures with recipes for hummus recipes until I tried the one Delia Smith gives in her basic but invaluable Cookery Course. It's not quite as good as the best I've ever had, in Emads in Surry Hills in inner Sydney, but it's really very good, and quite simple.
Delia's Hummous, adapted and annotated
4 oz (110g) dried chickpeas
Juice of 2 lemons
2 fat cloves garlic
4 tablespoons olive oil
5 fl oz tahini (150 ml)
cayenne pepper or paprika
salt
to garnish - olive oil, chopped parsley
EITHER
soak chickpeas in lots of water overnight,
OR
put in saucepan with water, bring to boil, turn off heat, soak for 2 hrs.
THEN drain and put in saucepan with lots of water.
Bring chickpeas to boil, cover and simmer gently until tender. Drain and reserve cooking liquid. Put chickpeas in a deepish bowl with lemon juice, garlic, olive oil and 5 fl oz (150 ml) of cooking liquid. Use a bamix/stickmixer thingy to blend it (or you can do it in a blender but it is messy to clean up afterwards). When it is nicely blended, start adding tahini slowly while blending. Tahini will make it go all thick and gloopy. Beware - some brands of tahini make the mix much thicker than others. If the mix goes too thick and gloopy, add extra cooking liquid until it is a good dippy texture. Taste and season with salt and either cayenne pepper or paprika to taste. Place in serving bowl and pour over it a thin layer of olive oil. Garnish with chopped parsley and a pinch or two of cayenne pepper or paprika.
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jennyblackford- Jenny Blackford
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