What Can't You Make With Chickpeas? Evan Sung for The New York Times; Food stylist: Suzanne Lenzer. Prop stylist: Kaitlyn DuRoss. I'm partial to chickpeas - or garbanzo beans, if you prefer - and not because they were among the first legumes I ever ate. (My mother would open a can and put them out at parties, with salt and pepper; you can do better than that. Sorry, Mom.) They have what to me is an irresistibly robust and nutty flavor, and a texture that can run from crunchy to tender. In addition to canned, you may see fresh chickpeas; peel them and cook them quickly, as if they were favas or peas. Increasingly you can find chickpea flour, also called besan or gram flour, in Indian markets, where it's most common, though it's also becoming more popular as a flour substitute for the gluten-intolerant. But dried is the most common form. Dried chickpeas take longer to cook than other beans (two hours is a likely cooking time); use enough water, and the process is stress-free. One major benefit to cooking chickpeas yourself - aside from the superior flavor and texture - is that the water you cook them in becomes particularly rich and flavorful by the time they're done. Save it for soups like the cold one here, which is a refreshing riff on hummus. You'll miss out on the soup stock, but canned chickpeas bear a closer resemblance to cooked-from-dried than any other canned bean: they're sturdy enough to withstand additional cooking without falling apart; make the crisp spiced chickpeas here, and you'll see what I mean. Even after a 20-minute sizzle in a skillet with olive oil, they stay intact, their exteriors turning crunchy while their insides become creamy. Serve these as a party snack instead of roasted nuts, and you'll have a hit. You'll get a similar result if you start cooking with chickpea flour. Made from nothing more than ground dried chickpeas, it has that same distinct nuttiness as the whole bean; try it once, and you'll keep it in your kitchen forever. Two reasons I'm so confident: socca and panelle. The first is essentially a large chickpea pancake from Provence (and neighboring Liguria, where it's called farinata). It's traditionally cooked in wood ovens on copper disks, roughly cut and served hot or warm. In the main market in Nice, it's baked a few hundred yards away and delivered by bicycle, to be wrapped in paper and eaten on the street. If you have no wood or copper, that's no problem. They're nearly as great in a skillet or in a pizza pan in your oven, and totally foolproof. You may have eaten panelle served as "chickpea fries," and that's not a bad name for them. You make a thick porridge of chickpea flour, spread it evenly into a pan and let it cool. As with thick polenta (which this resembles), you can then cut the paste into any shape you like - diamonds, squares or French fries, and fry until golden. They are not only among the easiest things to fry (there's very little spattering), but they're also gorgeous, and better than "real" fries in just about every regard. Except, of course, you can't buy them on every corner. Yet.