The chickpea (Cicer arietinum) is the dense, nut-flavoured seed of a small bushy legume, grown for thousands of years across the Near East, India and the Mediterranean and known as the garbanzo, gram or chana. Two kinds dominate: the large, round, pale kabuli used for hummus and salads, and the smaller, darker, angular desi that fills India's chana dals and is milled into besan flour. Hard and starchy when dried, it cooks down to a creamy, faintly buttery, gently nutty-earthy seed — the body and flavour behind hummus, falafel and chana masala — while its starchy cooking water, aquafaba, whips into a vegan egg-white.