Chickpea Flour Recipes

These crispy fried squares can be served alongside butternut squash soup or with cocktails.

The Good News Traditional panelle, the popular Sicilian chickpea fritter, is deep-fried. Melissa Kelly forms her panelle onto a sheet, lightly sprinkles it with goat cheese and bakes it. Then she cuts the panelle into pieces and sautés them until they're crisp.

For this appetizer, Pierre Gagnaire cleverly weaves together two major ingredients, shrimp and chickpeas: He quickly sears shrimp and uses the shells to make a stock to flavor the hummus. He then uses chickpeas to make the delicate cracker garnish. At his eponymous restaurant in Paris, it's part of a dish called Orientale, inspired by his walks in the desert. (He takes those walks when he's cooking at Reflets par Pierre Gagnaire in Dubai and his newest place, Twist, in Las Vegas.) "I like the silence. The wind. The simple rhythm of the days," he says.

This gluten-free Italian bread or socca is a pancake-like flatbread made out of one part chickpea flour, one part water and a dash of olive oil and salt. The topping can be varied to taste, or the crisp bread can be served "naked" with spreads and dips, like fresh ricotta.

Chefs Tyler Rodde and Curtis Di Fede like the briny flavor that bottarga (cured, dried mullet roe) gives these crispy chickpea-flour cakes. Find it online at gourmetsardinia.com.

Park Kitchen • Portland, OR

At this excellent little restaurant, Scott Dolich (a Food & Wine Magazine Best New Chef 2004) serves these crisp-outside-tender-inside jumbo fries with homemade pumpkin ketchup, but they're also wonderful on their own. He spikes the fries with sambal oelek, a bright red Southeast Asian chile sauce available at Asian markets.

What a spectacular way to serve cauliflower! The whole head is simmered in turmeric water, then stuffed with nuts and spices and slathered with a spicy paste. When it emerges from the oven, elegant and golden brown, it makes an unforgettable vegetarian main dish.

Bloggers Jasmine and Melissa Hemsley mix quinoa with grated cauliflower, salty halloumi cheese and chickpea flour to make crisp, fluffy little balls to serve as an hors d'oeuvre or with tomato sauce as a main course. Soaking the quinoa overnight before cooking makes it more digestible.

At Amarvilas Resort and Spa in India, these twice-marinated butterflied shrimp are baked in the searing heat of a tandoori oven.