Spicy crispy roasted chickpeas, aka garbanzo beans, are nothing like dry roasted nuts though they may look similar. The dish of oven baked chickpeas with grilled peppers and chillies is a wholesome vegetarian lunch or dinner as chickpeas are an excellent source of protein and fibre.
Chickpeas are funny little things - they look nothing like peas to start with but more like little nuts. Shouldn't they be called chicknuts? I guess not because they have more in common with peas and beans after all, belonging to the legume family, than they have with nuts. They used to be the poster foodstuff of hippy, new age and vegetarian diet, and rightly so: they are a reasonable source of protein if you don't eat meat or eggs.
If you look up alternative, historical or other language version names, it’s really confusing: garbanzo (Spanish), Indian pea, ceci bean, Bengal gram (India), cicer (Latin), hummus (Hebrew), hamaz (Arabic), nohut (Turkish), shimbra (Ethiopia), pois chiche (French), grão de bico, gravanço, ervanço (Portuguese), mdengu (Swahili). Blimey. Not one of those words looks much like another. But from the list above you can see how widely they are known: the Mediterranean, Middle East, Africa and Indian subcontinent.
Think 'chickpeas' and you will most probably expect a recipe for hummus or falafel; a curry, a stew or a soup. Think again, however lovely dishes they are. My favourite chickpea dish is more like a gratin than a curry. I like to keep them whole and make them crispy rather than saucy. Tinned chickpeas are perfectly okay to use - unlike beans and possibly lentils, I could never discern any difference in taste between the dried, soaked and cooked and the tinned, drained and rinsed. Just make sure you buy organic chickpeas - that does make a difference.
Red peppers on the other hand are quite fun to grill and peel at home and lots better value. But if it’s too much, use the grilled peppers sold in jars, just make sure they’re not vinegary.