NEW YORK — As a rule, deep-frying things is a good idea. Frying transforms croissant dough into a treat that otherwise reasonable people are willing to wait hours for. It transforms dry, bland Thanksgiving turkey into a moist, juicy marvel. It transforms broccoli into the kind of upscale restaurant appetizer that gets chefs book deals. You will be hard-pressed to find an ingredient that doesn’t benefit from a plunge in the deep-fryer, is what I’m saying.
And yet one fried food continues to dominate Americans’ fried food consumption: french fries. They play a part in about 13 percent of restaurant meals ordered in this country. They are our No. 1 national potato-product export. They are one of the very few fried foods that do not even mention their primary ingredient in their names. They are on a Madonna-like single-name basis with the world — we mostly just call them fries, not french fried potatoes.
I’ll eat however many french fries you put in front of me. French fries are indisputably a wonderful food. But their reputation as the zenith of deep-fried foods seems unexamined at best. They’re not the most interesting deep-fried potato dish: latkes, tater tots, and hash browns all have more pleasurable textures. They’re not even the tastiest deep-fried fry-shaped thing.
That title belongs to chickpea fries: crispy-on-the-outside, moist-on-the-inside little batons made from garbanzo bean flour and whatever other flavorings you care to add to them. They’re an American variation on panelle de ceci, garbanzo flour fritters that are often served on rolls or as bite-sized rounds or squares in southern Italy (France, too). With a smooth, dense, and custardlike interior, chickpea fries are far more satisfying than the starchy potato version. (They’re also higher in protein and fiber, if you’re concerned about such things when you eat fried foods.)
