On Saturday night I soaked about one third of a cup of dried chick peas, intending to use them the next day. I know it's much faster to use canned chick peas, but I prefer to use the dried ones, even though the excess canned ones are useful to sprinkle on salads throughout the week, kept in the refrigerator for that purpose. I thought I'd try out a recipe that was published in the newspaper for cold-weather meals.

And so on Sunday afternoon I put together the ingredients for Asian Chickpea Soup. Of course the amounts given are to produce a finished product to be shared by six people. Since there's only two of us and I don't like freezing portions to be used at a later date, and don't much like leftovers since I prefer my food preparation to take place the day it's meant to be eaten, I just roughly estimated amounts required for two servings, and the end result was extremely palatable.

Recipe for Asian Chickpea Soup

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 5 garlic coves, chopped
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 1 tsp. cumin seeds
• 1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
• 1/2 tsp. turmeric
• Leaves of 2 sprigs fresh thyme (dried will do well enough)
• 3 tomatoes, diced
• 1 stalk celery, finely chopped
• 3 cups boiling water
• 3 cups cooked chickpeas
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes (optional)
• sea salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1/4-cup chopped fresh coriander

I heated the oil to quickly stir the garlic, onion, cumin, red pepper flakes, turmeric and thyme until the onion was limp and the mixture was very aromatic, then added the tomatoes and celery, and water, and the chickpeas. And I added a chicken bouillon cube for good measure, then left it all to simmer while we went off for our hours-long ravine walk. On our return the fragrance of the cooking soup greeted us, and I just left it to continue slowly simmering.

The finished product was much to our taste, and it is joining our winter-soup repertoire consisting mostly of lentil-tomato, bean-vegetable, green-pea, and other variables on old favourites.