CHICKEN IN THE POT IN MY KITCHEN

In my kitchen I hum the lines to a song I used to listen to: Chicken, chicken, chicken in the pot. It was sung by Ricki Lee Jones. Was the song referring to Hoover’s promise for a chicken in every pot? I am making chicken soup on a Friday afternoon.

What’s in my mind is the sensations I find wafting through my life of Sabbaths, holidays, and always for cold and flu days.  It’s fragance makes for steaming visions of the kitchen on cold days, when nothing smelled better to me. Not even  breads in the oven, simmering sauces, cookies, or popcorn,  assured me that I would soon be soothed and  healed,  as much as a  bowl of the golden soup. Forget the clichés about it’s being Jewish Penicillin, or the metaphoric food for the soul. It is what is. That is enough.  

And here is the recipe:

Chicken Soup

Skin one organic chicken, cut into pieces and brown these and the vegetables listed below. Exception: Fresh celery and parsley are added afterwards and put in a soup sock. I also put the leeks, onions and celeriac in a soup sock but leave this choice to you.

Cover with 3 quarts of water, put on cover. Simmer for several hours, skimming off any scum that accumulates. Don't boil the soup or the fat becomes part of it. Chill, uncovered, in a sink of cold water until it is just lukewarm; then refrigerate. It needs to cool before being covered because the covering sours the soup. It is refrigerated, because then the fat layers on top and can be skimmed. Bring to a simmer after skimming fat and serve. If you want the soup immediately you can pour heated soup into a gravy separater. Soup socks are cheesecloth and available at New Seasons Market, and lots of kitchen supply stores, like Sur La Table, William Sonoma, or?

1 organic chicken
4-5 chicken feet (cleaned of course)

1 tablespoon salt
All veggies are organic:
1 peeled celeriac, cut in quarters
3 peeled parsnips, cut in quarters
3-4 peeled carrots cut in half

1 large peeled and quartered yellow onion
3 leeks,  whites only, cut in half.

*For the ingredients below, use a soup sock  (otherwise the stuff which cooks soft and slimy and distributes throughout)
1 bunch celery hearts including leaves.
Adding chicken feet creates a rich stock. They are rarely available unless one finds them at a kosher butcher, or an Asian market. These must be very well scraped and scrubbed. Otherwise I add two cubes of Telma chicken boullion and eliminate adding extra salt.

Garnish if you like with dill. Dried is fine, fresh is also. But use sparingly.