Tabitha's Excellent Cooking Adventure - Jewish Chicken Soup

My son hasn't been feeling well lately, and today I am going to make Jewish Chicken Soup. I've often heard about the wonderful healing powers of this soup, and once when I was very ill with a virus my friend Leon at work sent me some chicken soup that his wife had made. I really did feel tons better after having it, so today I'm going to attempt it myself.

I've got a recipe that my friend Wesley sent me - it's his grandmother's recipe, so I expect the soup to be even more powerful. So here we go on our Excellent Cooking Adventure. Oh, and lest you suspect me of abandoning my alphabet format, it is no such thing - F is for Family, and family is everything.

The First Day

Of course, as this is an old-fashioned Grandmother recipe, it has to start with a dead hen. None of this effete modern way of buying chicken fillets.

This chicken, according to its label, is 100% antibiotic free, accredited free range, raised on a vegetarian diet and has no added hormones or steroids. Why, in this case, it is wrapped in plastic, is a mystery. Another mystery is why a person who cared about vegetarianism would be buying a chicken.

First thing is to hack it into pieces. This is not how I planned to spend my day; I feel like Hannibal Lecter as I set about dismembering the corpse. The instant I start my grisly work, I am joined in the kitchen by Ferret, who demands his tribute.

I finish the disgusting business of ripping the chicken apart and appease Master with a small piece. It was supposed to be a WHOLE chicken, I tell him. He doesn't care.

Finally I have it all hacked up. What a gruesome sight it is! It goes into the crock pot with a little water.

Once the chicken is merrily crocking away it is time to start the other part of the soup. I'm cheating and using commercial chicken stock.

Look at my horrid old 1950s stove! My glamorous friend Amanda says my kitchen is a National Treasure and has forbidden me to change anything, but she doesn't have to live with it. I can't wait to get it gutted and replaced with a nice, all-white modern kitchen like everyone else has. Don't tell Amanda!

Now it is time to add the vegetables. Of course they are in their naked state. How I wish convenience foods were not evil.

Finally everything is in and cooking away on one of my two functional burners. 

At this point I consider leaving it and going back to work, because this is a work day and I have a daily wordcount to meet, but Wesley's recipe says to keep an eye on it, so I decide to play it safe and stay in the kitchen. I can finish reading my Lemony Snicket book.

These books are absolutely marvellous, and like the old Batman television show, they unfold more and more funniness as one is older, so can be enjoyed in different ways by people of practically any age. I can't recommend them enough!

After about an hour, during which time I finish the book, the two parts of the soup look like this. The left-hand picture is all blurry because of steam. It's not my crappy photography. It's not!

The vegetable part is ready, but the chicken still has some way to go, so I can get back to work for a short time before I must leave for my dance lesson.

Because of a very late start to the day, and the huge amount of time I've spent on this soup, I still have less than half of my daily wordcount when the alarm goes off to tell me to go to my dance lesson. I turn the crockpot down to low before I leave, just for safety - it's already had more than two hours but I think it still wants more cooking. By the time I've got back from my lesson and had a late lunch, the chicken is falling away from the bones; a little poking with the fork exposes smooth, clean bones, so it is cooked enough according to Wesley's grandmother's recipe. I turn off the pot to allow it to cool before the next step, and return to my desk for a final session.

Three hours later, the chicken is still almost boiling, so I decide to leave it to cool overnight.

The Second Day

Next morning it's cold, so I am able to continue. I cut it all into tiny fragments, carefully picking out the bones. Not that there's much cutting to do - it practically shreds itself at the slightest contact. This is the worst part of the whole exercise; I absolutely detest getting into food with my bare hands. 

Mercifully, the process is reasonably fast, and soon I can add all the chicken into the proto-soup.

This leaves me with a pile of bones and some sketchy-looking liquid in the crockpot.

This is all that remains of a once-proud bird

Not much to do now - I pour in the sketchy liquid and stir it all together, together with oregano and a little garlic powder.

Bring it to the boil and voila! My own, nearly-authentic Jewish Chicken Soup! It can't be completely authentic, I think, for my kitchen and equipment are not Kosher, and neither were the ingredients, but it's as near as I'm going to get.