Recipe: Chicken Soup Cure

This'll fix ya!

Chicken Soup Cure

Ingredients:

1 stewing hen
2 bunches green onions
2 cups Basmati brown rice
1 small cabbage
6-10 cloves garlic
4-20 hot chilli peppers
1 thumb ginger
4 red and 4 green bell peppers
6 celery stalks
6 carrots
2 large yellow onions
Olive oil cooking spray or 2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 bunch parsley
salt to taste

Wash chicken, removing giblets (save for another use), pin feathers, excessive fat. Place in a pasta pot (the kind that comes with a removable strainer) if you have one, cover with plenty of cold water. Halve one unpeeled onion and add to the chicken, together with 2 stalks celery, the parsley stalks, or half the bunch if you just can't be bothered to separate leaves and stalks, 1 bunch of the green onions.

Peel the ginger, removing any woody bits or eyes, and slice thinly lengthwise OR hit it with the flat of your knife to bruise it. If it cracks or breaks into chunks, you have achieved success and will soon be granted the blessing of ginger. Add to the chicken together with 2 chillies. If you can take the heat and like spice, you can remove the chilli stems, otherwise leave them intact.

Bring the pot to a full, rolling boil, then turn the heat down to the barest simmer and let simmer for approximately 45 minutes or until chicken is done and vegetables are very tender.

Remove chicken and vegetables from the pot (see why a pasta pot with strainer is perfect?) and let cool.

Dice all the remaining raw vegetables, shred the cabbage, slice the green onion (separate the white and green parts)and mince the chillies. Smash the garlic cloves with the flat of your knife (this makes them easy to peel and also releases the powerful antibacterial and antifungal, allicin. You must use it soon after smashing, as allicin degrades fairly rapidly.)

Heat the oil in a skillet large enough to contain all the vegetables except the cabbage. When the oil begins to shimmer, add the onions and let cook at medium heat till golden and fragrant. Add garlic (you might want to smash it right before adding it) and white part of green onion, and stir till the garlic releases its powerful fragrance. Add the carrots, celery, bell peppers, chilli peppers, stir for a minute or two, then cover and "sweat" the vegetables for about 10-20 minutes. They should release some liquid, in which they will cook, caramelizing their natural sugars.

Scrape the skillet into the chicken stock. Remove meat from the bones, discarding fat and skin (or you could donate the skin to Mike Huckabee, I hear he likes it), discard or reuse the cooked vegetables and either save the bones for stock or discard them. Wash the rice thoroughly and add. Let the soup simmer for about 40 minutes (Basmati brown rice cooks to perfection in approximately 30 minutes), then add the shredded cabbage, stir, garnish with finely minced parsley and sliced green part of green onion, and eat!

Cook's notes:

1. The older the chicken, the tastier the soup!
2. To reduce the heat of chillies, remove the seeds before mincing.
3. You might want to reserve some of the bell peppers to garnish the soup with. Raw peppers are sweet, and if you dice them tiny, they lurk like glistening jewels within your soup, bringing a little cheer to the sickbed.
4. We specify varying quantities of garlic and chillies, recognizing that not everyone shares our obsession with these ingredients.
5. Ginger is excellent for catarrh, sore throats, and upset stomachs.
6. All the vegetables used in this soup are high in Vitamin C.
7. You might find, if you have a cold, that everything tastes a little bland. This soup should fix that. Add salt sparingly, and add a little fresh lemon juice to bring out the flavours.

Feel better!

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