I am not much of a cook. When I was a little girl, I hung out in the playground, played baseball, read books, or climbed trees. I never hung out in the kitchen to learn about how to cook a dish or make a meal.

But now as an adult, I do know how to cook a few things. I have what you might call a very limited repertoire. I am great at making salads, guacamole, scrambled eggs, and chicken soup. Beyond that, well, I am over my head and just not interested. I was once asked to contribute a recipe to a collection that included recipes contributed by some important women. It was for our daughters, I recall, but I only have sons (both are better cooks than I am). I contributed my guacamole recipe. One of the contributors, I forget which one, offered this recipe: Open a box of cereal. Pour into dish. Add milk. My guacamole recipe was better than that! At least, it showed some thought and effort.

However, I just made my famous chicken soup. (Famous in an extremely limited circle of family, that is.) It is delicious, despite my lack of cooking skills and not that hard to make. It is the finish work that is time-intensive. It is best to make it in the winter, when hot chicken soup is needed. It is said to cure colds (Jewish penicillin), but I offer no guarantees.

To begin with, get good ingredients. Buy an organic chicken, if you can find it and afford it. They are cleaner than the packaged chicken in the supermarket (you can use that, too, just be prepared for more grit and stuff to float to the surface as you cook, which you must ladle off). The bigger the chicken, the better the flavor.

Put the chicken in your largest pot and add a lot of water. About 6-8 quarts, enough to cover the chicken. My soup pot is 9″ high and 12″ across. Do not skimp on the water.

Add the following:

A large onion, peeled and studded with about 3-4 cloves
Six big carrots, peeled and sliced.
An entire celery, cleaned and sliced.
3-5 large leeks, cleaned and sliced (don’t use the toughest ends of the leeks). Leeks can be dirty, so wash them well.
A bunch of parsley
A bunch of dill
Some peppercorns
Some salt
If you have it, throw in a peeled and cut-up turnip, a parsnip, scallions, etc.

Set the whole thing to a reach a low boil. When it comes to a boil, turn it down as low as you can without stopping the boiling or simmering. Cover with the top of the pot open very slightly to let off steam.

Let it simmer/boil for at least three hours. Then let it cool.

When you are done, this is the important thing you must do.

Put your largest bowl in the kitchen sink. Put a very large mesh strainer over the bowl. A colander won’t do, you have to go to the hardware or housewares store and buy a large mesh strainer, one that will sit comfortably over the bowl and the sink without touching the bowl. My mesh strainer is 10″ across and stretches across the bowl without touching it, balanced on the sink.

Use a large soup spoon and ladle out the greens and meat into the strainer, about a cup at a time. Separate the chicken meat and save it for chicken salad or whatever you want. Save the pieces of carrot for the soup.

Then as you put greens, onions, celery, etc in the strainer, mash it with the spoon until all the juice flows into the bowl below. That enriches the soup.

Repeat until you have squeezed out the juice from everything in the soup pot, saving the chicken and carrots for the future.

When you are done, you will have a large bowl of flavorful soup. Eat some now, freeze some for later. Be sure and date whatever you freeze. Depending on how much water you added, and how long you cooked it, you should have many servings of delicious chicken soup. And you will have a bowl of carrots that you can add to the soup now.

Now you have one of the very few dishes that I have ever cooked in my life.

Enjoy!