Medicine Soup

Some sort of mysterious virus has invaded our home and captured Tom by the eyes, nose, throat and chest. Me, being the wonderful gal that I am, decided to make him some soup, "Medicine Soup" as I dubbed it, filled with ginger and garlic and lime and fresh cilantro among other things.

Wednesday morning I poured some olive oil into my biggest stock pot and to that I added one diced onion, some diced carrots, about 10 fat cloves of thinly sliced garlic, a four inch piece of ginger that I had sliced into tiny sticks, some diced celery, some diced turnips and diced parsnips. I let the vegetable mixture "sweat" on low heat until the onions had started to turn translucent, then I added 6 chicken thighs and 6 chicken legs (skin on) and lots of cute little baby teeny weenie white potatoes that I had cut in half before adding to the pot. I poured enough water into the stockpot to cover the whole thing, added a few chicken bouillon cubes, some soy sauce, a few bay leaves, some dried parsley and marjoram, some paprika, some crushed red pepper flakes and some sumac (I think I got carried away with the spices). I let the whole thing come to a boil and then removed the chicken, while I let the chicken cool, I kept the pot simmering on the stove and to that I added lots of fresh ground pepper. Once the chicken was cool enough to handle I removed it all off the bones and put the chicken and skin back into the pot sans bones, added a pound of fresh spinach that had been washed and shredded, a large bunch of cilantro, some fresh basil leaves and the juice of one lime. I cooked everything long enough to let the spinach wilt and then I turned off the heat. I tasted it, it tasted like it was missing something, perhaps salt. What I thought was really great though, what really stood out and tasted fabulous was the bright clean taste of the cilantro and lime mingling with the pungent smell of the ginger and garlic. I had Tom taste the soup and tell me what he thought was missing...he informed me that he couldn't taste anything and would have to take my word that it tasted good. I added a tad more soy sauce (for good luck), or I should say my intention WAS to add a tad more soy sauce but some strange invisible force had seized hold of my wrist and by the time I could regain control about a quarter of a cup spilled into the pot. ARGGGGGGHH!. I panicked, then added some water, then stirred and tasted. Ok, maybe a bit salty but Tom can't taste anything anyway right? RIGHT! Besides, he needed the ginger and garlic to help him get better. We had some for lunch; I thought it was a bit too salty and also a little oily! I think the next time I will remove the skin from the chicken because it really left an oil slick in the soup that I didn't want. I know I could have skimmed it off with my nifty fat seperator but I was being lazy.

Tom assured me over and over that he was enjoying his hot soup even if he couldn't taste it very well. He kept saying it tasted fine and not salty. I left for work later on that afternoon happy in the knowledge that he had something for dinner that was hot and nutritious and might make him feel better.

Six hours later, I returned home from work and asked Tom how he was feeling:

"Much better, even though I'm still a bit congested, I think my taste buds are returning because the soup tasted kind of salty tonight."

/sigh.

pass me some of that cough medicine with the codeine would ya Tom.

Written by Deb on June 18, 2003 10:02 PM