Winter Soup

A blog party: winter recipes.

Seeing that my excellent summery stew is out of season, we've switched to winter foods.

Here's one easy recipe:
You'll need:
1 chicken
1 celery stalk
1 carrot
½ - 1 onion
1 teaspoon salt
8 white pepper corns
1 sweet bay leaf
2-4 liters of water

Put your chicken into a large pot, cover it with water, add salt, pepper, sweet bay, one celery stalk, half an onion and a carrot. Bring to a boil, let things simmer for 2-3 hours.
Pull out the chicken, let it cool on a plate.
Pour the chicken-flavored liquid through a strainer into a smaller pot, add the chicken meat to that (once the bird has cooled a bit), and add various wintery vegetables:

1 set of celery stalks (minus the one stalk which you already used)
1 parsnip
2-3 root parsleys
3-5 onions
whatever other root vegetables strike your fancy
a shot of balsamico vinegar

Let boil until the hardest roots are soft (about half an hour, for root parsley / parsnip / carrots). This makes a great winter stew / soup.

Put the remains of the chicken and the contents of the strainer back into the large pot which you started with, add more water, more salt, another laurel leaf, another carrot, another half onion, and bring to a boil. Let simmer for a few hours, then strain.
Again, add vegetables (and meat or sausages) of your choice, and let simmer until done.

Two soups from one chicken, and they don't even taste the same!