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it’s Spring Sick and you’re the least sick person in your household, so it’s time to make chicken soup for everybody. First, you’re gonna brown a couple bone-in skin-on legs in a big pan

they’ll cook through later. Pull ‘em out and add your mirepoix from the scraps of what you’ll add to the finished product. We don’t need much because these were all in the stock we made and more will end up in it. Then deglaze and scrape with some lemon juice and clarified butter

now put the legs back in along with a quart of stock you made and froze awhile back (it was a Costco rotisserie carcass, leek greens, mirepoix, pepper, thyme, bay, and parsley). There will be an interregnum in this thread while we simmer it until the legs are tender enough to shred

(but actually you just remembered that as long as you’re cooking up soup, you have a bunch of beef shank bones in the deep freeze, so you decide to make beef stock as well to have later in the week. Set your oven to Gas Mark 5 and put them in there. No need for oil, they’re self-oiling)

chicken’s done, pull it out to cool a bit so you can shred it, and strain the rest into a smaller pot. In a perfect world (this isn’t) you might chill it in an ice bath, fridge it overnight, but we’ll just skim. You can wait a bit, everyone’s napping anyways. Keep an eye on the pressure cooker.

shred it by hand. Save a few big pieces for the kiddo in case he’s feeling picky later, and if the legs included the oysters (they should have) put those on a weird plate and eat them. They’re the chef’s treat. The beef stock is still going in the pressure cooker, so now we’ll make the vegetables.

you should have the nicer bits from the mirepoix, and some acorn squash (you wanted kabocha, oh well) and daikon. Since there’s no rush, go find your decorative vegetable cutters and make it a little weird. You’re cooking for sick people, and you should put optimism and joy into the food for them.