Well folks, I am afraid that Friday@Flore has called in sick today. After a week of running around like chicken with my head cut off, standing out in the rain for Paris Fashion Week shots, juggling Back to School night and spending sleepless nights coughing up my left lung, I simply can not sit out at a café terrasse under a threatening grey sky.

BUT, hey, we’ve got a chicken with its head cut off, so lets use it and make some chicken soup! I made some earlier this week and frankly, it was the best I’ve ever made, which is actually saying something because with my Jewish roots, good chicken soup runs through my veins.

At the market I got 2 leeks, 2 small onions and 8 carrots. Grandmère French had just sent up a batch of fresh thyme from her garden, I’ve already got dried bay leaves and the butcher prepared a Baugrain chicken for me by taking out the innards (Did I want to take them home? Non, merci, you can keep them, but do want the neck) and cutting it into 8 pieces, minus the head and feet.

At home I cut the greens and roots off the leeks, then chopped each large white stalk in half. No matter how long I’ve lived in Paris, I am still lazy Californian so I don’t peel the carrots, I just chop them in thirds. Coins would be more elegant, but then they’d be over cooked. I skin the onions and cut them in 1/4s.

The prep work done, I throw the bird, veggies, 2 bay leaves a small hand full of grey sea salt from our trip to the Ile de Ré, the fresh thyme and about ten whole pepper corns into the stock pot, which I then fill with water. I put it all on the stove top at medium-high and go back to bed for forty minutes.

When I return to check on the soup it is with a large spoon so that I skim off all the grey scum that comes up from the chicken and the fat that is now floating on top. I adjust the heat, get everything down to a low simmer and go about my day.

Before serving I usually take a pair of kitchen tongs and remove the thyme, as well as the skin from all the chicken bits. Put into a bowl an serve steaming hot.

PLEASE NOTE / Next week I’ll be posting photos from Paris Fashion Week EVERYDAY / This is NOT turning into a fashion site, being sick for 12 days (and counting) has created quite a back log with my workload, and I need a mini-break. Stay tuned!!!