Chicken soup is the most soothingly delicious (and supremely restorative!) thing in the world for what ails you

How are you feeling? Not so great? Yeah, I thought so. 

When someone sneezes chez moi, I reach for a chicken – to make soup. It's what my mom always did. And I've always used her recipe.

And if the husband or the son or whoever happened to sneeze isn't actually under the weather, all the better: The chicken soup idea has been planted, and I can't shake it. As the soup simmers, it fills the house with wonderful smells. Chicken soup was the fragrance of my childhood (along with Chanel No. 5, but never at the same time). And I always find diving into a big bowl of chickeny broth with carrots, celery and noodles to be supremely restorative. No one needs to be ailing for chicken soup to be a splendid idea. 

Lots of cultures celebrate chicken soup. There's Chinese wonton soup, Thai thom ka gai (with coconut and lemongrass), Mexican tortilla soup and many more. I love them all. 

Jewish penicillin

But for Ashkenazi Jews, no matter how far-removed we are from the old country (wherever in Eastern Europe that may be), it's a primal dish, a cornerstone of Jewish culture – right up there with bagels and chopped liver. And like bagels, it's one of the few Ashkenazi dishes to have infiltrated mainstream American culture. Campbell's Chicken Soup: Is that Jewish, or American? You get my drift.

Fragrant, delicious chicken soup is very easy to make – easier, I'd say, than running out to a deli to pick some up, should you happen to be in possession of a chicken, celery and carrots. In fact, if you've never made it before, once you try it, you'll wonder why it took you so long to make your own.

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It goes like this: Cut up a chicken, ask the butcher to cut one up for you or buy one already cut up. The benefit of the first two are you can keep the back and neck to put in the soup -- they add lots of richness. Cover it in cold water, bring to a simmer, and skim. Add aromatic vegetables: onion, carrot and celery. My mom always added parsnip, too, so I follow suit, but it's not essential. If you skip it, add another carrot. Throw in a bunch of dill. Let it simmer an hour and a half or two hours. 

Add salt and pepper, and it's basically done. My mom always cooked fine egg noodles separately, put some in each bowl, and then strained some soup directly into each bowl, along with some carrots and celery. She would give us a plate of the chicken separately, and I shudder to think now that we often ate it with ketchup.

 I usually strain the whole soup –– reserving the chicken meat, carrots, celery and parsnip and adding them back into the clear soup. Put some cooked noodles in each bowl, and ladle it in.

My recipe includes measurements, but you don't have to measure things to make chicken soup; it's a soup made by feel. My mom never put garlic in hers, but I often do – especially if the soup is serving as Jewish penicillin; then I throw in a whole head, separated into cloves but not peeled. Sometimes I add a leek, or parsley. Have extra chicken parts in the freezer? Throw those in, for sure, and add a little more water. 

OK. That is my mom's gift to you. Wear it in good health. 

How to be blown away by your own gazpacho

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If you cook a lot, you've probably made gazpacho before. Maybe you've even made it dozens of times. But how often has it blown you away?

Just as I thought.

And just as we're heading into prime tomato season, it seems the right time to give the perennially popular cold soup – whose birthplace is southern Spain – a fresh look. As I wrote in a story that snagged me a James Beard Journalism Award some years ago, the soup's roots go back a long way: It was born sometime between the 7th and 13th centuries (depending on who you ask). In any case, it pretty clearly predates the arrival of tomatoes in Europe, which may come as a surprise to anyone who knows gazpacho as a cold tomato soup with cucumbers and peppers thrown in. In fact, gazpacho was originally a cold soup of pounded bread, garlic and salt with olive oil and vinegar pounded in. Some of those ingredients are often forgotten by modern American cooks, which is one of the many reasons gazpacho so often falls flat. Bread is essential for body, garlic for a little bite and vinegar for zing; a olive oil adds silkiness and its own fruity personality. 

In the summertime, when the weather's hot and tomatoes are bursting with flavor, gazpacho is one of my favorite things to make and eat. 

I approach it one of two ways. If I want a quick-as-possible version, I soak bread in sherry vinegar, toss it in the food processor with chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, a red bell pepper, a little water, garlic, salt and a pinch of red pepper, give it a whirl and serve it right away with a couple of ice cubes in the bowl. Chopped cucumber, peppers and maybe scallions go on top as garnishes. It's pretty damn good.

But if I want a version that's absolutely stunning, I take just a couple of extra steps – peeling and seeding the tomatoes, straining the intensely-flavored juice that runs out of them and adding that to the sherry vinegar-soaking bread. I use a vegetable peeler to peel the red bell pepper. And after I purée the soup in the food processor, I give it a whirl with an immersion blender, to make it super-smooth and silky. The few minutes extra results in a gazpacho that's out-of-this-world elegant. 

A great Andalusian gazpacho depends on two things: ripe tomatoes with fabulous flavor, and the right balance of ingredients – including the vinegar and olive oil. If you get your hands on great tomatoes and use them in this recipe, I'm pretty sure you'll be blown away: 

Either way, I generally use the same or garnishes. If I make the super-smooth version, I'll take more care by dicing them finely rather then chopping them in a hurry – and sometimes add radishes and/or avocados. I can't think of a more stunning vegan summertime starter.

You can also follow the lead of chefs, and get all creative with the garnishes. Want to go super-splashy, maybe for a special dinner party? Top each bowl with a spoonful of lump crabmeat or diced cooked shrimp (or boiled tiny bay shrimp), plus some diced ripe avocado and a few pretty sprigs of frisée.

Whether you go the super-smooth route or the quicker route, I think you'll love it. Go ahead: Give it a whirl! 

 RECIPE: Gazpacho Sevillano

A new cookbook, 'Soup for Syria,' aims to help food relief efforts for Syrian refugees

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Yesterday I was thrilled to find a review copy of a new cookbook, one that will appeal to just about every border-free cook I know, in my mailbox.  Soup for Syria: Recipes to Celebrate our Shared Humanity collects recipes by Alice Waters, Yotam Ottlenghi and Sami Tamini, Paula Wolfert, Claudia Roden, Mark Bittman, Greg Malouf, Anthony Bourdain and many more. All of them are for soup, and proceeds of the book go to the Soup for Syria project, a humanitarian campaign that aims to ease the suffering of 3.8 million refugees by delivering food and foodstuffs to refugee camps. 

A photograph of a girl in a refugee camp faces a recipe for gondi by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi

Barbara Abdeni Massaad, a Beirut-based food writer and photographer, collected the recipes for the collection and photographed the people who are living in the camps. The project started when she was visiting a camp just 45 minutes from her home in the Bekaa Valley "where Syrian families crowd into plastic tents and children die of cold and hunger," as she writes in her introduction. "I try to sleep and ignore this reality, but it's impossible. I am not immune to the suffering of others."

The photos are beautiful; the people in them – particularly the children – are gorgeous. 

And the recipes, many of them simple, look wonderful. I've already put Post-its on a bunch I want to make (of course I'll share them with you once I do!). I have my eye on a recipe from Ottolenghi and Tamimi for Gondi, a Persian chicken soup with dumplings made from ground chicken and chickpea flour. Greg Malouf's recipe for fennel soup with lemon and cinnamon looks great, too. As does Paula Wolfert's recipe for lentil and Swiss chard soup (it's vegan!). Soup seems just the thing to cook for such a cause, as it's nourishing and nurturing.

Of course I'll share the soups with you once I make them, but thought you'd want to know about the project right away so you can help. The $30 book can be ordered through the Soup for Syria website.  The site also offers other ways to get involved in the cause, such as hosting a soup party where you can sell the book or take orders for it.

Super bowl of soup: black bean with roasty veg

There's nothing more warming and comforting on a chilly winter evening – or a kicked-back Super Bowl Sunday – than a soulful black bean soup with a gentle zip of chile.  

I like to roast the soup's aromatic vegetables instead of sautéing them; roasting deepens and intensifies their flavor – so much that if you wanted to leave out the ham hock and go vegetarian/vegan, the roasted veg will carry the day. Grinding toasted spices – coriander and cumin – fills the house with a wonderful scent.

There's hardly any work involved: Just dice the roasted vegetables, toss them in a pot with beans, a can of tomatoes, a ham hock and the spices and let it simmer a couple hours. Debone the ham hock, whirr the soup a bit with an immersion blender, drop in the diced ham and you're in business. Serve the soup in small bowls, garnished with cilantro and sliced scallions. Try it! And tell us how you like it. 

The simplest soup in the universe — split pea — is one of the most delicious

This is the simplest soup in the universe, and one of the most heart-warming when it's cold outside. 

I try to keep its ingredients on hand all the time during the winter, so if a craving strikes, I can put it together without going shopping. If you buy the ham hocks two or three at a time, you can throw the extra(s) in the freezer. Of course if you happen to have a leftover ham bone, you can use that instead. Besides the ham and the split peas (which keep forever), all the ingredients are things a cook usually has on hand anyway: an onion, three or four carrots, a little olive oil. 

And it smells so good while it's cooking. 

Making it couldn't be easier. Just sauté diced onion and carrot in a little olive oil, add water, split peas and the ham hock, and let it simmer till it starts looking like soup. Take out the ham, discard its bone and fat, cut up the meat and toss it into the soup. Correct the seasoning and that's it – very little effort; time (about an hour and a half, maybe a little more) does all the work for you.

Start it in on a weekend morning, and you can eat it for lunch. Or make it in the afternoon and serve it on Monday or Tuesday night – with some good crusty dark rye bread and sweet butter, and maybe a salad – for a zero-effort dinner.