Here’s what you’ll need:

• A big saucepan, preferably a casserole – we’re making a load of this soup ok?
• Water – about half-fill your pot with it
• Chicken (or vegetable) stock or stock cubes
• Root vegetables – I’ll leave this to your taste, but any of: celery, celeriac, carrots, chop into small pieces
• Ginger, shavings if you can (I use a vegetable peeler for this)
• Garlic, chopped
• Fresh chillies, finely chopped. De-seed them only if you’re particularly sensitive to chilli. If you’re worried it will be too spicy, deseed half of them.
• Juice of one lemon
• Optional: one whole cooked chicken (I cheat and get a cooked chicken from the local supermarket), in pieces (separate the breast meat, you’ll want to eat that)
• For extra credit (for the flavour): fresh coriander (cilantro) and thai basil, chopped

Making it’s easy, start with the water, then the stock or stock cubes, then other ingredients, in the order they’re listed. Let it simmer for an hour or so, stir occasionally.

How do you know it’s right? Your throat should tingle as you taste it. Making it milder only harms its efficacy, so don’t do that. I’m not sure whether it’s the garlic, ginger, lemon juice (vit C) or chillies or simply the combination of all of it, but it seems to knock an impending cold on the head.

Here’s hoping it works for me this time, it has done in the past.

Photo credit: Jiva, via Flickr