Chicken & Leek Soup

Ingredients

• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 carrots, peeled and diced
• 2 celery sticks, diced
• 1 large onion, diced
• 3 large leeks, trimmed and sliced into rounds
• 2 tbsp butter
• 600 g chicken thigh fillets
• 1.2 litre chicken stock
• 150 g pearl barley or small pasta
• salt and black pepper
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 2 bay leaves
• 15g flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
• Crusty sourdough bread, to serve
• Natural yoghurt, to serve
• Wholegrain mustard, to serve

Method

1. Melt the butter in a heavy pot over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots, and celery with a good pinch of salt — salting now pulls the moisture out and gets you sweetness rather than steam. Cook for 8 minutes until softened and just starting to catch gold at the edges.
2. Add the garlic and leeks. Cook for 5 minutes more, stirring often, until the leeks collapse and turn silky. Watch the garlic — you want it fragrant, not browned. Burnt garlic turns the whole pot bitter, and there's no rescuing a bitter soup.
3. Season the chicken thighs generously with salt and black pepper, then nestle them into the pot. Pour over the chicken stock and add the thyme and bay leaves. Bring up to a gentle boil.
4. Stir in the pearl barley and rinsed red lentils. Drop the heat to a steady simmer and cook for 25 minutes, stirring once or twice so the lentils don't stick on the base, until the chicken pulls apart easily and the barley is tender with a gentle bite at the centre.
5. Lift the chicken out with a slotted spoon. Shred the meat with two forks — it should fall apart with no resistance — then return it to the pot. Fish out the bay leaves.
6. Taste the broth properly. It should taste rounded and savoury, with a slight golden thickness from the barley breaking down. Adjust salt and pepper now — the lentils drink seasoning, so it almost always needs more than you think. Taste again.
7. Ladle into deep bowls, scatter the parsley generously over each one, and finish with a spoonful of wholegrain mustard stirred through at the table — the mustard's vinegar-sharpness cuts through the richness and lifts everything you've just built.