One day, chicken soup came up in the session with my patient Bronte — both the homemade and the tinned variety. That day, Bronte had news to tell me: she said it was ‘over’ with her boyfriend, Eliot, whom she had been with for just over a year. In therapy, Bronte had said plenty about what was wrong in the relationship — or really, what Eliot was doing wrong in the relationship — from the moment she came to see me a few months prior. In fact, she spoke a lot about Eliot in general. I had got to know him quite well; in some ways, perhaps better than Bronte. I knew that Eliot was a chef and that he’d worked in some really well-known restaurants all around the world. He enjoyed exploring new cuisines, discovering new ingredients and developing his repertoire of tools and techniques. Now Eliot was getting ready to open his own restaurant, a fusion place in a trendy part of London where he would showcase all of his culinary expertise, including molecular gastronomy.

Chicken soup with matzo balls