Cream of celery soup

What to do with extra celery. This was an emergency recipe that's turned out quite nicely:

Ingredients:

Around 500-600 g celery (the better part of a head of celery), sliced
A large potato, diced
A large onion, diced
A red pepper, diced
A chilli or 2, diced
50-100 g butter
750 ml chicken stock
salt and pepper to taste
100ml cream or creme fraiche

Melt the butter in a large-ish pot. Add the celery, potato, onion, pepper, and chilli, season with salt, and cook for around 10-15 min over a low heat. When soft, add chicken stock and pepper, bring to a simmer, and cook for another 10-15 min on a low heat. When ready, take off the heat, add cream/creme fraiche, and blend. Serve with extra cream if so desired.

Chicken cacciatore

A simple Italian chicken stew. Can also be made with game meat. Lovely. Cobbled together from the BBC recipe and food.com's own version, with a couple of edits.

Ingredients:

Butter for frying
4 chicken drumsticks
4 chicken thighs
Plain flour mixed with salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper (to taste) to coat chicken
Olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 stalks celery, diced
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 or 2 chillies, diced
1 or 2 large red peppers
Rosemary or Provencal herb mix
3/4 cup white wine
2 400g tins of diced tomato
250-300ml chicken stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a large pot. Dust the chicken in the flour mixture, and then brown in the pot over a medium-high temperature. Remove from the pot using a slotted spoon. Add the oil and heat, then add the garlic, celery, onion, carrot, red peppers and chilli, as well as the rosemary/Provencal mix. Fry for a few minutes and then add the wine, scrape the bottom to remove chunky bits, and then add the tomatoes and stock. Return the chicken to the pot. Bring to a simmer, put the lid on, turn the temperature down low, then cook for around 45 minutes. At this stage, the chicken should be quite tender, as should the carrots.

Serve with rice and/or salad.