Let’s get one thing out of the way: Stephen Alexan­der, the tall, slim, charm­ing owner of two Cumbrae’s butcher shops in Toronto spe­cial­iz­ing in naturally-raised meat (there’s also one in Dun­das near Hamil­ton) , is easy on the eyes.

This third-generation Aussie butcher is also easy on the ears when he talks about his pas­sion: things car­niv­o­rous and how to pre­pare them.

Just as I’m not a fan of food gad­gets — being tech­ni­cally chal­lenged is one rea­son, find­ing the wooden spoon, whisk, a good qual­ity iron skil­let and good knife to be key tools of the trade is another — I am not one who seeks out the lat­est trendy ingredient.

Believe it or not, until now, I had never made authen­tic, Jewish-style chicken soup. But when a dear friend returned home from sev­eral months in hos­pi­tal, hav­ing lost weight and in a weak­ened con­di­tion, I decided this was the time to cook up a batch of this beau­ti­ful broth with sci­en­tif­i­cally proven health ben­e­fits that, I believe, come from nutri­ents in the chicken’s bones.