Oh, I do like making stock: that way you can taste as you go and find the different ingredients asserting themselves at different stages - fennel first, almost before the water's warm, and then the parsley; and then the onions and leeks coming through; and the chicken last of all, like a bass note that underscores the others and binds them all together into a single coherent flavour that nevertheless does still retain all its separate elements. It's jazz, I tell you. Jazz.