White Chili with Chicken and White Root Vegetables (FM)

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 bone-in chicken thighs
• Salt and black pepper
• 2 leeks, trimmed, well rinsed, and chopped, or 2 onions, chopped
• 4 parsnips, chopped
• 1 celery root, chopped
• 1 large or 2 medium turnips, chopped
• 2 all-purpose potatoes, chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh sage, or 1 teaspoon dried [I assumed incorrectly that I had dried sage, but I didn't]
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 dried mild chile (like ancho), or 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• Grated zest and juice of 1 lime
• 2 cups any dried white beans, rinse, picked over, and soaked if you like
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro, plus more for garnish
• 1/2 cup chopped scallions, for garnish

Insane amount of white root vegetables and their peelings.  I've never worked with celery root before, but it smells phenomenal.  I wonder if people ever eat it raw.

I had to store them in 4 whole pieces of tupperware until the next day.  The potatoes darkened overnight, but they were old.

Mise en place.

Browning the chicken.

Sauteeing the leeks until softened.

After dumping everything in (except for the lime juice, scallions, and cilantro), I had to switch pots.

I cooked this silly dish for probably about 4 hours.  I was waiting for the vegetables to show signs of "almost disintegrating, but I never got there and stashed it in the fridge overnight to try again.  Thankfully, I had the bright idea of just checking to see if the vegetables were tender and so they were.
A good well-spiced dish with chicken that basically shredded itself after loooong hours of stewing.  At 6-8 servings, it's a rather unwieldy dish for the single chef.  Yeah, I imagine the dish will take me at least a week to eat at this point.

Thrillingly enough the cilantro came with roots which are not exactly all that easy to find, but Zak Pelaccio using them extensively in EYH so I rinsed/scraped/rinse what I had and threw them in the freezer until I accumulate enough to use in a dish.