Case Cloved

I'm never really sure how to make use of leftover lamb, other than just eating it as is. A portion of the Cinnamon Clove Lamb was still fairly rare, so I decided to throw it into soup and soften up all the meat. Unsure of what to do with the flavor, I started flipping through the takeout menus kicking around the apartment and found one for an Iraqi lamb soup called Harira. This is another one of those recipes that have like 30 ingredients but 29 of them are spices. It's definitely easy to prepare, it just looks a little overwhelming.

The soup smelled a lot like pumpkin pie baking in the house, from the combination of the cinnamon and cloves. There is a general autumn warmth to the dish, with the mild gaminess of the lamb and all of the aromatic spices. When the soup was finished it was fairly thin. It had an alright flavor to it, but something was missing. As an afterthought I threw in a bit of Arborio rice to thick it up a bit and I thought that helped to bring the flavors together more. A lot of the spice flavor seemed to get lost in the cooking process. After taking this for lunch for a few days I'd grown quite tired of it. This definitely didn't hold up as a favorite soup, though it was definitely unique.