Lamb leftovers (2)

Soup — lamb-barley soup. My late friend Cheryl always made turkey-barley soup with the leftovers from her Christmas turkey. And it was always warming, comforting — excellent. Well, I have recently found recipes for lamb-barley soup on the internet, so that sealed it. Soup would be one of the things I would make with what was left of our Thanksgiving leg of lamb.

   
When I took the lamb off the bone, I kept as much of it as I could in thick pieces that I could cut into cubes for stew.
Or I could run those cubes through the meat grinder and make meat sauce for pasta or moussaka.
Still, there were a lot of little morsels of good meat that would be perfect in soup.
That meant I'd also need to dice up a lot of vegetables. So I got busy.

We had barley in the pantry. We had onions. We had turnips, carrots, and celery in the refrigerator. There was nearly
a liter of broth left from cooking the leg of lamb, because I had set the roast on a rack and poured some water,
wine, and herbs into the bottom of the roasting pan to keep the lamb juices from burning and smoking.
I also found a liter of chicken broth (guinea hen broth, actually) in the freezer.

   
The middle photo above shows what is called une mise en place — all the soup ingredients laid out on a table
so that nothing would be forgotten when the soup-making started. I had leftover flageolet beans from
Thanksgiving day, and I had some steamed broccoli florets and steamed potatoes left from the
cold lamb and mayonnaise lunch we had enjoyed the day before. There were some
cooked turnip greens and leek tops in the freezer, and
some cooked smoked-pork lardons in the fridge...