Leftovers are a wonderful thing, especially when you can use them to create a totally new dish. It tends to lead to exceptionally flavored food that cannot be replicated and can’t be written as any useful sort of recipe, as in: take one container of cumin-seasoned pork broth from the freezer, mix in a container of  cauliflower simmered with ginger and turmeric from last Wednesday and last night’s chicken meat that was roasted with fresh bay. Find some canned beans to throw in there, too.  This soup wasn’t quite that complicated. The broth was made using leftover black cumin curry sauce from the Vij’s restaurant cookbook which turned out much more liquidy than I expected. It was diluted with homemade chicken stock and water. I brought it to a simmer and dropped in meatballs based on a recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s Spice Kitchen (one of the most-opened cookbooks on our shelves). She calls them “Peshawari Kebabs” and we like them so much we make them a couple times a month, usually baked in the oven and eaten with yogurt and chutney.

I tossed in some frozen spinach and called it done! It was pretty good, the spices subtle but with the occasional kick of chile from the meatballs. We’ll probably never have quite this same soup again.