Cooking with Dr. Monkey

Most of the after effects of last week's chemo session are over so I got back in the kitchen last night and made a new to me recipe.  I made Italian sausage with miso and vegetable soup.  I got the recipe out of a Japanese cookbook.

You start by pricking the casing of the sausage with a toothpick or a fork and then boiling it for about ten minutes.  This not only cooks the sausage, it also lets out some of the grease and fat.  When the sausage is done, drain the water and let your sausage cool.

Next chop and saute in some canola oil one and a third cup onion and one half cup celery.  If you like cooked carrot, add one cup chopped and peeled carrot, I don't like it so I substituted about a third cup of mushrooms.

Then I added four cups of faux chicken stock, it's a vegan 'chicken' bullion I use in my cooking.  I added a pinch of salt.

Next I put in a third cup of my home canned tomatoes which I had chopped in my small food processor.  I also added on can of cannellini beans.  At this point I added the miso soup mix to my broth.  The recipe called for brown miso but all I could find was red, so I used it and it did fine.

I then sliced my sausage in to thin rounds and I added it to the soup.  I then let it all simmer for about an hour.

I served it with warmed up homemade bread.  All in all it was very good.  It tasted more Italian than Japanese, which wasn't a bad thing.  Yes, I'd make this again but I'd probably wait until it gets cold in the late fall or the winter.