Sausage Stroganoff?

     To make dinner last night, I had a pound of "sweet" Italian sausage, half an onion, a can of mushrooms and a couple of different-brand cans of mushroom soup, Amy's Mushroom Bisque (good stuff!) and Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup.  Plus three-quarters of a bag of rotini, spiral pasta.

     So why not see how all that would work together?  I fried the sausage loose with black pepper, a generous amount of shichimi togarashi (a mildly-hot Japanese spice mix) and a dash -- well, a few dashes -- of paprika, adding half the onion, diced, before draining the fat.

     Added the rest of the onion, stirred it in well, and added the mushroom bisque, canned mushrooms (poured the liquid into the bisque can) and Condensed Cream of Mushroom soup.  I used the mushroom liquid to get the rest of the soups from their cans and stirred everything together. 

     You could add some milk or water if needed.  I had put the pan dripping in a grease separator and got about four tablespoons of broth.

     Sprinkled some parsley, basil, and a little more shichimi togarashi and paprika on top and covered the pan to simmer while I cooked the rotini.

     The rotini water was already boiling, so I added it, returned it to boiling, and tuned the heat to let it simmer for seven minutes -- this varies to taste and with the kind of pasta, so check the label.

     The end result was darned good. Unconventional, somewhere between sausage gravy and stroganoff, but plenty tasty.  Tam added some of her Flatiron Pepper mix to give her bowl a little more zing.