Zuppa Toscana

Remember how I get various and sundry veggies from my CSA program every week? Well, this week, one of the things we got was a bunch of kale. Never having prepared kale before, I turned to Allrecipes to tell me what in the world to cook with it. I discovered this recipe, which claims to be a copy of the Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana. I LOVE OG's Zuppa Toscana; I order it every time I go there. But the problem was that while I DID have kale, I was missing a few crucial ingredients: sausage and heavy cream.

The closest thing I had to sausage was ground chicken. But, I read this vegetarian sausage recipe here and decided the same thing could be attempted with ground chicken. And it worked out pretty darn well! It turns out that if you add a bunch of sausage-esque spices to stuff, it makes it taste like sausage. I know--crazy. Instead of heavy cream, I used milk and cornstarch. That part, I must admit, was a definite down-grade from cream. Next time I make the soup, I'm going to do that part right. But I may just hang on to my "ground chicken in sausage clothing" idea.

So here's my faux-sausage recipe in case any of you are interested (taken mostly from that webpage above):

makes approximate equivalent of 1 pound crumbled sausage

Mince or food process the following, then sauté in a medium hot pan:

• 1/2 onion
• 3 garlic cloves
• a dash of ginger

When onions are clear, add and cook until whole seeds soften:

• 1 tsp ground fennel
• 1/2 tsp mustard seed
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• 1/2 tsp red pepper seeds

Add about a pound of ground chicken breast and cook until no longer pink. Then add:

• 2 egg whites
  
• 1 tbsp soy sauce

Allow to simmer until ingredients reach a thick sticky consistency