Sausage and Mushroom Ragout (by G)

I was going to have this dish on a night that Biggs was dining elsewhere but I decided it was probably going to be much too good not to share. It turns out that was not the case.

I'm going to apportion some blame:

- 10% of the blame goes to me - I didn't actually follow the recipe, I just guessmembered.

- 60% of the blame goes to the recipe for including water chestnuts in this meal (though if I mis-guessmembered the water chestnuts I'll take 10% of the 60% of the blame apportioned to the recipe).

- 30% of the blame goes to the Asian grocery store where I shopped for my ingredients for not having 2 of the 4 things I was looking for (though I should probably accept some of this blame for being too lazy to go somewhere else to find the ingredients).

This mix of sausages, tomato paste, green onions, dried shiitake, canned straw mushrooms, mushroom re-hydration water and butter was not too bad, but nothing like as flavourful as I had imagined based on the name.  For the record the grocery store did not have shallots (so I substituted green onions) nor fresh mushrooms (which I substituted for canned mushrooms).

All afternoon I've had 'The Gnu Song' stuck in my head with the word Ragout in place of Gnu... damn Flanders and Swann...