Ad hoc Italian Stir-Fry

Mark Bittman reports:

I found myself with the ingredients for a quick stir-fry: shreds of cooked chicken, two or three kinds of mushrooms, asparagus trimmings (the flower ends had mostly been used at a television shoot), basil.  But I also had a loaf of bread I wanted to eat, so I was caught in a cross-cultural conundrum: eat bread with a stir-fry, or try make an Italian-style stir-fry. The second seemed more logical.  And I tried — I used olive oil, I added a bit of white wine, I threw in a few thyme sprigs, I finished the dish with more olive oil and even a bit of lemon. But it really wasn’t very successful. I sat there munching on my bread and eating the dish and thought, contrary to much of what I usually think, that sometimes the style of cooking will conquer the nature of the ingredients. A stir-fry is somehow always going to seem Chinese.

I was faced with a refrigerator of leftover odds and ends and decided to attempt something similar.  Maybe I just have lower standards, but I surprised myself by how happy I was with the result.

Ingredients:

Small lump uncooked Italian sausage
One teaspoon olive oil
One onion, chopped into eighths and separated
One celery stalk, sliced thin
Three cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
About 8 oz. leftover canned fire-roasted diced tomatoes
Large spoonful of Italian seasoning
Large spoonful red pepper flakes
Small spoonful mustard powder

Preparation:

Brown sausage in skillet, breaking it into little lumps.  Remove.  Add olive oil to sausage fat, and saute onion, celery, and garlic until they are crisp-tender and developing brown bits.  Return sausage.  Add spice mixture.  Stir.  Add tomatoes.  Stir again, letting the mixture bubbily happily for a minute or two (or longer, depending on how much juice was left in your can).  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Consume happily (thinking of Mark Bittman, I put a slice of toast on the bottom of my bowl).