Fish Cake & Rice Cake Soup

I got the idea for this soup from a recipe for Japanese New Year's soup.  OK, now if you really look up a recipe for New Year's soup, it's not really like this at all.  I just got the inspiration from there.  I had no chicken thawed (what a surprise) and the rice cakes I have aren't really mochi, but it works.  You can really use any sort of fish cake you have if you don't have these little cubed fish cakes.

Fish Cake & Rice Cake Soup

Ingredients:

small handful of rice cake slices
2 imitation crab sticks
2 pieces fried fish cake
2 dried shiitake mushrooms, reconstituted
1/4 sheet toasted nori seaweed
1 tsp. dashi granules
1 1/2 water
2 tsp. soy sauce
1/2 tsp. mirin
small bunch enoki mushrooms, roots removed
4 snow peas, trimmed
1 spring onion
shichimi togarashi (Japanese seven-spice powder, optional, to serve)

Bring the measured water to a boil.  Add the dashi granules, soy sauce, and mirin.  Stir until the dashi has dissolved completely.

Add the rice cakes and boil 3-4 minutes, or until the rice cakes have softened through and turned a bright white color.

Cut the fish cakes into bite-sized pieces and slice the crab sticks in half.  Slice the shiitake mushrooms into 1/4 in. strips and separate the enoki mushrooms from one another.  Add these ingredients to the soup and simmer for another 2-3 minutes, until the fish cakes have heated all the way through.

Cut the snow peas in half on the diagonal and slice the spring onion into 1 in. pieces.  Add the green vegetables to the soup and simmer an additional 1-2 minutes.

Cut or tear the nori sheet into 1 in. squares.  Add the them one at a time to the soup to keep them from sticking to one another.  Sprinkle with shichimi togarashi and serve.