A casserole for leftovers: strata

My mom makes a brunch “quiche” that follows the same basic strata technique here: lay out slices of bread, top with the filling, top with the rest of the bread slices, pour an eggy mixture over top and let it sit overnight before baking. Hers is topped with crushed corn flakes that have been mixed with melted butter. I love that crunchy topping, but I didn’t have any corn flakes in the house to add to this experiment with leftovers. Also, the point of this experiment was to make a dish kind of like mom’s quiche that was lower in fat and in meat (the original has ham-and-cheese filling), so no buttery topping.

The experimental recipe

Layers:

8 slices bread (I used oat bran bread I had in the freezer)

1 small onion, diced

1 tsp oil or butter

leftover cooked spicy Italian loose sausage, probably was about ½ of the original pound of sausage

3 dried sage leaves, crushed

6 oz frozen broccoli

8 oz fresh mushrooms, sliced

½ Tbsp olive oil

½ Tbsp butter

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (forget lactose intolerance for a minute -- the cheese was on sale)

Grease an 8X8 baking dish. Cover the bottom with 4 slices of bread. Saute the onion in 1 tsp oil or butter and spread over the bread. Cover with sausage, sprinkle with sage. Cover with broccoli. Saute mushrooms in ½ Tbsp olive oil and ½ Tbsp butter and spread over broccoli. Cover with cheese and the other 4 slices of bread. Press down if the bread is above the top of the pan.

Egg mixture:

1 cup egg whites

a squirt of mustard (I don’t keep ordinary yellow mustard around – the mustards on hand were spicy brown or deli brown, but my usual choice would have been Dijon)

1 cup unsweetened soy milk (a little nod to the lactose intolerance)

½ tsp turmeric

Whisk all together and pour over the strata, soaking all the bread slices.

Cover the baking dish in aluminum foil and refrigerate overnight.

The next morning, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. If, like me, you are baking the strata straight out of the fridge instead of letting it warm up to room temperature, bake covered 25 minutes and uncovered 20 to 25 minutes until bread is browning and filling is bubbly. Let stand five minutes before serving.

Observations

My first thought on eating my first bite was “Whoa! Too much turmeric!” I wasn’t supposed to be able to pick out the turmeric taste so easily. It was supposed to be just for yellow color. That turmeric amount will have to be closer to 1/8 tsp next time. 

“Should I have added salt and pepper to the egg mixture?” I asked myself as I put the baking pan in the fridge before going to bed. When I ate the strata the next day, I found that the sausage and cheese had added enough salty and spicy flavor. I think I would go for some white pepper in the egg mix if I had an all-vegetable filling.

I don’t usually keep whole eggs in the house because the yolks are one of the many items that are not kind to my over-sensitive stomach and guts. I often use the Ener-G powdered egg substitute or substitute two egg whites for each whole egg in a recipe. In general, this dish was not good for me because of the pork sausage, eggs and cheese. Next time, I’d go for an egg substitute instead of any kind of real egg product, and my filling would not be meaty, so that the only tummy-unfriendly item would be the cheese. After this dish and a few egg-white/Egg Beaters omelettes, I’ve learned the lesson that in a dish that is mostly eggy, I just can’t tolerate the eggs. 

The reheated leftovers of this dish were just as good as the fresh-from-the-oven strata lunch.

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Smoothie #1

1 banana
1 cup each frozen blueberries, frozen peach slices
1 cup unsweetened soy milk
1/4 cup plain soy yogurt
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup apple cider (Schnuck's grocery store brand, with pulp sediment and spices floating in it)
honey to taste
pinch of orange zest

Put all ingredients in a blender and blend till smooth.

Comments: The cider amount could be adjusted to make it less or more free-flowing. My husband likes smoothies thicker than I do. He likes soft-serve ice cream-level thickness, I like to be able to put it in a regular kitchen glass and drink it without a straw.
The last time we had a few oranges in the house, I zested them before Andrew ate them and kept the zest in the freezer.
All the otherwise dairy products are soy substitutes because I have lactose intolerance. I cheat and have dairy foods on occasion, especially cheese, with a dose of lactase pills, but I usually just avoid the dairy.

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Simple side dish: apple salad

3 apples (I think the ones we had on hand were Gala)

2 to 3 Tbsp cherry wine vinegar (gift from in-laws)

1 Tbsp olive oil

2 tsp apple butter (gift from neighbor)

honey to taste

pinch of orange zest (my zester yields long strands of zest, very pretty in this)

pecan halves, chopped, to garnish

Core and chop apples, but leave the peels on. Whisk together vinegar, oil, apple butter, honey, orange zest. Add apple chunks and toss till they are covered in dressing. Sprinkle with pecans.

Keeps well for a couple of days, maintains most of apples' crunch.

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An introduction, or a short version of my life story as a cook

For more than 10 years, I've been creating recipes, but I rarely write them down. In the past year, I've been making a concerted effort to document the tastier results of my kitchen experiments, and I thought a blog would be a better way to organize kitchen notes and photographs of dishes. As an educational tool for myself and others, I'm going to post the stories of my failures as well as my successes.

My background: I loafed around the kitchen a lot in my teen years talking to my mom as she made meals, and there were some days when she handed me an ingredient and told me to make myself useful and chop vegetables or brown meat or whatever. I didn't really have any inclination toward the domestic arts early on as I didn't see myself being able to square feminism with slaving in the kitchen.

I decided to go vegetarian as a university student. Conserving water resources and reducing reliance on grain crops to feed livestock was a more global perspective that gave me the idea to try cutting out meat, but what made it an easy choice was the fact that the quality of the meat dishes at our cafeteria was so poor. Potlucks, eat-at-home date nights and getting together for meals with friends gave me some social motivation to learn to cook.

Two boyfriends I had while I was a student were avid cooks themselves. I learned from them how to use some new ingredients and we experimented with dishes together. I learned how to mince garlic, how to make gnocchi, a few ways to ruin a pot of beans, how to make tofu taste like something. During these years, I caught the cooking bug.

Going out to restaurants of all types is another style of cooking "lecture hall" that teaches me much. I worked for a short time as a waitress in a Sicilian family restaurant, where I learned how to make a few of the sauces, and I also picked up on some techniques of preparing dinner for hundreds from a banquet hall and supper club where I waitressed. I decided I had to learn to make curries after eating at Thai and Indian restaurants in Madison, WI, (still working on that skill) and I know what the best chocolate pâté in the world (made at BIOart in Paris) tastes like in case I want to try to replicate it.

My enthusiasm for cooking and joy in exploring and keeping traditions led to forays into using historical recipes and cooking for feasts in the Society for Creative Anachronism, and I'm a regular user of cookbooks of family recipes (both my own family and other families I've never met except through their cookbooks).

I've gotten over my issues with believing that kitchen work was a way for The Man to keep a woman down. I cook now for a living. My chef is a woman. I stop short of calling myself an artist, but cooking does serve as a creative outlet for me, and I'm jolly about being paid to do what was my hobby.

I've allowed some meat and fish back into my life so I could learn how to prepare it properly. On the other hand, during the past five years, I've subtracted quite a few foods from my diet that are irritants for acid reflux, irritable bowel syndrome and lactose intolerance. I do cheat every now and again, and you'll see the occasional recipe including dairy products, my favorite items to cheat with.

I dream of staying put in the same place long enough to garden and I worry over the source and production methods of my food. My husband and I are making steps every year to make our environmental impact less destructive and our food consumption more sustainable. Here is a picture of my little container garden on the balcony of our last apartment.

When I'm sitting down and writing my autobiography, I'm all serious and introspective and philosophical, but I'm not going to require that to be the tone of all the entries or the mood of all the readers. Conscious cooking is serious when you start worrying about where food comes from and why the price is the number it is, but the actions and decisions and techniques of making food tasty are fun to learn and fun to share. And sometimes I'm going to write stuff and post pictures just to show off when I'm proud of what I did.

Welcome to my virtual kitchen. There's an extra seat at the table for you.

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