Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Cheese Bread Pudding...

What? Cheese in pudding? Am I insane? Now that is a loaded question. Not usually safe to answer that one. Personal mental capacity aside, this is a great recipe. We sometimes have left over bread. Not often. Since I am the bread girl, I thought I'd share how we use some of the crust. Did I say crust? Crust is my favorite part! Usually the center slices have a better chance of survival around here.

Back to the pudding. This is a comfort food we have come to really enjoy. It is a savory casserole. Great as a main dinner or side dish. Great as a freezer meal. It is called Cheese Pudding thanks to my good friend Fannie Farmer. Ever read the Fannie Farmer Cookbook? I think it may be one of my all time favorite references. Great information. I wore out two soft covered copies before I had my brother in law order a hard cover into his store specially for me. It's nice having a family member in the book business.

Even nicer having recipes that work all nice and hard bound at my finger tips. Look at this...
I added green onions to the original recipe, but this is it:
Mmm. Cheese. So here's what's in it:
5 slices of good bread (I used some cottage cheese dill bread: The Sound of Music Meets Culinary School...Cottage...) cut into one inch squares.
1 1/2 cup milk (soy milk works)
1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese (and 1/2 cup for topping later...)
3 eggs
2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 green onions, chopped
all purpose seasoning to taste (I use my seasoning blend but any all purpose seasoning would work)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Yea. That's a low temperature, but it gives a good texture to your pudding to do it that way.

Oh. A word on seasoning...

I do go a little heavy on the seasoning, but that's what makes a good savory stuffing, right?

Mix all that stuff together. Pretty simple right? Put it all in a lightly oiled casserole dish. I use a round 10 inch by 2 inch deep pan. Top with another 1/2 cup shredded cheese.

Bake covered with foil 40-50 minutes.

Pull out and serve hot.
This is an excellent main course for breakfast or brunch if you prepare it, ready to bake, the night before and put in the fridge overnight. Also good with chunks of cream cheese mixed into the bread cubes (but is there anything on earth that isn't improved with chunks of cream cheese?!). If you're not vegetarian, Bacon is also good. Blue cheese. Big hunks of roasted garlic. Roasted red bell peppers. Jalapeno. Sausage. Stop me. I could go on all day! Just know that it is a great way to use extra bread. And...spread out the "bread" you have. It's very inexpensive to make. Oh and here's a kicker...if you freeze it instead of baking it, it will make a wonderful freezer meal! Yeah!! Defrost it and bake as directed. Simple and fast for the freezer. There you go.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. I never thought of using bread for dinner like that. Looks yummy.

TARA said...

Please, oh PLEASE tell me there is only leftover cottage dill bread because you guys have been sick at your house. Leftover cottage dill bread otherwise is a crime!!!!

This looks great, BTW....

Chef Tess said...

There is only left over cottage dill bread because I hid it for the cheese pudding! Oh I love it in the pudding. Otherwise, yes, it is a sin of incredible magnitude to have leftover cottage dill bread! It tastes as great as it looks!

Goob said...

I have seen this called "Christmas Morning" and several other things but I never thought to serve it for dinner. JP's fam makes it and dumps cream of mushroom soup all over it...not my fave. But I'm looking at this and realizing this is something that everybody else in my home would love, and if its not my fave I can have an apple, right?

Chef Tess said...

I'm not a fan of most casseroles that include cream of mushroom... I think you may like this without the soup. Seems a lot lighter texture and not so...casserole like. More like stuffing with cheese. That being said, you could just have an apple! LOL!