Raisin Bread Strata

Here is a recipe.  Something a little different.  Our store had a BOGO on the bread. 

Raisin-Bread Strata with Sausage and Dried Plums

8 – 10  servings

1 pound bulk breakfast sausage

8 large eggs

4 cups whole milk

1 ½ t. salt

¾ t. ground black pepper

1 16 ounce loaf sliced raisin-cinnamon swirl bread, each slice halved on the diagonal.  (Pepperidge Farm makes a good raisin cinnamon swirl).

18 dried pitted plums (prunes) each cut into 3 pieces

Pure Maple Syrup

Sauté sausage in large nonstick skillet over medium heat until brown and cooked through, breaking up with back of fork, about 6 minutes.  Using slotted spoon, remove sausage to bowl; cool. 

Butter a 13 x 9 x 2 inch glass baking dish. 

Whisk eggs, milk, salt and pepper in medium bowl.  Arrange half of bread in bottom of prepared dish with bases of triangles facing in same direction.  Scatter half of sausage, then half of plums over bread.  Arrange remaining bread in dish with triangles facing in opposite direction.  Scatter remaining sausage and plums over.  Pour milk mixture over; press on bread to submerge.  Cover and chill overnight.

Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 350 degrees F.  Place strata on rimmed baking sheet.  Bake uncovered until strata is pulled and golden and knife inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour.  Let stand 10 minutes.  Cut strata into squares and serve with maple syrup. 

If you don't want is so sweet, forego the maple syrup.  Serves more like 10.  I have a photo someplace. 

From Bon Appetit

I Squandered on Swordfish

Sometimes you just have to buy something wonderful that just ain't cheap.  Last week, at our house, it was fresh swordfish cooked up with three pepper butter.  The swordfish was lurking there in the Whole Foods Fish counter, looking to tasty, so meaty, all the while screaming "buy me!  buy me!" and so I did.  $25.00 worth!  Eeek! An issue of my eyes being bigger than our combined stomachs. 


So I cooked it up, and served it forth and it was truly delicious.  We had baked tomatoes and a bit of rice from the bowels of the freezer.  the sauce was toothsome, and there were two pieces of fish left, enough for a dinner of fish tacos the following night. 


I made a salsa from fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic and cilantro, and a "crema" of sour cream, garlic and Mexican seasonings.  Yum!  Had no cabbage but some past-prime iceberg, sliced fine, worked just as well.  We made two meals from the sword fish and I didn't feel nearly so guilty.  


This morning when I started to make blueberry muffins to take to a writing event with brunch, there were no frozen blueberries and no buttermilk.  I substituted mixed berry yogurt for the buttermilk, and frozen mixed berries for the blueberries and the result was moist and tasty and the extras came home to the freezer.   I've no idea what a dozen muffins would cost if one bought them, but surely more than that half hour of baking prep, probably less.  In the early a.m. (or even not-so-early a.m. I am not too swift.  

Apropos the three pepper butter.  You can buy black, green and red peppercorns in a grinder for $2.98, and it's not a bad deal.   Sometimes it is good to survey the supermarket spice shelves.  And now to put dinner on the table, a dinner I scrounged from today's brunch when no one wanted to carry her food offering home.  Someone even provided sealable bags for the leftovers.  Now that was a thoughtful gesture.  


Onward, 


The Cheese Parer