My earliest memories of eating strata include running around as a child in my best friend’s house after a sleepover on the weekend, and the smell of cheese, onions and bread cooking in the kitchen. Her mother would always make this on a Sunday morning and each time, it would taste different. Many years later when I was curious to know how she made this deliciously ‘eggy bread’, as we used to call it, I discovered the genius of a strata. She divulged that it was her way of using up whatever she had leftover in the fridge from packing school lunch boxes all week – slices of ham, mushrooms, tomatoes, spring onions, coriander leaves, spinach or whatever else she could find.
The strata started off as what one could call ‘the poor man’s souffle’ – stale bread coated in a savoury egg custard and scraps of vegetables and meat baked together in an oven, is exactly what would work when you’re still dreary from a wild Friday or Saturday night. This layered, one pan dish is seriously simple to put together, looks good when dug into and tastes even better than that. You could obviously use this recipe as a base to add or swap whatever ingredients you like and still make something delicious, decadent and fluffy as a cloud.
Recipe:
Ingredients
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- 1 ball mozzarella
- ½ cup grated cheddar
- ¼ cup parmesan cheese
- 4 spring onions
- 1 clove garlic
- 1 big red chilli
- 6 eggs
- 8-10 slices stale bread
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Chopped chives, for garnish
Method
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- In a food processor, crack 6 eggs, add the cheddar, parmesan and the whole ball of mozzarella cheese followed by the garlic and chilli.
- Trim the ends and bit of the green portion of the spring onions and add them whole into the food processor along with the rest of the ingredients. Blitz until it turns into a smooth, eggy mixture. In case the mixture might feel to thick, add a few tablespoons of milk. Season with salt and pepper.
- The egg mixture should have the consistency of crepe batter. Line up the stale bread in a buttered baking dish and blanket the slices with the egg-cheese-onion custard. Using the back of a spoon press gently, to encourage the bread to soak up the custard.
- Sprinkle with some more cheese on top and set it in the fridge overnight, if not baking in an oven after resting on your kitchen counter for 30 minutes. If you plan on baking it the next day, remove your dish from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature after which you bake in a 350F oven for 30 minutes, until the cheese on top is brown and blistered.
- Sprinkle some chopped chives on top and serve warm with some ketchup on the side.