welcome friends today we are making what some people call a breakfast strata or a
brunch strata or an egg strata I think of it as a savoury bread pudding
and it's the kind of thing that you can make a night before and then serve it a
big family gathering for breakfast or brunch well I don't know if you've got a
big festival coming up like Christmas or New Year's any festival where you want
to make something ahead of time and feed a crowd quickly easily with something
that tastes fantastic so of course the base for this is bread so I'm just gonna
cut this up and we'll get moving next up I'm gonna chop some green onion we'll
just set that aside to one side of the cutting board and now we'll chop up some
ham and you don't need to chop a hand too fine just dice it into nice little
cubes and as soon as you've got it diced you can just spread that over top of the
bread in the baking dish
now I'm just gonna grate some cheese over top and so this is Emmental you
could use any cheese you want Gruyere you could use cheddar really nice old
cheddar would be would be quite nice in this pepper jack I don't know the
flavors of the cheese are really up to you
I like Emmentaler I I really like Emmental with ham sandwich so the
combination of ham and this cheese goes really well for me but again this is for
you use whatever you want great now I'll just take the the green onions that I
chopped up earlier and sprinkle those on at this point and you see why it's
called strata I mean there's layers of you've got the bread and then the ham
and the cheese and the onion next up is the egg
now to the eggs we add some fresh thyme
little bit salt a little bit of freshly ground black pepper some Dijon mustard
and maybe just a little bit more and milk
there's also some garlic then I'll just crush in I hate chopping garlic I've
really become a big fan of the garlic press and we'll just use the whisk to
get that off okay so with a balloon whisk just give that a really good mix
now this is by no means the definitive list of flavours you could put with this
you can take this basic concept and flavor it any way you like you don't
want to use him you could use pieces of chicken already cooked roast chicken
like rotisserie chicken would be great you can put bacon in here you can put
different flavorings in the egg mixture you could put hot sauce with sriracha
anything you want really take this basic concept and just run with it so after
this is all mixed together slowly carefully pour it into the baking dish
you don't want to disrupt too much of the ham and the cheese and the end of
bread you just want to pour it in there and do it slowly enough that it sort of
starts to soak into the bread now I just throw the lid on this and stick it in
the fridge if you're gonna cook it the same day that you make it let it soak
together at least an hour but really leave it in the fridge overnight and
then cook it the next morning and you're going to get the best development of
flavor and the bread is really going to soak up the egg
it'll just be much much better that way
and the next morning I just stick that in the oven to bake
so is this making a mess there we go thank you
so is this the same recipe that we had with the the that was made for brunch
last year Christmas mmm it's the same idea I don't know if it's the same
recipe no it's it's a riff on that same okay so I don't know if you've gotten it
from them or if you know gonna ya know searched it and created your own I just
created my own alright that sounds so thank your style and even though I
created my own I mean this is not complicated no it's not it's completely
open to interpretation it is really hot ok we've let its cool but it's still
really hot it's steaming so it's one of those things where if you've got the
method down and the basic proportions of the bread and egg you can put anything
in it absolutely anything that let's see if it's too hot yet it's too hot mmm
although tasty mm-hmm I'm a little afraid of the heat it's a little warm
based on I burn you okay um so you know brunch table for a crowd I'm you could
make two or three with different toppings bake them off in the morning
and be really good serve this one even a hot sauce well yeah I mean that's you
know good all kinds of things that you could put in this so for your next
family brunch breakfast celebration I mean Tuesday night dinner this is if you
need it for this is this is a really good riff on no one's judging no when
you eat it no um it's got everything in here that you want to eat fantastic
mm-hmm thanks for stopping by see you again
soon
you