Strata with Swiss shard.
We can make this completely vegetarian by omitting this.
But my family, well my husband especially loves pork.
So this is a little bit of Pancetta.
I'm gonna add that to a large non stick skillet
in a couple of turns of the pan of EVOO,
a little olive oil and let that start to render.
This is a whole loaf of stale peasant bread.
Seven eight cups of bread.
What I did was split the bread open
and I charred it, see?
I toasted it.
That's to develop a nutty flavor in the bread itself.
I charred it and then I rubbed all of the bread with garlic.
Just halved, large clove of garlic.
Rubbed each piece of big chunk of bread.
The charred toasty bread.
Most people do not do this.
They just start Strata with stale bread.
I like to toast the bread,
it adds an extra layer of flavor.
This bread is starting to get moist again.
See how its breaking apart?
I took a leg up when I did this this morning
and I doused it with about 3 quarters of a cup of milk
for one casserole.
So this is already getting tender.
I gave it a little starting point, okay?
While that was resting, I whipped up
right now it's just five eggs.
It's about to be six.
Six eggs per casserole.
This has about three quarters of a cup of whole milk.
(whisking sound)
salt and white pepper is what I prefer
but you can use fine black.
And now six eggs.
Now I'm going to add this secret secret ingredient.
Vegetable stock flavored with a little bit of Dry Porcini
or mixed dry mushroom.
So we're going to add that in as one of our liquids.
So this is rendered.
And it's light brown.
So now we're going to add in our stems
(food sizzling)
and our shallots or onions.
And now we're gonna season our greens.
A little bit of salt cause you're getting some salt
if you're using Pancetta.
More salt if you're doing vegetarian.
For the greens I like red pepper.
About three quarters of a teaspoon.
I'm also going to add the zest of one lemon,
two teaspoons to one tablespoon.
A little bit, it was a handful of dried mushroom
that I used to flavor our vegetable broth.
And now we're just gonna let this sweat a bit.
Okay guys, now that I've cooked the stems
with the onion or shallot,
Pancetta if you're using it.
I'm adding in the last of the wilted greens.
Tossing in the minced or grated garlic.
Cause we didn't wanna singe it.
Now we're going to grate in
a little nutmeg
and add the juice of that half lemon that we zested.
Toss again.
And we're adding about half of our mixture
over half of our bread
to a buttered casserole.
Okay.
And then I'm going to add it
(Rachael grunting)
Gruyere cheese, oh about a cup and a half I grated up.
One small piece from the counter,
the cheese counter.
And I mixed it up with about oh,
couple of good handfuls of
Parmigiano Reggiano grated cheese.
Okay.
And now I'm gonna pour in half of my
custard with the four to five vegetable stock
milk and egg.
Gonna add all the rest of our bread.
And of course, we're just repeating here.
The rest of my greens.
Okay.
The rest of my vegetable stock egg mixture.
And then the last of our cheese.
So this is done guys.
We covered this and let it stand for one hour
and then we're gonna put in about a 350-375 oven.
Middle rack for 50-60 minutes until its
golden and bubbly and brown.
Here it is, our Strata,
look at that huh.
And then we just use the paddle
to cut it almost like a lasagna into portions.
(soft chiming)