Taking A Little Breather

   Whew. We have had a crazy few weeks recently, like everyone, I assume.
  The holidays tend to freak me out...I wrote about it last December here.  It's been so busy, I haven't had time to post anything much lately...
  I was all prepared for the usual emotional stress test this year, and was pleasantly surprised to be pretty mellow about it all. This had everything to do with the fact that all we planned to do was visit my folks and brother, cook, eat, drink and play dominoes.
  Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy, as they say.
 
  Sitting here at my desk, I was scrolling through some photos, and sort of forgot that I had taken a few shots while cooking the day before Christmas. We were lucky to spend a few days with the parents, and Mom and I had planned to do the majority of prep early. I knew we wanted to have some  quality time with my brother on Christmas day, so it all worked out great. We chose recipes that could be made a day ahead.

  I wanted to try a new recipe that I had seen in a recent Martha Stewart magazine. It's a fontina and spinach "strata", which doesn't mean much until you describe it...layers of good bread, spinach, and fontina cheese all soaked up in an eggy custard.

  Here, allow me to show you....

  I sliced and put down the first layer of brioche into my buttered casserole.

The recipe calls for brioche. I think I will use a more rustic, ciabatta type bread ,
next time.

  After sautéing up my greens, in this case spinach, baby kale, and baby chard, with diced onion and a pinch of fresh nutmeg...I let it cool and did the big ol' squeeze on it.

Use your little muscles....

2 lbs of greens cooks down to nuttin', man.

  I had already grated up a bunch of good fontina and parmesan... and because I am the way I am, I divided it up in neat little rows, ready to layer.

One little row was put aside to add on the next day, before baking.

  Pretty easy from here...layer bread, spinach, cheese...

  ...until you end up with bread at the top, and the last batch of cheese on the side for later.

I think there was one more layer of spinach and bread, to bring it to the top..

  So then I whisked up eggys and milk, poured it very carefully over the top, and put this parchment paper on. This helps as you gently push down, to make sure the custard soaks up and over the top layer. Then you wait.  We chose to wait over night, finishing off the next day..Christmas.

All the custard soaking into the bread, etc...making for some special goodness.

  We had a few things ready, waiting for the next day, so we did what we do best. We relaxed with a bit of wine, some tasty treats, and a game of dominoes. Why not?

It starts out so innocent...just tiles on the table.

Someone makes the first move, and then the no holes barred competition begins!

Johnny lines his tiles up

I choose to make double rows.

  It's always a blast, and we really don't mind who wins (right...tell that to Johnny), it's all for fun. Let me see...who won that game? Oh, right...I did. Heheheheheh... Came from waaay behind, too. Just saying.

Half way through my winning game.

  

Ok, back to the strata.

  24 or so hours later...

  We added a bit more custardy mix and the last layer of cheese, before popping it into the oven, and..Presto! What do you know? 

  It was a beautiful thing to behold:

Oh, yumminess. Hot, cheesy, yumminess. Sadly, I took so long grabbing the camera,
I missed it at it's highest puffed up-ness. Just starting to fall here...

Mmmmmmm.

  The recipe is an easy one, for sure. But when I do it again, I'll use a different bread, like I said. Either a sour dough something, or at least a more rustic something. I would have liked the "tartness" of a sour dough based bread. And the "sturdiness" of something more rustic.
  Also, I used too deep a casserole dish. I will use a shallower vessel next time. I would like it more, um, crispier? Denser? Just not so creamy on the inside, if you know what I mean. I had meant to bring up my 14" Le Crueset baking dish, which would be perfect. Too bad I forgot it.
  All in all, it was great and a wonderful addition to our all vegetarian Christmas dinner. The leftovers were awesome, too!
 
  So, I guess after 50+ years, I'm finally starting to learn to enjoy the things that are best about the holiday season. Just getting in some extra quality time with my family. Life is getting too damn short to stress out in December. Bring it on, I think I've figured out how to cope.



 Here is the recipe, with a photo in a shallower casserole, so you can see what I mean..
 Strata
  (Thanks, Martha...hope you don't mind me sharing....)