I suppose it’s a good sign when the food you make for your coworkers is eaten far too quickly for you to even take one picture. In the words of our (far younger) temp: “Yo, K, they tore that shit up!”
So you see how sticking my face in there even for one picture would have been dangerously similar to sticking your arm in a piranha tank. I should have just taken a few before I left the house this morning…
Since the food was such a smash, I figured I could at least post the recipes here, if not the pictures.
The breakfast strata is a straightforward recipe that we’ve all seen a million times, but I tweaked this one based on the ingredients I had on hand and my coworkers’ predictable tastes. It ended up a million times better than any other strata I’ve made before, and will now be my go-to breakfast casserole. Hope you enjoy!
Sausage and Cheese Breakfast Strata
Serves: 8 to 10
1lb. ground sausage
8 slices white bread, cubed
2 c. potatoes, diced
1 small onion, diced
2 Tbsp vegetable oil
2 c. shredded cheese
8 eggs
3 c. whole milk (none of this skim milk crap!)
2 Tbsp Worcester sauce
2 tsp Potlatch seasoning (if you don’t have this, just use seasoned salt)
4 to 5 big pinches of koshering salt
several good grinds of black pepper
Don’t preheat your oven! This strata — like all others — needs to be refrigerated overnight to set. You’ll bake it tomorrow…
Cook your ground sausage in a pan over medium heat. I prefer hot Jimmy Dean sausage, but my weenie coworkers don’t. While it’s cooking, dice that onion. After the sausage is cooked, remove it from the pan to drain on some paper towels but leave the drippings in the pan. Saute the onion in the sausage drippings until translucent. When done, combine the onion and sausage in a bowl and set aside.
Add the vegetable oil to the sausage/onion pan (see? all cooked in one pan!) and heat over medium. Once the oil is hot, add the diced potatoes and cook until slightly browned, turning often. When finished, remove the potatoes from the pan and drain on paper towels.
Cut the bread into cubes. Take half of the cubed bread and toss into a greased 13x9x2 casserole dish. Toss in half the cooked potatoes and half the shredded cheddar cheese on top of the bread. Spread the sausage and onion mixture evenly across the top of the bread/potato/cheese mixture. Then take the rest of the bread, potatoes and cheese and toss on top. Basically, you’re making three layers here (I’m seriously terrible at writing recipes…).
In a separate bowl, beat the eight eggs together well. Add the three cups of milk, Worcester sauce and Potlatch seasoning. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pour egg and milk mixture evenly over the three layers in the casserole dish. Cover tightly and refrigerate overnight.
In the morning, remove the casserole dish from the fridge and let stand for 30 minutes. During this time, preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. After 30 minutes has passed, put casserole dish into oven and bake for one hour (60 minutes) or until set and cooked in the center. Enjoy!
Buttermilk Apple Cake
Serves: 6 to 8
This recipe would normally be used to make muffins. However, upon remembering last night that I loaned out my muffin tins, I made this into a coffee cake-style recipe at the last minute. Although still delicious as muffins, I rather liked the cake instead. It was a unique twist on what everyone initially thought was coffee cake until they got to the sweet little nuggets of apple inside…
1 large Granny Smith apple, diced
1 c. brown sugar, divided into 1/4 c. and 3/4 c.
3/4 c. walnuts
1 tsp. cinnamon, divided into 1/2 tsps. (please use real cinnamon here, not cassia!)
1/2 c. buttermilk
1/3 c. vegetable oil
1 egg, beaten
2 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/3 tsp. salt
Preheat oven to 325 and grease a square baking dish. Combine 1/4 c. brown sugar, walnuts and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon in a small bowl and set aside.
Combine flour, baking soda, salt and remaining cinnamon (I added just a smidge more cinnamon here than 1/2 tsp.). In a separate bowl, combine remaining brown sugar, buttermilk, vegetable oil, beaten egg and vanilla. Add dry mixture to wet mixture a little bit at a time until just barely blended. Add the diced apple and mix well.
Pour batter into baking dish and top evenly with brown sugar/walnut/cinnamon mixture. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. If desired, sprinkle top with confectioner’s sugar after it has cooled off. Enjoy!
Image courtesy of Flickr user StarbuckGuy, who does awesome nature photography.
she eats. 