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Tag Archives: so delicious

I make! Garbage strata edition

You know how I’m always trying to get rid of food?  Yeah.

I’ve been seeing a lot of stratas recently floating around the food blogs and social media.  I’ve never made one before, but I have made quiches and the like.  A strata seemed much easier since I didn’t have to work with a pie crust (not that pie crusts are hard, but I’m lazy and don’t want to make one for quiche purposes).  But I did have sliced bread I wanted to use up, as well as some aging grape tomatoes and some frozen French cut green beans.  Garbage strata it is.  Added benefit: you can assemble the night before and bake the following morning.

I had half a loaf of Dave’s Killer Bread 21 Whole Grains and Seeds (not so much that it was whole grain as because that I like seeded breads) that I wanted to use up.  Also, my grape tomatoes were starting to get kind of shrively.  And the frozen green beans had been in my freezer for a while.  It was definitely time to get rid of some of this stuff.

I grabbed my cast iron skillet, because it was just sitting there, and covered the bottom with six slices of bread.  Then I layered some deli sliced chicken over the bread, followed by halved grape tomatoes, then covered the top with green beans, and finally maybe about half a cup of shredded extra sharp cheddar (also something I’m trying to get rid of).  Dusted the top with pepper and poured a mixture of six beaten eggs and 2 cups of milk (1% because that’s what I had, but I would recommend whole if you have it) over everything.  I didn’t add any salt because the chicken and cheese were already pretty salty.  I covered everything with plastic wrap and stuck it in the fridge overnight.

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I took the strata out in the morning when I started preheating the oven to 350degF and then stuck it in the oven for about an hour.  The top wasn’t quite as brown as I wanted so turned on the broiler for a few minutes before taking it out of the oven.  The middle of the strata will probably be a bit jiggly when you take it out.  You will have to let it sit for 5-10min or so and it’ll firm up.

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End result: delicious.  The cheese and chicken imparted enough salt to their surroundings, so I’m glad I didn’t add more salt.  I think next time, I might put a little more cheese and add green onions.  The strata is also very good with some Tabasco.

I make! Radish refrigerator pickles edition

Duck sometimes brings small sandwiches with him to work.  His sandwiches often include radishes.  This made me really crave radishes.  It’s weird.  I really wanted to put radishes in my sandwiches and stuff just because I saw him do it.  So I bought a great deal of radishes (by the bunch, so I sautéed the radish tops with some garlic since it seemed wasteful to throw away all the radish tops).  Now then, I only eat so many sandwiches and I had too many radishes for the amount of sandwiches I would normally eat.  So I decided to pickle the rest of them.

My mother made these really delicious, tangy radish (quick) pickles once.  Unfortunately, I don’t know what she pickled them with.  I mean, I know she used vinegar and sugar, but I didn’t know what kind of vinegar or how much sugar.  So in the end, I just made it up.  I opted for red wine vinegar, since I had that on hand, I was out of white wine vinegar, and I didn’t want the acridness of white vinegar (and balsamic is too dark).

I sliced all my extra radishes about 1/8″ thick and stuffed them in a mason jar.  Then I heated some red wine vinegar and sugar together (about 3:1, and I estimated the amount I would need to cover all the radishes) until the sugar was completed dissolved and the mixture was just starting the boil.  I poured the vinegar mixture over the radishes and let it cool to room temp.  Then I covered and stuffed it in the fridge.

I had pickles with sandwiches, after I ran out of fresh radishes, with hot dogs, because I was craving a hot dog one day, and sometimes just by themselves.  They were a little sweeter than I would have liked so I might go for a 4:1 ratio of vinegar and sugar next time, but otherwise they were quite good.  I think I might try making fermented radish pickles next time instead of make a quick fridge pickle.

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Yes, the whites of the radishes do turn red as they as they soak in the pickling liquid.