Savory Bread Pudding

In the US, when Americans hear the word "pudding," their minds are likely to turn to a sweetened, thickened milk based dessert, most commonly, but not exclusively, in either chocolate or vanilla. Butterscotch was a common flavor when I was a kid, and perhaps it still is? These puddings come as a dry mix in a small bag inside a box. To fix them, you add milk and cook them until the starch in the ingredients thickens the pudding, or there are also similar puddings that need only to be stirred well with cold milk, no cooking needed. Ah... forget all of that! Initially developed in England as a way to use stale bread, circa 1150, bread pudding took a swerve toward sweetness as a dessert recipe as time went on, although the bread-based stuffing and dressing mixtures used for various fowls or other animals are still going strong, and they are really something of a close cousin to bread pudding. These stuffings are often savory, but some recipes call for the addition of various fruit, which combines the savory with the sweet. Bread pudding uses milk and eggs in its preparation, which usually separates it from its various stuffing relatives, even though stuffings often use eggs, but as a binder. I used cheddar cheese to give this recipe a little bit more of an  "English" twist, but I kept the cheese as the orange-colored style, more typical of the United States, and ah, besides, it was on sale. In its English homeland, and in Britain, in general, cheddar is most often "white," but that's not to say they don't produce any orange colored (or should I say, "coloured?") type, but I'm not quite sure. In the US, the white cheddar is also produced, and it is called... "white cheddar." Hey, you can't always have an imaginative name. This is great as a side dish or, add a salad, and it's perfect for lunch. Let's see... meat, bread, cheese, eggs and vegetables... a little bit of everything!

Ingredients:

6 1/2 cups dried cubed bread  
3 large eggs
1 2/3 cups milk (I use canned evaporated milk)
1 1/2 cups chopped onion
1 pound bulk/loose sage sausage
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil* + more to coat the baking dish
6 cups chopped kale (may seem like a lot, but it isn't; I used lacinato kale, but curly kale is fine**)
1/2 pound Cheddar thinly sliced or shredded

Put the bread cubes into a lightly oiled pan or baking dish of "about" 9" x 13" size (see photo, below). Beat the eggs and mix them with the milk, pour over the bread and let the bread sit and soak up the liquid. Heat the oven to 375 F. In a skillet, add the oil over medium heat. When the oil is heated, put pieces of the sausage into the pan and continue to break up any large pieces of the sausage until there are no especially large chucks left. Cook for about 3 minutes, then add the onion. When the onion starts to soften, add the kale, and you may need to add it in stages, until it cooks down a little, which only takes a short time. Add the pepper. Add the kale/sausage mixture to the soaked bread pieces, folding the kale and other ingredients into the bread (outright stirring will break up the bread pieces, so you want to fold the ingredients together). Smooth the bread mixture out and sprinkle the shredded cheddar over the top, or lay the thin slices of cheddar over the top. Bake for about 1 hour, or, if you like the top a little darker, turn the heat to 400 F and bake about 10 to 15 minutes longer, or you could put it under the broiler for maybe 4 or 5 minutes. Just keep your eyes on it whether you use the broiler or the hotter oven. There will be some bubbling around the edges, but that's normal. The pudding should be "set" in the middle, the same as you'd think of a cake, with no runny middle. I use a serving spoon to scoop the pudding out onto plates.    

* When I was younger, pork and pork sausage was always "fatty." In more recent times hogs are much leaner and so you may need to adjust the amount of oil you use in this dish. I started with 1 tablespoon of olive oil to cook the sausage, but it proved to be inadequate, so I added a second tablespoon of oil. It's certainly possible you may need even a little more, or perhaps, a little less, if you happen to get more fatty sausage; so, the 2 tablespoons of oil are just a guide, not a truly fixed amount.

** Lacinato kale is also known to some as Italian kale. It is very dark green, with an elongated, "somewhat" flat leaf and it has become easier to find in supermarkets and produce stores in more recent times. Curly kale is, and has been, the more common type of kale in the U.S. It is a somewhat lighter green color and its leaves are curly. Hm, do you think that's why they call it "curly kale?"

I put a pound of butter behind the dish to give a comparison for the size of the dish...

WORD HISTORY:
Tuesday-The "Tues" part of the word goes back to Indo European "dyeu," which had the notion of "bright or shining." This general concept gave the further notion of "sky," which then gave the notion of "god/gods," since humans came to believe that deities lived, well.... in the sky. This gave Old Germanic "Tiwaz," the name for their "god of the sky (and also of war)."* (**) This was passed down to Old English as "Tiu"(also spelled "Tiw"). It "seems" that the Germanic tribes, including those who became the "English," took to naming some days after "gods," from the Roman example (there's that influence from contact with other peoples). With "Tiu," to show possession; that is, genitive case, it became "Tiwes," plus "daeg," the old form of "day" in English; thus, we have "Tiu's daeg," with "daeg" eventually losing its "g," and the spelling "Tuesday" coming along a bit later. *** Not all of the Germanic languages use a form of "Tuesday" in modern times, but here are the relatives: Danish has "tirsdag" (the Norse form of "Tiu/Tiw" was "Tyr," which also later went to England with Norse-speaking raiders and settlers), West Frisian "tiisdei," Faroese" has "týsdagur," **** Norwegian "tirsdag," Swedish "tisdag." German once used "Ziesdag," Low German once used "tiuwesdag." 

* This same Indo European base gave other Indo European languages words/names with essentially the same meaning: for example, Latin "deus" meant "god," and of course the famous Greek god, "Zeus." Both Latin and Greek are related to English, but somewhat further down the family tree.

** The Germanic gods can be quite confusing, at least to me, but then again I get confused counting up to ten, but I can get there if you give me a minute or so. From what I know, which is VERY limited, even historians aren't quite sure about some of the "positions of power" held by the various Germanic gods in the Old Germanic period of history. This is just a guess, but it may be that some or all of these gods held different "powers" at various times, and especially as the Germanic tribes dispersed; with one tribe believing a particular god to have certain powers, while another tribe came to hold a slightly different view of that god. To further complicate matters, the Germanic tribes would undoubtedly have been influenced by (and also bestowed influence upon) other peoples they came into contact with regarding such fundamental beliefs.

*** For the history of the word "day," this is the link to the article with that "Word History:" http://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2016/04/german-meatballs-in-caper-sauce.html

**** Faroese is the language of the Faroe Islands. It is from the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages. The Faroe Islands are self governing, but they are a possession of the Kingdom of Denmark.