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A Beautiful Strata

My friend, Megan, brought a proscuitto & goat cheese strata to a brunch we hosted last year. It was absolutely delicious. She referred me to the recipe on Epicurious.com, and I filed it away in the "recipes I want to try" part of my brain. Epicurious is a great source of recipes from Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazines, which are two magazines I subscribed to pre-children.


As I posted recently, we do a lot of brunch get-together's with friends. Today we hosted a twin family brunch - one couple, Carrie & Steven, are expecting b/g twins in May; the other couple, Sam & Keith, have 1-year-old twin boys named Nathaniel & Elliot. I thought it would be fun to get everyone together to give Carrie some ideas and info about planning for their new arrivals. 


Sam is a vegetarian, so originally I thought about making a vegetable quiche. I realized it wouldn't be enough to serve 6 adults and 4 kids, so I decided to look up the strata recipe. The recipe as posted required some tweaking, both to make it vegetarian but also to fix some measurements that are off. Thankfully there were a lot of reviews that guided me in the right direction in this regard. As always, mornings in our house are really hectic, so this recipe is great because it's assembled the night before. All we had to do was throw it in the oven an hour before our guests arrived!


Roasted Red Pepper, Mushroom and Goat Cheese Strata


3/4 loaf of challah bread (english muffin bread or french bread would work as well)
1 T. olive oil or butter
1 package cremini mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1/2 package white button mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
1 jar roasted red peppers, drained & chopped
A few ounces of goat cheese, crumbled
A few handfuls of mozzarella/provolone cheese, shredded (Sargento sells a blend)
6 green onions, chopped
Fresh basil would be great, I used 2 cubes of frozen basil from Trader Joe's


8 large eggs
2 cups whole milk
1 T. dijon mustard
1/2 tsp. salt


In a large skillet, heat olive oil or butter over medium high heat. Add sliced mushrooms and saute until browned. Add roasted red peppers, salt and pepper to taste - here is when I threw in the frozen basil as well. 


Line a 10x13 inch glass baking dish with slices of challah bread. Using a slotted spoon to drain of extra liquid, spread 1/2 the mushroom-pepper mixture on top of the sliced bread; sprinkle 1/2 the green onions, crumbled goat cheese, and provolone mix. Top with a second layer of bread, and layer the remaining vegetables and cheeses atop the bread.


Whisk eggs, milk, mustard and salt in a bowl; season with pepper. Pour egg-milk mixture over the strata; press down on bread with a spatula. Cover and refrigerate overnight.


Preheat oven to 350°F. Uncover strata and let stand at room temperature 30 minutes. Bake until center is set, about 1 hour. Remove from oven. Cut into large squares and serve.








Comments

  1. A student in my lab, Paula, has a food blog. She made the strata recently - here's the picture!
    http://thefoodaccent.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/mushroom-rosemary-honey-bread-goat-cheese-cheddar-pepper-strata/

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