One of our family traditions is a big Sunday breakfast.  All of us love to laze around on Sunday mornings and then eat late in the morning.  That’s our meal until dinner—and so we usually make it pretty substantial.

Most everyone I know has a version of this casserole in their repertoire, and because it is easy to make, and very satisfying, this makes an appearance at our Sunday breakfast table several times a year.  It’s a great basic recipe and can be embellished and changed with great result.  The bread can be plain white, sourdough, or leftover baguette…the sausage can be mild or spicy or a mixture…the cheese can be cheddar, white cheddar, or just about any kind you like…and vegetables can be layered in too…think tomato, onion, and peppers…whatever you add, it comes out wonderfully—this recipe is nearly impossible to mess up.

Serve it alone or like I did yesterday, with cinnamon toast and fresh pineapple alongside.

Breakfast Casserole

8 to 10 Servings

8 slices of bread cut into cubes
1 pound sausage, casings removed and cooked
8 ounces Cheddar cheese, shredded
6 eggs
4 cups milk
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste
1 teaspoon dry mustard
A dash or two of hot sauce (optional)

Butter a 9” x 13” rectangular or oval baking dish.  Place the bread cubes in an even layer on the bottom of the dish.  Evenly layer the cooked sausage and then the cheese over the bread.

In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs with a whisk and then add the milk, salt, pepper, dry mustard and hot sauce (if using) and whisk until the mixture is well combined.  Pour the mixture evenly over the bread, sausage and cheese.  Cover the dish and refrigerate it overnight.

An hour before you’re ready to cook, remove the casserole from the refrigerator and let it come to room temperature.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and cook the casserole for one hour.  Remove from the oven and let stand for 5 or 10 minutes before serving.

Here is a great little something to make and keep in a tin for serving with a glass of wine in the evening or a pomegranate juice and tonic in the afternoon.  A few pointers:  do use the parchment paper so that your pans don’t get messed up…do get the dough as thin as possible – this will give you a nice cracker consistency.  Feel free to change up the flavors…the cheddar could become freshly grated Parmesan cheese…the salt could be changed to cumin…and a dash of cayenne could be added if you like spice.  This is a good one to experiment with, and the results are a crunchy, cheesy, happy bite.

Sunflower Cheddar Crisps
Makes:  About 48 crisps, but this will depend on how you cut your dough

Preparation Time:  10 minutes
Cook Time:  30 minutes
Cool Time:  20 minutes
Total Time:  1 hour

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups raw, shelled sunflower seeds
1 ½ cups grated Cheddar cheese
½ teaspoon salt, and more for sprinkling
¼ cup water

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

In a food processor with the metal blade, process the sunflower seeds until they are finely ground.  Add the Cheddar cheese and the salt and pulse until the mixture is blended.  Add the water and pulse until the mixture comes together as dough.

Line a backing sheet with parchment paper.  Turn the dough onto the paper and spread it out, patting it thinly over the whole pan, almost to the edges, as thin and as even as you can.  (I took another piece of parchment and laid it over the dough and used a juice glass as a roller to help me flatten it…)  Take a knife or a pizza cutter and score the dough into cracker shapes – squares, diamonds, triangles, whatever you like.

Bake for 30 minutes.  Remove from the oven and invert onto a large cutting board so that you can remove the parchment from the bottom.  Break the crisps along the scored lines and let cool.  Store them in an airtight container.

Brad Kessler has given us a book which combines the literary pleasure of reading words strung together in a lovely, simple, and artful way—with the occasional action of a best selling adventure–and frequent “I didn’t know that” moments of illumination. In the way of Thoreau or Kingsolver, the book is deeply satisfying on several levels.
At the beginning, it draws us into the romantic fantasy that Kessler and his wife lived by throwing it all up and moving from Manhattan to Vermont to buy a farm, raise goats, and make cheese. As Kessler and his wife Donna build their fence, renovate a chicken coop into a goat barn and load their first 4 goats into their vehicle—they are revealed as brave and capable and their growing love, respect, and admiration for their animals is contagious.
Just about every page is a feast for the wordsmith or the sociologist.  Through meticulous research, Kessler has developed a deep knowledge about the history of man and goat and the symbolism and spiritualism of this ancient shepherd and herd relationship.   Interesting facts abound (the kind you read aloud to whomever will listen), as do beautiful turns of phrase, and revelations about living kindly—alone and with neighbors.
At times the book is a real page-turner.  The tending and raising of goats has its raw, gritty, and not-so-nice elements—and the description of the process of goat breeding is both x-rated and hilarious.  And Kessler’s exploration of the ancient nature of man as shepherd is an intriguing facet of our current culture and language.
And finally, the book is a gift to the senses.  The sights and smells of mountains, meadows and animals living their daily lives–the sounds of the goats and the developed touch of the harvesting of their milk are vivid.    The discovery of how goat cheese is made in the most basic, yet skillful way—is fascinating and mouthwatering. And the joy of the two of them sharing their first cheese—laying out the bread and the wine and savoring their first creation…makes you want to run right out and buy a goat, or at least read everything Brad Kessler ever writes.
I highly recommend this book.

Goat Song: A Seasonal Life, A Short History of Herding, and the Art of Making Cheese
By Brad Kessler; 2009, Scribner