panade (savoury bread pudding)

leftovers are a speciality in our family and this is a great way to use stale bread and leftover veg - it's my own adaptation of a dish i found in a huge vegetarian cookery book, but i've strayed quite a long way from the original now, sometimes i include bits of meat but usually it's meat-free and i make it in a frying pan instead of baking it in the oven - yotam recently featured a panade in his column, it's much fancier but the same basic idea

good quality stale bread is best for this dish as it holds together better than fresh - crusts are particularly good - we have a bread machine and bake our own wholemeal and malted grain loaves, it's so good that we hardly ever have stale bread to make this, so i store odd crusts in the freezer until i have enough

any hard cheese you have handy is good, a bit of something blue gives a nice tang - you can use less if you have a really strong cheese

the photo shows one made with carrots, peas and cabbage, i was so hungry i forgot to take a picture of it before tucking in so there was only a small piece left!

ingredients

• a couple of slices of stale bread per person, buttered on one side, or both
• leftover cooked vegetables (see variations)
• some sliced onion (optional) raw, softened or caramelised
• 1 egg per person
• milk
• 2 tbsp grated or finely chopped cheese per person

method

• in a mixing bowl large enough to hold all the ingredients beat the egg and milk
• cut the bread into small cubes or chunks and stir gently into the egg and milk, let it soak up the liquid - add more milk if it seems dry, but not so much that the bread falls apart - leave to stand 10 mins or more
• add the vegetables, onion and grated cheese and fold them in
• ligtly oil or butter a frying pan and tip the mixture in, cover with a lid
• cook on a  low to medium heat and finish off by browning the top under the grill - timing will depend on how big you've made it, one portion takes me about 15 mins + time under the grill

variations

• lightly cooked spinach or other greens with walnuts, cheese and a hint of nutmeg
• chopped bacon, ham, cooked sausage, chorizo or other cooked meat leftovers with any veg
• spread pesto on the bread instead of butter (or as well as) and add cooked peas, broad beans, chopped green beans and optional bacon, ham or pancetta
• use leftover sandwiches instead of stale bread
• for a lighter result you can replace some of the milk with a good home-made stock
• for a richer version use cream instead of milk, and more cheese
• you tell me some more :-)

i realised that sweet bread and butter pudding could be made in a frying pan too so that's how i do mine now