This series by the chef Jeff Schwarz and the photographer Greg Kessler traces the trajectory of seasonal food — from its original source to a place on your table.
This past weekend, when the weather turned decidedly cold and we lost an hour of sunshine to daylight savings, my hunger for starch, dairy and autumnal vegetables fired up. I craved comfort by way of fork. In short order, I eagerly got to work on a savory bread pudding with sweet potatoes I had harvested a few days before. I added mushrooms, kale and onions as the supporting cast and then covered the whole thing with a heavy grating of Parmesan cheese. It came out of the oven puffed up like a soufflé, with umami aromas and little molten bubbles of cream edging up through the bread crevices. It must have weighed five pounds and packed at least 20,000 calories. It’s beginning to feel like the holidays in the kitchen.
Sweet potatoes have always been on my Thanksgiving table, usually mashed or roasted. And for the most part, I have taken them for granted because they are consistently good no matter how they are prepared. That said, I started to look at them differently last week after walking among the three distinct sweet potato varieties growing at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett: Beauregard, O’Henry and Vardaman — each with its own subtle flavor profiles and unique flesh color. The deep-orange-fleshed Beauregard is what is usually sold at the markets and is often confused with a yam, which it’s not. Yams are in the monocot family, which includes onions and grass, and are rarely sold in American stores. Sweet potatoes are the tubers from the morning glory flower, a member of the convolvulaceae family. The confusion has more to do with marketing than farming.
Though I brought home all three different varieties from the fields, I treated each the same as the other for my savory bread pudding. Since pre-cooking ingredients gives bread pudding real depth of flavor, I baked the potatoes in the oven before assembling everything. But the real key to this dish is using the right bread. If making a sweet bread pudding, use brioche. If making a savory one, like the one below, use a good bakery’s pain de mie.
The recipe that follows is a highly adaptable one: just keep the bread, dairy, and egg quantities the same and then add and subtract the rest as you please. I was tempted to put bacon in this recipe but kept that urge in check. There will be plenty of days to come this winter for bacon.
Sweet Potato, Kale and Mushroom Bread Pudding
Yield: 1 pan
Total Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes (Prep: 40 minutes, Cooking: 50 minutes)
2 ½ cups whole milk
2 ½ cups heavy cream
½ teaspoon thyme leaves
16-ounce loaf of pain de mie, crust removed, diced into 1-inch cubes
3 medium-size sweet potatoes, peeled, cut into 1-inch pieces
4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 medium onion, medium dice
2 cups crimini mushrooms, quartered
1 cup parsley leaves
2 cups lacinato kale, roughly chopped
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon butter
Salt and pepper to taste
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, add the eggs, milk, cream and thyme leaves. Add a big pinch of salt and mix.
3. Gently fold the bread into the liquid mix. Submerge all the bread and let sit for 20 minutes.
4. While the bread soaks up the liquid, place the sweet potatoes on a baking sheet and lightly coat them with 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Place the baking sheet in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes or until the potatoes are just brown. After removing the potatoes from the oven, sprinkle them generously with salt.
5. Place a large sautée pan on the stove over medium-to-high heat. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil to the pan, and then cook the onions until just translucent. Add the mushrooms (and more oil if necessary). Salt liberally and sautée for about 4 to 5 minutes or until brown. Set aside.
6. Butter the inside of a 9-by-12-inch casserole dish.
7. Add the sweet potatoes, mushroom mix, parsley and kale to bread mixture. Gently fold to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pour contents of the bowl into the casserole dish.
8. Make sure all the ingredients are evenly spread out. The liquid should be visible between the bread and vegetables — if not, add some more cream.
9. Cover the casserole with grated Parmesan cheese and place in oven for 50 minutes.
10. The bread pudding is finished when it begins to puff up like a soufflé.
