Kitchen alchemy: Fall vegetable panade

Even a touch of coolness in the air tempts us to undertake more time-consuming and heat-producing kitchen tasks and to whip up comforting dishes that make use of fall produce.  As a consequence, we decided to make some chicken stock and a panade—a bread and stock concoction resembling stuffing or a custard-less savory bread pudding.  We’ve written in another post about “bountiful stock,” especially a stock made from stew hens when they’re available at the market.  The stock we just made might more properly be called “scarcity stock,” as we make it entirely from things that might otherwise be thrown away.  Like edible compost, this stock is a very satisfying form of alchemy, gold made out of garbage.

Over the last few months, we had been stashing the carcasses of all the Chowdown Farm chickens we roasted in the freezer.  They all went into the stockpot, along with a parmesan rind or two (also archived in the freezer), and some tired carrots and celery from the back of the fridge, an onion cut in half, a crushed clove of garlic or two, and, to strike a different note, some fresh rosemary, thyme branches, and bay leaves from the garden.  After bringing it to a boil and skimming it, we simmered it on low heat for a day.  We then chilled it, skimmed off the fat, and stored it in the freezer in small containers.  Chilling it makes it much easier to handle this wonderfully flavorful stock, which turns gelatinous. 

Because we were working with a backlog of chicken carcasses, we produced more stock than we really had room to store in the freezer.  So we were faced with the happy challenge of choosing a dish that would use some up.  We first learned about panade from Judy Rodgers’ splendid Zuni Café Cookbook.  We often make one of her panade recipes at Thanksgiving in place of stuffing.  The panade we made drew on what we learned from Rodgers and combined it with a panade recipe from the Tartine Cookbook, which uses milk in place of the stock.  Naturally, we were all about the chicken stock.   But you can also use vegetable stock or milk in this recipe. 

This simple dish showcases vegetables that are at their best right now at the market:  kale (or another dark, leafy green), cauliflower, butternut squash, and leeks.    

It also uses a hearty bread.  We prefer whole wheat levain, either from Village Bakery at the market or Acme breads at the Co-op.  For cheese, we list fontina and we used the Fontina Vera Aosta from the Co-op.  You can use anything that will melt and that has a flavor punch. 
 

We finished the panade with some grated cheese.  For this, we adapted a trick we learned at the Findlay Market in Cincinnati years ago.  The woman ahead of us in line at a cheesemonger requested “cheese ends.”  When we asked her what she would do with them—in an instance of the snooping, asking, learning, and teaching that make it such a pleasure to shop in a local market—she said she used them in her macaroni and cheese.  She went home with a very motley assortment of bits and pieces of various cheeses and an expression that conveyed her eager expectation of the mac and cheese they would produce.  And we went home with a commitment to mixing it up when it comes to cheese.  So for this panade, in the spirit of using things up rather than throwing them away, we put every stray bit of hard cheese we had in the cheese bin into a food processor and sprinkled it on top in the last phase of cooking.  It was delicious and the unintelligible identity and untraceable origins of the cheese topping just made it more so.

Fall vegetable panade

For the panade, you need a heavy, ovenproof pot (about 5-quart size), preferably with a lid.

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 leeks, white parts only, chopped

About 6 cups chicken stock (you can also use vegetable stock or milk)

Salt

About 3/4 a loaf of day-old country bread, in big cubes

1 small butternut squash (about 1 pound), peeled, seeded and cut into cubes

1 bunch black kale or Swiss chard, center stems removed

1 small head cauliflower (about 1½ pounds), trimmed and cut into florets

½ pound fontina cheese, thinly sliced or cubed

A little hard cheese to grate on top?

1)    Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Melt 2 tablespoons of the oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the leeks and sauté until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the stock and perhaps salt it lightly if it’s homemade and you haven’t added a lot of salt.  If you are using store bought stock, don’t salt!  Bring to a boil and then remove from the heat.

2)  Lightly and quickly saute the kale or chard in a bit more oil, just to soften it.

3)    Cover the bottom of the casserole with cubes of bread. Arrange the squash cubes in an even layer on top of the bread and pour in 2 cups of the stock. Put in a layer of some of the fontina cheese.  Then put in another layer of bread cubes.  Top with the kale and the rest of the soft cheese. Arrange the cauliflower florets over the kale. Press down on the ingredients to compress them. 

4) Pour the remaining stock over the top of the whole casserole, but stop adding it when the level is about even with the top layer of cauliflower.  You want the cauliflower to stick its head above the soupy sea. Cover the pot with a lid or aluminum foil. Bake for 30 minutes. Uncover and sprinkle the top with the grated cheese. Return to the oven uncovered and bake until the liquid is absorbed and reduced and the cheese has melted and browned, 30 to 40 minutes. This is delicious when it is wet and almost like a bread soup, but it is even better if you bake it long enough to dry it out so that it holds together.  Serve immediately or let cool and refrigerate for up to 3 days. Leftovers reheat well either in the casserole or in individual slices on a baking sheet. This is one of those dishes that, like love, just might get better the second time around, in this case because it develops wonderfully crispy edges.  This is also a good choice if you need something you can make in advance.