Last updated on January 3rd, 2022 at 03:01 pm
Can a casserole be elegant? This tangle of bread, veggies and cheese says, “Oh, yes, it can.”
This is not your Midwestern grandma’s casserole—in fact, the word casserole isn’t even the name. I’d like to think they call it a panade in France. And I’d like to think that because it’s French, it has to be classy. And it is. In fact, this elegant winter casserole is sophisticated enough to serve as a meatless main course at a dinner party.
This Mushroom and Kale Panade is everything I want to eat from the beginning of November until the end of February. I’ve been looking for a way to work kale into a casserole for a while without it turning into a brown pile of moosh, but came up with nothing (maybe I didn’t look that hard) so I had to create one myself. And it’s so good, I could take a bath in it.
What is a Panade?
Many people don’t know what a panade is—and for good reason. There isn’t a single definition for it. There are actually several types of panades (I don’t think I’ve found all of them):
- One type of panade is basically very dry breadcrumbs moistened with milk that you add to meatloaf, a meatball recipe and (sometimes) a burger, to act as a binder and keep the ground meat tightly packed together when it’s cooked.
- A second type of panade is a kind of casserole. Samin Nosrat has described it as France’s answer to stuffing while Cal Peternell, in his book Burnt Toast and Other Disasters (not to be confused with Teri Hatcher’s book of the same name), calls it lasagna made with old bread as the starch instead of noodles.Â
- A third type of panade is a tart made with grated apples.
- A fourth type of panade is bread soup which is soup made with stale bread.Â
- A fifth type is just a bad situation (I’m staring directly at you, 2021).
I really wanted my recipe to be French, but in my research, I didn’t find any authentic French recipes that fit the definition I wanted (I checked my Escoffier—only the panada is mentioned as a garnish in various forms), so I’m appropriating the title. My mushroom and kale panade recipe sits comfortably under the canopy of the second description, but I would characterize this panade as something akin to a savory bread pudding or savory French toast. It’s very fun to make and exceptionally delicious.
Bread
The base of this recipe is bread. It’s designed to use up leftovers, but the better the bread, the better the output. That means you don’t want to bother with plain white bread like Wonder or Bimbo. However, I wouldn’t recommend using the best bread either. As much as I want to use a loaf of olive bread from Bakhaus, it would be a shame to sully the fine crumb with a mix of wine, butter, egg, and cheese. It’d be kind of like using a bottle of 2008 Veuve Clicquot La Grande Dame to make a mimosa—it makes a great brunch cocktail, but polluted with orange juice, you can’t truly appreciate the quality of the French-made bubbles.
But, if you have a quality loaf of old bread (like your favorite sourdough loaf), please, by all means, let it mingle with the veggies and sauce for a warming winter meal you will want to make again and again.
Bread is very forgiving and so is this recipe (read: make a lot of mods and it’ll still be an amazing meal). That means you can also use toasted bread, cubed bread, heels of bread, bread chunks—instead of bread cubes, I like to use thin bread slices. I like making well-defined layers.
Filling
The filling here can be anything you want. Samin Nosrat makes her French onion panade with caramelized onions that result in something similar to French onion soup, but I like my vegetables to overpower the bread. I make rather thick layers of sauteed mushrooms, onions and kale between the bread slices. I also like cooking the veggies separately so nothing gets overcooked or undercooked—something I started doing after reading Bill Buford’s Dirt in which he mentions one of the French chefs he worked with cooks the veggies of ratatouille all separately.
Liquid
You can use different kinds of liquids to moisten your bread mixture. You could use vegetable or chicken broth, but for this one, I use a Greek bechamel fortified with reduced white wine. I’m not a big drinker, but the wine gives the sauce more wattage.
Mushroom and Kale Panade
Ingredients
- 7 tablespoons butter, divided
- 1 loaf crusty bread (baguette, Italian bread), sliced and slightly stale (if you don’t have stale bread, leave the sliced bread on a cooling rack for 24 hours)
- 1 yellow onion, diced
- 10 ounces chopped kale
- 10 ounces fresh mushrooms, sliced
- 2 cups Gruyere, divided
- 1 cup dry white wine
- 3 tablespoons 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 1 cup milk
- 2 eggsÂ
- 2 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
- Freshly ground pepper
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
- With 1 tablespoon of butter, grease a 9"x13" casserole dish (cooking spray is ok). Line the bottom of the dish with sliced bread. Set aside.
- Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add onions. Saute until the onion is soft and translucent. Season with ÂĽ teaspoon of salt. Transfer to a bowl.
- In the same pan, melt another tablespoon of butter over medium heat and saute the kale until the stems are soft and the leaves are bright green. Season with ÂĽ teaspoon of salt. Transfer to a bowl.
- In the same pan, melt another tablespoon of butter over medium heat and saute the mushrooms until all the water has evaporated. Season with ÂĽ teaspoon of salt. Transfer to a bowl.
- Layer the kale, mushrooms, cooked onions and a half cup of the Gruyere on top of the bread layer in the casserole dish. Alternate with vegetables, cheese and bread with bread as the last layer. Set aside.
- In a small saucepan over medium heat, reduce the wine by half. Transfer to a bowl.
- In the same small saucepan, add the remaining tablespoon of butter and melt over medium heat. Add flour. Mix with a wooden spoon and cook until fragrant and slightly brown.
- Stir in chicken stock, reduced wine and milk.
- Heat until slightly thickened. Add 1 cup of Gruyere and stir until melted. Remove from heat and let cool for about five minutes.
- In the jar of a blender, combine the wine mixture with the egg. Blend on high for about ten seconds. Add a grind of pepper and 1 teaspoon of kosher salt.
- Pour the mixture evenly over the layers of bread and vegetables in the casserole dish. Top with the remaining cheese. Cover with heat-resistant plastic wrap then add a layer of aluminum foil.
- Bake for 20 minutes. Remove the plastic and foil and return the panade to the oven and bake for another 20-25 minutes or until the top is lightly browned.