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Panade is a wonderful thing. It is one of those dishes that you can make when you don't know what to make for dinner but you have a fridge full of leftovers. The end of a piece of cheese, cooked greens from last night, bread that's not so fresh. . . panade is greater than the sum of its parts. If you've never had it, it's like a very very thick soup, or a very very sauce-y casserole. It's great for the winter, or even on a foggy Santa Cruz summer evening.
This is more of a procedure than a recipe. Amounts are estimates. Substitute other vegetables, omit the cheese. . .the general idea is to combine bread, broth and vegetables and bake it all together.
Ingredients, as an example:
bread (1/2 small loaf)
cooked greens - cabbage, escarole, chard, etc. (2 cups)
onions, sliced and cooked until very soft (1-2 cups)
cheese, a melty kind (2 cups)
chicken stock (4 cups)
Slice the bread rather thickly. If it's really stale and hard, you probably don't need to toast it. If it's still soft, toast the bread by putting the slices directly on the oven rack while you're preheating the oven to 350º.
While the bread is toasting, cook the greens and onions. If you don't have any leftovers to use up, then you can cook them both together. Grate the cheese, too, and bring the stock to a boil.
The baking dish can be deep or shallow. Last time I used souffle-ish dish. Put a layer of bread in the botton, breaking up the pieces as needed to make them fit. Then add half of the vegetables and top with a third of the cheese. Repeat again. End with a layer of bread then top with the rest of the cheese. Pour the chicken stock over everything. There should be enough stock so that you can see it, but that it doesn't cover the top layer of bread. Bake for 1/2 hour or so, until is is puffed and bubbling and nice and brown on top.
Notes:
These amounts are estimates and you can easily adjust them to fit the size of youre baking dish or the amount of people that you're feeding. The main thing is to have enough liquid to cover the second layer without covering up the top. (Actually, you could even cover the top if your dish was deep enough, but I love the browned cheese on the crusty top. It makes a good contrast with the soft middle.)
Taste and season all the elements before you combine them. They have to taste good separately or they won't taste good together. The stock should be salty enough, the greens should be cooked enough.
Obviously, panade calls out for substitutions. It can easily be vegetarian substituting a nicely-flavored vegetable stock for the chicken stock. Use wild mushrooms instead of greens and make it with a mushroom stock instead. Triple the amount of onions, omit the greens, add some white wine to your stock, use gruyere cheese and you've got baked french onion soup. Add some carrots to the greens, or mix some mustard in with the stock, or try eggplant. . . you might come up with something fantastic.
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