Celebrate Thanksgiving by Making Turkey Stock, then Serve Turkey Stew with Dumplings, the Best Day-After Thanksgiving Meal

My mother-in-law laughs when she thinks about it. On Thanksgiving, as everyone at the table is passing around platters heavy with freshly sliced turkey, cranberry sauce, roasted Brussel sprouts and so much more, I am still in the kitchen standing next to a large stock pot, stirring the hot water as it receives the bones and carcass from the turkey that I just carved.

Even as dinner is being served, I'm making turkey stock for the day after Thanksgiving with enough to have on hand in the freezer for days and weeks and months afterwards.

With the stock I can make soups, sauces and, my favorite, dumplings and turkey stew. The absolute best comfort food. 

The basics are straightforward. Cooked turkey meat. A handful of favorite vegetables. A cup of white flour. A bit of half and half. A cube of butter. Homemade turkey stock. A few seasonings.

Simmer. Cover. Uncover. Serve. Easy and delicious.

Homemade Turkey Stock

During Thanksgiving dinner, a large stock pot sits on the back of the stove. A steady flame brings the water to a slow-boil and, as I carve, I add bits of bones, skin and the parts we don't eat into the pot. As we share a feast, passing plates around the table, refilling wine glasses and looking with excitement at the dessert table, the stock pot does it work. A slow-boil does its work. The stock thickens and becomes lusciously nourishing.

When the liquid has been reduced by half, the flame is turned off so the stock can cool. A quick pass through a colander to remove the bones and bits and we have pure turkey stock. Allowed to cool to room temperature, the stock goes into the refrigerator in 16 ounce covered containers to allow for easy refrigeration or for freezing. 

Kept in the refrigerator, the stock is good for up to four days. Stored in the freezer, the stock will retain its qualities for up to six months. One tip, when you remove the frozen stock from the freezer, take off the lid and rinse the top of the frozen stock with water to remove any ice crystals, which can add an unpleasant flavor.

Another tip, use the left over meat and skin for your pet. Our son's dog, Fig, loves chopped up turkey meat and skin added to his daily bowl of prepared food. We freeze 6 ounce containers of the left over turkey so we can chop off pieces, defrost and give him a treat during the week.

Farm-to-Table Vegetables, Turkey and Dumplings

Use a good quality organic turkey and buy farmers market produce when available. 

If you have dried whole shiitake mushrooms, use them. They add a distinctive flavor, different from the delicate flavor of thinly sliced shiitakes.

Use vegetables you love. And lots of them. English peas. Squash rounds. Kabocha chunks. Roasted sweet potatoes. Green beans. Kale. Shredded cabbage. Chopped turnips. My preference is to tilt the balance towards the fresh produce, plating great mounds of vegetables with a leg and a wing or two pieces of breast.

The dish can be covered and served the next day or divided into smaller covered containers and frozen for up to three months.

Yield: 4 servings

Time to prep: 15 minutes (if you already have turkey stock as described above) or 1 hour (including time to make turkey stock)

Time to cook: 30 minutes

Total time: 45 minutes - 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients

4 cups cooked turkey meat, cut into quarter sized pieces, no bones
1 medium yellow onion, washed, ends trimmed, outer skin removed, cut into 1/2" pieces
1 cup green beans, washed, ends removed, cut into 1" long pieces
1 cup broccoli florets, washed and cut into 1" pieces or broccoli leaves, washed, shredded
2 cups shiitake mushrooms, washed, stem end trimmed, thinly sliced or 2 cups dried whole shiitake mushrooms, washed
1/4 cup Italian parsley, leaves only, washed, finely chopped
1 garlic, peeled, finely chopped (optional)
1/2 cup celery, washed, ends trimmed, cut into 1/2" pieces (optional)
4 cups homemade turkey stock, as described above
1 large carrot, washed, trimmed, peeled, cut into 1/2" thick rounds
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
Pinch freshly ground black pepper
Pinch cayenne powder (optional)

Dumpling ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour, white
2 tablespoons sweet (unsalted) butter, cut into fine bits
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
Pinch freshly ground black pepper

1 scallion, washed, ends trimmed, green and white parts finely chopped or 2 tablespoons Italian parsley, leaves only, washed, finely chopped (optional)
1/2-1/3 cup half and half, cream or whole milk

Directions

Turkey stock can be used when made fresh or when thawed after having been frozen, as described above.

In a mixing bowl, add flour, cut up butter, scallion (or Italian parsley), baking soda, sea salt and black pepper. Using a fork, mix well. Slowly add milk, stirring until thickened. The resulting mixture should be like thick batter. If the mixture is too runny, add a tablespoon of flour. Cover and set aside.

In a large pot, heat olive oil and sauté onions and garlic (optional) with oil until softened. Add cooked turkey and vegetables. Season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Add turkey stock.  Stir and simmer 20 minutes.

To make the dumplings, use two soup spoons to create small rounds of dough. Drop each dumpling into the simmering liquid. Make room for each dumpling so they do not touch because they will expand as they cook. Use all the dumplings batter and cover.

Adjust the heat so the stock simmers but does not boil.

Cook 30 minutes and serve immediately. Place several dumplings into each bowl, adding a protein and a good helping of vegetables with several tablespoons of sauce.

Serve hot.

How to Congee - Cooked Rice Repurposes into a Delicious Feast

Comfort food is many things to different people. 

Freshly made soup with croutons

Chicken and dumplings with vegetables

Homemade pasta with roasted tomato sauce

A bone-in steak seared medium-rare in a carbon steel pan

A baked potato with sour cream and scallions

An egg salad sandwich flavored with dill on crustless Japanese white bread

And, my favorite, congee.

Necessity led to a favorite dish

I couldn't sleep one night. Too much stress, too much going on in the world to sleep through the night. I woke up at 4 am and couldn't go back to sleep. Better to get out of bed so I wouldn't disturb my wife. Walking into the kitchen, I opened the refrigerator, hoping to find something already made or a dish that would be easy to prepare. 

I needed comfort food.

In the dull light, I saw there wasn't much. Wednesday was market day. This was Monday.

Searching in the refrigerator, I found a container of homemade vegetable stock I had made the day before, Japanese white rice from a take-out dinner two nights ago, a carrot, a shallot, an ear of corn, fresh shiitake mushrooms, green beans and a small piece of daikon. 

Not a treasure-trove, but those ingredients sparked an idea that led to my enjoying a deliciously comforting meal just as the sun was coming up.

Cooked rice. A liquid. Sautéed vegetables. That's all I needed to make congee.

What is congee?

Visit most Chinese restaurants and you'll find a section of the menu labeled "Congee." The basic components are raw white rice and a liquid. The rice is simmered for up to an hour in the liquid, which can be water or stock made from seafood, poultry, beef or pork. 

The result is a porridge-like bowl of creamy rice. Depending on the restaurant, the congee can be flavored with bits of protein or vegetables and topped with fresh scallions, fried shallots and a drizzle of hot oil. 

Inspired by traditional congee, my version is very different

I use cooked rice added at the very end so my "congee" isn't creamy. Depending on my mood, I may add a great deal of vegetables and a protein and a smaller amount of rice. Purists might say I am making soup with rice, but in my telling of the tale, I add a lot more rice than you would find in 'soup with rice.'

With my approach, the results are infinitely variable. The only constants are cooked rice and a liquid. 

Another variable is the ratio of broth to rice. For dry, cook the rice in the soup until most of the liquid is gone. For wet, cook the rice very briefly in the soup. Sometimes I like the congee with practically no broth. On a cold morning, lots of soup with the rice is the way to go. 

The rice

You can make congee out of any kind of cooked rice. 

Most of the time, I use Japanese short grained white rice or Chinese long grained rice. But, Thai brown rice, Middle Eastern basmati rice or Vietnamese broken white rice would also work.  I have even used basmati rice flavored with almonds and orange peel from my favorite Armenian restaurant, Adana (6918 San Fernando Road, Glendale 91201, 818/843-6237). 

Each rice creates a different result. The cooking time, amount of liquid used and the end result will change depending on the rice. 

Cooking tip: if the cooked rice you find in the back of the refrigerator has dried out, no worries. Cooking the rice in a liquid will reconstitute the grains. If you see mold, toss the rice. 

Generally speaking, one cup of cooked rice will serve one person. The ratio of rice to proteins and vegetables is a matter of personal taste. 

The stock

I always use homemade stock. To make vegetable stock, during the week I freeze vegetable peelings. On the weekend, I add them to a pot of boiling water, simmer 60 minutes, strain and, voila, homemade vegetable stock. Whenever we make a chicken dish, I save the bones, fat and skin, cover with water, simmer 60 minutes, strain and cool. The resulting vegetable or chicken stock can be refrigerated or frozen in an air tight container.

In a pinch, sautéing a goodly amount of vegetables and adding water will pull out flavors from the vegetables. That creates enough homemade stock for your congee. 

Homemade stock will produce the healthiest, freshest flavors. Store bought stock whether fresh in the deli department, packaged in cans or boxes or even dehydrated can be used, but the salt content tends to be high and the quality unpredictable. 

I have used all kinds of broth. Sometimes I'll use the miso soup I brought home from a Japanese restaurant or I'll make stock by boiling left-over Thai bbq honey pork ribs or turkey stock from a Thanksgiving feast or chicken stock made with the bones from a roast chicken. 

Making your own stock means you control the quality and flavor, so I recommend keeping 16 and 8 ounce containers of frozen stock in the freezer so you are always prepared to make a delicious savory meal at a moment's notice.

And, as I mentioned above, in a pinch, use water added to the sautéed vegetables to create a spur of the moment stock.

Vegetables and proteins

Use fresh vegetables or left-overs. Roasted vegetables from last night's dinner or bok choy and broccoli from Chinese take-out can be chopped into bite sized pieces and added to the congee. My go-to base ingredients are fresh, chopped onions, carrots, kale, shiitake mushrooms, green beans, daikon, broccoli stems or crowns and Savoy cabbage leaves, if I have them and corn kernels when in season.

For a protein, tofu, chicken, pork, fish and shellfish are good to add. Use cooked or raw proteins, knowing that the cooking times will be different for each. Cooked proteins only need to be reheated. Raw proteins can take longer, although fish and shellfish cook very quickly. Tofu can be added along with the stock.

Vegan or omnivore 

Use ingredients you like. Stick with plant-based and make a best-ever vegan congee with homemade vegetable stock, rice of your choice and all the vegetables that make you happy. 

If you're an omnivore, just about any animal protein or seafood works well. Use any protein you enjoy. Cooked meats with a lot of flavor, like bbq brisket or Vietnamese bbq pork or roasted dark chicken meat will add layers of flavor. Raw pieces of fish filets, crab, shrimp or lobster, add flavor to the broth as they cook. 

Congee with Scallions and BBQ Pork

As with all cooking, if you use quality ingredients, the resulting dish will taste better and be healthier.

Every element added to the congee should build to a final, layered conclusion. You can keep the result simple, like a piano recital, emphasizing the "quiet" of the stock and the rice or jazz it up with a composition with rhythms of hot, sour, sweet and savory.

I often add bbq pork from my frequent trips to Little Saigon south of LAX. From my home, the drive takes under an hour, barely enough time to catch up on The Daily, one of my favorite podcasts. On the return trip, I listen to the news and happily eat a Bánh mi from Bánh Mì Saigon ( 8940 Westminster Blvd., Westminster, CA 92683, (714) 896-8782) next to My Thuan, a favorite supermarket.

Cut all ingredients into small bite-sized pieces, the easier to pick up with chop sticks.

The recipe is for one, so multiply the ingredients by the number of servings you are making.

Serves 1

Time to prepare: 20 minutes

Ingredients

2 tablespoons yellow onions or shallots, cut into thin slices

2 tablespoons carrots cut into rounds or small "sticks"

2 shiitake mushrooms, washed, stem trimmed, cut into thin slices

1/4 cup broccoli, florets cut apart (optional)

1 tablespoon corn kernels (when available)

1/4 cup green beans, washed, cut into 1" sections (optional)

1 scallion, washed, root end removed, cut into 1/4" pieces

1 cup cooked rice

2 cups stock, preferably homemade

1/2 cup bbq pork or cooked beef, pork or chicken or raw shellfish or fish, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 teaspoon soy sauce (optional)

1 teaspoon Vietnamese sweet and hot sauce often served with bbq pork vermicelli (optional)

Sea salt to taste

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 teaspoon olive oil

Directions

Organize all the ingredients before beginning.

Heat small saucepan over medium flame. Add olive oil. Soften but do not brown. Add remaining vegetables, stir and soften.

If using cooked proteins, add and sauté briefly, then add stock. If using raw seafood, add to the broth.

Simmer 5 minutes.

Add rice. Break apart any grains that are stuck together. Stir well.

Simmer 5 minutes.

Pour into a large bowl. Top with scallions. Serve with chop sticks and a spoon. Serve hot and eat before the rice absorbs all the liquid.

Eat Twice - Quick and Easy, Vegetable-Chicken Congee-Style Rice Bowl

We've all been there. One hand holds the refrigerator door open as we stare into the brightly illuminated emptiness. We're hungry. We want something that doesn't take much time to prepare.

Where are all the great things to eat? What happened to the chicken and dumplings we made a few days ago? Oh, yeah, we finished that off at lunch. What about the brown sugar pork ribs that were so delicious? The crispy fried chicken? The roasted artichokes? Oh, yeah, all gone.

We could make a salad, but there's no Little Gem lettuce, no arugula, not even Italian parsley. We meant to go to the market. There just wasn't time.

But all is not lost. There's a container of steamed rice we brought home from a meal at the Chinese restaurant. There aren't any leafy greens in the vegetable bin, but there are a few things from last weekend's farmers market. A carrot, an onion, an ear of corn, a dozen English pea pods, a few mushrooms and a bunch of kale.

To make what I have in mind, we need homemade stock. A quick look in the freezer and, yes!, there's a container of chicken stock we made with the left over chicken from the Peruvian restaurant. Maybe our prospects aren't so bleak.

Eat Twice

The key to unlocking this deliciousness is repurposing or more specifically re-imagining what was served up for one meal that can be magically transformed into another.

One of my favorites is a richly flavored rice dish that uses freshly cooked rice or, in the spirit of Eat Twice, rice brought home after a meal at our favorite Vietnamese or Chinese restaurant.

The dish is a cousin of Asian congee, traditionally a soupy, pale white, savory morning bowl of boiled rice mixed with a protein. The version I want you to try is vibrant, colorful and richly layered with flavors and textures.

Use farmers market vegetables to give the dish a crisp freshness. Homemade stock braises the rice to create a comforting creaminess (without using cream).

I always use a mix of vegetables, especially shiitake mushrooms, onions, carrots, broccoli, corn kernels and English peas when they are available. For my pescatarian wife, I use homemade vegetable stock and add tofu or freshly deveined shrimp.

For me, I love a mix of cooked chicken and chopped up shumai, those wonderful pork filled dumplings served as a dim sum dish, or bbq pork sparerib meat cut off the bone and chopped into bite-sized pieces.

I also like using broccoli leaves. At the farmers market, many people peel off the leaves and leave them on the table. With the farmer's permission, I scoop them up, a treasure waiting to flavor my dishes. The stems should be cut into thin rounds. The leaves should be shredded. They are delicious.

In the summer, I use a medley of warm weather vegetables like corn and English peas. In colder weather, I rely on squash, sturdy leafy greens like kale and broccoli.

Vegetable and Chicken Congee

Convenient and versatile, left-over rice may feel dry to the touch but introduce a hot liquid and the grains plump up and return their former deliciousness.

Use any kind of rice you enjoy except wild rice.

If using freshly cooked rice, the time needed to cook the rice will be much less so add the rice to the simmering broth at the last minute so the grains do not absorb too much liquid and become soggy.

Use any vegetables you enjoy.

Homemade stock is preferable because it will be lower in sodium content and you can control the quality. And, it is less expensive than store bought canned or frozen stock. 

For a vegan version, use vegetables and vegetable broth.

For a spicy version, include 1 cup finely chopped kimchi.

Yield: 4

Prep time: 10 minutes

Cooking time: 15-20 minutes

Total time: 30 minutes

Ingredients

4 cups cooked rice

4 cups stock, preferably homemade

2 cups cooked chicken meat, deboned, roughly chopped

6 leaves kale, washed, pat dried, stems removed, cut into a small pieces or 6 large broccoli leaves, stems finely sliced into rounds, leaves shredded

1 cup broccoli stems and florets, cut into small pieces

1 cup corn kernels (when available)

1 large carrot, washed, peeled, cut into corn kernel sized pieces

1/2 cup shelled English peas, washed (when available)

1 medium yellow onions, washed, peeled, root and stem ends removed, cut into corn kernel sized pieces

6 large shiitake mushrooms, washed, pat dried, tip of the stem removed, thinly sliced

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/4 teaspoon sea salt, ground fine

Pinch freshly ground black pepper

Pinch cayenne powder (optional)

Directions

In a large sauce pan, heat olive oil over medium flame. Add all vegetables. Sauté until lightly brown.

Add stock and chicken. Stir and simmer 10 minutes to combine flavors.

Season with sea salt, black pepper and cayenne (optional).

Add rice. Stir well to combine all ingredients.

Simmer. The cooking time will depend on the rice. If freshly cooked, the time is probably 5 minutes. If the rice needs reconstituting, probably 10 minutes.

Be careful not to overcook because the rice will become soggy.

Serve hot with enough liquid in the bowl that the rice is "wet".

Eat Twice - How Repurposing Can Change Your Life - Rotisserie Chicken Becomes Chicken & Rice Soup

It all began with my grandmother.

I was probably seven when she gave me my first cooking lesson. Caroline lived in Manhattan in a small studio apartment on 110th Street near Amsterdam, around the corner from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. She slept on a pull-out bed that folded back into a sofa. Her kitchen was the size of a small closet.

My grandmother was a good cook. Mainly she served classic Jewish dishes. Boiled chicken, matzo ball soup and gefilte fish were some of the dishes I remember her making. When she taught me how to cook, she emphasized thrift. Nothing should be wasted. Not a drop nor a scrap should be thrown into the trash.

When she made scrambled eggs, after I cracked open the egg, she taught me to run my finger around the inside of each half of the shell to remove all of the egg white. When I accompanied her to the grocery store, we would shop at several until she found the best price for whatever it was she needed.

Those lessens are ingrained into my cooking-DNA. Which brings me to lunch last week.

My friend Dean and I tried Pollo A La Brasa (764 S Western Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90005, (213) 387-1531), a well-known fast-food, rotisserie chicken, Peruvian cafe in K-Town (Koreatown west of Downtown LA). We ordered quarter chickens (a thigh and a leg) and chose as our two sides white rice and black beans. Each plate cost less than $8.00.

A giant rotisserie filled up the back wall of the cooking area. More than forty whole chickens secured on spits, rotated above a blazing wood fire. A thick sheet of glass to keep the smoke out of the dining room raised and lowered  when the cook removed a chicken.

When our food was ready, we carried the plates back to the table. The sweet aroma of the wood fire lingered on the charred skin, beautifully flavored with a mix of dry spices. We tore pieces of moist dark meat off the bone and mixed them into the rice and creamy beans. When we needed more spice, the giant squeeze bottles of green and red salsa on the table were nearby and each plate of food was accompanied by a small container of pico de gallo. The tiny bits of tomato and chilies added a fiery top flavor.

All of this is to say, lunch was fantastic. This was  our first time at Pollo A La Brasa. We will return!

But that isn't the point of this post. Not entirely.

The point is this. When we had finished our meal, Dean still had rice on his plate, along with the bones and skin of the chicken. If my grandmother Caroline had been with us, she would have said to Dean, "Take that home and make soup."

Since she wasn't there, I gave voice to her long-ago lesson. I asked for a take-away-box, scooped up what he hadn't eaten and we headed back to his house.

Just so you know, my friends and family are used to this behavior from me.

I take home sourdough bread from restaurants to make bread pudding, croutons and oven roasted bread crumbs. If we are invited to Thanksgiving at a friend's, I'll ask if I can take home the turkey carcass to make stock. If my wife, who is mostly a vegetarian, orders a roasted vegetable plate at a restaurant and she doesn't finish everything, I'll take that home to make a vegetable soup or stir fried vegetables with rice.

Dean always laughs at my "odd" behavior. This time I wanted to show him how to transform restaurant left-overs into a delicious second meal.

At his house I showed him all we needed was 4 cups of water, the chicken bones, two leaves of black kale, two scallions and one shiitake mushroom.

The bones simmered for ten minutes to create the stock. The vegetables sautéed in a small amount of olive oil in a second pot. We added the stock to the sautéed vegetables and simmered on a lower flame for ten more minutes. We added a pinch of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.

To complete the dish, we placed a mound of the cooked white rice into the center of a bowl and poured in soup and vegetables. Dean tasted his soup. "Wow," he said, all smiles. "That's good."

And, there it was, a lesson in how to Eat Twice.

The restaurant had done half the cooking, providing steamed rice and smoke infused chicken that we turned into stock. We had added a few fresh ingredients and created an entirely new dish that borrowed flavors from the first but became it's own meal.

Easy. Frugal. Delicious. Grandmother Caroline would have been proud that her grandson learned her culinary lesson so well.

Chicken-Vegetable Soup with Rice

You can prepare this dish from scratch using raw chicken by first roasting the chicken pieces in a 350F oven for 45 minutes.  Allow the pieces to cool, then remove the meat and reserve to make chicken salad, pasta with chicken or shred and add to the soup and rice.

The cooked chicken you use can come from your own kitchen, in which case this is a strategy for repurposing left-overs.

The recipe is for one serving. If you have more bones or left over pieces of chicken, then the serving size will increase accordingly and the other ingredients should be increased proportionally as well.

Instead of kale leaves, you may use any greens you enjoy. A cup of washed spinach leaves, Savoy cabbage or Swiss chard leaves, roughly shredded would be good.

You can also add corn, carrots, celery, roasted tomatoes or grilled Japanese eggplant.

For this dish, we used the rice from our meal. We could as easily have used cooked pasta in the soup. 

Yield 1 serving

Time to prepare: 5 minutes

Time to cook: 20 minutes

Total time: 25 minutes

Ingredients

1 cup chicken bones and skin or bones from 1 thigh, 1 leg and 1 wing with skin

4 cups water

1 shiitake mushroom, washed, pat dried, stem end trimmed, thin sliced

2 scallions, root end trimmed off, washed

2 kale leaves, washed, center stalk removed and discarded, roughly shred the leaves

Pinch of sea salt to taste

Pinch of freshly ground black pepper to taste

Pinch of cayenne pepper to taste (optional)

1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil

Directions

Cut off the green part of the scallions. Slice the white part into 1/2" lengths, set aside. Roughly shred the green part.

Use two pots. In one combine the chicken bones and water. Bring water to a rapid boil on a high flame. Reduce the liquid by 1/3.

In the second pot while you are making the stock, heat olive oil over a medium flame and sauté the scallion green parts, shiitake mushroom slices and shredded kale until softened not browned. Set aside.

Place a small strainer over the pot with the sautéed vegetables and add the stock, capturing the bones and skin in the strainer. Pick through the bones for any bits of chicken meat. Add the meat to the stock. Discard the bones and skin.

Add any additional chicken meat if desired. Simmer the stock with vegetables 10 minutes. Taste and season as desired.

To serve, place a mound of cooked rice on the bottom of a bowl and pour in hot soup and vegetables.

The Best Tasting Dessert You Will Ever Make - Challah Bread Pudding Cake

I love challah, the egg bread traditionally eaten on Fridays for Jewish shabbat. But our family never finishes the entire loaf. The bread is so good, I looked for other ways to enjoy it.

Challah makes great French toast. A slice of dense challah absorbs the frothy egg and milk and still retains it shape. Cooked on a hot carbon steel pan with a pat of butter, the outside gets crusty as the inside stays custard-moist. A drizzle of warm maple syrup on top and we have a delicious breakfast.

So leftover challah is not a bad thing. It's a good thing.

The French toast got me thinking. How else could I use challah? I always loved bread pudding. So why not challah bread pudding?

I could have made the dessert in small cups, but I like to make bread pudding as a cake. The result was spectacular. The easy-to-make dessert is perfect for dinner parties, Oscar watching parties, Super Bowl Sunday, birthdays and anniversaries.

Challah Bread Pudding Cake

At our neighborhood bakery, a full-sized challah loaf weighs 24 ounces. The recipe uses half a loaf to make enough for 8-10 people. If you need to make more for a party, the recipe can be easily doubled or tripled. Whatever you need.

The challah should be day old or even a week old. If you aren't going to make the bread pudding cake for awhile, place the challah into an airtight bag and freeze for up to two months. When defrosting, brush off any ice crystals that may have accumulated on the bread.

For heavy cream, I prefer to use Trader Joe's because there are no additives. The heavy cream I see in markets, even ones that are high-end, has chemicals added.

Buy good quality chocolate without flavorings or nuts. Trader Joe's sells one pound bars of Belgium chocolate that are good. After opening the package, keep unrefrigerated in a sealed bag for freshness. If the chocolate turns chalky, discard.

Use one 9" round baking pan at least 3" tall or two 6" baking pans at least 3" tall. Do not use a spring form pan because it will leak during baking.

The baking pan needs to be at least 1" taller than the amount of batter because the cake will rise as it cooks.

Freezing the buttered, parchment lined baking pan for 15 minutes helps when you remove the cake from the pan after baking. 

So the challah pieces do not get mushy, as quickly as the toasted bread is coated with the custard, pour the mixture into the baking pan. 

Serves 8-10

Time to prepare 30 minutes

Time to bake 60-75 minutes depending on the size of the baking pan and the oven

Ingredients

12 ounces day old challah, torn apart into 2" pieces

1 tablespoon sweet (unsalted) butter

4 eggs

1 cup + 1 tablespoon sugar

1 pint heavy cream, preferably Trader Joe's 

1 cup dark chocolate at least 60% cacao, finely chopped

½ cup roasted almonds, roughly chopped (optional)

¼ cup powdered sugar 

½ cup shaved dark chocolate 

Directions

Preheat oven 350 F.

Place torn up challah pieces on a baking tray. Place in oven for 15 minutes. Remove and set aside to cool.

Place the baking pan on a piece of parchment paper, trace the shape of the pan with a pencil and use scissors to cut the parchment paper to size.

Melt butter. Using a pastry brush, paint the bottom and sides of the pan(s) with the melted butter. 

Place parchment paper round(s) onto the bottom of the baking pan. Paint the top of the parchment paper. Place baking pan with parchment paper in freezer for at least 15 minutes.

In a large bowl, with a whisk mix together eggs and sugar. Add heavy cream. Mix well. Add chopped chocolate. Add chopped almonds (optional). Mix together and add toasted challah pieces. Toss well to coat.

Pour into the buttered pan with parchment paper and place in to 350 F pre-heated oven.

Bake 45-60 minutes or until top is lightly browned. Remove and place on a wire rack to cool.

As the cake cools, it will shrink away from the sides of the pan. 

Place your hand over the top, flip over and remove the cake. Flip over so the parchment paper is on the bottom and place on the wire rack.

Once cooled, the cake can be placed in plastic wrap and an airtight plastic bag and refrigerated or frozen. Refrigerated the cake will keep fresh for 2 days. The cake can be kept frozen for up to a month.

Before serving, preheat oven 250 F, remove the parchment paper, place on a baking sheet, place into oven for fifteen minutes. Remove and dust with shaved chocolate and powdered sugar.

Serve warm with cream or ice cream.