[carefree music] You know, a sometimes overlooked wonderful holiday meal is breakfast.

I love a savory bread pudding, which is my take on a breakfast casserole.

It is so easy.

Let me show you how I get started.

So what I'm going to do is I am going to make an egg base, basically a custard, and that was four eggs, and this is heavy cream, and I'm going to whisk them together.

And of course, we have to make sure that there's plenty of delicious seasoning in there.

So there's gonna be salt, some fresh garlic, and then there's going to be some dried spices.

Now what I have on my little plate here is mustard powder, fresh nutmeg, show you a trick on that in a second, a little bit of cayenne, and plenty of black pepper.

Now about that nutmeg, this is how nutmeg comes.

It's actually a little tree nut, and hard.

And all you do is take a little zester and grate directly into your recipe.

This smell is like the smell of the holidays to me, and it is so good in this savory egg mixture.

And then I have a little bit of fresh herbs as well.

I have some fresh sage and some fresh thyme.

Whisk it all together, and then I'm gonna add bread cubes.

Now you want a really good crusty, dense bread, like an Italian loaf, or a French loaf, or even a country loaf.

And here are my bread cubes.

Now I don't take the crust off.

I like that little bit of a rustic look, and I want them in large bite-sized pieces.

And this wonderful crusty bread is going to soak up some of this egg custard, and start softening.

And so I'm gonna give it a little bit of a turn right here, and I'm gonna let this sit for 10 minutes, and then we're gonna build a casserole.

So while my bread was soaking in that egg mixture, I got my other ingredients together, and now I'm going to assemble them in a beautifully buttered baking dish.

Look how simple this is.

I'm gonna take about half of my bread.

and you do not have to be super precise.

Just eyeball about half of the bread and put it in your baking dish.

Spread it around a little bit.

And then I am going to put in some cubed ham, just good deli ham that you've put in nice big cubes.

And this is spinach, frozen spinach.

It actually works better than the fresh leafy kind you would use in a salad.

So when you thaw your spinach, I want you to squeeze all of the liquid out of it that you possibly can because you don't want that excess liquid in your egg dish.

And then we have here some freshly shredded Asiago cheese.

Sprinkle about half of that in.

And then this is crumbled goat cheese, a chef style, a beautifully tangy, creamy, delightful goat cheese.

And we're gonna sprinkle all of that in there as well.

And guess what?

I'm gonna do it again.

I'm going to take the rest of my bread, put that on top, [carefree music] and if your bread kind of piled up, just move it around with your spoon.

And then we're gonna add the rest of our ham.

Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle.

The rest of our spinach.

Isn't this pretty?

I love this burst of green in here.

It's not only delicious, it really gives some color and freshness to all of this.

And the last of our Asiago.

[carefree music] And now we've got a tiny bit of our egg custard left, and we're just gonna pour that around the outside, letting it trickle down in there.

I'm gonna scrape out every good drop.

And now I have Parmesan.

I love Parmesan on the top of a savory casserole.

It adds a little saltiness, tons of flavor, and it browns beautifully.

So this is gonna look great when it comes out of the oven.

And that's it.

All I'm gonna do now is cover it either with a lid or a piece of plastic wrap, and I'm gonna put this in the refrigerator.

This needs to refrigerate for at least four hours, but you know what, it works overnight.

I love this, the night before the big breakfast, all I have to do is tuck it in the fridge, and the next morning, just pop it in the oven while I make a pot of coffee.

So one thing that makes this breakfast casserole a little bit different and a lot more interesting is I serve it with a warm sauce, a warm, savory sauce, and it is so easy.

I'm starting with marinara sauce.

Yes, a jar of good marinara because we all know we keep that in our pantry.

And to that, I'm gonna doctor it up a little bit.

This is some finely chopped, roasted, sweet bell pepper.

And then I have a little smoked paprika, kind of amplifies the roasty goodness of that pepper.

And I have some brown sugar because we know that tomato-y things like a little sweet.

And then I have some sherry vinegar 'cause we know tomato-y things like a little acidity too.

And just by adding those simple things, I am turning this marinara into this gorgeous, smoky, smooth, delicious, sweet and tangy sauce that is gonna set off that bread pudding like you can't believe.

It's so good.

So as soon as my gorgeous savory bread pudding came out of the oven, I could not wait to cut a big serving to put on my plate.

Let me describe this for you.

The middle, where all that cheese and cream and the eggy goodness is, it's very soft and tender, but those brown toasty bits, with that Parmesan on that crusty bread, is like really great cheese toast.

It's a wonderful combination of textures and flavors, and all it needs now is a little bit of that great, vibrant red, beautiful sauce that tastes as good as it looks.

Isn't this pretty on top of all this good stuff?

And now, I cannot wait to taste this.

[carefree music] Oh my goodness, this is so good.

It reminds me of why I love this recipe so much.

It makes me so happy to make this recipe every year and it's gonna make me so happy when you make it for your next holiday breakfast.

[upbeat music] [bright music]