Tomato Spinach Bread Pudding

We got 7 lbs of Tomatoes from the CSA this week AND 2 quarts of cherry tomatoes. This weeks menu kind of sounds like Forest Gump talking about tomatoes: Cherry Tomato Sauce with Orzo, Tomato Soup, and Tomato Bread pudding. This is the tomato bread pudding:



Tomato Bread Pudding

5 medium tomatoes or 3 large (~2 lbs - peeled, halved, cored, and seeded) *
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
pepper
2/3 Whole wheat baguette (cut into 1 to 1 1/2 in cubes)
2-3 Tbsp vegan margarine, melted
1/4 cup vegan parmesan replacement **
1 bunch of fresh spinach, roughly chopped
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 large clove garlic, minced
fresh thyme, minced (~4-5 sprigs)
1-2 Tbsp fresh basil, roughly chopped
1 tsp balsamic

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Grease a 1 1/2 qt shallow casserole dish.

Place the tomatoes in a food processor with salt, pepper, and sugar. Pulse 4-5 times until the tomatoes are nearly pureed, but still have some recognizable tomato chunks. Set aside.

Toss the bread cubes in a bowl with the margarine. Set aside.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Add the garlic and thyme and cook for about a minute until the garlic is fragrant. Add the spinach and stir. If there is no water clinging to the spinach from washing, you might need to add a teaspoon. Cover and cook for about 30 seconds. Stir. Cover and cook for about another 30 seconds. You basically want to cook it until it is just wilted. Add the balsamic.

Place 1/2 the bread cubes in the casserole dish. Top with the spinach mixture. Sprinkle the basil over the spinach. Add the rest of the bread cubes. Top with the tomato puree and gently stir around a little to incorporate the tomatoes (just a little stir/poke).

Bake for about 30 minutes until browned. Top with the vegan parmesan replacement. Cook for about another 4 minutes.

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* Invest in an Oxo tomato peeler. These are great if you only have a few tomatoes to peel. If I need to peel a lot, I'll resort to the old boiling water trick, but for a few this peeler is very handy. It also works well on peaches.

** We make our own vegan parmesan replacement from a recipe in the uncheese cookbook. In the picture above, you can see that I didn't grind it enough in the food processor when I made this batch, but it is really tasty anyway. It is made from miso, blanched almonds, nutiritional yeast, and salt. You can find this recipe if you go to this google book search page and scroll to the bottom right of the page and search for "parmesan". It should be around the 3rd hit. It is also a good book to have, so I would recommed ordering the book. I have made this "parmesan" with both white mellow miso and with the darker barley miso. I liked the taste of the barley miso better, but it looks funny. The white miso looks better as a parmesan topping and has a milder taste.