Savoury bread and butter pudding

"Bread and butter pudding? Surely that's a dessert?" I hear you cry.

It can be a delicious main course too. It's still a great way of using up stale bread, plus any odds and ends of cheese you have lying round. Despite the name of the dish, I skip the butter to keep the fat content down, especially as I'm using cheese too.

The recipe is almost infinitely adaptable - try different cheeses, leave out the cherry tomatoes, swap the onions for leeks (in which case I would be tempted to go for a blue cheese such as Stilton), or try other vegetables such as spinach or mushrooms instead of or as well as the onions.

Ingredients

Serves 4

284ml/ half a pint milk
2 bay leaves, ideally fresh not dried
2 cloves
3 onions
A dusting of freshly grated nutmeg 
4 eggs
50g/ 2oz full-flavoured cheese (eg a Gruyere or a strong Cheddar - feel free to use a mixture, and to use a bit more cheese if you want it really cheesy)
1 loaf good-quality white bread, ideally slightly stale (I used a garlic and rosemary rustic loaf)
1 punnet cherry tomatoes (250g)

Method

Preheat the oven to gas mark 5/ 190C / fan 170C/ 375F. Put the milk, bay leaves and cloves and a dusting of freshly grated nutmeg in a small pan and keep warm on a very low heat to infuse while you cook the onions.

Slice the onions finely and put in a large heavy-based saucepan or frying pan over a medium heat. After a couple of minutes, turn the heat down and stir them from time to time as they collapse. Cook for about 15 minutes on a low heat until completely softened and translucent. Remove from the heat.

Grease an oven proof dish about 20cm by 20cm (8in by 8in) and reasonably deep.

Slice your bread - I don't bother to cut the crusts off - and thinly slice the cheese. Put half the cooked onions in the base of your dish. Arrange half the bread on top, followed by half the cheese slices, evenly spread over the bread.

Beat the eggs lightly and mix with the milk mixture (which shouldn't be boiling hot, to avoid scrambling the eggs). Pour half this over the bread and cheese in your dish.

Repeat your layers with the rest of the onions, bread and cheese. Pour the rest of the egg and milk over the top - you might need to press the bread down with your hands to help it soak up the egg and milk.

Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and arrange them in rows on top. Bake for half an hour or until golden on top and set and piping hot in the middle.