A new tradition with bread pudding

When I lived in India, ovens were not an essential component of households. There was the tandoor, a large earthen oven, in which naan is cooked to give it that delightful blistered appearance and skewers of seasoned meat are grilled to perfect succulence.

But we certainly did not have an oven in our kitchen, so every holiday season, my mother would borrow a countertop oven from a neighbor. After borrowing and hauling the heavy appliance around one too many times, my mother finally caved in and got her own.

The oven, shiny and gleaming in the kitchen light, was special. This was not only my mom’s first oven in her kitchen, but also the first oven I learned to bake and roast in. We had to keep it spotless, so the silver metal finish would be wiped down and polished; my mom even sewed a cover for her precious new toy.

Along with the oven came a small cookbook complete with colored photographs and recipes that promised to make our dinner table exciting: chickens to be made and vegetables to be roasted. Every time I opened the door to the oven, I imagined my life changing — the pizza would go in and I’d imagine myself in Italy. To someone young and eager to see the world, this was a passport.

Until the oven, the only bread puddings I knew were the steamed versions. Typically, they’d be the dessert kind — slices of plain white bread dipped in a sweetened concoction of milk and eggs with a generous dose of raisins that would plump as the pudding cooked. It was quick and convenient, and above all it was comforting.

Within the little cookbook came a recipe for a baked bread pudding. Bits of sausage were folded into it with a few spices and plenty of eggs. In many ways, it felt revolutionary and foreign to a young teenager — baked and savory. I never tried the recipe because I was so attached to what I thought was traditional; it made me feel disloyal to even consider the idea.

As time went by, I grew up and moved across the world. But it was only until I moved to Washington, D.C., that I tried my first savory bread pudding at my friend John’s house. In his pudding — he called it a breakfast casserole — there was the familiar composition of bread, milk and eggs, plus hearty breakfast sausage, onions and plenty of cheddar. Every summer, we’d take vacations with John and his husband, Tyler, and at least once John would prepare his breakfast casserole. It became a tradition. And it taught me to be open to the idea that tradition is a practice that we make our own because we repeat it again and again, year after year.

Nik Sharma Savory bread pudding.