Crepes

Time off in the summer is glorious.  The sun is shining, a pool and the beach are mere moments away, and in my free time I go cooking crazy.  The fact that I haven't posted since last summer is a fair indicator that there is so much going on at my job during the school year, that I just don't take the time to post...let alone cook at all some days.

On one of these lazy summer mornings I got a bee in my bonnet to try something different for breakfast.  According to my New Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book, crepes take just 5 ingredients, all of which I had at my disposal.  Ingredient availability is paramount in this house, so I jumped at the chance to try my hand at crepes.

In all of the cooking shows, crepes are one of those "difficult" dishes that people struggle to pull off, so I fully expected a challenge.  However, the mere quarter page mention of the "Crepes" recipe in the cookbook made me wonder if this had all been a great deception.  Time to bust this crepe mystery wide open!


Fixins:

• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 Tbs. cooking oil (I used vegetable oil)
• 1/4 tsp. salt

The recipe says to mix all of the ingredients in a bowl, but a la Alton Brown, I placed the ingredients in a blender and blended until smooth.  

I then wetted a paper towel with vegetable oil, wiped my small non-stick skillet with the oiled paper towel and set it on medium heat.  The recipe didn't specify a heat, so I just went middle of the road and it worked for me.  Off of the heat, add 3 Tbs batter to the pan, then lift and tilt it to spread the batter all around the pan.  The recipe says to cook 2 Tbs of batter at a time in a 6" skillet, but in my slightly smaller skillet, I found 3 Tbs of batter easier to work with.  

Return the pan to the heat and cook the crepe until the bottom has reached the brown color you desire.  I found it easiest to release the crepe from the pan gradually, so I ran the underside of my spatula under the edges of the crepe once the batter started to solidify.  Confession time: I didn't wait for the crepes to get brown.  They were cooked, but they were not brown.  I felt like it was taking a long time, so I pulled the crepes earlier than necessary.  My very last crepe cooked a bit longer and had a nice toasty brown side.  It tasted significantly better than the rest, so my advice is to keep an eye on them, but don't be afraid to let them cook for a while. They can be brown and yummy!  Once you have the crepe loosened from the pan, invert the pan onto a paper towel.  Prior to adding the next amount of batter, I wiped the pan with the oiled paper towel and repeated this process between every crepe.  I think this made for a smooth, easy process turning out crepes.

The Result:

They were a little undercooked and because of that, they were a bit heavy.  Despite that, the flavor was very nice.  I wish I had worked out some sort of creative topping or filling ahead of time, since crepes are so fancy.  Putting syrup on them tasted fine, but it's kind of like putting on your fancy heels with yoga pants (not that there's anything wrong with that!)  Maybe I'll whip up some cream and chop some strawberries to dress it up next time.  Or open up a jar of Nutella.  Or make a raspberry syrup.  Now I'm hungry again.

Repeat:

Unlike a lot of recipes from this book, I felt that there was not a lot of guidance or information in the crepes recipe - no specific heat to use, no estimation of cooking time per crepe, no picture of what the finished product should look like.  For such a finicky dish, you'd think the recipe would merit the usual half page, at least.  That said, I will repeat this dish, but only because I think crepes are fancy and I want to be able to cook fancy things (especially ones that require so few ingredients!)  This one is a repeat in spite of the cookbook.  Next time, I'll break out Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and get these crepes done right!