I’ve never really had much to do with crepes, either cooking or eating, mostly because if I wanted pancakes, then I’d just have pancakes.  My mom never made them, and when I had the opportunity to have them out, I would usually get pancakes instead.  The only crepe experiences I can think of off the top of my head is a restaurant in town called Cinzetti’s, which is basically an upscale Italian-themed buffet.  They have sweet crepes you can get from their dessert bar, but I’ve never actually had savory crepes, something that I’d fix with this chapter.

Alton demystifies the crepe here, since there’s a lot of additional equipment that fussy French chefs would tell you are required for making crepes.  All you really need is a non-stick skillet and a blender.  The blender is used to bring the batter together very quickly, and then gets rested for an hour in the fridge.  An ounce or so of the batter is ladled into a hot, buttered pan, and the thin layer of batter cooks relatively quickly, no more than a minute or two in total.  That’s it.  No special pan is required, no special stirring implement is required – just a simple technique.

The first of the two recipes was a savory herb crepe that would be used to make a mushroom crepe cake, something that a friend likened to crepe lasagna.  The crepes themselves are herb crepes, and while the recipe didn’t specify the sort of herb, I went with a combination of parsley and tarragon – mostly parsley, since tarragon’s a very strong herb, and a little goes a long way.  The plan for the recipe is to make as many herb crepes as possible, which would be the noodle stand-ins for the crepe lasagna.  The layers would be held together by a duxelles, which is a mushroom paste that’s as French as Escoffier.  I’d never made it before, and from what I’ve seen, Alton’s is a bit…unorthodox (I know, that’s shocking, right?).  It’s got a pound of mushrooms, which are the vegetarian’s secret weapon against missing meat.  Half of the mushrooms are finely chopped.  In a saute pan, we melt some butter and sweat a diced onion until soft.  The mushrooms are added, along with some salt and pepper, and we cook until the mushrooms give up their liquid and shrink.  We then add some whole milk, and cook until we have a paste.  We then add some shredded Provolone cheese, and cook until it all comes together.  We’re now ready to build the “lasagna,” which starts with two herb crepes, then a bit of the duxelles, followed by a bit of chopped chive.  Then we add another crepe, followed by more duxelles, and more chives.  Repeat until we’re out of duxelles, then top with one more crepe, sprinkle on some shredded Parm, and broil for a few minutes.  Slice into wedges and serve.

This one…well, it was fraught with problems.  First, the duxelles didn’t quite come together – the cheese stuck to the bottom of the pan, and the paste wasn’t quite as pasty as I expect it should have been.  I didn’t bring a non-stick pan to the friend’s place I made it, because I expected that they’d have a 10″ non-stick pan.  They did, but it was very scratched, and wasn’t all that non-stick.  As a result, I lost a lot of crepes trying to depan, and I basically needed to butter the pan every time in order to successfully depan one.  It tasted fine, but this one didn’t come out the way I’d hoped.

So, with that barely successful recipe out of the way, it was time to make the final recipe for the chapter.  This time, we were making the most famous of crepe recipes, Crepes Suzette.  I decided I needed to make some more homemade vanilla ice cream to go with it, which was quickly becoming my go-to recipe from this book.  I ended up making the dessert at a different friend’s house, and fortunately, they had much better non-stick pans!  The sweet crepes were just as easy to make as the herb crepes, and with the better pans, I only lost one or two due to bad flips.  Crepes Suzette has an orange liqueur sauce that they’re dipped in, which was also rather easy to make.  Orange juices, Grand Marnier, white and brown sugar are all added to a pan and whisked until slightly reduced.  Butter is then added to tighten the sauce, and the finished crepes are dipped in the sauce, then folded into quarters on the serving plate.  I added a scoop of ice cream, and garnished with orange zest and supremes.  This one worked much better, and tasted great!  The only issue is that I grated the zest way too fine, and should have been finely shredded instead of grated.  Regardless, it was rather simple, and I feel like I should make this one again for family.

And with that, the chapter comes to a close, with a fifty-fifty success rate.  Crepes are definitely not nearly as difficult as I imagined they would be, and I figure I could make them again pretty easily.  I just need to invest in a blender.  Food for thought.

Next Time: The Holiday Special.

Recipes:

Crepes

Mushroom Crepe Cake

Crepes Suzette