Crepes anyone?

To me, nothing says fine dinning better than crepes. I’m thinking that this may be because earlier in life I thought the cuisine at IHOP was about as good as food could get. Still, even if you don’t share my childhood scars, crepes are a surprisingly easy path to fancy dishes, and you should add them to your cooking arsenal.

There’s lots of instructional videos on YouTube, like this one:

And the basic crepe batter recipe is here.

Which only leaves us with a couple of points to discuss: crepe pans and the flip – don’t flip question. Being a bit of a fanatic on the subject, I have an expensive 9″ non-stick skillet reserved just for cooking crepes. It was what I asked for Christmas like 10 years ago, and it’s never been used for anything except cooking crepes, other than that one time I caught my wife making scrambled eggs in it, after which I’ve kept it double sealed in plastic bags on the highest shelf in a closet where she needs a ladder to reach it. You can, however, get by with either a cheap specially designed crepe pan, which you can probably find for $10-$20, or any good non-stick skillet.

And that brings us to flip – don’t flip. Most all of the instructions you’ll find will suggest that you use a spatula or something to turn the crepe, and there are reasons for this. Mostly, the use of a turning tool is recommended because the person making the recommendation thinks it’s a safer method. The other reason is that, if you don’t control the temperature of your crepe pan properly, the edges of the crepe will tend to stick a bit – even to non-stick cookware – and this necessitates running something under the edge to lift it loose. And the reason no one will mention is that they don’t think the average home cook has the motor skills necessary to flip.

I, however, think that flipping is absolutely necessary. Beyond that, it’s fun! The secrets to successful flipping are:

1. always brush your pan with melted butter. Sure, you might not think that this is necessary with a non-stick pan, but it is. Besides, crepes are supposed to be a decedent dish, so a little more butter is a good thing.

2. keep the pan hot enough that the batter flash cooks on contact as you swirl it around, and then keep shaking the pan after it’s coated. You’ll find, with a bit of practice, that lifting the pan off the burner to shake it will help you keep the temperature just right, and you’ll know when the crepe needs to be turned by the fact that it breaks loose and starts to slide around the pan.

3. remember that, while you’re learning how to do this, you should do it in private. On the other hand, once you get the hang of it, being able to flip a crepe in front of your guests becomes performance art and enhances the dinning experience.

And, to reward your patience in reading the above, here’s how to make my favorite crepe dish.

You’ll need:

2 crepes per person, or more depending on the crowd
cream cheese and ricotta cheese in equal parts, about 1/3 cup per crepe
1 teaspoon of lemon juice per 8 ounces of cream cheese
lots of powdered sugar
a food processor
frozen berries of your choice (I like strawberries,) defrosted and sweetened if necessary to taste, and microwaved until reasonably warm

Cooking: put the cream cheese, ricotta cheese, and lemon juice in the food processor and pulse until well combined. If it comes out too thick, which can happen depending on the batch of cheeses you get, you can fluff it up by adding a little heavy cream and pulsing some more. It should be firm enough to hold its shape, but not so firm as to provide resistance to eating – like a really heavy whipped cream. Add powdered sugar and pulse, taste, repeat, until it’s sweet enough but not too sweet to over power the taste of the crepes and berry topping.

Serving: place a crepe on a plate, most brown side down. Spoon a line of the filling down the middle, 1/3 of a cup or so. Fold the edges over to make a tube. Turn it over so the fold is down. Spoon an appropriate amount of the berries and juice over the top. Dust with powdered sugar so it’s pretty.

With a side of bacon cooked until it’s just starting to get crispy and a cup of strong coffee, this is heaven.

Enjoy,
the Grit