Cooking Club: French Crepes

My in-laws were able to recently go to Europe for vacation, which inspired my mother-in-law to pick this recipe for the Cooking Club. And as always, if you make a recipe, just leave a comment with your review and I will feature you during the reviews in about a week. Here is the recipe with some notes and additional help from my mother-in-law. And the wonderful picture is from my sister-in-law Rachel.

French Crepes
(Allrecipes.com)

2 eggs

1 cup milk (I used whole)

2/3 cup flour

1 pinch salt

1 1/2 tsp oil

Directions

Combine eggs, milk, flour, salt and oil. Process with a blender or with beaters until smooth. Cover and refrigerate for one hour.

Heat a non-stick skillet medium-high and brush with oil. Pour 1/3 cup of crepe batter into pan. Tilt the pan to completely coat the surface of the pan. Cook 2 to 5 minutes, turning once, until golden. Repeat with the remaining batter. (Made six that were approximately 8-9 inches across)

I found one crepe recipe that said you could refrigerate it for only 1/2 an hour. This is what I did and it worked just fine. I found that you must work quickly to tilt the pan and spread out the batter. In the end, three sides spread evenly and by the time you get to the fourth side, it spreads out in finger-like projectiles. Most of the batter is firming up by then. I found I turned them over in about 1 1/2-2 minutes. I had to fill in some spots with little drops of batter to perfectly round out the final side. But that didn't matter and in the end, the crepe was perfect to work with. My pan didn't make the pretty crepes until the third one...kind of like cooking pancakes...the first ones aren't as good looking, evenly-browned as the later ones. But, it didn't affect the taste and we loved preparing these.

In Paris, the street vendors pull out a pre-browned/cooked crepe and heat it up on the grill. Then...this is an unexpected step. An egg is cracked right into the middle of the crepe. The guy took his spatula and started just scrambling up the egg and mixing it all around right on top of the crepe in the pan. As he worked with it, he simultaneously spread it out to all edges of the crepe. It began to cook onto the crepe and stick to it, so you have a crepe with scrambled egg cooked onto one side. Then the crepes were topped with a scoop of the filling...whatever the customer ordered. When I made them, I browned the second side, and then flipped it back over to the first side for cracking on the egg. This takes very little time to get that egg cooked onto the crepe. I only had one that wasn't completely done cooking in the center and I just flipped the egg side down for a few seconds.

You will now top the egg side of the crepe with whatever topping you want. This is where you can create your own fillings. I used ingredients I had on hand and fried them together while the crepe batter was chilling. I used bacon, chopped tomato, some ham, a couple of green onions, and parmesan cheese. You can order just about anything you can think of from the street vendors in Paris. Try other meats or fish (cut into small pieces), different cheeses--grated separately on top of the filling, mushrooms, olives, shredded and seasoned veggies..whatever is in your frig. Just be sure to prepare and heat everything up together in a separate pan and season it as you desire.

I had my filling all ready so once that egg was scrambled onto the crepe, I put a scoop of filling onto the crepe and spread it across one half of it. In France, they fold them twice and serve a triangle-shaped finished product. Serve with cottage cheese and fruit.

The great thing about preparing and serving crepes, is that the first round you can eat them as described above, then use the second round for a dessert round. Omit the scrambled egg and instead top the crepe with butter, sugar, jam, chocolate spread, berries or powdered sugar. They serve Nutella a lot in Europe...a hazelnut-chocolate spread...and this is often served on the crepes.