crepe | Cecile's Cuisine

Yesterday was La Chandeleur in France. For those of you who may not know what Chandeleur is, it is National French Pancake Day. I am not very familiar with the reason why we eat crepes on that day, but supposedly Pope Gelase I gave out pancakes to the Romans who came to town on that day, and this is why today, people eat crepes…

I will tell you that growing up, I did not need to have a reason to eat crepes because they were my favorite things to eat, and they are still my favorite things to eat today.

This evening nothing fancy. I just wanted to fix a few to keep up the tradition at home. I made a cake of crepes ( that I will show you later), and made a few with some swiss cheese and salami.

Ingredients for 12-15 crepes:

6 tablespoons of flour
1/3 can of beer
1/2 cup of milk
2 eggs
2 tbsp of butter
1lb of slices swiss cheese
1/2 lb of slices salami or any other meat.

Take a large bowl and place the flour in the bowl.
Curve a hole in the flour, and slowly pour the milk while mixing with a whisk.
Be careful to whisk slowly so as to make the mixture smooth and free of lumps.
Then add the eggs one at a time and mix well. Add the beer and mix well also. The mixture should be smooth and liquid, but not too liquid.
Turn the stove to medium high and place the frying pan on the stove. The frying pan should be hot before starting to fix the pancakes.
With a paper towel or a brush, spread butter on the walls of the frying pan and pour a small ladle of crepe mixture.
Move the frying pan in a circle motion so that the dough has spread to the entire surface of the pan.
Cook for 1 minute.
With a spatula, flip the crepe, place 3 slices of cheese, 5 slices of salami all around the crepes.
Fold the crepe in half and cook for 1 minute or less.
Place the crepes flat on a plate. Continue the process until you have exhausted all the batter. Et voila!!!

Bon Appetit and Happy Cooking!!!

I don’t know how it is at your house, but at my house on Sunday, we try to have fancy dinner and try to eat things we would not normally eat during the week… We also eat desserts. Since I had fixed crepes for dinner, an easy dessert to follow would have been Crepes Flambee…I love Crepes Flambees. The traditional Crepes flambees are topped with fresh oranges, and flambees with Cointreau. Nothing wrong with the traditional recipe, I just wanted my crepe flambee with a “fall flavor”. I thought of using apples, but then decided to go with pears. Pears are much more delicate in taste…Here is my recipe:

Ingredients for 4 people: 8 crepes, 1 cup of creme patissiere( 1/8 cup of brown sugar, 1 vanilla bean sliced, 2 tbsp of flour, 1 cup of milk, 1 egg). 2 pears, 2 tbsp of butter, 2 tbsp of brown sugar ( i used dark muscavado). 4 tsp of pear schaps such as Pear William.

First, make the creme patissiere: In a large bowl, beat the egg with the sugar and slowly add the flour. Then add the milk that you would have previously brought to boil with the vanilla bean. Stir the milk into the egg mixture. Place the creme back on the stove and cook at low temperature until the cream is getting thick, remove the vanilla bean and remove the seeds from the bean. Set the cream aside, and let cool.

Now prepare the pears that will top the crepes. Core the pears, and peel ( or not) the pears. Then slice the pears in thin slices. In a frying pan, melt the butter and when the butter has melted, add the sugar and bring to boil. Add the pears in the caramel, and cook the pears for 2-4 minutes.

To prepare the crepes, spoon the creme patissiere ( about 1/8 of a cup) in each crepe. Fold the crepe in half, and again in half. You will have a triangle. Place two stuffed crepes onto a bowl, or a concave plate. Spoon some pears with the caramel onto the crepes. Drizzle 1 tsp to 1 Tbsp of Pear William onto the pears, and with a lighter ignite the crepes. Et voila! Yum, Yum…