Crepe Suzette

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Nearly three weeks from Pancake Tuesday we bring you the second course of our Pancake Extravaganza 100% intentional I promise!

I don't usually recommend songs - but they sing about pancake batter! a cover of the White Stripes by the Golden Filter

Make the Crepes as follows (again, this is a recipe from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking)

Ingredients Pancake Batter

1/2 cup cold water
1/2 cup milk
2 large eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tablespoons melted butter
1 tbsp caster sugat 

1tbsp cointreau or Grand marinier

Mix all the ingredients together and whizz in a food processor (I used my trusty stick blender) refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Make the crepes: Get a heavy bottomed non-stick frying pan really hot and melt some butter in it, wipe the majority of the butter away with a wodge of kitchen paper. Do this between each pancake. This recipe should make about 12 pancakes.

Spoon about half a ladle full (depends on how thin you like them, but for crepes, the thinner the better) of the mixture into the hot pan and swirl around quickly until evenly coated. Place back on the heat and cook for 2 or 3 minutes until golden brown, then flip and cook for another minute or so on the other side until golden brown.

You can make the crepes up to 4 or 5 hours in advance. Don't refrigerate them. Just stack them up on a plate on on top of the other and they should be fine.

When you're ready to serve the dessert mix the following ingredients in a bowl: (this will make enough sauce for 8 pancakes so you can increase everything a little if you want to use up all 12 of your crepes from the recipe above)

Ingredients Crepe Suzette Sauce

Zest of 1 orange
Juice of 3 oranges
1 tbsp cointreau/grand marnier
1 tbsp caster sugar


Transfer half of this into your frying pan and heat it up until warm and slightly bubbling. Ad 1 oz butter and swirl so that it all melts in. Place a crepe in this sauce, and quickly flip it so it is coated on both sides. Then fold it in half and half again. Leave the folded crepe in the pan while you heat up and fold another 3 crepes so you have 4 in the pan at once. 

Then quickly add in 2 tbsps cointreau and set in on fire with a match. Stand well back as it will Whoosh up and look very impressive. Bring it to the table and serve.

If you wanted to serve all 8 crepes at once you could probably fold them in 8ths...

We had this by itself and it was gorgeous, but if you wanted to be extra extra decadent you could serve it with ice-cream or Chantilly for an added French touch.

Pancake Dinner Extravaganza

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Course 1 - Potato Blinis with Smoked Salmon

So as pancake day approached we started to think of what we would make to mark this most singularly culinary celebration. If Christmas was changed to roast turkey day, and Halloween was barn brack day, when instead of going trick or treating/giving presents everyone would be at home making cakes/turkey. It will soon be national fish and chips day too - well in May! 

We thought we’d like to bring a random group of people together in our house, for a feast of pancakes. So we put an invite up on our own facebook, and within 15 minutes we’d reached our quota for the dinner.

We decided on a menu that encompassed a different type of pancake for each course
Starters were smoked salmon blinis
Main course was pancake cannelloni with bolognaise sauce
and ricotta and leek cannelloni with tomato sauce for the veggies
Dessert was Crepe Suzette - kaboom!

Smoked  Salmon and Potato Blinis

Ingredients

6 boiled potatoes
2 eggs
1/2 pint of milk 
about 2 tbsps four
creme fraiche (or cream cheese)
smoked salmon
chives 

The potato blinis were made by mashing about 6 boiled potatoes and combining this with 2 eggs, about 1/2 pint of milk and about 2 tbsps four. I just added things until I got the right consistency- very instinctive of me but not so good for blogging recipes! The batter should be thick in consistency, like whipped cream. I cooked them by getting a heavy frying pan really hot, smearing on some butter with a wadded up paper towel, and putting a tablespoon on the mixture at a time in the pan. I could do about 8 at a time. Cook on one side for about 3 or 4 mins, until golden brown and then flip. 

We served with creme fraiche and smoked salmon but you could top with anything- I was thinking cream cheese would be nice with roasted tomatoes. 

Recipes for pancake cannelloni and crepe suzette to follow before Easter I promise!

Leek and Bacon Crepes

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Crêpes avec Poireaux et Lardon It was the weekend of the brunch. We started on Saturday with a place I would like to nominate for 'Best BLT' in Dublin, The News Cafe in Blackrock. They also do a great fry - with their own recipe flat sausage - nice.

Then it was onto these for Sunday brunch. I ate the best crepe ever in Roscoff while waiting for the ferry. They were divine and a very fitting end to the two week eating and cooking binge that was my summer holiday. I wrote a little about them here.This is my attempt to re-create them - hampered only by my lack of a drop of white wine for the sauce. We cheated and bought pre-made pancakes - I will blog the recipe for pancakes - pancake Tuesday special perhaps.

The photos come courtesy of Delo - you can see more of his photos here. Be warned there are many, many , many photos of bicycles!

Ingredients
Serves 2
4 pancakes
3 leeks - sliced in 2cm slices
Lardons (or rashers sliced in strips)
4 slices of Provolone Cheese (or similar mild cheese)
2 tablespoons of cream
Butter!
Salt and Pepper

Cook the some butter over a medium heat for about 3-4 mins then lash in the lardons and continue to cook until your bacon is nice and crispy and the leeks are bright green - with nice little orangey brown edges yum. I once said my favourite colour is the inside of a leek - LOVE it - then eat it - that's what I say, except horses - don't eat horses, bad French people, but I love your pancakes.

Ramble sorry. Then add in the cream, season and bring up to a gentle simmer to thicken. In a clean frying pan - flick in a nob of butter, until it melts. Then pop in your pancake. Place a big spoonful of your mixture into the centre. Push it out to be a little smaller than a postcard. Top this with some cheese. Fold over the edgesTo make a nice little parcel - and serve. This orange is nice - fancy fanta!

Breakfast in France

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Le Petit Dejeuner Galette

I didn't make this so maybe I shouldn't blog it, but it was a wonderful start to the day, delivered to me on a plate - I love holidays, thanks Delo.We ate a number of crepes and galettes while we were away, crepes are sweet, while galettes are savory and made with buckwheat flour. We bought these pre-made ones from the supermarket to play with back at the van. Often a galette comes with an egg on, the white quickly finds it way through the holes in the pancake and cooks while the yoke stay all gooey. Inside hidden away from sight are some nice little lardons (batons of bacon - see detail photo!) and some melty emmental. A grind of black pepper and a coffee and you're done.Also specialities in Brittany are creme de caramel au beurre salle, which is creme caramel made with salted butter, served on crepes with cooked apples or bananas and chantilly. There's always the classic lemon and sugar.

The best galletes we ate were in Roscoff and were just too delicious to photograph! Bacon with leeks fondue, the other had scallops with gratin vegetables, both were bursting with flavour and showed what a wide range of tastes and ingredients these little galletes can handle.... now I regret not taking a photo ah well, sometimes the moment is just too good to spoil