Return to the Kitchen: Crepes!

It always feels a little strange, stepping back into my kitchen after being away from it. True, I was only gone ten days, but that's a pretty long time to go without cooking anything, as far as I'm concerned. I'm always slightly concerned that I'll have forgotten how to do something important, or that I'll fail to remember simple things like monitoring pan-temperatures, or whether something has been left in the broiler. Such things have never come to pass - yet! - but I am always still a little concerned.

Today also brought a return to a dish I've not made in a long time: Crepes. I've always been partial to them, but when I travelled to France on my Big Trip ten years ago, I fell in love with them. Sweet, savory, stacked, folded, on a plate, or in a folded paper cone, crepes were my number one hunger-buster on the streets of Paris, and they're awfully good at home, too.


Since I have been primarily cooking lighter meals since we got back from Scotland, I decided to make a breakfast of savory crepes. With their payload of a single egg and but a half-teaspoon of canola oil, they fit well enough in with my criteria that I decided to include slices of Freybe's Italian sausage - part of their line of lower-fat chicken and turkey sausages that I use in a number of supper dishes (like Sausage and Hominy Chili) quite frequently.


Like a number of food bloggers, I've recently been pillaging the Williams Sonoma website for its recipes, and the one that I decided on for my crepes was their Black Pepper Crepes with Goat Cheese and Tomatoes. Since I was using a 9 or 10" non-stick frying pan instead of a WS crepe pan, I only got five crepes instead of eight, but I also was using between a third and a half cup of batter for each one, too - so that sort of makes sense. I also decided that the black pepper element of the crepe batter was negligible, so next time I may well add more pepper - or perhaps grind additional pepper over the crepe as it cooks on its first side, so the fresh black pepper sinks evenly into the batter and is locked in when the crepe is turned.


I also discovered that I did not need to re-season the pan between crepes, as the recipe suggests. Perhaps that is an advantage of the non-stick pan over the crepe pan, but it worked in my favour, so I'm not complaining.

I had forgotten how much fun crepes are. You can prepare them in advance. You can fill them with practically anything. You can dress them up or down. You can freeze them. And, you can microwave chilled crepes to heat them back up!