Bachelor Chow: Crêpes Edition

I was initially planning to be making crêpes this morning, but the potluck-brunch one of my work friends was going to have got cancelled since she's sick. (Like last year this was pegged to the St. Patty's Day Parade in town.) I was even going to remember to set my clocks ahead this year, too, and not get there an hour late. Oh well.

Plan B was to go check out a Unitarian church up the road a ways (following up this approximately biennial religious impulse I get, at least towards the hamburger-hold-the-meat forms of Christianity that I can coutenance involving myself in) but on the way to the bus stop I realized that I forgot to set my clocks ahead this year, so I was an hour late. Oh well. The Unitarians, save some non-creedal rapture, will still be there next week.

(Meanwhile, I can't go to the parade later on since I'm playing in a concert with that community band this afternoon, at some middle school in Fairfield. It's a shame that I have to ignore my 3/8 Irish heritage this way, but at least I did get some drinking in last night with some people.)

So now I'm sitting in my room listening to the Slavic Variety Show on WNHU 88.7 (which alternates between ethnic hoedown music and the godawful synth-heavy folk-ballad arrangements that Eastern Europeans seem susceptible to pouring their soul into) and sharing the crêpe recipe with the blog, since it's a good recipe, and it's not too hard, and crêpes are a good bachelor food. You can keep them in the fridge for a long while and use them for any meal of the day, savory or sweet. My friend Lisa taught me how to make these last month when I was visiting her & Andy in NYC. (I'm largely copying this off what I think is a color copy of a cookbook page, so, um, fair . . . copyright . . . use . . . warning or something.)

Crêpes

Before starting, make sure
● Your roommate has an 8-inch omelet pan (henceforth "crêpe pan")

and set out in your kitchen
● 2/3 cup flour
● 1/4 tsp salt
● 2 tbsp sugar
● 2 eggs, lightly beaten
● 1 cup milk, with 4 tbsp water added
● 2 tbsp butter

1. Mix the flour, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl.

2. Make a little "well" in the center of the flour bowl, and pour the eggs in there. Whisk these together with the flour, gradually. (If you have an electric mixer, use that. If you don't, pull up your sleeves and get a fork and put some elbow into it, and seriously consider buying an electric mixer.) This should form an even-textured, stubbornly glutenous blob.

3. Whisk the milk into this. You need to do this extremely gradually, or else the batter will form irreconciliable bloblets. Combine just a little bit of the milk at a time, and keep the texture uniform.

4. The batter will be very thin: this is correct. Let it sit there for 20 to 30 minutes. You can use this time to chop up the veggies or grate cheese or otherwise plot what you're going to do with the crêpes.

5. Melt the butter in a little bowl, and brush the crêpe pan with a little bit of it. Stir the rest of the butter into the batter. Put the pan on medium heat.

6. To produce each crêpe, fill a large spoon (like a sauce-mixing kind) with batter, pour it into the pan, and then tilt the pan around so that the batter covers the whole area with a thin layer. Use a second spoonful to fill it out and cover gaps if necessary. It only takes a minute for the bottom of the crêpe to brown; then you flip it over for a very short time, and slide it out into a waiting plate.

Voila! Now that's good eatin'.

I kind of want to teach myself how to make borscht next, and employ the crêpes as ersatz blini. That may just be the slavic variety show kicking in this morning.