In the heart of winter, let’s continue to cook. Do you celebrate chandeleur? Here we eat crêpes and a lot of them in the whole month of February. Then there is also the Asian Lunar new year in mi-February.
LOL, @LindaWhit I don’t have the wit like you, if you come up with a better title, just change it!
Groundhog day, Valentine’s Day, Presidents Day and Black history month also fall in February.
Looking forward to your tasty creations!
I always like the Lemon Cream and Zest Crêpe from Breizh Café book.
Ingredient (for 1 crêpe)
Lemon cream
Prepare the lemon cream in a bowl: mix the eggs and sugar until the mixture is whitened. Add slowly the lemon juice and cook in warm water bath or cook the whole mixture in a sauce pot, but with medium low heat. Keep stirring, and when the mixture is thicken, stop the heat and add the salted butter. Allow the mixture to cool. (Be careful with the heat, it can cook the egg!)
Spread evenly the crepe mixture in a hot pan, when the crepe is cooked, folded it 2 times to get a triangle. Spread the lemon cream and zest.
I also like banana crepe with caramel sauce and rum and of course crêpe suzette.
Do you need the basic crepe recipe?
I have not formally celebrated here however, I had spent a weekend in Paris a few times on this holiday years ago.
I love Crepe Suzettes !!! On rare occasion I prepare for a brunch at home.
Yes, the basic recipe would be a good place for me to start. I haven’t tried crepes formally…but I’d like to.
Here it goes!
Basic crêpe recipe
COOK: 1 -2 minutes
FOR ABOUT 36 CRÊPES
12 eggs
300 g /10.6 oz cane sugar
1 kg /35oz wheat flour
2 liters / 8.5 cups of milk
Options
1 vanilla bean
1 tbsp Grand Marnier or rum
zest grated citrus fruits
browned butter (nutty flavour)
Beat the eggs and mix in the sugar by hand with a little of milk, mix vigorously with a whisk. Add the flour, mix very gently (mix if there are lumps), add the rest of the milk, use a chinois if there is lumps, add optional ingredient if necessary. This wheat dough can be worked on immediately. Cooking is to be done in a hot pan using bout 50 g / 1.8 oz of the dough mixture in the pan. Cooking, is very fast: 1-2 minutes for a crepe. Spread with raclette with semi salted butter generously.
To see how a professional cook a crepe with a crepe maker (bilic) and a raclette. Also to give an idea the thickness of crêpe. Homemade ones in pan are usually thicker than on this bilic.
Crêpes are always sweet for the French, the savoury version is called galette, and is made with with buckwheat.
We kicked off February in New Jersey with a huge snowstorm that started Sunday night and is actually still going (just a flurry now). I tried to get to work yesterday, but my SUV would not even budge from the spot. So I called out of a job for the first time in my life and had myself a snow day.
Food-wise, we were thoroughly unprepared. We are not the panicking kind and that combined with a lifestyle of hitting the grocery store almost daily, meant we were practically empty. So we did a repeat of the pulled chicken nachos on freshly fried corn tortilla chips from the other day-- thank goodness for a well-stocked spice cabinet. Had a little bit of Tito’s left in this handle, so left it to chill in the snow.
We have ground beef defrosting for pastitsio tomorrow night (a good winter dish!) and the BF is off today so will attempt to get to the grocery store. Don’t know what we’re eating tonight yet.
Hope everyone else in the NE is safe and sound!
Prep very similar to the popover batter I have on repeat. We don’t own that clever wooden tool but I have a crepe pan our son bought while living in France. I use it for super thin cooked eggs. When our son still lived with us, he was the crepe, choc mousse and lamb maker. Haven’t thought about crepes until this post in a long time.
His french cookbook is stashed around here somewhere…
We lucked out and did not get any where close to the amount of snow as @gcaggiano, but it was still cold, sleety and VERY windy. Since we made a pilgrimage to H Mart last week I decided to use some of our purchases to make a kimchee and fish stew/soup. I had some pho broth in the freezer to which I added mushrooms, shallots, kimchee, ginger, gochujang, and potatoes. I let the base simmer to cook the potatoes through and added some sea bass, also from the freezer. It was nice and hot in all the best ways.
One of my favorite sections at H Mart is what I call the banchan section, where I picked up squid in chile sauce and crispy fried fish. I served them as well as a quick bean sprout salad I made.
Croque Monsieur … Tuesday Light Dinner.
Spent the morning shoveling - we got nearly two feet! Treated myself to a mocha latte with Kahlua while getting a pot of Bolognese together to simmer all afternoon. Standard traditional recipe except I used fennel instead of celery (because I was out of celery and there was NO chance I was going to the store on our current streets!). I just tasted it and I like the extra complexity of the subtle anise flavor. Just need to make a salad and dinner is served!
Quickie tonight - crispy chicken (with “General Tsao’s sauce” on side), sesame buffalo roasted cauliflower, light ranch, sauteed sugar snaps with soy sauce and butter.
Yesterday I had a very late lunch that ended up being my dinner - sprouted moong beans, made into a gravy dish that’s halfway between the two types my mom makes 
. Really good over some leftover sabzi polow from weekend middle eastern takeout.
For other dinners I made cauliflower cheese (gratin) for the kids - it was delicious but the frozen cauliflower disintegrated along the way, so the texture was dubious. And yet, 2 lbs of cauliflower all gone. Also, GF and mostly dairy free except a bit of cheese for flavor and topping. Forgot to take a pic.
And pan fried salmon with harissa, my mom’s tomato salad, and roasted cauliflower for the sib.
I’d like to add that my DH “helpfully” unscrewed the cap on the sauce bottle. Unaware me gave it a hefty shake and sent sauce flying all over me, my hair, and the kitchen!
Why I DON’T like WFH:
my laptop screen is too small for what I need to work on, especially when I’m doing monthly invoicing for clients.
My dining room chairs SUCK to sit in for 9 hours. Even with a couch pillow behind my back.
The boyz won’t leave me the hell alone most if the day. If I’m home, I’m there to serve them. No matter what crisis is going on at work.
Why I DO like WFH:
I can sleep in an extra hour.
I can wear comfy clothes.
I can plan dinner on the fly and not have to remember to take stuff out of the freezer the night before. I can just walk downstairs and pull out what I want from the freezers mid-morning so it can defrost in time.
So it’s a toss-up. I’ll go back into the office tomorrow after a “snow day” today. Dinner was a bone-in pork chop, osn-seared in olive oil, with shallots and red grapes added in near the end of searing, white wine splooshed in for a quick reduction, then into the oven to finish.
Sides were maple-ginger mashed sweet potatoes and steamed green beans. And despite it being a Tuesday, wine.
Oh, and Mother Nature needs to cut this shit out with 20" of snow overnight, y’hear?
Exactly. I got 30 inches last Tuesday
