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spookyeviloneI have a thing for crepes. My mother was Canadian and when I was growing up, crepes were the weekend thing. She'd make a big batch Friday night with various things to fill them with, which let me fend for myself while maximizing the amount of time I spent outdoors running amok.
As an adult, I've really come to appreciate the amount of time my mother put into making crepes from scratch - because I am inherently lazy and very rarely willing to go to such trouble for myself. Also, I am incapable of cooking small amounts and would wind up with a freezer full of crepes, which is what happened last time I made them. We've recently had a spat of Creperies open in MN, but their crepes have been flavourless and boring.
A friend recently asked what she could keep in the house that I could eat, so when I was over she didn't feel bad that I was stuck with cheese sandwiches. I was touched that she would ask but the answer made me realize that we had little common ground. I'm a pastavore vegetarian, she's a gluten intolerant paleo. In a very weird turn, there was nothing I keep on hand that I could feed /her/, other than a salad or veggie stir-fry or hummus. But without pita, hummus is worthless.
Looking online, I found a gluten-free pirogie recipe whose pasta recipe didn't immediately make me gag. I'll be trying that later this weekend, I think. I happened across a gluten-free crepe recipe and was very skeptical about it. Mom-style crepes take awhile to prepare and cook, and this recipe looked too simple to work.
I tried it. I was absolutely blown away. It produced tasty crepes. They're more like Russian blini than French crepes in texture, but they're tasty.
The recipe:
2/3 c. milk
1/3 c. corn starch (I substituted a 1:1 mix of tapioca starch and flax meal to make up the 1/3c.)
1 egg
Pinch of salt
The recipe said to drop into pan and swirl into a circle. This absolutely doesn't work. While the recipe produced a very runny batter (to the point I was worried it wasn't thick enough), the starch binds almost immediately upon contact with the hot pan and I had funny looking non-circular crepes. I wound up doing it the way my mother would - pour a bunch into the pan to coat the bottom, wait a moment, and then pour out the excess. Perfect round crepes every time. The recipe made 4 8" crepes. The flax meal doesn't appear to have done anything for the consistency, but I added it for the Omega-3 factor anyway. The tapioca starch helped prevent the dusty starchy taste that I've come to expect with massive amounts of corn starch. It is absolutely not low carb when done the way I do it - tapioca starch is mostly carbs - but it is gluten free and dead simple to make.
The filling I used was a canned apple pie filling. I may try a savory filling of shredded cabbage and carrots sauteed in salt/ginger/lemon juice/sesame oil. If I wasn't a vegevore, I'd do a savory with cubed chicken breast sauteed in olive oil, sea salt, and rosemary.
Yum!
As an adult, I've really come to appreciate the amount of time my mother put into making crepes from scratch - because I am inherently lazy and very rarely willing to go to such trouble for myself. Also, I am incapable of cooking small amounts and would wind up with a freezer full of crepes, which is what happened last time I made them. We've recently had a spat of Creperies open in MN, but their crepes have been flavourless and boring.
A friend recently asked what she could keep in the house that I could eat, so when I was over she didn't feel bad that I was stuck with cheese sandwiches. I was touched that she would ask but the answer made me realize that we had little common ground. I'm a pastavore vegetarian, she's a gluten intolerant paleo. In a very weird turn, there was nothing I keep on hand that I could feed /her/, other than a salad or veggie stir-fry or hummus. But without pita, hummus is worthless.
Looking online, I found a gluten-free pirogie recipe whose pasta recipe didn't immediately make me gag. I'll be trying that later this weekend, I think. I happened across a gluten-free crepe recipe and was very skeptical about it. Mom-style crepes take awhile to prepare and cook, and this recipe looked too simple to work.
I tried it. I was absolutely blown away. It produced tasty crepes. They're more like Russian blini than French crepes in texture, but they're tasty.
The recipe:
2/3 c. milk
1/3 c. corn starch (I substituted a 1:1 mix of tapioca starch and flax meal to make up the 1/3c.)
1 egg
Pinch of salt
The recipe said to drop into pan and swirl into a circle. This absolutely doesn't work. While the recipe produced a very runny batter (to the point I was worried it wasn't thick enough), the starch binds almost immediately upon contact with the hot pan and I had funny looking non-circular crepes. I wound up doing it the way my mother would - pour a bunch into the pan to coat the bottom, wait a moment, and then pour out the excess. Perfect round crepes every time. The recipe made 4 8" crepes. The flax meal doesn't appear to have done anything for the consistency, but I added it for the Omega-3 factor anyway. The tapioca starch helped prevent the dusty starchy taste that I've come to expect with massive amounts of corn starch. It is absolutely not low carb when done the way I do it - tapioca starch is mostly carbs - but it is gluten free and dead simple to make.
The filling I used was a canned apple pie filling. I may try a savory filling of shredded cabbage and carrots sauteed in salt/ginger/lemon juice/sesame oil. If I wasn't a vegevore, I'd do a savory with cubed chicken breast sauteed in olive oil, sea salt, and rosemary.
Yum!