Monthly Archives: November 2012

November 26, 2012 · 11:29 am

Homemade Crepes

I thought crepes would be incredibly complicated, but they are in fact just milk, flour and eggs! I’m sure there are plenty of other ingredients (i.e. sugar) that some people add to this recipe, but I was taught that one should start at the very beginning (it’s a very good place to start). So I kept it simple:

crepes, recipes, walnut, pear, bleu cheese, arugula, lunch

1 cup flour, 1 cup milk, 2 eggs, pinch of salt.

Mix-eems up!

Now came the hard part. I wasted one entire batch of batter attempting to swirl the batter evenly in our cast-iron skillet. The trouble is the batter starts cooking as soon as it hits the pan, so make sure you have a strategy. I didn’t need much butter, just a light greasing of the pan and about 1/3 cup of batter did me just fine. 🙂

Swirl evenly into pan on med heat.

It’s definitely a learning curve.

After several tries, I finally found my swirling sweet spot. Hours later, I read that an easy way to make it even is to tilt the pan and pour the batter in on an incline — if anyone has tried this, please let me know if it works!

As soon as the batter starts to bubble, flip-eems around and cook the other side. Afterward you can set them aside until you have as many as you need.

crepes, recipes, pesto, mozzarella, tomato, caprese, chicken caprese, lunch

Chicken Caprese Crepe for my man.

Heat it up on a warm pan and serve!

When it’s time to build the crepes, turn the pan on very very low and lay your crepe down, throw on your toppings and fold hot-dog, then hamburger (the nineties kids know what I mean).

The time had come to attempt the crepe of all crepes. The one I had placed up so high on a pedestal, I was bound to be disappointed, right? WRONG! I had seen this done so many times, I knew all of the components. I knew the order the ingredients needed to go in and what sorts of dressings topped them. It went crepe, bleu cheese, pears, honey, walnuts, balsamic, then arugula.

I topped this with black pepper and honey.

Served with arugula and a balsamic glaze.

And it was delicious! I’ll have to work on my crepe technique, but the integrity of the crepe was there. I considered this a huge victory and I intend to enjoy this for lunch every day this week because me and this crepe? We’re married. What’s your crepe soul-mate?

Chelsea Market Crepes

As someone who works from home, I have the great luxury of also being able to work from any coffee shop or restaurant with wi-fi. Now truth be told, I love my apartment, and it’s where I’d rather be 75% of the time. On nice days, however, I do like to venture into Manhattan for a sip of all the human energy until I inevitably drink in a little too much pretension and am forced to retreat to my simpler Queens.

Over the summer my prime destination became Chelsea Market. There is a constant in and out of new humans to watch and a varied cornucopia of eateries for me to choose from. It’s a food bloggers dream come true. Or it would be if I’d ever made it past Bar Suzette, the creperie. They have this Walnut, Pear and Gorgonzola crepe and I think we’re in love.

Chelsea Market, crepes, NYC, restaurant, chelsea, draught beer

How I was ever supposed to try something else?

I enjoyed this for the first time with some Texan friends, one of whom likened this crepe to “God’s breath,” now I’m not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds very complimentary. It was on that day that I also discovered The Filling Station.

Every shop at Chelsea Market is a specialty shop and The Filling Station is no different. It has special sea salts and olive oils (like bacon sea salt and chili-infused olive oil) that you can take home in a variety of sizes. They also have really special draught beers from local breweries for sale that they serve you in a jar for $4. So yeah, they had me at “serve you in a jar” and they kept me at “$4.”

I have yet to try something new at Chelsea Market because this crepe truly has my heart on a string, but the hefty price tag it carries ($9!) has made me want to take my heart back. In Thailand we saw street vendors making pancakes (which are basically crepes) in woks and other non-crepe hot surfaces so I’ve become inspired to try to make crepes in my cast iron skillet. Has anyone seen success or failure with this? I will report back with results. Wish me luck!

High Heat and Heads Up

Some info about me: I live with a magical person. He’s magical in several ways, one being his magnetic ability to attract odd and awesome opportunities that he always has the good sense to grasp. The latest of these was his role as Sleight-of-hand consultant/Hand double on the short film Heads Up, which played last night at the Big Apple Film Festival. One great thing about NYC is that, no matter the night, there is always something weird and artsy going on. So we went!

But two people gotta eat, right? So before heading down to Tribeca for what promised to be a delightfully hipsterentious evening, we stopped by High Heat for a a burger and some beer.

(Hipsterentious: Where “hipster” meets “pretentious.” See other uses: When bloggers create their own douchey words.)

high heat burger, nyc, west village, flower power IPA, draught beer

A growler of Ithaca’s Flower Power IPA.

To my utter delight, this wonderful establishment had my very favorite IPA on tap, Ithaca Beer Company‘s Flower Power IPA, so we indulged in a growler of this tasty swill.

nyc restaurant, west village, high heat nyc, burgers nyc, ithaca beer company

Appetizer: asparagus with tom-toms and parmesan.

It’s not easy for my man to resist an asparagus dish on a menu, let alone a deliciously cheese-covered asparagus dish as this. This was a tasty addition to one of the tastier burgers I have had in this city:

This may be the best burger I’ve had in NYC.

The meat was well seasoned and cooked to perfection and the bun was crunchy but soft. It was served with their own B&B pickles, lettuce, tomato, onions and cheese. Since I’m a woman who loves her side dishes, I was enchanted to learn the french fry options were unique and plentiful. We opted to share two orders: one parmesan and herb, the other garlic oil — both were so good I required no condiments.

If you find yourself in Greenwich Village feeling carnivorous (or not! They have a veggie burger :-D), I highly recommend a stop by this great spot! They have pizza, too, so they’ve really covered the “goes-with-beer” foods to perfection. Has anyone tried the pizza? Is it worth a second trip?