Simple Crepes

Crêpes! Whether wrapped with peaches and yoghurt for breakfast, baked with bacon and spinach and feta for lunch, stacked with roasted vegetables and cheese for dinner, smothered with raspberries and chocolate for dessert, or doused with cheddar and ham for an amazing post-bar snack, crepes are, in a word, amazing. How can you not love a food that’s so versatile and simple to make?

As you can tell, I’ve been getting “into” crepes recently. I’m sure I’m making them all wrong in comparison to what they would do in France—or heck, even at the beloved Cafe Crêpe in Vancouver—it looks like there’s a whole science behind making the perfect crepe. But they’re quick, simple, even classy, and I love that they fit into the dinner genre of “I have nothing good in my fridge except for some veggies and eggs,” previously populated only by omelettes and frittatas. I like omelettes and frittatas, but they don’t keep well the next day if there’s leftovers, and they can get a bit repetitive. Anyway, for your peace of mind, my fiancé and roommate, who have travelled France, find nothing wrong with my crêpes. So rest assured I’m not leading you terribly astray from the real thing.

Coming soon is a great recipe for a roasted vegetable crêpe cake! Which is So. Darn. Good. Maybe it’s all the cheese…

Also, sorry for the infrequent posts this last month. Our recent move has left us without internet. Hopefully this is getting fixed tomorrow and hopefully I’ll be able to keep updating regularly from now on. I have a few great recipes stored up, but have also been enjoying not compulsively taking photos of every bite that goes into my mouth too.

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Edited: March 24th, 2011

The Easiest White Sauce

This measuring cup is amazing. It measures standard volumes and indicates volumes which are equivalent to the weights of commonly used ingredients. So useful!

Occasionally one is passed on a bit of cooking wisdom which makes a huge difference in your every day abilities to tackle recipes. This was one such piece of knowledge that Luke’s mum, Kerrie, imparted to me. It was while we were in the process of preparing lasagna for a dinner party of 15—during which she and a family friend regaled me with the story of how they had once made 400 lasagnas in one day. Seriously. 400 lasagnas.

Well, once I peeled my jaw from the floor, I started taking notes! Kerrie’s method (which was in turn passed to her from a friend who had once cooked for the army) for making white sauce is so darn easy, not to mention successful, than any other way I’d ever tried to make it. My white sauce making abilities were so dismal that I’m pretty sure I’d never made a proper one—they were always runny, lumpy, or thick and rubbery no matter what I did. My mum has probably shown me a thousand times how to make a proper white sauce, and I’m sure that every other cook even mildly worth their salt also knows how to make them, plus all the fancy French words.

Point is, if I didn’t know how to do it, there’s a good chance the rest of the world also doesn’t know! So here’s an easy three-step guide to a simple white sauce. Step four is for making it fancy!

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Edited: June 10th, 2010