Thinking about dinner today, my initial plan was another round of pizza research. However, eating another pizza didn't sound that fun, so when someone mentioned crepes, I thought, "yeah! I haven't made those since we shifted house in April."
Made a mental list for the grocery store and then thought, "gee, I am not too enthusiastic about more chocolate/strawberry and ham/cheese crepes." Then Ling's mom said something about having nice seafood crepes in Paris my interest was piqued. Then I decided a nice carmelized apple would do for dessert. I ended up doing 4x more than I expected when I woke up today. Thanks Julia Child.....
For the seafood crepe, I didn't really have a recipe, so I picked around and decided a savory crepe filled with some seafood and a bechamel sauce, baked, would do. I bought the only seafood I like: some fresh crab leg and scallops. No stinky prawns or lobster.
Bechamel sauce requires a roux and a nice white vegetable stock I had to prepare first. I made the typical crepe batter, but unfortunately forgot I should double the recipe. I really wanted to avoid turning my seafood into either disintegrated pulp or hard rubber bullets so I checked around different cooking methods and figured that gently poaching the seafood in a stock made of vermouth and some root/stalk vegetables with herbs would do the most nimble job. I was right. This time I didn't foul the roux and the bechamel sauce came out perfectly. Everything was already vaguely warm when I rolled the crepes and so I only baked them in the oven for 10-15 minutes at relatively low 190C. Really nice result.
Dessert was essentially a stack of dessert crepes layered with homemade apple-sauce and almond slivers, then baked in the oven. I prepared too much apple and not enough crepe batter, so I ended up with fewer, but thicker layers. It was still quite good. I used a medley of apples for the rough sauce, red delicious, gala, and granny smith and kept the consistency fairly chunky. I think on a re-do, I'd make more crepes, thinner, and with thinner layers of apple.
One ridiculous thing I didn't realize until the last moment was that the dessert is meant to be served with flaming rum on top to carmelized the sugar topping. The apple sauce is already infused with rum and creme, so the flavor matches, but I innocently made this dessert that turned out to be something of a tacky show-off thing. The recipe called for a half-cup of burning rum, which is too much, as I had a little gutter trough of rum burning for two minutes before i realized it was carbonizing bits of the crepes and blew it out. Ling, who doesn't drink, kept coughing as she had drew the quarter of the stack that was most rum-soaked.
On the side, still giddy from an extraordinarily effective barrista training course in Sydney, and with a larder full of really beautiful fresh beans, I made myself a double ristretto and Ling and her mom each a mocha, which they are quite fond of now. Now that my milk frothing skills are presentable, I poured it nicely such that a layer of melted cocoa layed on top of the creamy milk. Looked pro! (Used ghiradelli hot chocolate powder this time. This morning I tried to make her one, but foolishly used Hershey's cocoa powder, which just takes like baking chocolate, as there is no sugar in it. Yuck!)
Posted by Nils Blutig at November 12, 2006 09:31 PM | TrackBack