The long-awaited 5-24: Meat-Filled Crêpes. I finally solved my ingredient issues and it was crêpe-time. The only thing is…I’ve never done this before.
Confession time: In all of my time cooking (which is most of my life), I have NEVER made crêpes. I have made many pancakes (as you could imagine), but never a crêpe. This was a first for me and as you will see, I learned many lessons from this attempt.
Recipe card. As I said, I’ve never attempted crêpes, and I doubt my mother would have cooked this (she’s not a fan of red meat), so I think this one is untested.
Note that this recipe contains three components: the crêpes themselves, the meat filling, and the cheese sauce. The meat filling and crêpes could be made in advance, but the sauce probably needs to be made right before you cook it (as the bottom note suggests).
Ingredients–the first time. See, the first time I attempted this recipe (a few days ago, when I made 3-1: Sweet Potato Vichyssoise), it didn’t go well and I had to stop halfway through. In the interest of true documentation, I’ve chosen to include the original failed effort along with the subsequent completion.
Substitutions were my downfall on the first attempt. I tried to use coconut flour instead of all-purpose flour, thinking that the two would equate–they DO NOT. I also subbed coconut milk for regular milk, although that substitution tends to work out much better–when the milk is fresh. Watch to make sure that it hasn’t gone bad–we found out later after a few nasty cups of coffee that it had.
A bit out of order–I start with cooking the meat filling. This is more meat than what was called for–I planned to make extra for snacking/lunches.
Added in the veggies & seasoning. I chose to make the meat filling first so that I could take a bit more time to practice the crêpes, knowing that the meat was ready to go when I got the hang of it.
I mix up the crêpe ingredients–seems too thick, but I have no reference to go off of, so I go with it. The recipe card is really vague about how to make crêpes, so I consulted a few other “how to make crêpes” articles online. All coconut flour ones seem to be mostly eggs (“Paleo”), and not quite what I was looking for with this recipe.
Um, I’m no crêpe expert, but that don’t look right.
I had no regular flour (result of a brief flirtation with Paleo/gluten free diets that didn’t quite stick) at the moment, so everything gets put on hold until I go to the market for flour and new milk. Meat filling goes in a Pyrex and into the fridge.
Fast-forward a few days. New ingredients are purchased, and we’re ready for crêpe attempt #2. No particular reason for almond/coconut blend milk, the market just didn’t have any other coconut-ish milk besides this one and we like that better for coffee/baking/drinking than almond.
Batter comes out much thinner, and rolls around on the pan much better than the coconut disaster.
…but I’m still no expert. I screwed up quite a few before I got it down, but I eventually got the hang of it.
Look at that nice-looking crêpe. It was the best of the bunch…which ended up being quite a small bunch. Good thing we ate some of the meat filling over the few days before we got new ingredients.
Cheese sauce was also being made during crêpe production.
Paprika added while it’s on the stove–I chose to add smoked paprika because I like to live dangerously. Also, my nails look nice.
Crêpes being filled. I only was able to produce 4 relatively large crêpes, as opposed to the 12 suggested by the card. Either I made them too large, screwed too many up, or didn’t make enough batter. I have no idea. But there’s only two of us, and you can only eat so many crêpes, so it’s probably for the best.
ACTION SHOT. It looks a lot like boxed mac & cheese sauce, and kind of tastes like that, although with a strong flavor of white wine. That seemed to mellow out as it cooked, though.
Parmesan sprinkled on top. They look more like enchiladas instead of crêpes. I suppose it’s like French enchiladas. Frenchiladas. 😉
When they came out of the oven 10 minutes later. If I did it again, I’d go with the broiler rather than the oven at 400 degrees, I think it’d give you a nicer brown on top. I know that was noted on the card, but I didn’t think about it until it was already almost done, and I was hungry.
The final product. I put a little cracked black pepper on top for my own tastes. Looks either like an enchilada or an omelette. Either way, it was pretty good, and definitely worth the wait.
Grade: A
