Crepes

Tonight I tried my hand at crepes, with the batter recipe taken from the dear Julia Child. Basically just a mix of flour, milk, water, eggs and a bit of butter whirled together and placed in fridge for about 30 min to allow the gluten to rest before cooking. Then you get a small nonstick skillet fairly hot, so "water dances on surface", which is such a perfect description of what it looks like. One of the reasons I love Julia Child is her beautiful descriptions, but also that she lets cooks know why to do what she tells them instead of just following the recipe. So anyway, after you pour the batter in, and swirl a bit and let the bottom cook, you flip it on the other side. Which finally (yay!) I was able to do just by sliding the pan out and back, doing the flip that looks so cool and efficient on TV. Got pretty good at it too, and even Kyle got into trying it. Then I just filled most of the crepes with a cream cheese/sour cream mix, some green onions, and smoked salmon. Very tasty, especially once you put just a bit of jam inside the crepe. Next time I'll have to make more just so I'll have crepes left for dessert.

I've decided that I need a bit of structure and purpose to my cooking/baking, so I've decided to be more systematic, as inspired by Julie Powell. I want to master the basic types of sauces, which I should have already done, but there hasn't been much call for thickened sauces when I usually cook. In fact, I was trying to make a sauce from the left over juice in the pan of the pot roast, and it was totally hopeless. I realized that I really have no clue how to thicken sauces, make sauces, add depth to sauces, etc. So next it's all about tackling sauces. Speaking of, here's a pic of my lovely new Dutch oven.



So I'm not sure what else to tackle besides sauces, so if anyone even reads this, a few suggestions would be nice. There are definitely a few recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking that I want to try, mainly due to the descriptions given in Julie's blog.

Plus, every Tuesday I'll be going to a Breadmaking class given by the local continuing education center. Tomorrow's my first class, hopefully enough people will register so the class can be continued and not cancelled. I think another bit of a project, mainly because of the class, will also be breadbaking and possible basic pastry/baking techniques, like making pasta or souffles.