Monday, April 14, 2003

Crepes, Day Two: Timbale de Crepes. Poor Eric.  The first thing he said this morning was, “Oh God.  Is it a weekday?”  After three days spent in the Milwaukee convention center, I guess the last thing you need is a weekday.  (­And I didn’t even get to Kopp’s – sorry, Pinky…Eric.)  He got home around noon on Sunday and was pretty much useless for the rest of the day, which is okay because so was I.  Our money situation being particularly dire, we decided to hold off one more day on the next leg of lamb recipe.  Next and next to last, I should mention, which would be great for us monetarily if the lamb weren’t followed upon immediately by the veal roasts.  But let us not dwell on that which we cannot change.  For tonight, Timbale de Crepes. I started at around six-thirty, making the crepes with batter leftover from Friday, along with a bit more that I’d made that afternoon.  JC wanted me to make ten crepes 6 ½ - 7 inches in diameter, and twelve crepes 6 inches in diameter.  Oh, no problem Julia, I’ll just pull out my 6-inch and 6 ½ -inch omelette pans, you know I have the whole set -- 3 to 12 inches, in quarter-inch increments.  Vital for any serious gourmand.  Whatever.  I got down my small skillet, rubbed it with the strip of bacon, heated it up.  The first crepe was, inevitably, fucked.  Stuck like glue to the pan.  This was to be expected.  I cleaned it out, started again.  The second wound up being stuck on too, which made me a little nervous.  I cleaned it out again, and this time sprayed it with some Pam to give it a kick start.  That did the trick.  After that, the crepes were no problem.  Though making 22 of them does take some time.  In an effort to be obedient to Julia, I was trying to go by the dimensions she called for.  But with the small ones, particularly, it was tricky, I had to tilt the pan around with extreme care so it would make this little disc in the middle of the pan that didn’t reach all the way to the edges.  Inevitably stray rivulets rebelled, but for the most part, I could chop those bits off and wind up with a vaguely round, vaguely six-inch crepe. None of which mattered in the end, since these measurements were calculated to precisely fit the “1 ½ - quart cylindrical mold, preferably a charlotte, about 3 ½ inches high and 6 ¼ inches in diameter” that Julia asks this mold be made up in.  As some of you may recall, my cylindrical mold, which never was a charlotte in first place, is now not a cylindrical mold at all, but rather a few shards of porcelain on some barge somewhere enroute to the landfill from the trash can in Lower Manhattan where I deposited it after smashing it on the sidewalk.  So I used a sauce pan which was not, you may be dismayed to discover, just exactly 6 ¼ inches in diameter, nor 3 ½ inches high.  We’d have to make do with what we had. After I’d finished making the crepes, which took about an hour, I made up the two fillings I was going to layer with the crepes – Fondue au Gruyere (Cream Filling with Swiss Cheese), and the same with a garlic and wine flavoring.  These were the first two of the crepe filling recipes, but it was pretty silly to layer the Timbale de Crepes with alternating layers of these, since they look and taste pretty much exactly the same.  But oh well. For the Fondue au Gruyere, make a roux with 2 ½ tablespoons butter and 3 tablespoons flour.  Mix in a cup and a half boiling milk, season with salt, pepper, cayenne, and nutmeg if you like that kind of thing.  Boil for a minute; remove from heat and beat in an egg.  Beat in a cup of mixed swiss and parmesan cheese, then two tablespoons of butter.  For the variation with the garlic and wine flavoring, start by sautéing minced shallots and garlic with a bit of butter.  Pour in half a cup of vermouth and boil until reduced by half.  Use that quarter cup to replace a quarter cup of the milk.  I fucked this up by, in an effort to try and save pots, pouring the milk directly into the pan with the cooked-down vermouth.  When I brought the milk to a boil, it turned into this really scary curdled looking stuff.  But I beat it into the roux anyway, and with enough beating it turned out looking okay – kind of gluey and oddly almost glittery, but okay.  Tasted pretty much exactly like the plain Fondue au Gruyere.  I turned the oven on to 350° and put a kettle of water on to boil.  I cut the large crepes in half and lined the sides of the sauce pan with them.  They didn’t really want to stay there, but I made them, for the most part.  I put one of the smaller crepes in the bottom of the pan, and spread it with one of the fillings.  Laid on another crepe and spread it with the other filling.  And so on, until either the crepes or the fillings ran out.  In my case, it was the fillings.  I ended with a filling layer, folded the edges of the big crepes over it, then put one last small crepe on top.  Stuck it in a roasting pan into which I poured some boiling water.  Stuck it in the oven.  Set the timer for half an hour. And, apparently, turned off the oven. I came back into the kitchen when the timer went off to discover the oven, and the Timbale de Crepes, stone cold. I had so been looking forward to eating before ten-o’clock at night.  I threw a minor fit here, during which I threw only oven mitts, though a wine glass was looking tempting for a minute.  I turned the oven back on. Timbale de Crepes, when finally cooked, are quite nice.  They’re like French enchiladas, or lasagna maybe.  All these tiny pancake and cheese layers.  Very pretty.  I had neglected to make a sauce to go on top of this, and it was perfectly delicious without it, but I could have made a tomato sauce, that would have been very good.  That and/or a different second filling, perhaps the next one that has ham in it.  But Timbales de Crepes, I love you just the way you are. So, I’ve embarked on a teeth-bleaching regimen.  This morning was my fourth time to do it, and the first time I managed not to drool all over myself like a rabid dog.  I’m choosing to look at that as a positive sign for the day.   7:40:20 AM    comment []