Crepes and Beer Pairing

By Greg B. Crepes are among some of the simplest foods to prepare, ingredient wise but are fairly complicated to do well.  Below I’m going to take you through my crepe recipe, which I think turn out pretty well as a dessert crepe (but the recipe can be modified to suit the food you want to eat).  I know this may offend some of the people who eat very refined cuisine here, but a crepe is really a versatile French tortilla since both have the same mission: provide an easy and delicious vehicle for other food into the mouth!

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1 1/3 cup of milk… I like whole milk for this
• 1/2 cup water or less, depending on how thick you like it
• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 5 tablespoons butter (real butter please, no margarine!)
• pinch of salt
• For Dessert Crepes: 1/2 cup sugar, 2 tablespoons vanilla

So this recipe is simple, mix all ingredients thoroughly.  I don’t care how you do it, whisk it, blend it, whatever, just make sure it’s very well mixed!  Then let it sit, preferably in the refrigerator for about an hour.  This allows any gas in the mixture to bubble out as well as for it to thicken a bit.  The thicker this becomes, the thicker your crepes will be, so I recommend a thicker batter for a beginner and as you get better at making these, get thinner and thinner.

Heat a pan, I use a small frying pan, and use butter to coat the inside of the pan.  Now, be prepared, you’re probably going to use an entire stick of butter in making these crepes, so, just have one handy.  Get the pan hot, but not really hot, as you can easily burn the crepes… this will require some experience, there’s no getting around that.  So butter the pan, warm it up, and I like to pick up the pan, tilt it at an angle and pour batter on the higher end.  Let that run down the pan, swirl it around until you coat the entire bottom just barely, and replace on the heat.  It will cook very quickly, a matter of minutes to seconds depending on heat and thickness of batter!  Flip it, let cook a few more seconds, maybe up to a minute more, then remove from heat.  Don’t worry, the first one always looks retarded as you need to adjust the heat to match your skills and the way the batter is working that day.

So re-butter that pan, and repeat!  Do this until all the batter is done  and voila!  Crepes!  You can put these  in a bag and freeze or store them in the refrigerator until necessary. But now that you have your crepes, don’t you want to know what goes in them?

Nutella.  Nothing beats Nutella for a filling for the crepes.   The hazelenutty goodness is excellent, but you will want something to cut it.  I recommend making a little fruit spread yourself.  Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, etc, these all make wonderful additions to the crepes with nutella.  In my case, I used a mixture of raspberries and blackberries in a pan with some additional sugar and simmered it until thick, put this into a container and it went into the fridge overnight.  The tartness of these berries, mixed with the creamy-nutty-chocolatey-ness of the Nutella and the slightly sweet, vanilla taste in the crepes were excellent.  Now if only I had something to pair it with….

Ah yes, my new favorite stout, the Weyerbacher Old Heathen!  Man does this beer pair well with desserts as well was stand up by itself!  The chocolate malts on the nose and taste, the full bodied malty texture of the beer go really really well with these crepes.  I have to say that in the morning, I’d prefer and recommend a good espresso to pair with this, but anytime after that, definitely this beer.

And there you have it, a way to prepare a very delicious dessert potentially in advance of having guests over, with very minimal effort.  So please, go out and experiment with these crepes.  If you leave out the sugar, you can make savory crepes by adding spices to the batter, and serving them with meals of chicken or pork or beef, really the options are only up to you, the chef.  Enjoy them, and please report back with suggestions and comments on your creative ideas and uses for crepes!