Simple Saturday Brunch

I've been making crêpes more and more recently, and had forgotten how much fun they are. For a recent Saturday brunch I made two different kinds of blintzes, folded in the pillow style rather than rolled in a tube. One has a cottage cheese filling and is topped with strawberries reduced in balsamic vinegar. The other is stuffed with wilted spinach, ricotta, ham, and topped with sour cream and cracked black pepper.

I don't have a proper crêpe pan, but I do have a skillet wide and flat enough to do the trick. If you make a dozen crêpes you'll quickly figure out what works and what doesn't, and if it's hot and dry (as it's been here in Memphis recently), you'll need to add some water along the way to make the batter thin again. Uniformity of thickness is really important, and if your pan has any curvature there's going to be a tendency to be thick in the middle and paper thin on the edges, which is still tasty but doesn't roll or fold well. There's no golden ratio of ingredients, but I've found the ones with more eggs to work better and taste better. In reality you're making something that's somewhere between a pancake and an omelette, and that soft, steamy, eggy dough tastes better when it's a little closer to the omelette side.

The wine pictured is my standard go-to sparkler when I'm out of bubbly samples: the NV Domaine Ste. Michelle Blanc de Noirs from Washington State. I've written about it so many times here that I'm not going to review it again, but will say that it's never disappointed me and went wonderfully with brunch.