Low fat Crepes...Bon Appetit!

The mention of crepes makes me drool. I think of all the cream, all the butter, IHOP and other such gooey images creep into my head. Creeping crepes? :D Sorry, I couldn't resist that alliterative joke. However bad it was. So, ya, getting back to crepes. A and I love crepes. Every time I order a crepe at a restaurant, I usually tell myself that I'm more of a savory crepe person and I cannot handle all the cream and the syrupy sweet crepes. But then, once I eat the savory crepes and start people-watching and gossiping about random people in the restaurant, I realize everyone else has a sweet crepe and that I need dessert to round off the meal. So, I end up ordering a sweet crepe. Now, you know why I have to be on a diet? Sigh.

Now, obviously, you didn't come here to read about my fascination with dessert and about how I plot to make sure I get the best of both crepes. We had crepes for dinner today. We made crepes because we wanted to send it along to A.W.E.D - France event. Ya, we are like that :P

While I sulked that we didn't have berries, so there couldn't be crepes, A, the patient, the calm and the experimental one between the both of us tried a savory crepe. He made a simple potato-mushroom curry or stuffing while I continued to figure out a plot in my head to have a sweet crepe. This is how he claims he rustled up the absolutely amazing crepes and the stuffing! We topped it with some barbeque sauce and it was heaven, indeed.

Ingredients

For the Crepes

2 large eggs
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup milk
1 tbsp butter (melted)
a pinch of salt

For the filling

2 medium potatoes, diced.
1/2 cup chopped french beans
8 oz mushrooms (we used canned)
1/4 cup finely chopped onions
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2tsp paprika
1/2 tsp ground thyme
1/2 tsp ground sage
red chili flakes and salt to taste

First, let's make the crepe batter since it has to 'sit' for half hour. Mix all the ingredients well in a blender. Pour it in a bowl and let sit in the refrigerator for 30 mins.

1. Heat one tbsp oil in a skillet. Add the potatoes and stir well to coat with oil. Add the onions and the mushrooms.

2. Add the remaining tbsp of oil. Stir until the onions are translucent. Then add the beans.

3. Add the spices. Cook on medium heat until potatoes are tender but they shouldn't fall apart.

4. To make the crepes, heat a non-stick skillet. When hot, pour some batter and spread it by turning the skillet to make a nice circle. Cook for about a minute, flip it and cook for another minute.

5. To assemble, put the filling on one end of the crepe and roll it. You can top it with sauce or sprinkle some other spice on top of it. Or even rub some butter to make it glisten. We didn't. Didn't I say low-fat at the top? Easy-peasy, filling and may I say, a very French meal was had ;)

But of course, I ended the meal with some leftover Rasmalai and some chocolate cookies. What did ya think? I'd not eat dessert? But then, some sweet crepes'd have been perfect no?

*stops writing, wanders into kitchen thinking fruit instead of sweet crepe*

*After 5 minutes, comes out with a plate :D *

Just before hitting 'publish,' this is what I turned up with ;)

Banana Muffins!

As I was posting my Thai Green Curry recipe, I could smell the rotting bananas on the dining table. Bananas have a strong smell and taste and I wanted to get rid of them somehow. I love bananas. They always bring back one memory for me. Of my paternal grandfather who is no more. From the time I was a baby, he fed me bananas :) We had this huge house in the center of the city. My grandfather would worship the Gods and his mother's photo(!) every morning and serve juice and bananas to all the kids around the area. Some of these kids were street urchins. In fact, my sisters and I were asked to serve juice and hand out bananas to these kids. After this ritual, he'd go on to dress up and leave home for work. When he came back for lunch, irrespective of whether I'd eaten or not, he'd feed me bananas. He'd make sure I ate them. He'd stuff them in my mouth and I loved them! These bananas were generally the over-ripe ones, with the black spots on the bananas :) I still love them that way. I treasure this particular memory of mine with him. I feel proud to date that I ate these almost rotten bananas while the same ritual with my ever-particular sis turned out to be a failure ;) I was proud that I was closer to my Granddad this way. Frankly, I no longer remember him that well. Except for very ripe bananas, chillies in his food (which makes me tolerant to very spicy food), the flowers he used to bring, so all of us could tie it up for God the next day, his generosity with those street kids, him making me write all the words I knew with all the letters in the alphabet. Aaah, memories... So, this banana muffin post really goes to my Granddad. Thank you, Thatha :)

Note: This recipe was adapted from a Food Network recipe. I did not adapt too much though ;) I'm not a great baker and wanted to be careful. I hate measuring stuff, so I usually bake with what I have in hand. It comes out quite well, though not perfect. This time, they were perfect. Patience pays, I've learned :) I added more vanilla essence, omitted the nuts because I did not have any and added more bananas and used a little less oil than recommended.

Of course, it helped that I bought new muffin trays and was dying to try them ;) Also, the batter was a lot for 12 muffins, so I also filled up the new RED (see! I told you about my obsession with colour) ramekin I bought with this batter and popped it into the oven! So what if ramekins are not used for banana cakes/muffins ;) We are all trying to be different no? Also, for the batter that I used in the ramekin, I topped it with a crumbly mixture of this:

3 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
3 tbsp butter

Mix these well, make sure its crumbly. Make sure that the butter is soft.

(all this done in a hurry since I suddenly saw this bit from Ina Garten's show on Food Network on TV then :P She did this for a blueberry crumb cake. The impatient me, sigh! I did this in the last minute. Almost put the ramekin in, sighed, washed my hands, came out to the drawing room, saw the show, went back into the kitchen, took out the ramekin, and did this topping. Phew!)

All the impatience created these muffins and I was done with the whole thing including cleaning (and eating while clicking as you can see!) in an hour :) I do not see anything wrong with these results. Neither did A, for whom it was a surprise evening snack. Whaddya think?

P.S. - We bought new bakeware for DIRT CHEAP. So, this blog is going to see a flurry of baked food :D Yay!