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I think black beans, also called turtle beans when you buy them dry, are om of the best tasting beans. Of course, they are synonymous with Cuban cooking and Southwestern cuisine. Bean pancakes, made from leftover beans, are part of old-fashioned home cooking, from the days when every kitchen had its daily pot of beans bubbling on the back of the stove. Given how common they once were, I was surprised at how hard it was to find a recipe for bean pancakes.
Makes twelve 4-inch pancakes
| 1 | clove garlic, minced |
| 1 | bunch green onions, white part and 1 inch of the green part, minced |
| 1 | tablespoon olive oil |
| 2⅓ | cups drained canned black beans, divided |
| 1 | pickled jalapeño chile, minced |
| 1 | teaspoon red chili powder |
| ½ | teaspoon cumin seeds, toasted in a dry skillet and crushed in a mortar |
| ¾ | cup cooked brown rice or steamed barley, at room temperature |
| 2 to 3 |
tablespoons fresh snipped cilantro |
| 1 | cup yellow cornmeal, for coating |
| About ¼ cup olive oil, for frying | |
| ½ | cup regular, reduced-fat, or imitation sour cream, for garnish |
| Salsa, for topping |
Traveling in France decades ago was the first time I was introduced to crêpes (pronounced crep as in yep, rather than crayp). We often went to crêpe houses for dinner. There were pâte, cornichons, and French baguette pieces as appetizers; a main dish crêpe that was as big around as the oversized dinner plate it was served on and was filled with a savory filling, such as ratatouille, or ham and Emmenthaler cheese; and then a sugar-crusted sweet dessert crêpe, available liberally doused with brandy and flamed at the table, with coffee to finish. On my jaunts to the local l’épicerie, a convenience store often not larger than a big closet packed with nice food, sort of a gourmet 7-11, as I handed my money over the counter for my daily yogurt, there would be flat piles of ready-made crêpes off to the side of the cash register wrapped in plastic wrap, ready to be taken home and filled.
Back in the states, I indulged my love of this delicate pancake at crêperies like the Magic Pan, or at the house of a friend who had gone to school in France. I was ecstatic to be invited to a brunch where my hostess had made homemade blintzes, a Jewish crêpetype specialty, which she served with sour cream and blueberry preserves. Except for an occasional crêpe suzette, the showstopping orange-liqueur dessert crêpe that is flambéed tableside, on the menu of upscale old-style Continental restaurants, I found little trace of the food that is used much like homemade noodles and is very much loved in France. I craved the thin pancake filled with vegetables and topped with a creamy sauce. So 1 had to experiment on my own.
Crêpes comes from the word crispus, or curly or wavy, probably a reference to how the edges of a cooked crêpe look. In Hungary, crêpes are called palacsintas and are served in homes as well as restaurants; they are known as crespelle in Italy. Along with other types of pancakes, they are economical as well as elegant, a testament to the ability of European cooks to make a simple food a masterpiece of ingenuity as well as taste. It is said that crêpes are “the French cook’s way to transform Sunday’s roast chicken or ham into Monday’s supper.” No matter what filling you make, it must be moistened slightly with some sauce, melted butter, or soft cheese, and all the ingredients must harmonize with each other.
Crêpes can be sweet or savory, with sweet crêpes, crêpes sucress, including a bit of sugar, extra egg yolks, and a dash of brandy to make the batter a bit richer. The most famous crêpe desserts are crêpes bathed in suzette sauce, prepared in a chafing dish, and walnut crêpes, served in a pool of warm chocolate sauce, a dish that originated at Gundel’s restaurant in Budapest, Hungary. There are many versions of each.
Crêpes are rich in milk and eggs, making them more protein-rich than starchy, but stock or beer can be substituted for the milk. Since they are so flexible, crêpes can be folded into halves or fourths, or rolled like a fat cigar into many different shapes around their filling, giving this humble pancake many different guises, from an appetizer bite to an Italian cannelloni casserole or gâteau, which is also called a crêpe cake, when individual pancakes are stacked one on top of another with moist fillings in between and served in wedges like a cake. A gâteau is a vegetarian’s delight. At a wedding buffet I sampled a gâteau made with Gruyère and a béchamel sauce that was a solid 8 inches high, and delightfully filling as an entrée.
The most famous appetizer is the “beggar’s purse,” a 5-inch crêpe with a spoonful of crème frâiche and dab of caviar in the center, the edges gathered up to form a miniature bundle. A length of blanched chive or green onion is used to “tie” the pleated top. German crêpes, called pfannkuchen, are rolled up and cut into strips, placed into soup bowls, and served with clear hot consommé, a beautiful first course. A cross between American pancakes and the crêpe are tiny Russian and Scandinavian blini, often made with a bit of yeast and washed down with glasses of aquavit or vodka, and Swedish pancakes, plàttar, both of which can be made in a special pan with shallow, small indentations for creating perfectly formed rounds (see [>]).
Crêpe batters showcase different flours beautifully, providing a perfect venue for their unique flavors. Although flours like whole wheat, chestnut, and garbanzo may be variations on the basic crêpe, the most famous is the hearty, oversized buckwheat crêpe called krampouz, which are native to the coast of Brittany, where they are street food and eaten dripping with butter or wrapped around a sausage.
Some batter recipes will have more liquid than flour, making a most delicate crêpe, but the standard is a 1-to-1 ratio of liquid to flour; the sturdiness of this crêpe is essential if you want to use it for a thick filling, such as for cannelloni or manicotti. All crêpe batters and the related pancakes can be prepared in advance, then filled and reheated. This is not true of regular pancakes; they must be eaten right off the griddle.
Specialty kitchen shops like Williams-Sonoma offer French steel crêpe pans at reasonable prices, often in pairs so you can have an assembly line of sorts, just like in restaurants (experienced crêpe makers bake on up to six pans at once), to make 6- to 7-inch crêpes efficiently. A crêpe pan is a flat pan with shallow, angled sides and a long, tilted handle, designed in the 1600s especially for the essential action of swirling the batter and turning the crêpe over. Dedicated crêpe makers use these pans only for making crêpes, nothing else. An ordinary black cast-iron skillet or nonstick sauté pan works just as well, but the pan must be heavy-weight, since the heat will be high and the pan must distribute it evenly. I generally use an 8- to 10-inch omelette pan with sloping sides, which I bought at a restaurant supply store; with a silverstone coating it requires minimal buttering. Any size pan from 6 to 8 inches to 12 to 20 inches in diameter, depending on the size of the crêpe you want to make, will do, but remember that you have to be able to lift the pan to turn the crêpe. Many small crêpes will obviously take longer to make than larger crêpes, and will yield more crêpes per batch of batter. The larger the crêpe, the easier it is to tear it during the turning.
There are so many recipes for making and filling crêpes. I have included my favorites here, and fillings for them. All of the crêpe batters are cooked in exactly the same manner. If you make smaller crêpes, use 2 to 3 tablespoons of batter in a 6- to 7-inch pan, which yields about 20 crêpes per recipe; if you want big 9- to 10-inch crêpes, use ½ to ¾ cup batter and a 10- to 12-inch pan, which yields about 10 crêpes per recipe. Dinner crêpes are usually made in the larger size, and dessert, appetizer, and cannelloni crêpes are made in the smaller size. The recipe for Classic Crêpes, the first recipe in this section, gives the most detailed instructions for cooking crêpes.
If you are not going to use the crêpes you have made within a few hours, they should be refrigerated or frozen. Wrap the cooled crêpes in plastic or slip them into a self-sealing plastic bag and refrigerate them for up to 3 days, or freeze in plastic freezer bags for up to 1 month. Wrap the crêpes in stacks of as many as you will use at one time. Let refrigerated crêpes stand at room temperature for 1 hour before filling them so they won’t tear as you separate them. If they have been frozen, the crêpes must be thawed in the refrigerator or on the kitchen counter and should be brought back to room temperature before they are separated, to avoid tearing. A package of 6 crêpes takes only 20 to 30 minutes to defrost. Delicate crêpes can be stacked with some waxed paper in between to keep them perfect. To reheat them, remove the waxed paper, wrap your stack in foil, and place it in a 325°F oven for 15 minutes. Warmed crêpes separate the easiest. You will need to warm the premade crêpes in this manner if you are going to fill them just before serving. You can also fill room-temperature crêpes if you are going to warm them in the oven after filling them.
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