Roasted fruit crepes

I do everything in phases. I find a recipe I like and I make it over and over again using different variations. I went through a crepe phase about a year ago and then suddenly moved on to bigger but not necessarily better things. My favorite crepe definitely consisted of one stuffed to the max with mushrooms and cheese. But, when I'm in a rush, slicing 4 cups of mushrooms and sauteeing them with garlic is just a little too time consuming on top of all the other preparation involved in making crepes.

Recently, on a lazy impulse, I threw a bunch of chopped fruit into a baking dish and stuck it in a hot oven for 30 minutes, until bubbling and syrupy. After letting the fruit cool on the counter for a half an hour I had a nice and perfectly sweet drizzly compote. The timing of cooking and cooling the fruit coincided perfectly with the amount of time it takes to blend up some crepe batter, let it rest in the fridge for an hour, cook the crepes and roll in the fruit.Discovering how easy it is to make a quick and delicious crepe filling has launched me back into a crepe making phase frenzy.

Lately, even when I am not feeling super lazy, I still roast fruit and roll it into a crepe. Because I also love mushroom crepes I make a few of those as well. Since roasting fruit requires no hands on time, I can still sautee some mushrooms and grate cheese with time to spare while the fruit cooks. Today, I wrote up a recipe for making 6 or 7 crepes - some of them fruit and some of them mushroom. If you are only interested in doing one or the other then simply increase the amount of fruit or mushrooms/cheese recommended below.

Making crepes is a great way to use up things that might be nearing the end of their shelf life in your kitchen, like eggs and milk. And if you are like me and have been going just a little bit crazy over the fruit at the farmers market then you might have more fruit on hand then you know what to do with. Once you roast up some plain fruit you will discover how amazing roasted fruit really is. If you roast too much fruit, stir it into some yogurt or oatmeal for a quick breakfast or eat it with ice cream for a summer dessert. No sugar, no work, no problem.

Roasted fruit crepes

Ingredients

Crepe batter (6 or 7 crepes)

1 and 1/4 cup milk

2 eggs

1 cup flour

2 tbsp melted butter

2 tsp sweetener (sugar, honey, agave etc)

1/4 tsp salt

Roasted fruit (enough for 3-4 crepes)

3 peaches

2 cups strawberries

1 cup cherries

Mushroom filling (enough for 2 - 3 crepes)

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

3 cups mushrooms (i.e. brown, shiitake, oyster etc)

3 cloves garlic minced

2 tbsp chopped herbs (thyme, rosemary or basil)

1/2 cup grated cheese (gruyere, gouda, parrano etc)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 425F.

2. Mix crepe batter by first, whisking the eggs and stirring them into the milk, Then, whisk in the flour. Mix in the melted butter, the sugar and the salt.

3. Blend the batter in a food processor for 5 seconds then cover and store the batter in the fridge for an hour.

4. Meanwhile, chop the fruit into bite sized pieces. Place them in a baking dish and bake for 35 minutes.

5. While fruit is roasting, slice the mushrooms and heat a pan to medium heat with 1 tbsp of oil.

6. Stir in the garlic and cook one minute. Raise the heat to medium high and stir in the mushrooms.

7. Cook, stirring frequently until the mushrooms start to brown. The high heat will help the water that is released from the mushrooms to evaporate.

8. Season the mushrooms with salt and stir in the herbs a couple of minutes before taking the mushrooms off of the heat and place into a bowl.

9. Heat up a large cast-iron or non-stick pan to medium heat.

10. If you are not confident in your pan's non-stick factor, add a small dab of butter to the pan once it has reached full heat.

11. Scoop about 1/3 - 1/2 a cup of batter into the pan and swirl immediately to cover the batter over the entire bottom of the pan (sometimes this is a lot more difficult in reality than it is in theory - practice helps).

12. Cook the crepe about 30 seconds to 1 minute then flip using a spatula.

13. for the fruit crepes. simple cook the crepe another 30-60 seconds then place on a large plate. Repeat for the next 2 or 3 crepes.

14. For the mushroom crepes, after cooking on one side, flip the crepe then spread about 1/2 or 1/3 of the mushrooms and grated cheese all around the crepe.

15. Slowly and carefully (multiple utensils may be required) roll the mushrooms and cheese up in the crepe and remove crepe from heat.

16. For the fruit crepes, simply scoop some of the cooled, roasted fruit onto the ready-made crepes (spreading all around the crepe) and roll.

17. Serve crepes warm with maple syrup.