FINAL REPORT

Healthy cooking project

 BEER CREPES

1- Why the recipe is healthy?

Our project will focus on how to make Crepes is a very popular and delicious dish, It’s a easy and fast dish, for this reason is known anywhere in the world.

It’s possible to make crepes with different ingredients, all depends on what people want to taste.

Crepes are very healthy because It’s ingredients are 100% natural, It’s a matter of having original ideas in order to combine a wheat flour tortilla with different things like fruits, vegetables, fresh meat among other ingredients.

2-Cultural and practical advantages of the recipe.

This recipe has advantages like its quick and easy way to prepare, besides, it has a cultural background that show its importance in the French traditions, where the crêpe was used in times when there wasn’t food. Another advantage since its origins,is that it has a lot of ways to prepare it, and different ingredients, like the wheat meal or the buckwheat meal.

Due to its easy preparation, its use has been generalized in a lot of countries, that is the reason why it has so many variations, and each country put some of their own traditions and culture in the ingredients, properties, texture, presentation ans other thing of the recipe. Also, it can be an alternative for eating something new in the breakfast or for eating in a fast break, it can be filled with food that you prefer and it can be accompanied with a refresh drink or with a hot drink it depends of the context.

3-Does it have a certain level of originality?

The crepe is a amazing recipe because it is easy to do, cheap and have a delicious taste, also this recipe have a interesting history; crepes are typical of Brittany in France and in Eastern Europe where it was formerly belonging to the Austro-Hungarian empire.
Actually this recipe is using in all the world as a dessert or a main course, and this can eat in any moment. For these reasons the crepe is a original recipe.

WHAT IS A CREPE?

The origin of the word 'crepe'  comes to the Frech culture, and is used to speak abouth an unleavened, flat, thin pancake of cooked dough or batter, which is used as a wrapper for another food.  The Crepe batter can be made of   milk, butter, salt, eggs, sugar, water and oil.

However, and due to that recipe has been changing through different cultures, the ingredients can vary according to the culture.

THE CREPES HISTORY

The crepes have a particular and unusual origin. The French crepes was a celebration that happened each 2nd of February, on this date, every french home  made a docen of lovely crepes and share it with the family. The meaning of this celebration was the “return of the light, the return of the spring, “the chandeleur”. Actually in French culture  is celebrated the National Crepe Day, that make reference to the tradition of offering crêpes. The belief was that if you could catch the crepe with a frying pan after tossing it in the air with your right hand and holding a gold coin in your left hand, you would become rich that year

The place where the crepes were most common was in the Britanny region in the North West of France, where they make them extremely big and paper thin. The folds of the crepes can be different too, for example on this region they were rolled in a big "cigar" or folded in four. At this time the white flour was an expensive product, reserved only for royalty that why savory crepes were traditionally made with buckweat.

As farmers became wealthier, they began to enjoy sweet white flour crepes as an after-dinner treat or with coffee for breakfast.

The crêpes were cooked on large cast-iron hot plates heated over a wood fire in a fireplace. The hot plates are now gas or electric heated.

In Paris and the South of France, crepes were essentially a dessert, served in fine restaurants, thanks to Henri Charpentier who in 1895 as a young man from the South of France, went to Monaco to work for the Paris’s Coffee with his uncle, the chef Escoffier.

One evening , the Prince of Wales requested a crepe for dessert. Henri raced to the kitchen and prepared a crepe with an orange sauce flambe. He named the Suzette in honor of the beautiful young lady who accompanied the Prince. This Crepe Suzette became the most celebrated French dessert. Chef Henry Charpentier retired in Redondo Beach where all the rich and famous sometimes months do get a table at his small restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway.

BEER CRÊPES

Jehnee Rains was a pastry chef at Chez Panisse and she asked to develop the restaurant's recipe for Crêpes Suzette. From the testing and retesting of several versions, she came up with what turned out to be the Holy Grail of sweet crêpes. She shared a few unusual tips that make these perfectly sweet crêpes stand out and one very unusual ingredient: BEER! She puts a light lager beer in her crêpe batter. The texture and lacy structure of the dessert crêpes are perfection, with much credit to this added carbonation and yeast.

Jehnee Rains is now owner and chef of Suzette, in Portland, Oregon. Her restaurant is a bit unusual  the crêpe-focused menu items get cooked within a 1940s trailer kitchen and the dining room is a converted garage. On Friday nights, there's usually an old movie projected as the diners take in the amazing crêpes and entertainment.
 (SEE NUTRITIONAL TABLE ON PORTFOLIO)

Jehnee's Top 5 Tips for Making Sweet Crêpes

1. Beer. Beer adds a slight flavor, and carbonation, keeping the crêpe batter tender and loose. This ingredient keeps the crêpes lacy, with lots of air bubbles (which Jehnee says are a good thing!) while they're cooking. The bubbles and small holes leave lovely pockets for sauces and fillings to ooze through.

2. The right pan. Jehnee suggests buying a small crêpe pan. They're not expensive but they ensure even cooking and have a great little lip for lifting the batter off the pan. If you like crêpes, this pan makes life easier. It's also nice to reserve the pan just for crêpes and care for it following the instructions, so it doesn't get dinged up and lose its nonstick perfect-crêpe surface.

3. Strain the batter. Once the batter is mixed, strain it through a fine sieve or metal strainer, to ensure there’s no lump in the batter. This may seem like an extra-fussy step.

4. Let the batter rest. Make the batter the night before, or 8 hours before is planned to make crêpes, they will be better than straight away. This resting period allows the gluten in the flour to develop and bond to the milk and eggs, and this yields a more complex flavor. This step isn't absolutely essential, but if you have the time and forethought, it is worth the trouble.

5. Heat the milk. Heating the milk to warm, not boiling, along with the butter before adding to the eggs and flour ensures a delicious batter. The warm milk/butter combination allows the butter to 'stay in suspension,' which means the fat is evenly distributed in the batter and the crêpes won't stick to the pan when the crêpes are flipped.

6. Use your hands. Jehnee uses her hands to flip the crêpes. No fancy offset spatula, silicone spoon or anything else but her little fingertips.

BEER CRÊPES

INGREDIENTS:

         2 cups warm milk

         1/4 cup melted butter

         1 and 1/4 cup flour

         1/2 teaspoon salt

         1/2 teaspoon sugar

         3 eggs

         3/4 tablespoon oil

         1/2 cup beer

LET’S COOK!

1-      In first place, you have to melt the butter                            

And heat the milk to warm, on the stove.                             

 

  2- Meanwhile, mix flour, sugar, and salt in a

 large bowl with a whisk ready.  A recommendation here is to make a mixture with the dry ingredients, pour eggs and oil mixture  and beat at medium speed .   

 

3- Slowly you have to add the melted butter and milk mixture until the mass becomes uniform in texture. Now it is necessary that you pour the mass on a fine-toothed sieve into another medium-sized bowl, pressing any lumps through with your fingers. The result of this mixture is the mass to make the crepes.

4-After the mixture is done, you have to stir in the beer, until just evenly incorporated. Set the mixture aside, covered with plastic, for 8 hours or overnight, if you can.

 5- Pour about 1/4 to 1/3 cup the mass onto a hot pan, swirling the mass to create an even surface. Add a little more mass if needed. Little holes are okay while crêpe cooks — just 2 minutes on the first side, then about 30 seconds on other side

6- Keep warm in a low temperature, at 200 degrees until serving.

7-  Add  powdered sugar, jam, fruit compote, whatever you like to this beer crêpes. Enjoy it!!