Strawberry Mango Crêpes Filler or Pancake/Waffel Topping

Yum!

Ingredients

• 1 large mango
• 2-3 handfuls of strawberries, as many as you like
• evaporated cane juice, or sugar, as much as you like

1. Quarter the strawberries, or slice them into smaller sections if they're large.
2. Cut up the mango. There's an easy way to do it here.
3. Mix fruits in a bowl with the sugar. The sugar draws moisture from the fruit, making a watery syrup--so, the more the merrier.
4. Allow the sugared fruits time to sit. About 10-15 minutes.

Options: Any fleshy, juicy fruit should work treated like this: kiwi, papaya, peaches, apricots. If you try this with anything in the genus Rubus (blackberry, dewberry, raspberry, boysenberry, salmonberry) just bruise the fruits slightly by mixing in the sugar with a blunt instrument.

Mangoes are in the Anacardiaceae, along with cashews, pistachios, sumac, and poison ivy. Strawberries are in the Rosaceae along with peaches, plums, almonds, pears, apples, quince, hawthorn, the above mentioned fruits in the genus Rubus, and, of course, the rose. I used to think that the mango might be in the Rosaceae since it is a drupe with a structure much like a peach, but the taste of the sap in the skin should have helped me catch on to the fact that it is related to sumac.

Sweet Crêpes

We miss our nice crêpes pans. They're hidden away in a garage, missing us back, I'm certain. There's nothing quite like blue steel that has never seen soap. We've been having to use a crummy fry pan coated with flaking Teflon. Yuck.

This recipe is fairly standard, and probably came from Cook's Illustrated. Maybe. There are others that include more eggs, or less milk, or no sugar. This one works well for us.

Ingredients

• 2 large eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tbsp water
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 tsp melted butter

Equipment

• a blue steel crêpes pan, well seasoned cast-iron comal, or other small no-stick pan
  
• a wooden crêpes turner (just make your own from a 3/16" x 2" x 10" piece of oak or ash)

1. Throw all the ingredients in a blender and pulse several times, then blend for about 20-30 seconds. Don't whip the eggs.
2. Alternatively, mix the liquid ingredients in a bowl then stir in the dry ingredients with a whisk.
3. Let the batter rest, covered, for an hour, or even overnight in the fridge. This allows the particles of flour to completely absorb the liquids.
4. Blend/stir the batter one last time before cooking the crêpes.
5. Heat your pan over medium heat, and wipe some butter into it with a paper towel. There should be enough butter in the batter not to need any more. If the crêpes start sticking whipe in a little more.
6. Pour one sloppy, sacrificial crêpe to get your swishing wrist in practice (you roll the pan to coat it with a thin coat of batter), and to make sure the heat is right.
7. I never measure out my batter, but a scant 1/4 cup should work.
8. Turn the crêpe once the edges begin to brown lightly by running the crêpes turner under the edges before going for the center. This is where a genuine crêpes pan will come in handy since the edges are so low.
9. Brown the other side lightly.

Options: We have yet to experiment with savory crêpes, when we do we'll post a recipe. These are great with all kinds of fillers. Lately we've been using fresh strawberries and mangoes. Homemade whipped cream is a must.

We'll hêv no more of your crêpe.