The Crepes of Wrath

Because I haven't cooked in a couple of days, and because the weekend was upon me, and because I knew I didn't have plans and therefore had time to cook up a good meal, I decided to make something special, not just something I hadn't cooked this year, but something I'd never cooked before. So I cooked curried chicken crepes.

I found the recipe in Louise Dodd's cookbook, Cooking from the White House to the Jail House. Louise is a friend of my mother's, and Mom gave me the cook book several years ago for my birthday. Louise's book has lots of good recipes in it, such as Hello Dollies, which are to die for, and Savannah Pie, which I'll make for dinner one night when I feel like gaining another ten pounds. Not only are Louise's recipes tasty, but they're often very easy to make. At least I thought so until tonight. I had not yet made curried chicken crepes.

The recipe was a wee bit misleading. It explains how to make the curried chicken part, but at first glance I didn't think about the fact that her recipe calls for already-cooked and shredded chicken and already-made crepes. So before I could even start on her recipe, I had a lot of cooking to do.

First of all, there's something I've never quite understood: How exactly does one shred a chicken breast? Does that happen in a food processor? Should I want the chicken pieces to be chopped down to a chicken salad-looking kind of lumpy mush? Is that shredded chicken? I've never quite understood. So after I cooked my chicken breasts, I simply used a knife and fork and cut it into little pieces, cutting against the grain of the meat so that it would also come apart into those little stringy pieces it tends to fall into.

Secondly, I've never made crepes. I've always understood the general idea--they're really flat pancakes, so they cook really fast. But I've never done it. Still, I thought crepes would be a good idea because 1) my older son Davis loves crepes, which he learned how to make at his Uncle Brett's house, and 2) because of Davis's love for crepes, he received for Christmas a box of crepe mix, which he has never used, and I thought it needed to see the light of day.

Now, when I think of crepe mix, I think of dumping the powdered substance into a bowl and adding water. No, it's not that simple. Crepe mix calls for six eggs. Six eggs! I hadn't thought of that when I went to the Publix in the pouring rain to buy ingredients. And when I looked in the fridge, I found, to my dismay, only two eggs. So my heartfelt thanks to my next-door sister in-law Kelley, who happened to have four eggs in her fridge, thereby saving me another trip to the grocery store. So once I had the required number of eggs, I beat them, added the mix, added the water, beat that mixture for a while, added more water, beat that mixture to death, and it was still lumpy! So I strained the lumps out of the batter.
Finally, I got to cook the crepes.

A box of crepe mix makes about two quarts of batter. Each crepe takes about two table spoons of that batter in the pan. I had a crepe-a-palooza in my kitchen. What's more, I had to set the crepes aside until I was ready to fill them, and to keep them from sticking to each other, I had to separate them with pieces of wax paper. I never knew crepes were so high maintenance.

So after about an hour or so, I was finally ready to start Louise's recipe.

The curried chicken crepe filling includes chicken (of course) and curry (natch), but I was a little nervous about the curry. For a very good reason, I haven't eaten curry in more than forty years. I have my grandmother to thank for that. She loved curry. She adored it. She put curry in everything. Chicken salad. Deviled eggs. It wouldn't have surprised me to learn she'd put curry in her chocolate cake. She was a curry fiend. But at four years old, I wasn't the biggest curry fan in the world, and my heart always sank when I anticipated a delectable meal at Grandmother's, only to enter her house and smell that familiar, strong curry aroma. It was my signal that nothing at the meal would taste good.

So I decided upon embarking on this recipe that I would greatly reduce the amount of curry in the dish. Louise calls for 1 1/2 tablespoons of curry powder. I used a teaspoon. I thought that was just enough.

The recipe also includes apples, onions and carrots. On paper, it seems really good. And the instructions were pretty easy--until I had to add the 1 1/2 cups of chicken stock and 2 1/2 cups of milk. Then for about thirty minutes I stood at the stove, stirring constantly until the sauce came to a slow boil. S-s-s-s-l-l-l-l-o-o-o-o-w-w-w-w boil. I didn't think I'd ever see those bubbles! But the sauce finally boiled, and according to the instructions, I added the carrot and lemon juice, then covered the sauce to simmer for seven to ten minutes, during which time I made a salad.

Finally, it was time to uncover the sauce and fill those crepes. But when I took the cover off, I was dismayed to discover my milky sauce had curdled!

As soon as I saw those curds, I thought, Well, duh. When you put lemon in milk, the milk curdles. Still, I was surprised. After all, Louise said to put the lemon juice in. And I have a feeling when she puts the lemon juice in her milky sauce, her milk stays nice and creamy.

By this point I was about two hours into this venture, and my family was hungry. So I stuffed the crepes according to the recipe's instructions. Then I put the whole dish in the oven for about thirty minutes, during which time my children starting biting their nails because they were so hungry.

After all of that, what was the family's assessment? Well, Davis had a second helping, and he said he liked it after he added salt. Lawson also had a second helping, but he claimed he only liked the chicken and the crepe, not the saucy part. Stephen said he thought it was good, but it looked like a pain to make. And me? Well, I thought it was fine. Just fine. But definitely not worth the time and effort it took to prepare it.

And now I've made that meal. Time to move on.

For those of you who are curious, I'll include the recipe. Maybe your milk won't curdle.

Ingredients

1 1/2 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 apple, chopped
2 tbsp. flour
1 1/2 tbsp. curry powder
1 1/2 cups chicken stock
2 1/2 cups milk
pinch of sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1 carrot, grated
2 tbsp. lemon juice
4-6 cups chicken, shredded
Crepes

Instructions:
Heat olive oil in large skillet. Add onion and apple and saute until onion is transparent. Add flour and curry and cook one minute. Add chicken stock and milk slowly, stirring constantly. Then add sugar and salt. Bring to a slow boil, add the carrot and lemon juice and simmer covered for 7 to 10 minutes. Sauce should be on the thin side as the chicken will absorb some moisture and some will bake off. Divide the chicken among the crepes, cover with two tablespoons of sauce and roll up. Place crepes in a buttered baking dish and spoon over the rest of the sauce. Bake uncovered at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until bubbling.