Little passed hors d'ouvres involving crepes?

[Jenise]

Anyone had such a thing? I haven't, but I'm looking for a way to put some very French into a big French dinner. Gougeres will be featured, but we need more, something that will take a stuffing, maybe a lobster salad. Can't be too messy, needs to be hand-food.

Oh wait, I take it back. I did once make crepes that I stuffed with a smoked salmon spread--they rolled up, they stayed shut, and I cut them in oh, two inch lengths. They stood up like pipes on the serving tray--that would actually work quite well, in fact.

When we make fresh sturgeon caviar we make 6 " crepes, fold them in half then form them into a cone into which the caviar is spooned. THey look great layered and fanned out on a platter for a large crowd. For smaller #'s I have conical vodka glasses into which I put a single crepe which when removed can then be filled with ice cold vodka. Perfect for the traditional Russian toast, vodka shot then caviar bite. Good for two bites or one large mouthfull
Larger 9" crepes can be cut in half become problematic for the filling oozing out the bottom with a bite. Usually 3 bites and messy.

Not a bread but how about stuffed endive leaves? Very French... on-deev, you know.

[Jenise]

When we make fresh sturgeon caviar we make 6 " crepes, fold them in half then form them into a cone into which the caviar is spooned. THey look great layered and fanned out on a platter for a large crowd. For smaller #'s I have conical vodka glasses into which I put a single crepe which when removed can then be filled with ice cold vodka. Perfect for the traditional Russian toast, vodka shot then caviar bite. Good for two bites or one large mouthfull
Larger 9" crepes can be cut in half become problematic for the filling oozing out the bottom with a bite. Usually 3 bites and messy.

I love that idea! Caviar and crepes and then vodka shots. VERY clever. I actually did think we might want to do something shot/up like that without a single concrete idea what that would be, so looked over the second hand market last week. At the Good Will? $1.99 ea with almost no exceptions--shot, small sherbet, cheap souvenir, grandma's crystal--what have you, all $1.99. Unfortunately I don't have the budget for that. Not for 90 servings. SIGH.

[Jenise]

Not a bread but how about stuffed endive leaves? Very French... on-deev, you know.

Good reminder. On-DEEV. Only it scares me. We planned an onDEEV appie 7-8 years ago and come almost-Christmas day, there were hardly any to be had. Don't know where they all went, but it gave me the sense that they're a seasonal GU (geographic undesirable) at that time of year.

In the vein of Christina, blinis with caviar or cream cheese and smoked salmon, could be easier than folding and stuffing. A bit of a fiddle making bite size blinis but can be done ahead.

And hey Christina, you make your own sturgeon caviar,? You are a legend.! You have sturgeon in your pond?

Jenise, if you wanted to pursue the shot glass idea, down here we can often coerce our liquor supplier to lend us glasses for an event with just breakages/losses to be paid for. Hey vodka for 90 should give you some leverage.

This is a recipe I have in my files. I don't know what a "package" of crepes is.
SEAFOOD CREPES
3 tbsp. butter
3 tbsp. flour
2 tbsp. chives
1 pkg. Crepes
Pinch of salt
1 1/3 c. milk
2 tbsp. sherry
1 lb. shrimp
1 lb. crab
Melt butter in pan. Blend flour, chives and salt in butter. Slowly add milk and sherry; cook until thick. Add crab and shrimp. Fill crepes and roll. Bake 8 to 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

Also, this one. A Galette is a large crepe to be used as a main course, but I'm sure they could be made appetizer size.
GALETTE PARISIENNE
Parisian Galette
- Prepare a batter like explained ; preheat the oven at 150C / 300F if needed.
- Grate some Swiss cheese (reckon 30 gr [1 oz +] per galette) and cut ham slices into small pieces (reckon 1 slice per galette).
- Let the ham and cheese heat in the pan like explained above and generously season with pepper when ready.
- If you wish, add some tomatoes, or add a broken egg (it will cook just a bit in the pan, this is really good !!).
- Serve on a bed of lettuce...The most classical of our Galettes !

And this for ideas:
PETITES CREPES AMUSE-GUEULES
Small Appetizer Crepes

- Prepare a batter like explained ; preheat the oven at 150C / 300F.
- Cook several miniature crepes per person in a miniature crepe pan or non-stick pan.
- Fill the crepes with French specialties like our Mediterranean stuffing: Olive tapenade, Cod brandade, anchovy cream, eggplant caviar...
- Fold the crepes in 2, display them in an oven dish and heat them for a couple minutes and serve right away. Do not heat too long, the crepes must stay soft!
TRICK : For an easy refill, cover one half of the crepe and fold the other half on it !
TRICK : For miniature crepes, you can butter the pan only every 2 or 3 crepe.

[Jenise]

Howie, those are good recipes, but the first two require forks and aren't the small passed hors d'ouvres I have a need for. The last is more of what I had in mind.

Btw, I was surprised to google "hor d'ouvres crepes" and basically find zilch.

Suggestion - instead of crepes (which are labour intensive) what about pastry puffs - like gougeres, with no sugar. Cook em then use a coarse tip piping bag to stuff the with whatever you like or if your filling has solid components that can't be piped, snick off the tops and spoon filling inside?

Might be less total work than crepes.

[Jenise]

Suggestion - instead of crepes (which are labour intensive) what about pastry puffs - like gougeres, with no sugar. Cook em then use a coarse tip piping bag to stuff the with whatever you like or if your filling has solid components that can't be piped, snick off the tops and spoon filling inside?

Might be less total work than crepes.

We ARE doing gougeres, it's a great idea. But I need to do at least two things, so still hunting.

We ARE doing gougeres, it's a great idea. But I need to do at least two things, so still hunting.

Pipe one set of gougeres with spinach and cream cheese so they show a blob of green, and the other set with either a tapenade and cream cheese (black) or a tomato (red) spread.

Nothing wrong with having more than one of the same basic nibble - I am doing mini-bruschetti with three different toppings to go with bubbly - black olive tapenade, white bean spread and foie gras. That would make it even easier for your 'assembling' help to put together.

Pipe one set of gougeres with spinach and cream cheese so they show a blob of green, and the other set with either a tapenade and cream cheese (black) or a tomato (red) spread.

Bill, you've missed a trick here. Jenise needs fillings that are bleu, blanc, rouge!

So blue cheese, white bean and tomato?

I like the idea of the rolled up crepes with the salmon stuffing. That would be marginally red. You could do a blue cheese spread in some others and.....something white in some others.

I think the idea of you Americans doing homage to the British flag with red white and blue canapes is darned nice!

Blue white red is not the same as red white blue, Mr. Dyslexia.

I like the idea of the rolled up crepes with the salmon stuffing. That would be marginally red. You could do a blue cheese spread in some others and.....something white in some others.

Hm. Jenise, what do you think of food coloring in the crepe batter?

[Jenise]

I like the idea of the rolled up crepes with the salmon stuffing. That would be marginally red. You could do a blue cheese spread in some others and.....something white in some others.

Hm. Jenise, what do you think of food coloring in the crepe batter?

No. No. No.

I like the idea of the rolled up crepes with the salmon stuffing. That would be marginally red. You could do a blue cheese spread in some others and.....something white in some others.

Hm. Jenise, what do you think of food coloring in the crepe batter?

No. No. No.

That's non, non, non.

I prefer to hear oui, oui, oui myself, but that's another matter.

On dyes see http://pioneerthinking.com/health-synth ... eadly-dyes

While poisoning children's parties might be considered a worthy activity per se, I prefer not to sully my body with such chemicals. I didn't know that MCPukies used cheese with Yellow #5 and #6 to make the cheese look brighter. Hopefully that is old news as even Kraft has switched to traditional annato etc. in their Krap...er, Kraft Dinner.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/1 ... range-glow

Pushing the mini crepes idea.....they are quite easy to fold and the cone shape holds the contents well. They can be stacked attractively on serving platters if you don't have individual glasses. Another filling is Russian eggplant caviar- baklazhannaya ikra- quite Provencal with some tweaking and if dry enough would not make the crepes soggy. I would change the crepe mix adding finely minced onion or onion juice and minced herbs, even strategically placed whole parsley leaves to "show" on the served face
side. That might be too putzy but assembly line production works well for soemthing like this and I am always surprised how well crepes maintain for do ahead preps.
Perhaps an interesting smoked fish salad or deconstructed mini Nicoise filling. Not a fan of plastic serving ware but I've used it when quantity couldn't be matched otherwise. I've used plastic champagne flutes for 40 cents each for panna cotta and tiramisu for benefit cooking.
I would just love to be a sous chef on something like this. I find the planning and organizing most enjoyable.

[Jenise]

So I had an idea yesterday. I committed to taking something-lobster for an appie to Thanksgiving dinner, so was asking myself about how to make a classy riff on a lobster roll. That led to me remembering that celery is a common ingredient, which I think makes it almost TOO common, and one thought led to another and I came up with: crepes stuffed with lobster and celery root remoulade. The celery root remoulade would have a more sophisticated and decidedly French flavor and provide texture to the salad/crepe stuffing. Going to work on this, perhaps this afternoon.

The celery root remoulade would have a more sophisticated and decidedly French flavor and provide texture to the salad/crepe stuffing.

And, of course, no one who eats celery remoulade would even dream that it might be Jenise's fancy tartar sauce. No, not one.

When it can percolate long enough the ideas will be ready . Wonderful !!