Sweet Orange Crepes

What a delight to get eggs today! Eggs are so delicious, nutritious, and versatile. It seems fitting to highlight one of nature's most perfect foods in today's recipe.

Crepes are one of the easiest pancakes to make. They can be used in sweet dishes, like this recipe, or savory ones. Eat them plain, rolled, and dusted with powdered sugar; or fill them with ham and cheese or sauteed spinach and mushrooms, and fold them in half or in quarters. Dress them up with a little hollandaise or cream sauce.

Crepes make a lovely dish for breakfast, lunch, or supper. And they can turn a simple dessert, such as strawberries and whipped cream, into something elegant and special.

This recipe calls for mixing all the ingredients in a blender. Let the batter rest in the fridge for a minimum of 40 minutes. Then cook them up.

You can cook the crepes right before you use them, or in advance if you prefer. Store them in a stack, wrapped in plastic, in the fridge for a day or two. Be careful when separating stored crepes, as they are delicate and prone to tearing.

Basic Crepe Recipe:

1 C milk, preferably whole
3/4 C flour
2 eggs
2 T melted butter
1/4 t salt
additional melted butter or oil for frying

1. Place all of the ingredients (except the additional butter or oil for frying) in a blender. Cover and blend for 30-60 seconds, until well combined.

2. Refrigerate for at least 40 minutes. Batter can be kept in the fridge for up to 24 hours.

3. Heat a well-seasoned 9-inch or 10-inch skillet over medium heat. Brush a little melted butter or oil on the heating skillet. When the pan is hot, pour 1/4 C crepe batter into the center. Working quickly, lift the pan over the heat and rotate the pan until the batter has spread evenly over the bottom.

4. Return the pan to the heat and cook the crepe until it is lightly brown on the bottom. The edges should pull away from the sides of the pan. Using a spatula, flip the crepe over and cook lightly on the other side before turning out onto a plate.

5. Repeat with the remaining batter, stacking the cooked crepes on top of one another until you've used up all the batter (or until you've made as many crepes as you need).

As the pan continues to heat up, the handle may get very hot if it's made of metal. Be sure to use an oven mitt when holding and rotating the pan.

This recipe will make approximately 10, 10-inch crepes. Make your crepes smaller if you wish. Use a little less batter per crepe if you use a smaller pan.

For Sweet Orange Crepes:

I used 1 rounded Tablespoon of my homemade Satsuma Mandarin Marmalade (see recipe for January 6, 2012) per crepe. If you don't have any Satsuma Mandarin Marmalade, you can use your favorite orange marmalade or any other tasty jam.

Spread the marmalade or jam on the inside of the crepe. Roll up or fold in quarters. Garnish with orange zest and powdered sugar.

Five Farms provided this week's bounty:

From Underwood Family Farms: Broccoli, cauliflower, fennel, orange carrots, kale, bok choy, Easter radishes, escarole, iceberg lettuce, and parsley;

From Weiser Family Farms: Red Thumb potatoes and watermelon radishes;

From Sage Mountain Farm: Golden beet greens, Shiraz beets, mustard greens, and spinach;


From Jaime Farms: Hot-house Tomatoes, Persian cucumbers, yellow bell peppers; thyme, rosemary, green onions, red and brown onions, and happy eggs;

From Rancho Santa Cecilia: Satsuma mandarins.

Enjoy!

Shelley

Satsuma Mandarin Marmalade

Citrus fruit is abundant right now. Trees all over the neighborhood are heavy with ripe oranges, grapefruit, lemons and limes, as well as some of the more exotic varieties such as blood oranges, Meyer lemons, kumquats, and yuzus.

Now is the perfect time to preserve the season's bright citrus flavors by making marmalade. Marmalade is usually a softly jelled spread with pieces of peel and fruit suspended in a transparent jelly.

You can make marmalade from just about any citrus fruit and your marmalade will keep in the fridge for weeks, if not months, without canning. If you can it using a hot water bath canner, you can make a shelf-stable product that will keep for at least a year, if it doesn't get eaten up before then.

Making marmalade doesn't take long. There are just three basic steps: chopping the fruit, cooking it briefly to soften the peel, and adding the sugar and cooking it until it's done. If you don't have time to do this all at once, you can spread out the work over two or even three days.

Our Satsumas make a delicious marmalade with just three ingredients: fruit, water, and sugar. Added commercial pectin is not necessary because most citrus peels, pith, membranes, and seeds are high in pectin.

When you make your own marmalade, you can choose to cut the rind thick or thin and you can opt for a slightly higher or lower fruit to jelly ratio depending on your taste. You can make flavor combinations that you might not find at your local market. You can even add dried herbs such as rosemary, lavender, or lemon verbena.

I use a basic recipe that's essentially a 1:1:1 ratio of fruit to water to sugar. There's room for a little variation, such as reducing the sugar slightly or adding a little more liquid, but reducing the sugar too much will result in a product that will not jell.

Step 1, Chopping the Fruit: I like to leave the fruit on the peel. I simply quarter the fruit lengthwise, trim the ends and a little of the membrane from the center, and slice each quarter crosswise, capturing as much of the juice as possible. Put it all in a bowl, or better yet, a large measuring cup, if you have one.

I save the ends, center membranes, and any seeds for their juice and to put into a pectin bag (pictured below), which simply involves wrapping them in cheesecloth. The pectin bag goes into the pot during the peel-softening stage.



You can separate the pulp from the peel if you like, but that adds another step - chopping the pulp; and most of the pulp gets cooked off the peel anyway. Besides, I like the look of the fruit on the peel suspended in the jelly when I get that effect.

Once the fruit is chopped, squeeze the juice out of the saved ends and membranes before wrapping them in cheesecloth.

For a nice small batch of marmalade, chop up about 3-4 C of loosely packed fruit and juice.

Step 2, Softening the Peel: I find that Satsuma mandarin peels are pretty soft to begin with, so they don't require much softening. [This is not true of all citrus. Some will require longer cooking and perhaps even an overnight soak.] Still, I cook the Satsumas in water for about 20 minutes with the pectin bag.



Measure out your loosely packed peels and juice and place in a large, wide pot. Add the same amount of water and the pectin bag. Bring to a boil and simmer softly for 20 minutes. Remove the pectin bag when it's cool enough to handle and squeeze it out into the pot before discarding it.

Step 3, Making the Marmalade: Measure out the same amount of white granulated sugar as the fruit in Step 2 (not the fruit plus the water). Add the sugar to the pot and bring to a boil. Cook over medium heat, stirring regularly to make sure it doesn't burn, until it reaches the jell point.

The jell point is about 220 degree F at sea level. You can check this with a jelly thermometer, or you can use a lower tech jell test by placing a teaspoon of the marmalade on a plate and putting in the freezer for a minute. Take the plate out of the freezer and push in one edge of the marmalade. If it wrinkles and folds, it's at the jell point.

Turn off the marmalade and pour it into glass jars with lids. Cool to room temperature before putting it in the fridge. This recipe yields approximately 3-4, 8-ounce jars.

If you'd like to can it so that it's shelf-stable, you'll need canning jars, new canning lids, rings, a jar lifter, and a pot with a lid, a rack at the bottom, and tall enough to cover the tops of the jars with at least an inch of water. You can buy a hot water bath canner that comes with a rack or you can improvise your own if you have a big enough pot.

Fill your canning pot with enough water to cover the jars and heat to nearly a boil. Wash the canning jars well. You may want to warm up the jars before pouring the hot marmalade into them, but they do not need to be pre-sterilized. You can do this by putting the jars in your canning pot filled with hot water. Also, place the lids in a separate pot of hot, but not boiling water.

When your marmalade is done. Remove the jars from the hot water and fill them to within 1/4 inch of the top with hot marmalade. Wipe the rims of the jars well. Place lids on the jars and screw on the rings until their just tightened, not too tight. Using a jar lifter, place the jars in your canner. Bring the water to a full boil and process, covered, for 10 minutes. When done, turn off the heat and uncover the pot. Allow the jars to stay in the pot for 5-10 minutes before removing them with a jar lifter. Place them on a kitchen towel and allow them to cool before labelling and storing. The marmalade may not set completely for 8-12 hours, so be patient.

Today's bounty included:

From Underwood Family Farms: White icicle radishes, red leaf lettuce, orange carrots, fennel, broccoli, bok choy, green kale, and Brussels sprouts;

From Weiser Family Farms: Watermelon radishes, parsnips, celery root, and Romanesco cauliflower;

From Sage Mountain Farm: Arugula, Russian green kale, broccoli raab, Swiss chard, and white carrots;

And from Rancho Santa Cecilia: Satsuma mandarins.

Enjoy!

Shelley

Glacé Satsuma Mandarin Orange Segments

There's something perfectly delightful about gifts from the kitchen, and the holiday season offers many opportunities to make something wonderful and delicious for family and friends.

Today's recipe uses one of our favorite winter fruits, Satsuma mandarins, to make beautiful candied orange segments that taste like orange honey and will keep for months, if they're not eaten up before then.

Making glacé fruit takes a little time, most of which is simply allowing the fruit to soak. Whole fruit or pieces of fruit are soaked in a sugar syrup for several days until they become saturated. Each day you add a little more sugar to the syrup, increasing the concentration and allowing the fruit to soak up more syrup. Once the fruit is saturated, you let it dry for a day or two and that's it.



You can use practically any fruit. The amount of time needed to fully saturate the fruit will vary depending on the size of the pieces and the type of fruit. I allowed the mandarin orange segments to soak in the syrup for a total of 10 days, adding sugar each of the first six days then allowing them to soak in the syrup at room temperature for four more days. Then I dried them on a rack for two days.

This recipe calls for a little bit of dextrose, also known as brewer's sugar. Dextrose is an invert sugar, so called because its molecular structure is inverted as compared to glucose. What's important is that it prevents the sugar from crystallizing during the the multi-day process of making glacé fruit. You can get dextrose at a home brewing (beer-making) store. There's one in Eagle Rock.

This recipe calls for 1/2 lb. of mandarin segments, but you can double the recipe if you have more mandarins.

Glacé Satsuma Mandarin Orange Segments

1/2 lb peeled Satsuma mandarin oranges
1/2 C dextrose
2 to 2-1/4 C sugar
water

1. Carefully separate the peeled mandarins into segments and carefully remove as much of the pith and membrane as possible.

2. Place segments in a small to medium saucepan. Cover with plenty of water and bring to a gentle boil. Reduce to a simmer and gently cook for 5-10 minutes, until fruit is just barely cooked through and not falling apart. Drain and discard the water.

3. In the same pot, heat 1/2 C dextrose, 3/4 C sugar, and 3 C water over medium low heat until it comes to a boil, stirring occasionally and gently, only to combine. Reduce the heat and gently simmer for 10 minutes. Add the fruit to the hot syrup. Cook for 1 minute, until just heated through. Then remove from the heat and let stand overnight, uncovered, at room temperature.

4. The next day: Remove fruit from the syrup with a slotted spoon. Add 2-3 T sugar to the syrup and bring to a low boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Then add fruit back to the syrup. Remove from the heat and let stand overnight, uncovered, at room temperature.

5. For the next 4-6 days, repeat step 4 until all the sugar is used or until the mandarin segments are fully saturated with sugar.

6. After the last addition of sugar, allow the mandarin segments to soak in the syrup for another 3-4 days. Then remove the segments from the syrup. Place them on a wire rack with a pan underneath to catch the drips and allow them to dry for 8 hours or overnight, preferably in a warm dry place.

Don't discard the syrup. It'll taste like orange honey. Put it on pancakes or waffles, or stir it into tea.

You can toss the glacéed segments in fine sugar after drying or dip them in tempered chocolate to create an extra special treat.



Today's bounty included:

From Underwood Family Farms: Green leaf lettuce, red chard, bok choy, arugula, yellow carrots, turnips, celery, Kabocha squash, parsley, and Beefsteak tomatoes;

From Sage Mountain Farm: Collard greens, Red Russian kale, Red Gold tomatoes, Cherry Belle radishes, and Spring Torpedo onions;

From Weiser Family Farms: Rustic Nantes carrots, parsnips, German Butterball potatoes, and Romanesco cauliflower;

From Rancho Santa Cecilia: Satsuma mandarins.

Enjoy!

Shelley