Crepes Suzette with Kumquat-Butter Sauce and Vanilla Bean Ice Cream *Recipe #19 Page 208*

Friday night we went to a movie in Lexington and passed by Whole Foods on the way home. We ran in and I found all kinds of goodies, including the kumquats for this recipe. I have seen a kumquat before but have never ate one and was curious about them.
I decided to cook this recipe for breakfast today. Crepes are a breakfast food, right?

I started by making the crepe batter:

2 cups whole milk

2 eggs

1.5 cups all-purpose flour

1 stick unsalted butter, melted

pinch kosher salt

Place milk and eggs in a blender and blend. Add flour 1/2 cup at a time, blending after each addition to ensure a smooth consistency. Add melted butter and salt; blend for 30 seconds until batter is smooth. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

For Kumquat-Butter sauce: (I think Tyler collaberated with Paula Deen on this recipe) In a small saucepan, combine 2 sticks of unsalted butter, 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup fresh-squeezed orange juice, 1/2 lemon-juice only, 1 cup sliced kumquats, 1 vanilla bean-split. Cook about 10 minutes, until it begins to carmelize. Remove from heat and add 1 tablespoon Grand Marnier. Place pan over heat and cook about 10 minutes more until sauce is reduced and syrupy. Set aside and keep warm.

Preheat oven to 350F. To cook crepes, dip a piece of paper towel in veg. oil and grease a small crepe pan or nonstick skillet. Ladle a small spoonful of batter into the pan. Move pan from side to side, so batter evenly cover the entire bottom. A good crepe should be paper thin. Cook over high heat; flip crepe when you see the edge turning golden brown. Remove crepe from pan and fold in half and then in half again, to form a triangle shape. Repeat with remaining batter. Line up crepes in a baking dish and spoon sauce over to just cover crepes. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until crepes are slightly crispy and brown around the edges and sauce is thick and syrupy. Serve with vanilla bean ice cream.

The recipe suggests that this dish takes only 50 minutes to make. I think it took a lot longer than that. I thought slicing the kumquats would be quick and easy, but they are little, hard to hold onto, and they also have seeds. I think this dish is worth making, but not really for entertaining or as dessert after dinner. There are a lot of steps and it takes quite awhile. You would not want to start this with guests over.

Overall, this dish was good, but almost too sweet. The crepes were swimming in the kumquat-butter sauce when they came out of the oven. I think that the dish would be better if you cut the recipe for the sauce in half and just drizzled it on top of the crepe before serving. This method would cut out most of the sweetness. I saved some crepe batter and sauce to try this method later. The crepe batter was a dream to work with. As far as I'm concerned, this is the ultimate batter for crepes!