Tag: cheese

Imitation Crab Crepes Mornay

On a recent Sunday, when neither my wife nor I felt the need for a big Sunday dinner, I suggested that we try imitation crab crepes. When I searched for recipes on the web, I found plenty of crab and seafood crepe recipes, but they all called for real crab, shrimp, scallops or lobster. I like all of those treasures from the sea, but they are expensive, and we had just indulged ourselves at a nice restaurant the night before.

Since we enjoy an excellent Seafood Fettuccine that uses imitation crab or lobster, I thought that crepes with imitation crab would be worth trying. I was right, and imitation crab is about one-tenth the cost of the real stuff. Just give it a try.

One particularly nice thing about crepes is that you can make them in advance. Crepes keep well for a few days in the refrigerator or frozen for a couple of months. Microwave them for a few seconds before filling and rolling them. Cover them with sauce and bake them until the sauce is hot and bubbly. When you bring them out with a relaxed smile on your face, your guests will think you are a master chef.

If you don’t have any crepes in your fridge or freezer, you need to make some before starting the crab filling. Here is our recipe. Do this at least an hour before you plan on putting the crepes together.

Once you have ten crepes made, you can prepare the filling and make the Mornay sauce.

Mornay sauce is Béchamel (white sauce) flavored with cheese. This variety of Mornay sauce uses Swiss and Parmesan cheese, which goes well with seafood. Americans eat a lot of Mornay sauce without realizing it. They just call the dish “Mac and Cheese.” The Cheddar cheese used for macaroni and cheese gives a different flavor than the Swiss and Parmesan, but the creamy goodness is the same.

Here are the ingredients for filling eight to ten crepes.

8 oz. imitation crab
1 tsp. minced parsley
1- 2 scallions (a generous tablespoon chopped)
1 tsp. lemon juice

Here are the ingredients for the sauce.

2 cups milk
2 T butter
3 T all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. white pepper
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 cup grated Swiss cheese
2 T grated Parmesan cheese
1 to 3 drops hot sauce (optional)

PROCEDURE:

Chop the imitation crab into a quarter-inch dice and put it into a medium mixing bowl. Wash and mince the parsley and add it to the meat. Clean and chop one or two scallions into eighth-inch rounds. Put the onion into the bowl with the meat. Add a teaspoon of lemon juice and mix everything together.

Preheat the oven to 375º while you make the sauce.

Heat the milk until it is hot but not boiling. While the milk is warming, melt the butter in a one and one-half-quart sauce pan, blend in the flour, salt and pepper and cook the roux (the mixture of flour and butter) for about three minutes over low heat. Stir often with a wooden spoon. You are making a white sauce, so be careful not to brown the flour.

Use the spoon or a whisk to blend the hot milk with the roux. Raise the heat slightly and stir until you have a smooth, creamy sauce. The sauce should just come to a simmer and not boil. Cook for about three minutes after the sauce has started to thicken.

Gradually stir in the grated cheeses and taste the sauce. If your tastebuds tell you to do it, add a drop or two of hot sauce.

Stir half of the sauce into the meat. Grease a seven by eleven-inch glass baking dish.

Working on a plate, spread a scant two tablespoons of the meat mixture in a row on a crepe, roll it up and place it seam side down in the baking pan. Continue until all the crepes are in the pan. Spoon the rest of the sauce over the crepes.Seafood Crepes Mornay

Bake uncovered for about twenty minutes until the sauce is bubbling and begins to turn slightly brown in a few spots.

Serve with a green salad and glass of white wine as a light dinner or lunch for three to four people.

Super Easy Garlic Buns

Unless you are fortunate enough to have a son like one of our great nephews when he was young, you are going to end up with extra hot dog buns from time to time. When Nate was about nine, he stopped eating most things. Meat was especially out of the question and he had never liked vegetables anyway.

What he did like was hot dog buns covered with ketchup, and that’s what he ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He drank milk, so his diet included four of the five food groups: grain (flour), legumes (soybean oil), fruit (tomatoes) and milk. His parents took this dietary phase with equanimity, and after a year or two Nate one day decided to add white chicken to his list of acceptable foods which had already grown to include hamburger buns and plain white bread.

When I heard of this preference for white foods, I wondered if he had been mistakenly swapped with a Scandinavian baby when he was discharged from the nursery. If he had insisted on mayonnaise with the buns, that might have been the explanation, but his preference for ketchup ruled that out.

Anyway, Nate’s mother did not have to worry about what to do with leftover hot dog buns. With Nate around, there never were any leftover buns. He was a growing boy with a healthy appetite.

However, like many people we know, we often end up with extra hot dog buns. We usually buy three dogs at a meat market or one pound packages of hot dogs at the supermarket. The packages we buy today have two separate pouches with four dogs in each, so we can toss one in the freezer.

Buns, alas, are always sold in packages of eight or ten. One can freeze buns of course, but they take up lots of space in the freezer and are often forgotten by the husband who is sent out to buy hot dogs for supper. Contrary to what one might suppose, frozen hot dog buns do not last forever. They really are not very good even after only six or seven months.

Here is a quick way to turn those extra hot dog buns into a delicious appetizer that you and your friends will enjoy.

INGREDIENTS:

Hot dog buns
Butter
Powdered garlic
Dried basil
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Grated Parmesan cheese
Dried oregano

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 350º and melt a tablespoon of butter.

Separate and brush the buns with the melted butter and put them on a plate or other work surface. Sprinkle them with garlic powder, basil, and shredded mozzarella cheese. Top with a little grated Parmesan cheese and finish with a light sprinkling of oregano.

Put the buns on a baking sheet and bake them for about twelve minutes or until the cheese begins to brown.

Serve the buns warm from the oven.

NOTES: You can substitute olive oil for the butter. There are of course other ways to use the extra buns. For instance, you can dry them and make bread crumbs to top your next casserole or add to the hamburger when you make a meatloaf, but you won’t have any leftovers if you make garlic buns.