The summer of the crepe

My latest kitchen-related acquisition is a nonstick lefse grill that we bought online about a month ago. We purchased it with the intention that we'd start making crepes, but we've been using it for just about everything but crepes so far.  (Although mostly that's because we hadn't yet found a crepe recipe we were terribly fond of.) Until now that is.

Yesterday we finally tried a recipe we liked.  Our plan had been to make crepes and fill them with all the fruit and berries that are languishing around here.  But instead of doing crepes for dessert, we ate them for dinner too.  We put together a quick dinner of Gruyere and mushroom crepes (mushrooms sauteed with scapes, butter, and a little parsley) with a simple salad of oak leaf lettuce, arugula, and tomato dressed with a thrown-together mustard vinaigrette.  I located a white Bordeaux in the fridge that had been left behind by some friends, and we thoroughly enjoyed what turned out to be a very French meal on a lovely summer evening.  Wyatt got in on the action too, polishing off half a mushroom crepe of his own.

Maybe part of why I liked our dinner so well was because it evoked good memories.  I have a nice memory of a crepe lunch I once enjoyed at an unremarkable cafe in the town of Paray-le-Monial, a quick stop on the road from Geneva to Bourges.  I recall a light salad and a warm, goat-cheesy-mushroomy crepe on a rainy day -- part of a trip that I took well over 12 years ago now.  Our dinner also made me happy because it made me think of my sister and her fiance, who are, even as I write this, traveling in the South of France and enjoying things like cheese plates and, hopefully, crepes..

I think I'm going to enjoy coming up with fillings for my crepes this summer.

In the meantime, I'm jotting down my salad dressing recipe here so I don't forget how I threw it together.  It was just right.

Thrown-together mustard vinaigrette

Combine in a small jar, in this order:

1 part chive blossom vinegar
large pinch of fine sea salt
some grinds of fresh black pepper
a bit of good Dijon mustard (I used green peppercorn dijon)

Cover and shake it up.  Then add:
1 1/2 parts good olive oil

Shake again, taste, adjust, and dress the salad.