Cheese Blintzes
Source of Recipe
The Jewish Delicatessen Online Cookbook
Recipe Introduction
Making the filling is the easy part, so make the crepes first.
(yield: depends, probably about 18)
List of Ingredients
MAKE THE CREPES
6 eggs – use the large ones
1 cup – water.
1 cup milk –
2 cup flour – use unbleached white flour –
1 pinch salt – Use Kosher salt, if you can. It has fewer stray flavors.
3 pinches sugar – what can I say, sugar isn’t as sugary as salt is salty.
some oil – as little as possible. like soya or canola oil.
Whip the first three ingredients to a frenzy. Or, at least until everything seems equally distributed. Now, adding a little at a time, blend in the flour while continuing madly to whisk the batter. The idea here is to have as few little pits of unblended flour as possible. When all the batter is blended, add the salt and sugar and continue to whisk it up. When the s&s have dissolved, strain the batter through a mesh strainer to remove any undissolved salt or sugar crystals, pieces of random eggshell (Mendell!), bloppy parts of the egg, etc. When done the batter should be about as thick as a thin eggnog.
Choose a middle-sized sauté pan (maybe 8inches in diameter.) The first time you make the crepes you might want to use a larger one, because rolling and folding them into blintzes can be a challenge. And, as with mu shu pancake at Hong Fat’s in New York, rolling your own crepe around a mound of filling can be daunting the first few (hundred) times. As far as the pan is concerned, you can use a high quality "silverstone" or Teflon finished pan, or the one you always choose for omelets. Any pan that will resist sticking is okay, so long as the pan itself is not a very lightweight pan. The heat has to distribute evenly or the crepe thing won’t work at all…lighter pans tend to transfer heat from the source through the bottom of the pan without spreading it out evenly across the surface. Rounded corners work better than sharply vertical ones.
Drip a little of the oil into the pan, removing the excess so there is only a sheen on the pan. You can wipe it glossy with a cloth towel if you have confidence in the pan. (That sounds silly, doesn’t it Micki?) Heat the pan (not the oil) to a medium temperature.
When the pan is hot, drizzle a small amount of batter into the center of the pan, then immediately tilt the pan back and forth, allowing the batter to spread to the edges. By tilting the pan before the batter sets, you will be able to get the raw batter to spread around better. Try to keep the batter from pooling in the center or at any single place in the pan. The idea is to form a very thin circle of cooked batter without holes in it. (Butter makes a bitter batter better…no it’s a joke. I just always liked that tongue twister, it has nothing to do with this recipe.)
As soon as the batter sets and before it burns or sticks to the pan, turn the whole pan upside down over a moistened cloth towel and give it a little knock to dislodge the crepe. You can tease it from the surface of the pan with a soft spatula, if necessary. But, if it requires that you scrape it free, then the pan is too hot, or not slick enough or the batter is too thin or thick or something else is wrong. (Good luck!) The crepe should be puckered and just barely brown in spots underneath. On top it should have the raw looking color of eggnog. Stack the crepes about 4 or five high, each separated from the next with wax paper. When you have made a few dozen – or run out of batter - sit down and thank your lucky stars you never promised God that you’d do anything to make blintzes. (This enterprise takes practice, determination and patience.)
Recipe
MAKE THE CHEESE FILLING
2 eggs – beaten.
1/2 lb cottage cheese
24 oz farmer’s cheese. A typical package is 12 oz. If you can’t find farmer’s cheese you can use ricotta. The consistency is right, but it changes the flavor slightly.
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
matzo meal – if necessary. We’ll talk.
How
Blend the cheeses. At the risk of offending Grandma Anna, it is really easier to do this with your hands. Just crumble the farmer cheese, then shmush it all up. Wear surgical gloves if you must. Anyway, take the blended cheese and dry it out by balling the cheese in, of all things, cheese cloth and squeezing out the liquid. If you can’t find cheesecloth, press it carefully against the inside of a fine-mesh strainer-type colander.
In a non reactive bowl, blend in the eggs, sugar, salt, and vanilla. Now, here’s the tricky part. The cheese needs to be stiff, but smooth. And, of course, until you have done this once or twice, it is hard to know what that really means. The consistency should be along the lines of a slightly grainy, slightly soft cream cheese. Not quite the consistency of whipped cream cheese, but getting there. So long as most of the liquid was squeezed from the cheese in the first place, the eggs will help the mixture to tighten up a bit as it cooks. If you’ve left a lot of water in the cheese it will run out as the blintz cooks. It’s not a pretty sight. If you think the cheese will be too wet, separate a little bit out and cook a couple blintzes with it the way it is. If you are right, and water oozes out of the blintz as it cooks, add a matzo meal little by little to the mixture until it works. Sorry, Erin, trial and error is the best I can offer.
SO MAKE THE BLINTZES, ALREADY
What
1 egg – beaten well, with a couple of drops of water.
How
Lay out the crepe with the soft side down - that’s the side that looks like eggnog. (You want the mixture to come into contact with this side of the crepe because it has been cooked a little drier than the eggnoggy side. Any wetness in the cheese mixture will be absorbed somewhat by the drier side of the crepe. The soft eggnoggy side will begin to deteriorate in contact with wetness from the cheese.) Depending upon the size of your crepes, spoon three or four tablespoons of the mixture onto the crepe just where the smile would be if the crepe were a face – about 1/4 of the distance from the bottom. Instead of a smile, spread the cheese mixture into the shape of a bar about 1 ½ inches wide, 3/4 inch high straight across the crepe until it extends within an inch of the outside. Now, carefully fold the edges of the crepe below the smile up to the edge of the cheese and cover the cheese with the crepe. If you’ve done this right, the edge of the bottom of the crepe should just cover the cheese. Brush the exposed, eggnoggy side of the crepe with a little of the beaten egg. This will help it stick to the other face of the crepe when you put them together.
Without letting the cheese spread toward the top of the crepe, bring the two sides of the crepe in until they fold over the edge of the egg-ed crepe, forming three sides of the blintz. Again, without letting the cheese spread, turn the blintz over and over, rolling it toward the top of the crepe. Brush the beaten egg along the inside surface of the last part of the exposed crepe just before you seal the blintz completely. Set it aside on the folded edge and admire that handsome thing, why don’t you. Be proud of yourself, Hannah. Okay, enough, now roll the other 17 blintzes, stop wasting time.
The blintzes can be cooked now or set aside in the refrigerator. They may even be frozen uncooked . If you intend to freeze them before cooking them, it’s best to freeze them on wax paper, without allowing the blintzes to touch one another before they freeze. (You leave them alone for one minute, one minute alone, I tell you, and those blintzes are going to cause trouble!)
Cook the blintzes in a little soya or canola oil. Some people swear by butter, but I think the butter has a tendency to leave a burnt taste if you try to fry them at too high a temperature. For best results, cook the blintzes in about a 1/4 inch of oil over a low-moderature fire. Cook the blintzes on the folded side first, then, when the blintz begins to turn golden brown, turn in the direction of the fold (another words, pretend you are still rolling the crepe around the cheese.) By the way, if you have a light touch, the best way to handle blintzes in a frying pan is with a pair of cooks’ tongs, rather than trying to turn them with a spatula. The blintzes are done when both sides are golden brown. Blot the excess oil and serve with sour cream or some fresh berries or berry fruit preserves. Here at Jack Cooper’s we dust the blintzes with powdered sugar and offer sour cream as a condiment. I find them sweet enough without the sugar. You decide. It’s a free country.
Our recipes are not kosher
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