Smoked Salmon Crepes with Cream Cheese and Celery Leaf Salad

We hosted a small dinner party at our house last Saturday night for Jeff's former boss and one of his coworkers - a little last hurrah before they had to go back to work in new roles after our furlough ended. As we are apt to do, we decided to experiment on our poor unsuspecting guests with a new recipe. It was a hit. These were really tasty, not too scary, and even the suspicious said they were pleasantly surprised by how good they were. We even got some people to try the edible flowers! We used our fun dinnerware set for the evening, and we thought the plates came out looking quite colorful and pretty. The only thing we might change next time would be to add a few artfully placed drops of thickened dressing around the sides, not because the food needed it, but because it might give the plates just a bit more pizazz.


We had one other new experimental dish for the night - a Savarin aux Fruits (fresh raspberries and strawberries). We failed to get any photos taken of it before we cut into it, but it was also really yummy. We might make it again someday and post that recipe as well.

Here's how to make the Smoked Salmon Crepe dish...the recipe came from "Amuse Bouche" by Rick Tramonto:

The Crepes
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3 tsp sugar
pinch of salt
1 1/4 cups milk
3 large eggs
melted butter

1. Whisk together the flour, sugar, and salt in a medium sized bowl. Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour in the milk. Whisk the milk into the flour mixture until the batter is smooth and well blended. Whisk in the eggs until blended.

2. Strain the batter through a sieve into another medium-sized bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours to give the batter time to rest.

3. Heat an 8-inch nonstick skillet or crepe pan over medium heat. Lightly brush the pan with melted butter.

4. Ladle about 1/4 cup of the batter into the skillet and tilt the pan in all directions to evenly coat the bottom. Cook the crepes for about 30 seconds or until the bottom is lightly brown. Loosen the edges with a spatula and flip the crepe over. Cook the underside for 10 to 15 seconds or until it is set, dry, and browned in spots. Slide the crepe onto a flat plate and cover with a piece of wax paper.

5. Repeat with the remaining batter, brushing the pan with more butter as needed, and stacking the crepes between wax paper. The crepes may be made up to 3 days ahead. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature before using.

The Filling, The Stack, and The Salad
2 oz cream cheese, softened
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 lb thinly sliced smoked salmon
5 Crepes (see recipe above)
1/2 cup celery leaves
1 tbsp olive oil
Grated zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp finely snipped chives
6 cucumber flowers, for garnishing (we used all different types of edible flowers)

1. Put the cream cheese in a small bowl with 2 teaspoons of the lemon juice. Mix well and season to taste with salt and pepper.

2. Using a 3-inch round cookie cutter (we made ours bigger - closer to 5 inches), stamp out 4 rounds of smoked salmon and 5 rounds of crepes (again, we went a little taller on ours, 5 salmon and 6 crepes).

3. Place 1 crepe on a work surface and top with a salmon round. Spread about 1 tablespoon of the cream cheese over the salmon. Continue the layering, so that you end with a plain crepe on top of the stack. (Our smoked salmon wasn't what we'd call "thinly sliced", so rather than making rounds, we just covered the surface of the crepe with thinly pulled apart salmon. Not quite as pretty, but it worked. We also made two batches of the filling for our larger diameter crepes and our taller stack.)

4. Put the celery leaves in a small bowl and toss with the olive oil, lemon zest, chives, and remaining 1 teaspoon lemon juice. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

5. To serve, divide the celery salad among 6 small plates. Cut the stack of salmon crepes into 6 wedges. Arrange a wedge and a cucumber flower on each plate.