April 8, 2021

Savory Crepes with Chicken, Apples & Blue Cheese

Sometimes when I’m just enjoying the quiet in the house, and I’m avoiding screens, and also avoiding doing whatever it is that I’m sure I should be doing instead, I flip through the Joy of Cooking. A couple years ago, I’d say, I was doing just that and earmarked this recipe: Crepes with Chicken, Apples & Blue Cheese.

Last year I finally got around to making it, and yesterday I was flipping through pictures (trying to find this picture of our German Giant garlic) and I came across a picture of this dish and wanted to make it again for dinner, right now.

So I made it again, and I love it, and quite frankly wanted to add this recipe to my blog for myself, so all the quantities and instructions are on one page!

I really love this meal at this time of year. It’s comprised of sturdy, savory crepes with a white roux sauce, grilled chicken, apples and blue cheese crumbles. So it’s one of those dishes that really suits seasonal transitions. It’s rich from the buttery crepes and white sauce, but bright from the apples and blue cheese. It matches the weather right now!

Savory Crepes with Chicken, Apples & Blue Cheese

You’ll Need:

For the Savory Crepes*

1 cup milk, at room temperature
1 cup all purpose flour
½ cup lukewarm water
½ tsp salt
4 large eggs
¼ cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted

*If you’re thinking, “Hey I’ve got a great crepe recipe that I’m used to, don’t be too tempted to just go with your go-to for this dish. These particular savory crepes hold up and roll up so well to the heavy filling and last through the baking as well. I highly recommend using this crepe recipe for this application! Also, if you’re looking for a sweet crepe recipe for using with berries and whipped cream, etc., bump the salt quantity down to ¼ tsp and add 2 Tbs of sugar, and you’re all set!

For the White Sauce

1 Tbs butter
1 Tbs all-purpose flour
½ cup milk**
1 thick onion slice
1 dozen dried cloves
1 bay leaf
Salt and black pepper to taste (I used
1 dash of ground nutmeg

**You can substitute almond milk if you’d like. You can also substitute chicken broth, but the sauce tends to be thinner, and you may need up to 2 additional tablespoons of all-purpose flour.

For the Crepe Assembly

12 savory crepes
3 cups cooked chicken, from 1 to 2 chicken breasts
2 small apples, sliced thin
1 cup white sauce
2 – 3 oz Blue or Roquefort Cheese

The crepe batter, ideally, sits for 30 minutes to give the ingredients time to meld, and rest and develop and all that jazz, so I start by making the crepe batter.

Melt 2 Tbs of butter. (I used my microwave for once! It’s a joke of mine that the microwave is a glorified butter softener.) But, cube your butter and melt in the microwave for a few 7- to 10-second intervals, melting the last few solid chunks of butter by stirring them in, the same way you would melt chocolate without cooking it. Alternately, melt the butter in a very small saucepan over low heat for a minute or so.

(I start by blending most of the ingredients, up to the melted butter, to make sure the rest of the ingredients are warm enough to not cool the butter, and instead allowing the butter to mix into the batter evenly.)

Pour your 1 cup room temperature milk into a blender, add the 1 cup all purpose flour, ½ cup lukewarm water, and ½ tsp salt and blend to combine.

Next add the 4 eggs and blend once more.

Add the melted butter, and blend once more until everything is smooth.

Cover and allow to sit at room temperature for 30 minutes.

(You can make the batter ahead and store sealed in the refrigerator for up to 2 days.)

Next, grill the chicken breasts. (See my “Simple, [Dare I Say, Perfect,] Grilled Chicken Breasts” blog post for my favorite way to grill chicken breasts.)

Allow the chicken breasts to cool until able to be sliced into thin strips.

Now make the White Sauce.

In a small saucepan, place 1 Tbs butter and turn the heat to low.

Punch your dozen or so dried cloves into the thick onion slice.

In a separate small saucepan from your butter, pour 1 cup of milk and add the clove-studded onion slice, and the bay leaf, and heat on medium-low until the milk just begins to steam. (Scalding the milk first makes it blend much smoother into your roux in just a minute when you go to mix the two together.)

Turn up the heat a bit on your first saucepan with the butter, to medium-low, and add 1 Tbs all-purpose flour, and stir with a rubber spatula to combine fully and cream it together. Stirring as necessary to keep the sauce smooth, cook until lightly golden and frothy.

Remove the pan briefly from the heat and strain out or remove the onion and bay leaf as you pour the scalded milk into the butter-flour (your roux).

Return that pan to the heat and bring to a simmer, stirring constantly to prevent lumps as the sauce thickens, about 1-2 minutes.

Stir in your dash of nutmeg, pinch of salt and a few grinds of black pepper.

Cover and set aside while you cook the crepes.

Cook the Crepes.

I use a couple skillets at a time, just to keep the process moving.

Heat a dollop of butter in each skillet over medium-high heat. Use a silicone brush or heat resistant pastry brush to brush the butter thinly and evenly in the skillet. Once the butter bubbles and is frothy, pour in ¼ cup of batter and cook 2 – 3 minutes, until the top looks shiny and dry. When it’s ready to flip, you should be able to pick up the pan and shake it a bit, and the crepe should slide back and forth in the pan. Shift the crepe more to one side to help you get a spatula underneath and then you can set the pan back down, get the spatula all the way under the crepe, and be able to flip it.

(Sometimes, I find my first crepe in each pan shows all the signs that it will be flippable, but instead, it breaks or folds or gets “tangled up.” This just means that my skillet wasn’t hot enough. If this happens, just give your skillet another minute or so to heat up, and the next one should work just fine.)

Re-butter the pan between each crepe and use the heat-proof pastry brush to spread more butter on the pan each time.

Cook each crepe, ¼ cup of batter at a time, about 2 – 3 minutes on each side.

Remove each crepe to a plate and stack them up until you have 12 crepes.

(If you have any leftover batter, it can be stored in a ball jar with a lid in the refrigerator for up to 2 days. Extra cooked crepes can be cooled, folded in quarters and stored in something along the lines of a quart size Ziploc bag in the refrigerator for about 2 days. They heat really well in a foil pouch/envelope in your toaster and then can be filled with whipped cream and berries a morning or two later! These are savory crepes though, so I found that, because I prefer unsweetened whipped cream, the next-morning-crepe with berries also needed just a pinch of Vanilla Spiced Sugar as well – just a pinch though, because I’m going to run out of Vanilla Spiced Sugar before I ever get my Palmiers made!)

Now it’s time to assemble the crepes and bake them.

Preheat your oven to 400˚F, and very lightly butter a large baking dish.

Note: If you find your White Sauce has thickened too much while you cooked your crepes, simply heat a bit more milk, and stir it into the thickened sauce, it should thin right back out and be a spreadable consistency in only a minute or two.

Peel and slice your 2 apples very thin.

Slice or shred your chicken.

Lay a crepe flat and spread 1 -2 teaspoons of the white sauce in the center of the crepe.

Spread an ounce or two of shredded chicken on the bottom third of the crepe.

Lay 4-6 apple slices over the chicken and place 3-4 chunks of blue cheese over the stripe of sauce.

Roll the crepe and place seam-side down in the buttered dish.

Continue until each crepe has been filled, rolled and placed.

Spread any remaining White Sauce over the tops of the crepes and sprinkle some crumbles of Blue Cheese over the tops as well.

Bake in your 400˚F preheated oven for 20 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling and possibly lightly browned.

I often like to serve main dishes with creamy sauces like this one with broccoli, so I paired this dish with broccolini prepared the same way I love to fix Grilled Asparagus, complete with lemon juice and lemon zest. The brightness goes really nicely with the bits of Blue Cheese here and there.