Un-filled crepes and their filling

I am still here! It’s amazing that five months have gone by since my last posting. One day during that time I wrote down a list of recipes that I want to post here. The list quickly reached thirty recipes! In the coming months I intend to post all thirty.

This recipe is one of the recipes that I have been cooking the longest. I became a vegetarian in 1987. At about that time, at a bookstall near Central Park in New York City, I found “The Vegetarian Gourmet Cookbook” by Paul Southey — a book so obscure that Amazon doesn’t even have a listing for it! It is full of time-consuming, complicated recipes that make amazingly delicious food. This recipe is from that cookbook. I love it so much that it has followed me through a zillion changes to my diet, as I have adapted it again and again.

Sauce

I am a big fan of simplifying recipes, so this recipe has been very much simplified from Paul Southey’s version, and converted to be gluten-free, and healthier, and it can optionally be vegan if you make the crepes vegan. I think Paul Southey would probably still recognize the recipe, but I have changed vast swaths of it from his version.

To keep you posted: I am thinking of changing this blog’s name to something more unique than Valerie’s Recipes — maybe The Rainbow Lentil or The Lentil Rainbow. I would be glad to hear other ideas — please use the comments to leave suggestions!

Print Recipe

Dinner Crepes filled with lentils and either greens or mushrooms - delicious, dairy-free, and gluten-free

These dinner crepes are healthy and addictively delicious! They can be filled with lentils and mushrooms, or lentils and greens, or all three!

Prep Time5

Cook Time40

Total Time45

Course: Dinner

Cuisine: American

Author: Valerie Mates

Ingredients

Crepes

2 batches of crepes made with the optional salt I recommend my gluten-free crepe recipe (about 16 crepes)

Filling

2 cups brown or green lentils
3 cups water
3 tablespoons oil such as canola or olive oil
EITHER 3 cups of chopped mushrooms OR a pound of frozen chopped kale or spinach defrosted OR a bunch of fresh kale or other greens, chopped OR both mushrooms and greens
1 1/2 cups chopped celery optional
3/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
salt and pepper to taste

Sauce

3 tablespoons cornstarch or if you are not gluten-free flour
3 tablespoons canola oil or olive oil
2 1/4 cups of EITHER your favorite plant milk soymilk or rice milk or almond milk, etc. OR fat-free cow's milk OR homemade cashew milk (made in a blender from 1/8 cup of cashews and 2 1/4 cups water)
Optional but really good: You can replace half of the milk with vegetable broth such as Imagine's No-Chicken broth.
dried herbs such as 1/2 teaspoon each of parsley, sage, crumbled rosemary, and thyme; or basil and oregano
1 1/2 tablespoons gluten-free tamari or some salt

Instructions

Put the lentils and water in a pot on the stove. Heat to boiling, then simmer until the lentils are tender. This takes about 30 minutes.
While the lentils are cooking, make the crepes.
If you are using fresh greens, stir them into the lentils toward the end of the cooking time.
Once the lentils are cooked, add all of the other filling ingredients and stir.
As the crepes get cooked, put two heaping dinnertablespoons of filling in each one, in a line, and roll up the crepe around it. You can put them directly onto people's dinnerplates.
Now make the sauce: Put the cornstarch or flour into a pot (you can re-use a pot from the crepes or the lentils without washing it out) and add the oil. Stir. If you are using real flour, heat and stir the mixture until it is bubbly; if you are using cornstarch skip this step.
Add the milk-of-choice and any optional broth that you are using. Heat on medium-high while stirring until it boils, then lower the heat to low. Simmer and stir for one minute. Turn off the heat. Stir in the herbs and tamari and/or salt. Check for saltiness and add more salt or tamari if needed.
Pour sauce over crepes and serve. A serving is about four crepes.