The Blintz: It's not just the word I mistakenly use when talking about that thing in football where all the people run the same way at once, or something. No, the Blintz is the mothership of Jewish cooking. According to wikipedia, it comes from the Yiddish word "blintse," which comes from "blin," which comes from the Old Slavic word "mlin," meaning "to mill." We don't really understand the connection between milling and stuffing pancakes with ricotta, but we've learned not to question when cheese is involved.
As we recently discovered, however, this isn't 19th century Russia. Who knew, right? So instead of the classic Blintz recipe, we decided to try a modernized version of our own invention. We created a Pumpkin Pie-like filling for autumn using basically whatever we found in the cabinets. For the crepes, we used the Bittman recipe that we posted about earlier. Though we were super nervous, we were pretty pleased with the results -- not too sweet, so you could definitely do them for brunch as well, and warmly comforting and tasty. Obviously, we'll post the recipe for what we did, and I definitely recommend it, however there may be plenty of other ways to do this as well. We just kept throwing stuff in until it tasted good (hence, the measurements are liberal estimates), and you should do the same.
Ingredients (makes about 20 blintzes):
crepes
15 oz. canned pumpkin (1 can)
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
3 tbsp cinnamon, plus extra for topping
2 tbsp nutmeg
4 tbsp butter (half a stick), melted
powdered sugar, for topping
Instructions:
Make the crepes in advance, and set them aside (Note: Instead of regular sized-crepes, these should be about 6 inches in diameter). We recommend stacking them with paper towels in between so that they don't stick together. Preheat the oven 350. To make the filling, combine all of the other ingredients in a large bowl, and user a mixer on medium speed to whip them up until fluffy. Spoon about 2 tbsp of filling onto each crepe, and roll them up. Place them in a very lightly greased baking pan, and bake them for about 20 minutes. Sprinkle with cinnamon and powdered sugar, and serve warm.
