Savory Mushroom Blue Cheese & Walnut Crepes

Two weeks ago I shared my trip to our neighborhood crepe truck as part of my year of exploring street food as a flavor correspondent for Sargento. (If there is a truck you think I should see please let me know!) This program features myself and a few other food bloggers as we spend the year exploring the top 10 food trends of 2013 as identified by Rick Bayless. I was bummed I couldn’t go to the program kick-off at the headquarters in Wisconsin in early February, but I had just had a baby so that was impossible! Instead, I joined the conference via Google + hangout and enjoyed Rick’s talk about food trends remotely.

At that talk each blogger was assigned two specific food trends to explore this year. I was assigned food trucks/street food, as you know, and mushrooms. Two of my favorite things! I felt very lucky. The remaining food trends were also cool and I can’t wait to see what my fellow correspondents write. They include: middle eastern foods, Peruvian foods, habanero peppers, tacos, fermented foods, braising meats, greens, and herbs in desserts.

I kicked off my flavor correspondence with food trucks last week, so today I want to talk about my other assignment: mushrooms. I usually buy basic crimini mushrooms for my everyday mushroom-based dishes. But this year I want to explore lesser known varieties and show everyone how we can use them to add more flavor and flair to our everyday dishes. Since we had just recently visited the food truck, where I enjoyed a savory crepe, I thought it would be fun to make my own savory mushroom crepes at home.

Since I was making our crepes for dinner I wanted to make sure they were substantial enough to hold us for the evening.  I decided to use blue cheese, mushrooms, and walnuts. In keeping with my pledge to stay away from the common cremini, we elected to use shitake mushrooms for their strong smokey flavor and firm texture.

As with any good powernap recipe, the batter for the crepes came together in a snap and they were easy to cook up on the stove top. To fill them I added in the stewed shitake mushrooms, crumbled blue cheese, and chopped toasted walnuts. Then I folded up the crepe like an envelope and dinner was served! The crepe was certainly rich to boot, but we loved the contrast of the earthy mushrooms with the sharp cheese. The walnuts added a nice amount of crunch without overpowering the palate. It was a deliciously fun dinner for an early spring evening. We also all agreed that this easy recipe would be great for lunch, or even for taking to school for lunch wrapped in foil. Looks like there will be many more crepes in our future this spring!

For more flavor correspondents check out:

• Bree from Baked Bree
• Bren Herrara from Flanbouyant Eats
• Cara Eisenpress from Big Girls Small Kitchen
• Cathy Pollack from Noble Pig
• Ann Fulton from The Fountain Avenue Kitche

(This post is sponsored by Sargento. Thank you so much for supporting the sponsors that make The Naptime Chef possible.)