Commander's Palace Pain Perdu

Gary and I went to New Orleans last year and loved it. A highlight of the trip was our dinner at Commander's Palace. Gary bought me their cookbook, and a few weeks ago made this French toast, or "pain perdu" from the book. Delicious!

Ingredients

6 medium eggs
1/2 cup milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 tsp nutmeg
8 slices day-old French bread, cut 3/4 inch thick on the bias
2 TB butter
1/8 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup cane syrup, molasses, or honey butter
salt and pepper

Directions

1) Whisk eggs with the milk and vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Add to egg mixture and whisk until well blended.

2) Place 4 slices of bread into the egg mixture, soaking for 5 seconds on each side. Melt 1 TB butter in a nonstick skillet over high heat. When butter starts to brown (about 2 minutes), put the soaked bread slices in the pan and reduce heat to medium-high. Cook for 1-1.5 minutes on each side until done.

3) Remove slices from pan and keep warm. Wipe pan with a paper towel, melt another TB of butter, and repeat until all the bread has been cooked.

4) Finish the slices with powdered sugar and serve with syrup, molasses, or honey butter.

Crepes with Mandarin Orange Sauce

Yesterday while I was at the mall with Gary, I dragged him into Williams Sonoma. I love that place-- all those pretty dishes and shiny kitchen gadgets. It's a dangerous place though. I start thinking, "Oh, I need that $400 espresso machine... or maybe that $200 panini press..."

Luckily I left with only a $10 can of "Voila la Crepe" mix. I just loved the name--"Voila!" What could be easier, right?

So on this fine Sunday morning, I decided to make some crepes. I won't go into the details of the crepe recipe. After all, it's a mix, right? How hard can it be? The one tip I would give you is to not let your pan get too hot. If the butter gets brown right away, you need to turn down the heat, because the batter won't spread on the pan. I learned this the hard way.

I wanted to make some kind of sauce for the crepes but didn't feel like going to the grocery store, so I used what I had on hand... so if the ingredients seem kind of random, that's why. It actually came out pretty good, if I do say so myself!

Mandarin Orange Sauce a la Liza

Ingredients

1 15 oz. can of "no sugar added" mandarin orange slices
2 TB corn syrup
2 TB rum (Grand Marnier would be better, I think)
1 TB vanilla extract
Powdered sugar for topping

Mix the can of oranges (including liquid), corn syrup, rum, and vanilla in a saucepan and heat over medium-high heat. When the mixture starts boiling, turn down to medium. Stir frequently and let mixture simmer until most of the water has boiled off and the mixture becomes syrupy-- about 10 minutes.

Pour mixture over crepes. Sprinkle some powdered sugar over the top and serve warm. Makes two servings.