tom hudgens

I love old-fashioned recipes. Dishes that “nobody makes anymore.” Fads long faded. Passé recipes. Somebody has to pore through old cookbooks to find and resurrect these forgotten treasures, and I’m happy to do it. Take crepes, for instance. One weekend, many years ago at Deep Springs, a student mixed up a great vat of crepe batter and spent the afternoon making stacks and stacks of crepes. Then he sautéed some mushrooms and onions and spinach, chopped some ham, grated some Swiss cheese, and whipped up some béchamel sauce. He stacked the crepes into 4 or 5 "cakes" with the various fillings and cheese, covered the stacks with béchamel and more cheese, and stuck them in the oven for half an hour, until the cheese and the béchamel browned a bit. Et voila, there, along with a green salad, was a simple, but nourishing and wonderfully satisfying dinner, equally magnifique for its frugality and economy as for its richness and flavor.
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