Cripes Those are Good Crepes

I'm a foodie. I like food and I particularly like good food. So as Des Moines continues to put up amazingly good new restaurants I am in seventh heaven. Today I ended up at Django (pronounced Jaing-go) a newish French restaurant in town. I hadn't been avoiding the place but I put off going for a while. As a vegetarian, French food is tough. Most dishes tend to be heavily meat based. Or so I thought.

Months ago, while we were on our cruise, I read Kathleen Flinn's very tasty "The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry". The author spent one year in France attending the very competitive Le Cordon Bleu cooking school. The school is designed to make people into master chefs and walking out with an advanced degree at Le Cordon Bleu will guarantee most people a highly sought chef position. Flinn's book was fantastic. All of the dishes seemed so beautiful and tasty. Even all the hard work that went into making them seemed to make them that much better. I found myself wanting to learn to cut vegetables the proper way. I wanted to learn to make dough and create my own stocks. Although the meat portions kind of disgusted me (not through her fault, just my sensitive stomach) I came back from the trip with a desire to cook and bake. And with a new appreciation for French cuisine.

And one of the dishes she made constantly was bechamel sauce. Bechamel is considered one of the five mother sauces in France. It is a simple concoction, mixing milk with roux (butter and flour) and is one of the bases for many different types of sauces. Cream sauces and cheese sauces simply wouldn't exist without bechamel. So when I saw a pretty dish with roasted red pepper bechamel sauce I knew I had to have it. It certainly didn't hurt that it was drizzled over wild mushroom crepes with spinach and goat's cheese. I can't even imagine a better combination. And it was heavenly. For those of you out there who are too afraid to try savory crepes, you are really missing out.

So I ate what is considered the ultimate comfort food in France, while watching the rain pour down and the lightning crack across the sky. I had lunch with a friend who offered me pieces of her tart and we talked and enjoyed being inside and eating amazing food. And I got over my worry about French food. There were at least four other vegetarian options on the menu for me to come back and try. And I will definately be back.