Cheese Me Please - Bulgarian Palachinka

This week we find ourselves once again in Eastern Europe eating palachinka (aka crepes).  We arrived in Bulgaria, only to discover that there was a delay in our departure to pancake land.  Delay you say?  Yes, there was a delay.  We should really read the recipes we find in their entirety so that we can be prepared and able to eat pancakes for breakfast in the morning.  The particular Bulgarian palachinka recipe that we found requires a 2 hour - overnight refrigeration process.  Thus, despite the fact that we were super hungry this morning, we weren't able to eat palachinka for breakfast.  Instead we had strawberry smoothies.  Here is what our breakfast smoothies looked like as we looked at them in the blender from up above.

We did eat palachinka today, we just ate them for lunch instead.  I have to thank Faux Chef for 5 for her lovely palachinka recipe.  Her husband is Bulgarians, and she makes him these when he is missing home.  Anyway, here are the ingredients you will need for Bulgarian palachinka:

2 large eggs
1 cup whole milk
6 Tablespoons water
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 Tablespoons melted butter

After you have gathered up all of your ingredients, put them in the blender and give them a whirl.  The only picture we have for this is the picture of everything whirled in the blender as we forgot to take pictures until this point in time.  It is a very thin batter, so here's what it looks like:

Next pour the batter in a bowl, cover, and let it chill for at least 2 hours.  You can chill it overnight as well.  While the batter is chilling, you can make the cheese filling.  For the cheese filling, you'll need the following ingredients:

1/4 cup sirene (Sirene is Bulgarian Feta Cheese.  We couldn't find sirene, so we used Greek Feta instead)
1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon of plain Greek yogurt
1 clove of garlic
 1 teaspoon fresh dill

Faux Chef's original recipe for the cheese spread called for 1/4 cup of mayonnaise and only one tablespoon of yogurt, but since I detest mayonnaise, I decided to substitute yogurt for it.  After cleaning batter out of the blender, put all of the ingredients for the cheese spread inside and pulse it until they are mixed together.  You will not end up with a smooth spread, but everything should be fairly homogenously mixed together.

Put the cheese spread into the refrigerator until it's time to put it on the palachinka.  Once 2 hours have passed, take your palachinka batter out of the refrigerator and stir if necessary.  Heat up a crepe pan and lightly oil it.  The original recipe says to use butter, but we used our misto sprayer filled with olive oil.

After the pan is sufficiently heated, use a ladle to pour batter in the middle of the pan as you tilt it so that the batter spreads evenly across the bottom and cook on one side until the top is dry and the edges are starting to brown (about 1-2 minutes).

Flip the palachinka and cook briefly on the other side.



Remove from heat and place it on a plate in a warm oven until you are finished making the rest of the palachinka.  Continue making until all of the batter is used, you will get about 8 palachinka.

After cooking all of the palachinka, spread with about 1 tablespoon of the cheese spread.

Roll the palachinka and serve.  We cut ours in half so that they would be easy to pick up and eat without using forks. 

I will say that these were really yummy!  I'm glad we have 4 left so I can have them again tomorrow!