Cottage Cheese Blintzes and Peach-Plum Compote

Blintzes are essentially the same thing as crêpes but traditionally stuffed with a cream or cottage cheese filling, so it seems appropriate to call these thin stuffed breakfast or dessert pancakes by their old Yiddish name.

The peach-plum compote is very sweet and slightly spicy, and it's easiest to make well ahead of time and reheat gently before making the blintzes. As with crêpes, the batter should be left to sit for a while before frying, so if you're going to be serving them for breakfast it's a good idea to prepare the batter the night before.

I've submitted this tasty recipe to Sweetnicks, who will be hosting ARF (Antioxidant Rich Food) Tuesday night.

Cottage cheese blintzes and peach-plum compote

Peach-plum compote:

1 cup sugar
1 cup water
juice of 1 orange
rind from 1/2 lemon
1 stick cinnamon
4 cloves
4 peaches, peeled, pitted and chopped
3 large plums, pitted and chopped
juice of 1 lemon

Blintzes:

3 eggs
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup yoghurt
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons warm butter
2/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

Filling:

1 6 oz. package dry-pressed whole-fat cottage cheese
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Compote: Make the compote first, or the day before, by combining the sugar, water, orange juice, lemon rind, cinnamon stick and cloves in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and continue to boil, stirring frequently, until syrupy.

Reduce the heat to medium-low and add the peaches. Cover and boil slowly until the peaches are tender, about 5 to 10 minutes, and remove with a slotted spoon.

Add the plums and cook the same way as the peaches, again about 5 to 10 minutes. The skin from the plums should only be starting to peel away from the fruit. Remove the plums with a slotted spoon and set aside separately from the peaches to cool a few moments before gently pulling off the skins by hand. Add to the peaches and toss.

Meanwhile, continue to slowly boil the compote syrup, by now thinned with the peach and plum juices, until it thickens again. Remove the lemon rind, cinnamon stick and cloves. Stir in the lemon juice to the syrup. Pour in the fruit and let simmer over the lowest heat.

If you're making the compote the day, store covered in the refrigerator and reheat the fruit in the syrup gently over low heat while cooking the blintzes.

Blintzes: To make the blintzes, put all blintz ingredients except the flour into a blender and blend well. Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl and make a well in the center. Pour the blended mixture into the flour and whisk together the ingredients until smooth. Refrigerate for at least one hour. If you are going to store the batter overnight, cover tightly before putting in the refrigerator.

Butter an 8-inch frying pan and place over medium heat. When the frying pan is hot, scoop 1/3 of a cup of the blintz batter and pour it into the pan. Wait a few seconds, then swirl the batter around the pan just enough to cover the bottom and let the batter climb just a little bit up the sides.

Cook until the top surface is dry and the edges release easily from the sides, just a minute or so. Loosen the edges of the blintz with a spatula and remove from the pan onto a plate. Cover with a sheet of wax paper before adding the next blintz.

Cook the rest of the batter the same way, stirring the bowl briefly before measuring each 1/3 of a cup.

To make the filling, cream together the cottage cheese, sugar and vanilla. To serve the blintzes, spread one out on a large plate and spoon two tablespoonfuls of the filling in the center of the blintz. Roll or fold up the blintz on each side over the filling and fold in one end. Traditionally, blintzes are lightly re-fried again or baked after filling, but if you're serving them right away this isn't necessary. Transfer the filled and folded blintz carefully with a spatula to a serving plate and ladle some warm peach-plum compote with its syrup over top.

Makes about a dozen blintzes.