Give a crêpe

A simple French food brought home

Dear food friends,

Let’s just say you open your refrigerator, and you see you have several small portions of leftovers, a couple of fruit, eggs, butter and milk, maybe some leftover onion dip or sour cream, but not much else in there. Let’s also say you have flour and sugar in your pantry. What might you make for dinner?

Well your girl in pearls has a simple suggestion from the French countryside, one that some Louisiana French settlers brought with them over here.

That’s right. I am talking about crêpes, and despite Ricky Bobby’s willingness to let Jean Girard break his arm because he would not say, “I like crêpes” (even though he actually liked them), crêpes are perfectly suited to American dinners, not just the rather nice IHOP selection of crêpes with lingonberry preserves (neither a particularly traditional American nor a traditional French ingredient). If IHOP can smear lingonberry on a crêpe, Americans can put anything they like on a crepe and chant U-S-A! U-S-A! Whoo Hoo! AMERICA! Pass me some of them crêpes, y’all.

I first encountered crepes in a snooty crêperie in the Silicon Valley when I was a teenager. Silicon Valley operates on the idea that money is as easy to obtain as it is for coders to code bitcoin, so they were charging filet mignon prices for what should have been more like a Waffle House dish. There were chargers on the tables when we sat down, and the waitress offered my parents expensive wine to accompany our French peasant food, something traditionally accompanied by hard cider or water, what peasants in the north of France had readily on hand.

In France, crêpes may be the second-oldest form of fast food (the ancient Roman settlers apparently liked roasted nuts as they sat at the Arènes de Lutece, a small Roman amphitheater they built when they occupied what is today Paris). When I lived not far from that excavated Roman amphitheater, I would get crêpes as a late-night après-club snack on the rue Mouffetard. The late-night crêperie on La Mouffe, as the local denizens call it, wasn’t snooty at all. It was a plywood stand with plastic windows, two hot plates, and a couple covered with tattoos who handed me a hot crepe in a tin foil packet to chew on as I walked the rest of the way home down the cobblestones in my stiletto heels, careful not to drip egg yolk or butter on my sequined dress. In France, there is nothing snooty about the crêpe. It’s not only homey; it’s down home.

I had the truly old-fashioned crêpes in a small restaurant in Brittany, not far from the gorgeous presqu’île of Mont Saint Michel. There, I had buckwheat galettes (recipe to follow) soubise, which is nothing but buckwheat crêpes, butter from a clearly happy cow, salt and pepper, and sautéed onions. It was simple but magnificent. I also had a simple crêpe aux pommes à la crème du pays. I can teach you how to make an apple crêpe (and will), but nobody can teach you how to make that crème du pays! I had never tasted anything like it in my life. I asked the waitress what exactly it was that was sweetening it so delicately. She said that it was not in fact sweetened; it was just some clotted cream from the shiny-coated cows on the other side of the road, a local farm I could see outside the window, and nobody but the cows themselves sweetened it by eating sweet grasses that were so green they were almost blue. I am sorry to say that this is God’s recipe, not mine, and His Holy Mysteries include this. Perhaps he meant this when the psalmist wrote “O taste and see that the Lord is good.” Let’s admit he didn’t specify. I will nevertheless offer you a very nice way to make apple crêpes, just not perhaps ones that makes you see the fingerprints of the Creator.

Without deus ex machina, then, let’s talk about the galettes and the crêpes that you will make. The good news about the galettes is that the ingredient buckwheat flour, a current darling of those who are cooking with alternative flours, is more widely available than it used to be. When I returned to the states and looked for it, I couldn’t find it in New York City, a place where it is usually easy to find exotic ingredients. In my local market in New Orleans, I can get a pound and a half of it for about six bucks, which will more than suffice for any short-term projects, even if you happen to fall in love with the stuff. Don’t be alarmed that the flour has a purplish hue before it browns. That’s natural and probably good for us in some way I don’t understand. You can use this flour in quick breads, country breads, roux, and other kinds of cooking. It has a vaguely nutty flavor (just like I do).

If you think you will like crêpes at your house with some frequency, it may make sense to invest in a crêpe pan. They aren’t very expensive, and they are a great help. Some places give them snooty prices, let the buyer beware and comparison shop, but they really don’t need to be. The one at my house cost me about 24 dollars, and that’s fairly standard as a price. I only use this shallow griddle for crêpes so that the surface doesn’t get scratched doing anything else. If you are just trying this out to see if you like making these dishes, just use a plate-sized, light-weight, non-stick frying pan. You really want to make it light-weight because the technique of making this quick-frying batter is to twist your wrist in a circular motion as you hold the pan so that the whole surface gets coated right away with the batter. If you tried this with a cast iron skillet, you could hurt yourself after a few times, as the pan would be too heavy to make it easy. I make crêpes almost every month, as they are economical and delicious, so I keep my pan handy whenever I get in the mood to make them.

Once you have selected the pan you will use, it’s time to make the batter. I tend to make a meal of crêpes, both savory and sweet, so I make a batter for buckwheat galettes AND a batter for sweet crêpes made with white flour. I then fry the crêpes and galettes all at once. I store them in a plastic bag in the fridge until I need them. It’s likely (unless you have a crowd coming over for crêpes), you will have more made from my recipe than you will eat in one sitting. They will last in the fridge for AT LEAST a week, but in my house, because they are so delicious, we tend to eat the leftovers within no more than a day or two.

This is a white flour crêpe I have made halfway. I make it light golden brown as you see here before I flip it. I leave it light because when I actually fill the crepe, I may brown it a little more with the ingredients I make with it.

A few things I would have you notice in the photo above:

1. The pan is shallow. I am not making a deep dish pizza.

2. The pan is about the size of a dinner plate. You can make smaller crêpes, but I confess I don’t understand why you would.

3. The batter here is quite thin.

4. I personally always flip crêpes with a spatula because unlike flap jack-style pancakes, the thin quality of crêpes makes it hard to land them squarely in the pan if you only use a flick of the handle to get them to move. I have seen the occasional chef who can flip a thin crêpe. I think it’s a talent handed down through extraordinary genetics.

In my fridge when I was looking for leftovers I could make into a dinner of crêpes, I had a few small slices of smoked salmon and a couple of slices of bacon. I also had some apples, which is a traditional companion for sweet crêpes, and they were on the verge of getting too old to use for, say, inclusion in a salad.

To my compote de pommes, I added cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, slivered almonds, butter, Southern Comfort, and powdered sugar.

I took the apples and chopped them coarsely. Then I simmered them in a pot with butter, Southern Comfort, lots of cinnamon, nutmeg, powdered sugar, slivered almonds and ginger. This is a traditional French dish that the French call a compote de pommes. You can put it on crêpes, but it goes well over vanilla ice cream or in a bowl by itself. After the liquids had simmered down, the apples had softened, I took it off the heat.

For the buckwheat galettes, the process of making them was largely the same as for the crêpes. I put them aside.

I chopped the several slices of bacon I had in two, and I fried them. I used the pan and the bacon grease to reheat the galettes I had made earlier in the day.

I folded two of them almost like a coffee filter might be folded on each plate. I laid a couple of slices of smoked salmon, the several slices of bacon I had, some sour cream, a sprig of dill, and a bit of leftover sautéed watercress in garlic from a previous evening (see previous recipes for details).

I then reheated the crêpes with a little butter in the crepe pan, browning them a little on both sides. I folded the crepes much the same way on another plate. I spooned on some compote over the crêpes, and I sprinkled powdered sugar and more slivered almonds on top.

Here’s what all this looked like:

Galettes au Sarassin (that’s buckwheat thin pancakes, y’all!) with smoked salmon, bacon, sour cream and dill, coupled with quick-sautéed watercress with garlic in olive oil.

crêpes au compote de pommes with Southern comfort and spices, slivered almonds, and powdered sugar.

My husband can’t wait for me to make a dinner like this one again. I surely will soon, but for now, I offer you these plates. Feast your eyes. O taste and see! O say can you see, make this at home, and taste! God did not specify all his secret ingredients in life. Life itself is complicated. Crêpes, however, are pretty simple. Even Ricky Bobby likes them. So do I. I think you will, too.

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RECIPES AND WHAT TO BUY

Shopping list:

PRODUCE

1 bunch (or bag) of fresh watercress

4-6 apples

1 bunch of fresh dill

MEAT/FISH

smoked salmon

DAIRY

6 eggs

1 pint of milk

A stick or two of butter

Sour Cream

GROCERY/DRY GOODS

1 small bag of white flour

1 small bag of buckwheat flour

Nutmeg

Cinnamon

Ginger

1 bottle of vegetable oil

1 bottle of olive oil

1 jar of minced garlic (you can substitute cloves of fresh garlic, but I recommend always having some minced garlic in your refrigerator for any number of recipes).

ALCOHOL

Southern Comfort (You’ll only need the smallest bottle, but who knows what cocktail recipes you might want to try out later on?)

Note: If you do not want to use alcohol in this recipe, I suggest you try making a compote with leftover sweet tea instead. I will tell you, however, that by the time the dish using Southern Comfort has cooked, the alcohol will have burned off, leaving only the sweet syrupy flavor. Nobody gets drunk on apple compote unless it’s undercooked.

These groceries at my grocer would cost $70, with lots of garlic, flour, Southern Comfort, oil, milk, and sugar left over. I suspect you have MANY of these ingredients already on hand, so the groceries your household might not have on hand will cost less.

Here are the recipes for this week:

Galettes au sarassin (buckwheat crepes)

1 cup of buckwheat flour

1 cup whole milk

3 eggs

3 tbsp olive oil

Salt and pepper

Mix all the ingredients above in a large bowl.

Let them sit for at least a half an hour to thicken a little.

See actual crepe-frying and galette-frying technique described below the next recipe.

Crepes

1 cup of white flour

1 cup of whole milk

3 eggs

3 tablespoons of melted butter or vegetable oil

A pinch of salt

Mix all the ingredients above in a large bowl.

Let them sit for at least a half an hour to thicken a little.

How to fry a crepe or a galette:

1. Heat a shallow, light-weight skillet over a medium flame with a little bit of butter or a whisper of olive oil to prevent sticking.

2. Pour about 1/4 cup of batter into the pan.

3. IMMEDIATELY, grab the handle, lift the pan off the heat, and swirl your hand in a circular motion so that the batter covers the entire surface of the pan.

4. Wait until the edges of the crepe appear to slightly change color or curl up to flip it.

5. As I said in the body of the newsletter, those who are extremely coordinated may wish to flip the crepe in the air. I suggest trying to flip it with a spatula first.

6. Once both sides are cooked (but not deeply brown) remove the crepe or galette to a plate where you are collecting finished crepes.

7. Reheat the crepes or galettes prior to serving them in a pan with oil, butter (or as I suggest above, bacon grease).

8. Add such ingredients at that time that you would like to have in your crepe. Techniques vary according to the ingredients added and the taste of each chef.

Compote de pommes with Southern Comfort and spices.

6 apples, peeled and chopped

1/2 cup of powdered sugar (or more)

Cinnamon to taste

Nutmeg to taste

Ginger to taste

1-2 sticks of butter, cut into small pieces.

1 cup of Southern Comfort (or to taste. See my suggestions above.)

A pinch of salt.

Combine these ingredients in a saucepan over a low flame. Stir until the liquid in the pan is reduced, and the apples are browned. The more slowly you cook this, the more delicious this is likely to be. Take your time.

Quick watercress sautée with garlic and olive oil

(This recipe was discussed in a previous issue of the newsletter)

1 large bunch (or bag) of fresh watercress.

1-2 tablespoons of olive oil.

4 tablespoons of garlic.

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the olive oil over a medium-high flame.

Add all the other ingredients into the pan.

Stir them quickly. The idea is to wilt the watercress without making it too mushy and to lightly brown the garlic.

Serve this while it is still warm.