One Good Crepe

I've had many inquiries into what exactly I'm eating over here in this land without peanut butter or pancakes.

Here's a little look:
Morning: I normally don't eat b/c I'm ALWAYS running late for class (big surprise) - but if time allows, I take the remainder of last night's baguette and dunk it in my jam 'chip and dip' style.

Lunch: Le Resto-U (le restaurant universitaire) basically a french DC-1 (otherwise known as "The Commons" for all you Eastern young'uns). Its a cafeteria affiliated with the university. For 2.90 euro I get a lil salad or soup, a hot plate, and dessert (which is often whipped cream with sprinkles on top). Bread and water are free. How nice.
Otherwise there's this cute lil boulangerie that sells a pretty good lunch "formule" a baguette sandwich and drink or dessert for 3.60 euro.

Dinner: Many things. A soup-pot portion of cereal (I FOUND SPECIAL K RED BERRIES), baguette purchased on the way home from class w/ butter and ham, couscous w/ soup, frozen dinner mix, nutella by the spoonful...

I have endeavored, on one occasion, to make crepes. When in France, right?

Well, here's what happened:

First things first- crepes are just eggs, milk, and flour. I've watched a real french person make them right in front of my eyes and really this looks like a no-brainer: FIRST MISCONCEPTION.

Mixing the batter is a science. You want to break the egg and mix it up first- so that you don't have tentacles of egg-slime permeating your batter (le pate). Next you add a little bit of milk, and then slowly flour- stir- milk- stir- flour- stir- milk etc until all the flour you want is added and the consistancy is thinner than elmers glue. Ideally without chunks. HOW DO YOU AVOID CHUNKS? I don't know. My batter was chunky. See?

SO- that failed. I added some more milk to try to dissolve them, but in the end, I scooped the chunks out of the batter w/ my fingers (I don't have a wisk - don't judge) and tried again:



Result: Disgusting scrambled eggs. The batter was too thin- or too fluffy after all my stirring- or something. In any case the result was a wet, hot mess that tasted like diluted eggs. Adding nutella didn't help. ADD MORE FLOUR!


Omigosh. Look at the color! Look at the shape! Its a perfectly cooked, golden brown PANCAKE.
I found this particularly spiteful. For a number of years I have tried and FAILED to make pancakes- many of those reading have suffered through (out of the goodness of their own hearts) my undercooked, burnt, dense-as-hell-because-katie-can't-make-batter-from-a-box, pancakes. Now I'm in France trying to make CREPES and the muses of cuisine decide to deliver me the perfect pancake. I slathered Nutella on this and moved on.


The key is to let the crepe cook. Trying to flip it too early (with that pathetic wooden substitute for a slotted turner you see in the pic) invites disaster. Once you can poke around the edges and not get batter- and you can shake the non-stick pan and the crepe moves around- its time to flip- with an elegant flick of the wrist (which often ended with omelette-crepes) and let that side firm up a bit. I think I made one good crepe out of a dozen attempts. I blame the last failure on my host-mother. She came upstairs to grab my sheets (contractually she washes them every two weeks) and we got talking about the words for pillowcase and douvet cover and by the time I returned to my skillet I had one big tortilla chip. I slathered Nutella on it and moved on.