Crepes by Amandine

Amandine is the very picture of French sensibility, grace and wit. For her sabbatical year she chose to travel to Italy and learn the language, learn about the culture, and also be in the country side which she has missed after 6 years in Paris. Of course I couldn't pass up the chance to heckle her into cooking something, so when my Italian hosts begged for pancakes I gave my conditions- one day I make pancakes, and one day Amandine must make crepes! My pancake were a total disaster and tasted like something you'd scrub the sink with, in part because of the difficulty in finding an equivalent to baking soda. Italian Bicarbonate of Sodium seems like an exact equivalent but doesn't have the same make up I think of our American leavening agent. It's ok, Saturday morning I get a chance to redeem myself. 

So what follows is Amandine's crepe recipe, and it produces the most delicious, silky crepes I've tasted. 

250grams Flour

4 Eggs- we used gorgeous fresh eggs from the chickens here on the farm

500ml Milk

Rum or vanilla

1 extra large pat of Butter (1-2 tablespoons) Melted

Add the flour to the bowl and crack the eggs in the middle. Whisk until it resembles a dough. Once all the flour and the egg are combined, add the milk slowly at first while whisking to incorporate. The dough should now be a very, very thin batter and  very easy to pour. Add vanilla or Rum (or both! The rum adds only a tiny bit of flavor) and mix. Pour in slowly while whisking the melted butter. Heat a non stick pan on medium. CAUTION- mistakes are made after this point. Up to here, it's very difficult to make a mistake since the batter is fairly forgiving. After this point the most common mistake is that people put way too much batter into the pan, and I did too, until Amandine gave me a lesson in crepe batter pouring. Don't think you can get the batter to cover the pan if you're holding it in your non dominant hand, because you can't. You need to ladle with your opposite hand and while ladling a tiny bit of batter into the pan, swirl the pan with your other hand so the batter coats the bottom evenly. This is done very very quickly. If your batter starts to cook too quickly and you end up with thick streaks of cooked batter before it's thinned out and covered the rest of the pan- the batter is too thick. Add more milk. Once the crepe is dry on top, flip. Wait 30seconds to a minute and you have your wonderfully authentic French crepe.