Cooking Adventures: La Crêperie de Celia

Aujourd'hui, je suis plus française qu'hier.

In other words, today I am more French than I was yesterday.

Why, you ask?

Because today I successfully mastered the art of crepe-making.

Heck yes.

As anyone who has spent time in France will tell you, one of the best side effects of la vie francaise is the abundance of crepes that suddenly become available in one's life.  They're the quintessential Parisian street-food, with creperies popping up all over the place luring tourists and natives alike to their windows with enormous jars of Nutella and a batter-strewn pan steaming from its latest creation.  It's like walking by dessert heaven; it would be a sin not to eat one.

Even better than the crepe stands, though, was when my French host mother would serve up crepes for dinner.  My housemates and I dubbed this recurring practice "crepe-night", and would talk in excited anticipation about its imminent arrival and eat as little as possible throughout the day in preparation of the main event.  A three-course affair, crepe night began with a stack of crepes, eggs fried over-easy, flash-fried ham slices, and fried goat cheese rounds, sitting enticingly in the middle of the table waiting for us to assemble our do-it-yourself dinner crepes.  Next came the baguettes with Camembert and Comte cheeses (hello, it's France).  The best part of crepe night, though, was the dessert course, when Madame would reveal from her kitchen all sorts of sweet spreads and fruits and ice cream and bid us build the crepe of our wildest imaginations.  Nutella, bananas, peanut butter, whipped cream, ice cream - they all made an appearance at this course.  On one memorable night, Madame emerged from the kitchen with a tray containing no less than NINE containers of ice cream, ordering us to use up what was left in our crepe fancies.  The evening always concluded with laughter as Madame forced us to eat all the crepes so there wouldn't be leftovers, offering the last crepe from one girl to the next as we protested and begged her to have mercy on our stomachs.  Somehow, I usually ended up with that last crepe...they're rather hard to resist, you know.

Since returning from Paris, I've wanted to be able to recreate Madame's crepe dinners, if on a smaller scale.  My sister and I attempted to make crepes back in the summer of 2009, right after my return to the States, only to be thwarted in our efforts by old pans that had lost their non-stick capabilities, leaving us with a mess of half-cooked crepe pieces and general frustration.  The failure was so spectacular that I never attempted to make crepes again.

Until now.

In my birthday card from my parents, my mother included a crepe recipe that she found in a cooking magazine.  Having vowed to get back into the cooking experimentation over the summer, and having my own kitchen and good-condition frying pan at my disposal, and looking for a cheap and tasty meal, I decided to try my hand at crepe-creation again.  So I turned on some music, heated up the frying pan, and set to work.

The first crepe was about as disappointing as those of the 2009 fiasco.  Small, misshapen, and half-cooked, my prospects weren't looking so good.  But, upon reevaluating the situation, I determined that I hadn't put enough batter in the pan, that the batter hadn't spread around well enough because of its small quantity, and that I hadn't let it cook long enough.  So I got a bigger scoop, plopped the batter in the middle of the pan, twirled it around with somewhat greater finesse, and watched it nervously as it cooked.  I flipped it over a couple times, letting each side brown up a bit, and then slid it onto my cooling pan.

That was my first victorious crepe.

After that, I whipped up about 10 more crepes with ease.  Then I fried up some sliced ham, fried an egg (ironically, that was the part that gave me the most trouble of the whole ordeal), and assembled the two on a crepe before sprinkling it with mozzarella cheese and rolling it up.  Grabbing another crepe, I sliced up half a banana, tossed the pieces in the middle, scooped a bit of Nutella over the top, rolled it up, and placed it next to the other crepe on my plate.  Then I wandered over to my couch and watched TV while enjoying my crepe-victory.

It was basically my best cooking adventure ever.

And now enjoy some photos of the crepe process!

First Crepe vs Second Crepe Comparison

Going well!!

I was all excited...

My crepe bounty

And yes Mom, I will still be able to get my deposit back on my apartment when I move out...the crepe-making adventure didn't cause that much destruction ;)