Soirée Crêpe



Food!

Now that I have had my apartment for two weeks and feel pretty well settled, I decided I should commemorate the occasion with a Soirée Crêpe. When I studied abroad, I remember having such a fête with my host family. My host mother and sister would make a huge batch of crêpes and on the dining table would be placed a jar of nutella, some lemons cut in half, some sugar, honey, and whatever else was on hand. When the crêpes were ready, we'd each take one and fill it with whatever we wanted. My favorite, of course, was nutella. I was a nutella junkie when I studied abroad, an addiction I regret entirely. But it's just soooooo gooooood.

Anyway, so we'd all eat crêpes and chat and generally have a good time. I was very fortunate to have a great host family that wanted to give me a real taste of France. My host mother was a great cook and she did her best to educate me about the traditional foods of France. My host father, on the other hand, made sure my wine glass was always full, and always spoke English with me because he wanted to practice his English. I have very fond memories of these dinners. So I wanted to bring a little of that back by hosting my own soirée.

Les boissons!

For my fête, I invited a mixture of friends and family. Sadly, I did not realize until too late that I did not have enough chairs for everyone, but I think we got by just fine. I served up my host family's recipe for crêpes, some hard cider (I believe that's tradition), some beer and wine, and various fillings. My crêpes did not turn out pretty, but they tasted good. I cut my host family's recipe in half because it called for an entire kilogram of flour and twelve eggs! Even though I cut the recipe in half, I still have leftovers...

And now, the recipe (la recette, en français):

Crêpes

500 g flour

1 liter whole milk

6 eggs

6 oz beer

salt

5 Tbsp oil

Put the flour in a large bowl and add the eggs. Stir a little, then add the milk, little by little (au fur et à mesure). Next, add the beer, oil, and salt. Stir until smooth, then set aside and let sit for at least 3 hours.

Really, there's nutella in there!

When ready to cook the crêpes, butter a crêpe pan and use a ladle to put some batter on the pan. I use the rolling method, where you kind of tilt the pan around to get the batter spread out evenly. You don't want to use too much batter, as the crêpes should be thin, but if you don't use enough batter, you will have funny scraggly lines coming off the edges. When the top of the crêpe starts to look dry, you are ready to flip. I use a long thin spatula (the kind used for frosting cakes). Remember, the first crêpe is for throwing out!

Enjoy!