Crêpes

Crêpes

*******
Makes 12-14 crêpes
Who can forget Uncle Kerry’s mile-high pile of crêpes for an unforgettable Spring City picnic years ago?Crêpes originate from Brittany, France, a coastal region west of Normandy.  In Brittany, their savory buckwheat crêpes are traditionally served with cider.The word, crêpe, has French origins, deriving from the Latin crispa, meaning curled.  The circumflex symbol above the ê in French usually indicates that there used to be an ‘s’ after that letter—i.e. crispa=crespe=crêpe).
How do you proununce it? English: ˈkreɪp/ French: [kʁɛp] Breton: krampouezhenn.

Long live La Chandeleur! (February 2^nd *)

1 ½ C flour

1 tsp salt

4 eggs

1 1/3 C milk

2/3 C water

1 tsp vanilla

2 tsp sugar

2 TBL melted butter

kirsch (optional)

Fillings:  beurre sucre (salted butter & sugar), Nutella, chestnut puree (crème de marron), sugar with orange juice or lemon juice, ice cream & chocolate, or jam

1.     To a blender add milk, eggs, butter.  Add flour, and salt.  Blend.  Let sit for 1 hour before making crêpes.

2.     Melt 2 TBL butter in little dish.  Use wadded up paper towel to butter crêpe pan before each crêpe is made, or after every 2 or 3 crêpes.

3.     Heat crêpe pan on med high heat.  Pan is too hot if holes form in crêpes.

4. Take pan off heat, angle it and pour a ladle-full of batter at about 1 o’clock on the pan and swirl it around.  Or, ladle it on crêpe pan and use the wooden spreader to spread it into a circle.
5. Using flat spatula, turn crêpe and brown on other side. Serve the crêpes from the skillet as you make them, or pile them on a heatproof plate set over a saucepan of simmering water, covering the crêpes with foil until ready to serve. The batter and crêpes will keep for 2 to 3 days in the fridge, tightly covered.
6. This recipe can be used for savory crêpes also—just hold the sugar and vanilla.

*  La Chandeleur:  In France & Belgium crêpes are often served each year on February 2^nd, an ancient religious holiday. The holiday is called La Chandeleur (or Candlemas), along with many lit candles.  La Chandeleur (also called “the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple” among other names) once marked the end of the Christmas season, 40 days after Christmas.  It is one of the twelve Great Feasts of the Eastern Orthodox Church.  Each Christian church seems to have it’s own take on the celebration.

   
This day was also called Virgin Mary's Blessing Day but became known as "avec Crêpe Day", referring to the tradition of offering crêpes. The belief was that if you could catch the crêpe with a frying pan after tossing it in the air with your left hand and holding a gold coin in your right hand, you would become rich that year.  There is still a lot of crêpe flipping going on these days! 

   
In the United Kingdom, crêpes are traditionally eaten on Shrove Tuesday, also known as "Pancake Day". They are generally associated with the day preceding Lent because they were a way to use up rich foodstuffs such as eggs, milk, and sugar, before the fasting season of the 40 days of Lent. They are generally served with sugar and/or lemon juice.

    Galettes (buckwheat crêpes made for savory fillings) are the traditional crêpe in Bretagne, France.  A little restaurant in Mont St. Michel, France gave us a hankering to eat more of them, with a sunny egg in the middleJ.

 

The names for thin crêpes in other parts of Europe are:

Greek: κρέπα krepa

Norwegian: pannekake

Polish: naleśniki

Romanian: clătită

Albanian: krep, palaçinka

Lithuanian: Lietiniai blynai

Latvian: pankūka

Russian: блины bliny

Swedish: pannkaka

Ukrainian: налисники nalisniki'

Finnish: ohukainen, also lätty, lettu or räiskäle

Faroese: pannukaka

Hungarian: palacsinta

Icelandic: pönnukaka

Dutch: flensjes

Slovak: palacinka

Czech: palačinka

Serbian: палачинка/palačinka