Recipe: French Crepes

Cool beans. Piece of cake. Not my cup of tea. Food idioms make language more colorful, even if they don’t make much sense. Clotilde Dusoulier’s new book with beautiful illustrations by Melina Josserand,Edible French: Tasty Expressions and Cultural Bites is all about the French language’s food idioms. One of their sayings, in true French form, is “long like a day without bread.”

This recipe for crepes comes from their book. To find out more, make sure you tune in to this Saturday’s edition of Good Food.

French Crepes

Makes about fifteen 9 1/2-inch (24 centimeter) crepes

2 cups (250 grams) all-purpose flour

1⁄4 cup (50 grams) sugar

1⁄4 teaspoon fine sea salt

3 large eggs

1 cup (240 milliliters) milk

1 cup (240 milliliters) water

2 tablespoons rum (optional)

Vegetable oil for cooking

1. Combine flour, sugar, and salt in a large mixing bowl, form a well in the center. Crack in the eggs, one by one, stirring them in gently with a whisk to incorporate with some, but not all, of the dry

2. Pour in the milk, then the water, slowly, whisking as you pour. Keep whisking until all the flour is incorporated; the batter will be thin. Add the rum, if using, and whisk again. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, and preferably overnight.

3. Remove the batter from the fridge and whisk it again. Set a thick-bottomed, low rimmed skillet over high heat. When it is hot, brush it lightly with oil.

4. Ladle just enough batter into the pan to cover it thinly, and swirl the pan around to form a round disk. Cook until the top is set and the edges start to pull away from the sides of the pan, about 1 minute. Run the tip of the hard spatula around the crepe to loosen, peek underneath, and flip it when you see that it is nice and golden.

5. Cook the other side until golden, about 30 seconds, and slip it out of the pan onto a plate to serve. Grease the skillet again every two crepes, or as needed.