Pancake Tuesday...Shrove Tuesday...

In anticipation of the week ahead, and the fact that Amelia will be at boarding school on Tuesday, we had a trial run of pancakes this morning....

It was very cold in the kitchen as the power tripped last night so no under floor heating!!!  I gather that this may have been caused by most of the French nation turning all and every form of electrical heating on to max to get through one of the chilliest night of late. We slept on regardless but awoke to 6 degrees in the kitchen...a little ridiculous but now the heating all up to speed again and my fingers have thawed out enough to type!!

When we brought our French house we inherited a huge number of books...we all love books and have slowly waded our way through the library familiarising ourselves with the new additions...in amongst these books I discovered, to my delight, a book by Anne Willan called 'French Regional Cooking' which was first published in 1981. Anne was the founder of the celebrated 'La Varenne' cooking school in Paris.

It is a great book that Anne wrote after travelling the length and breath of France studying what the French families and restaurants serve in each particular region...a very educational book with fabulous explanations of all and every typical recipe, tradition, wine and cheese and so much more about every region of France. If you can get hold of a copy you will, like I do, treasure it!
I have also discovered while writing this piece Anne's later book 'The Country Cooking of France'. 
which was Winner of the 2008 James Beard Foundation International and Photography Book Awards.
I have ordered a get a copy and will review it at some stage soon...

 Anne's book has the best Breton crepe, galette or pancake recipe I know... for pancakes that is now the only one I use...fill with a pat of butter, sugar, lemon, honey, jam, poached fruit, chantilly cream, nutella, fresh fruit, flambee with cognac, rum or calvados or go Canadian and pour on the maple syrup....whatever takes your fancy....

 Crepes Sucre / Dessert Pancakes... 

adapted from 'French Regional Cooking by Anne Billan

250 gms plain flour
60 grams of sugar
pinch of salt 
600 ml of milk
2 eggs
100 mls of water
75 gms of melted butter

1. Put the flour, sugar and salt into a bowl and mix with a whisk. Add 400 ml of the milk and the eggs and whisk till smooth. Don't overdo it as it will make the mixture tough....
2. Stir in the melted butter, remaining 200 ml of milk and 100 ml of water and mix.

 3. Leave the bowl to the side for 1-2 hrs and then when you are ready to cook the crepes add more water if the mixture is too thick. This mixture is great as it becomes very elastic so it is easy to turn even when it is cooked very thin and lacy...quite different to the thick puffy pikelet style pancakes of my youth....
4. Using a crepe or frying pan brush with butter and pour a ladle full of mixture into the pan to cook...flip and then put into foil to keep warm while you repeat the process till all of the mixture is used up...makes between 12 and 16 crepes...

 5. Serve spread or sprinkled with whatever you fancy the most then roll or fold in four, eat with fingers or cutlery...and enjoy...it is the season...