31How did
we come to
think of
the crepe as
something
intimidating
to make?
6 ounces Gruyère cheese, grated
(about 2 cups)
8 ounces thinly sliced jambon de Paris
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper- In a large bowl, whisk 3 eggs with
1 cup water until frothy and uniform. Sift
in buckwheat flour, and whisk until as
smooth as a new can of paint. Season with
salt, and whisk to combine. Cover batter,
and refrigerate overnight (at least 8 hours,
or up to 24 hours). - Heat a 10-inch nonstick skillet over medium-
low. Ladle in 2 ounces (¼ cup) of batter,
then quickly tilt the pan in a clockwise motion
to swirl the batter all the way to the edges
into a perfectly round, very thin pancake.
The batter should disperse quickly; if it is too
thick — and doesn’t swiftly radiate to cover
the width of the pan — you’ll need to stir
a few extra tablespoons of water into the
batter and try again with a second
crepe. Expect to lose the first two or three
crepes as you get used to the swirling
motion, the amount of batter to add and the
hotness of the pan. When all three factors
align, you can make six savory crepes in about
as many minutes. - When you feel you have the hang of it and
are ready to go live, ladle in the batter,
swirl and allow crepe to set for just 10 seconds.
Crack an egg in the center, and use the back
of a spoon or a small rubber spatula to spread
the egg white, which will allow the egg to
cook evenly in the amount of time it will take
the cheese to melt and the galette to
crisp. Sprinkle about ⅓ cup Gruyère across
the surface, and tear 2 or 3 pieces of ham,
and set them flat on top, flanking the egg yolk. - Allow the crepe to crisp up and brown
on the bottom while the egg cooks sunny
side up, and the ham warms through,
3-4 minutes. In Brittany, these are cooked
on a large, round cast-iron griddle, and
the four sides of the galette are folded in
to become a large square before being
slid onto a plate. This is harder to do in a
slope-sided pan, but try it if it suits you —
you’ll want to fold the sides about 1 minute
before the egg is done cooking. Otherwise,
an open round is just fine. Slide it onto
a plate, and repeat with remaining galettes. - Season with salt and pepper. Drink with
hard cider, not too cold.
Buckwheat Galettes Complètes Yield: 6 crepes.
Time: 30 minutes, plus at least 8 hours’ chilling
For the crepe batter:
3 large eggs
1¼ cups/150 grams buckwheat fl our
¼ teaspoon kosher saltFor assembly:
6 large eggsSomehow, when I think of crepes, I auto-
matically see a guy in a tuxedo fl aming a
copper pan of Cointreau tableside. White
gloves, silver utensils, a heavy and starched
tablecloth. Crêpes suzette — butter, sugar
and orange liqueur — was the go-to move
of my parents’ generation for capping off
special dinner parties; I remember my dad
fl ipping and fl ambéing, not in a tuxedo
but defi nitely with a cravat.
But then I worked one gray wet win-
ter in a crêperie in France, in a real cow
town in Brittany, that was also a bar
and a tabac. Farmers left their tractors
idling outside and came in for a quick
glass of red wine, and to buy cigarettes
and lottery tickets. At 8 in the morning!
And here I came to know the crepe in an
entirely diff erent way.
The guy who worked the big black cast-
iron fl attops wore only a T-shirt and loose
dungarees and an often-dirty apron. He
didn’t make crepes; he made galettes de
sarrasin. These are large, savory crepes
— as big as hubcaps — made with only
buckwheat fl our and topped with vari-
ous things. My favorite was Gruyère and
ham and a sunny-side-up egg: the com-
plète. Sometimes made even more com-
plète with a garlicky, acidic escarole salad
mounded right on top and a bottle of the
local hard cider to drink.
I now forget if his name was Jean-
Claude or Michel, but when he arrived
in the morning, he beat eggs and fl our,
without even measuring, in big plastic
bowls (the kind meant for dishwashing
or hand laundry), using enough liquid to
make the batter thin and runny. He wasn’t
particular. In went half bottles of the hard
cider, or water from the tap, or a big draft
of one of the beers on tap — Stella Artois
or Kronenbourg.
Farmers and farmers’ wives, truck
drivers and their families, weekend soc-
cer clubs — everybody piled into that little
place on the corner, in that little town
where even the fog smelled of manure.
They sat, without formality, at bare tables,
on rough rattan chairs, and ate these gor-
geous, tasty galettes at any hour of the
day. Before church. After school. The bank
teller came for his lunch break.
I just don’t know why we do this to
certain things: How did the utilitarian,
sturdy, totally accessible crepe come to be
thought of as a tuxedo-and-white-glove
kind of meal? And how did we come to
think of it as something intimidating tomake? It’s a pancake, after all. A freakin’
pancake (pardon my French). That said,
in fact, the fi rst few never, ever work out.
If you don’t tilt and swirl fast enough,
you’re left with a half moon in the pan,
or if your batter is too thick, you end up
with a spongy disc. Straight out of the
gate your confi dence is rattled, it’s true.
But know that it’s this way for all of us
— even for Michel or Jean-Claude, who
cranked out perfect galettes all day and all
night otherwise and used to christen his
griddles every morning with his fi rst few
disasters, scraping the duds with his long
metal spatula right into the trash bucket
at his feet, with a little fl ourish of the wrist
and one hard clank on the griddle top to
ceremoniously ring its death.
You’ll always lose a few in the fi rst
couple of rounds. Throw them out. Too
thick, too thin, lopsided — it takes several
swirls and ladlesful to get the motion and
timing down. Batter thickens up? Add a
little water, a splash of beer, a glug of
hard cider. It’s not precious. Once you’ve
hit your stride and the galette starts to
set up, you immediately crack your egg
and lay in the ham and add the grated
Gruyère. By the time the egg is cooked,
the cheese will have melted, the ham
will have warmed through and the crepe
itself will have a crisp exterior that tastes
dark and nutty as the buckwheat toasts
in the dry pan.
A hard cider, pulled from the cellar,
neither fridge-cold nor kitchen-warm, is
the thing to drink. And this earthy galette,
with its rich and fatty toppings, deserves
a superb one in spite of its humble ingre-
dients and lack of pretension. Seek out a
true Norman hard cider in a bottle from
your wine store, not a can of oversweet,
soda-pop-ish ‘‘spiked’’ apple drink that
you now fi nd in any supermarket aisle —
dumbed down and passed off as ‘‘hard
cider.’’ That’s another way, though in the
opposite direction, that we confuse things
that shouldn’t be confused.