Christmas Desserts

Did I ever tell you about how I came to work at a French creperie? Well, it all started when I graduated from High School in Singapore a year ahead of time. We knew we were moving back to India but the Indian Government had been up and down about Dad’s posting dates, so we didn’t know exactly when we’d be back. So I’d taken extra courses and graduated early and now I was underage for college in India so I had nothing to do. One day when mom and I were out at a mall, she spotted a sign asking for assistance at a French bakery so she egged me on to put in a one-line resume and our phone number. The next thing I knew, they called me for an interview and I was hired as the girl manning the crepe stand at the food court in the Metro mall on Orchard Road.

The crepe stand was a new venture by two young Frenchmen in their mid-twenties. I of course only remember the name of the one on whom I had a crush – Bruno. His partner used to be the manager of the stand I worked at. We had about 6 square feet of space at a small supermarket, and it consisted of a table with a crepe machine sitting on top and space below to store paper plates and so on. My job was not only to make the crepes but also to wander around the food court giving samples out to entice customers into buying them, because they were new to Singapore.

When I began working there, Bruno and his partner had exactly three fillings for the crepes – butter and sugar, butter and jam and jambon – ham. They asked me to try and come up with new fillings, so my friend from school, Ginger - who worked at the yogurt stand next door that summer - and I used to brainstorm to come up with new flavourings. Cinnamon was one flavor I remember Ginger coming up with. We came up with banana, and chocolate (Nutella), then banana-nutella, granola…Ginger and I used to have a lot of fun coming up with these during our lunch breaks.

I remember all kinds of funny things happened at that crepe stand. First, one day the batter finished and when I called my boss to tell him that, he just said, “Well, buy it from the supermarket”. I was flabbergasted and spent a good hour wandering around in search of the batter before it occurred to me that language may have gotten the better of us and called him to say it was the batter – crepe mix – that I was talking about and not the butter – le beurre. It got so confusing for him that I wrote out the old tongue-twister, Betty Botter bought some butter and gifted it to him. Another time, I noticed that every day by about midday, the batter, if it had been left over from the previous day, would start smelling bad and then the crepes would start coming out spoilt – they wouldn’t spread easily but drop out in little gobs and stick to the crepe machine surface. At first my boss thought I was doing something wrong, and then we both started getting puzzled about it. Then one day my boss figured it out – the supermarket manager used to turn off all the electricity at night, including for the refrigerator where the leftover batter was stored.

It was fun working at that stand, and I got to make a decent amount of money. The crepe machine was a doddle to operate – you filled the batter in a little rectangular pan that stood at one end and ran on wheels. You brushed some butter on the hot surface and then pulled the rectangular pan from one end of the hot plate to the other, applying pressure evenly to a pair of handles – kind of like pliers’ handles – that stuck out from the long sides of the rectangular pan, and that meant that a small crack opened up on the floor of the pan and poured out an even thickness of crepe batter along the hot plate. Brush a little more melted butter onto the crepe, dust caster sugar/ jam or jambon onto the crepe, roll it up using the spatula and serve up with your best French smile!

I even learned to make crepes flambé, which was spectacular, especially in the relatively bland environs of the food court – douse a butter and sugar crepe in rum and set it alight. The showmanship came in folding up the crepe even as flames were shooting out – you had to be really fast – and serving it up onto a plate. Every time a large crowd was in the food court, I’d flambé a crepe and then the next hour or so be flooded with orders.

We didn’t end up having crepes too often while we lived in France. I think we were so starved for spicy snacks and food, that sweet stuff just didn’t appeal to us at that point. And I’d never made crepes from scratch by myself. But the thought of making crepes suddenly occurred to me yesterday morning as I was debating what to make for Christmas lunch. I usually put on a spread that involves a fair degree of work, mostly because I have a tiny oven so any meal that involves baking more than one dish becomes a production and a masterclass in timing. And I like making what I think of as typically continental fare for Christmas – though vegetarian – baked vegetables, quiches, pies, potatoes dauphinoise – that sort of thing. But this year I’ve been so exhausted lately and last night we were out late for our anniversary dinner and then up early for Christmas present-opening with the kids so I was making a simple meal. Crepes seemed like the perfect way to end it – simple yet flamboyant and exotic.

They were surprisingly easy to put together from scratch, and very easy to make. Even better, they need really careful monitoring of the amount of butter used – my kind of recipe! Too much and they won’t come out right. I started out with butter and sugar ones, then for the kids I made two with Nutella. But I really wanted the flambé, reminiscent of Christmas pudding, so I cut up some oranges in half and made one crepe with sugar and orange halves, folded it up, smothered it in Benedictine and set it alight. That was a spectacle, alright, with flames shooting high up.

I don’t have great pictures, because you get the best effect with the lights turned down low, which means I’m groping in the dark for the matches and by the time I’ve found them half the liqueur has caramelized away and so on. But I’d highly recommend this super-easy dessert for a small gathering. It looks incredibly complicated and oomphy, tastes great and, like all my favourite recipes, you can ring in your own changes. For instance, tonight we had some batter left, so in remembrance of an amazing liqueur we’d bought at Freiburg once, I made crepes Flambé with orange peel and kahlua – truly delicious. I wouldn’t be surprised if crepes made with Nutella topped with Frangelico taste fabulous – an adult chocolate experience – or ones doused in Godiva…the possibilities are endless!

Ingredients

1 cup plain flour

1 egg

3/4 cup of milk

For flavouring:

Caster sugar

Orange peel/Cut oranges/Thinly sliced Apples/ Nutella/ cinnamon powder

Tablespoon of liqueur for flambeing - you can use any clear liqueur, from Kirsch to Frangelico, Kahlua...

Make a paste of the egg and flour and gradually add in the milk, whisking slowly to avoid forming lumps. Keep aside for half hour.

Use a nonstick pan for making the crepes. Take 2-3 paper towels and dab a bit of butter on them, and rub the paper on the frying pan. Be careful to use only the minimum butter needed to grease the pan.

The batter should be pouring consistency - use a few more teaspoonsful of milk to thin it out if needed - it should pour easily from a jug. Pour some batter into the frying pan and swirl the pan around to coat completely.

Pour off excess batter if any.

Sprinkle some caster sugar on the crepe.

Add oranges/ orange peel/ whatever. Fold over the two sides towards the middle.

Douse in the liqueur and, working quickly, set it alight and serve up.

With practice, you can serve it up while flames are still shooting up, which looks phenomenal. You should turn the lights down before you flambe so it looks even more spectacular!

Strawberry Fever

I had never tasted strawberries, though I had heard about them from my parents when they returned from England. Strawberries held a peculiar fascination for me, since my favorite authors from childhood, all British, from Enid Blyton to Noel Streatfeild, had mentioned them as inevitable accompaniments to summer. I used to wonder what they tasted like, tasting them in my imagination as something out of the world. Perhaps nothing could have lived up to the taste conjured up by my mind.

As it is, in my growing up years, I had to stay away from many food stuffs since I had Bronchitis. Ice creams, heavy milkshakes, grapes, bananas…My parents used to keep trying to make up for this – mom would pressure cook a banana once in a while. My aunt would boil grapes in water to make grape juice. Dad would buy me an icecream cone when we went to India Gate – just the cone, because the icecream would have made me ill. Then, when we moved to Bangkok when I was twelve, it was liberating in many ways. The hot climate and the Bronchitis treatment I got there meant I could finally have icecream. And milk shakes. And fried foods. Even bananas. Strawberries, alas were unavailable there too, but the flavour was ubiquitous, so my sister and I, in our first three months there, had everything we could lay our hands on that had strawberry flavor – milk, icecream, cream biscuits, wafers…

Sadly, though, after the first three months, that syrupy sweetness palled on us and we moved onto other flavours, never to return to strawberry flavor with the same fervor. Somehow the artificial strawberry flavour seems to fous more on the colour than on replicating the intense taste of the strawberry. Even the colour is off-putting - more like Digene or Pepto Bismol than anything else, hardly any relation to the vibrant red-pink of real strawberries. And the taste is just blandly sweet - no fragrance and certainly no tartness to round out the sweetness. Artificial strawberry flavouring is actually revoltingly similar in taste to Digene!

Much later, by the time I was in college in Delhi, I suddenly found little plastic baskets of fresh strawberries being sold at those Diplomat haunts, INA market or Khan market. I had no idea how to pick them so I usually ended up being cheated by the shopkeepers into buying baskets which had red sour fruit on top and green, sour ones at the bottom. I really wasn't sure whether the song and dance about strawberries was just another example of British cuisine. But I was entranced by the way they looked - the lovely heart-shaped fruit, the intense colour, and the whole delicate body being crowned by pretty little green leaves.

Then, on my first visit to Europe, I was in the Eurostar going from London to Paris and found that they were selling punnets of strawberries. I had never seen strawberries like this – they were the size of the peaches we get back here in India. Despite the expense on my limited budget, I had to try them – and finally understood what all the scrumptious mystique was about. Juicy, sweet and yet delightfully and addictively tart, I could have made a meal of them, and nearly did. Ever since, every winter in Delhi, between January and March when the strawberries are out, I pounce on them, hoping to recreate the same flavor that I experienced in England. But maybe that's something that just belongs there, amidst Wimbledon and Boat race night, driven by the terroir?

However, what I can manage is to make strawberries and cream, the cream slightly whipped with sugar to add a little more sweetness to the largely tart flavor of Indian strawberries. Fluffily and palely pink if you refrigerate it for half an hour, it looks like a visual representation of Cloud 9. Add a few ruby-red pomegranate seeds and you're not quite sure whether you're supposed to eat it or just stare at it in delight!