When a friend woke me up at 2 a.m. to brag about the crepe he was eating for breakfast at my favorite creperie in Washington, D.C., I groaned – partly out of tiredness, mostly out of jealousy – and rolled over to fall back asleep. But when I woke up, I firmly decided that I would have to one-up this taunting, bragging friend.
There’s just one problem: I hate crepes.
Before discovering my favorite D.C. creperie, I’d never had a crepe I liked. At first, I attributed this to living in Hawaii, where crepes were usually only served where Japanese tourists could find them. These crepes likewise catered to their tastes: always served sweet, probably with ice cream, and with too much whipped cream.
When a French friend at invited me over for crepes, I jumped at the chance to have real crepes – real crepes! Yet as we sat at the table with our crepes, the other French expats nodding their head in approval as they ate theirs, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. As I filled and folded my crepe, I wondered if I had been led astray.
It’s not like I even had an idea of what a crepe was supposed to be – but everyone had always talked about crepes with such praise and desire. A trip to France confirmed that they were exactly as my friend had made them, and I was dismayed that they were so simple, so far from mind-blowing. Crepe-fans praised them for being so soft, so fluffy. Nibbling at my crepe at the Gare Montparnasse, I disagreed. Soft and fluffy? That’s how you described a good pancake. In comparison, crepes were so… wimpy.
I decided that crepes just weren’t for me, as I’d always preferred foods with a bit more substance, a bit more bite. I turned my nose up at crepes from then on – at least until my last trip to D.C., when my friend cajoled me into visiting his neighborhood creperie. The crepes came in savory and sweet with a choice of white or buckwheat flour – typical. But after my first bite, I had to admit… these crepes were good! They were exactly what I’d been looking for, a bit more substantial than your typical crepe. This probably means that they’re not quite “authentic,” but they were too good even for culinary elitism.
The only problem is that I haven’t been able to reproduce them in my own kitchen, and there was no way I would settle for the usual soft, fluffy, wimpy crepes.
I mulled over how to one-up my bragging friend. It had to be something to make him jealous, but something I was also willing to eat for breakfast. Looking over my pantry, I decided that whole wheat flour would give the crepe more chew. Then my eye caught a box of mochi flour sitting demurely in the corner. Mochi. With a love for mochi on his froyo and desire for the moffles (mochi waffles) I once bragged to him about, he would definitely be jealous over this: mochi crepes.
The mochi flour provided a more substantial bite without weighing down the crepes. Despite fears that the crepe would turn out gummy, the crepes stayed soft and pliable, and were easy to fold. Filled with strawberries and nutella, they were a perfect, bragworthy breakfast.
Ano…where is the recipe?