The Secret Ingredient

I have watched my father making crepes probably more than 50 times. His pride was the old-fashioned way (that is extremely slow) he made the batter. First, he sieved the flour into a big bowl made of glass. The children my siblings and I were at that time loved the second step: digging a well, just so that the milk was surrounded by a snowy collar of flour. But first you only added half of the liquid in the well. Too much of it would create an avalanche of lumps, implying a culinary disaster. With a wooden spoon, my father would start to stir, making very small circles in the center of the bowl. The point was to avoid to touch directly the floor; it would merge into the milk naturally with the push of the milky waves. That being done (at least 5 minutes of careful wrist dancing), you could add the beaten eggs, the sugar, a pinch of salt and some oil. Stirring again, but energetically now that the flour was integrated in the milk. Eventually, my father would reach the step of adding the second half of milk. My father's batter was finally ready after 20 minutes of attention. My mother made hers in 30 seconds with the exact same ingredients thrown carelessly in the Kitchen Aid. Of course the taste was never the same.

When I moved out from my parents' house to live on my own, it did not last a week that I needed to eat crepes. An acute form of nostalgia. Or maybe just hunger. I followed my father's recipe religiously, to the point that I had to go back to the supermarket to buy a wooden spoon (I only had a plastic one.) As the reader can expect at this point of the story, the result of my efforts was disappointing: my crepes weren't the same than my father's. I tried it again and again, some times being more successful than some others. But it never tasted exactly the same. So I asked my father what was his secret ingredient. He summarized his recipe as I wrote it above: no more, no less.

M. F. K. Fisher in her article “the secret ingredient” compares this kind of mysterious cooks -the ones that cannot be imitated- to wizards and witches. She finishes his piece, writing that “perhaps that was the Secret Ingredient: the blind strength of timeless passion.” While this beautiful idea applies very well to Bertie, Fisher's sorceress of food, the ending of my story is way less poetic. My father has nothing of a wizard. Even better: there was a secret ingredient. It took me years to find out that it was the butter. The bubbles of the hot butter would indeed prevent the batter to spread all around the pan, creating tiny holes in the crepes which were the secret of their fluffiness. I used to cook my crepes with oil. Stupid mistake.

 So if you too want to find out the secret ingredient, first try butter. If you are into French cooking, I bet it's going to work !