How to Roll a Crepe

Pick a sunny morning -- the last sunny morning of Indian summer will do -- and make some crepe batter. I whisk together a cup of flour, 4 eggs, and enough milk or water to make a very thin runny batter. I like to add several tablespoons of ground flax meal because it makes a pied-beauty speckling on the undersides of the crepes (and, magically, only the undersides). Then I heat at least two skillets to medium-hot, with a little butter, and go into skillet-slamming wrist-gyrating batter-dribbling pancake mode. The idea is to make a small puddle of batter in the middle of the skillet, then lift the pan and swirl it around to spread out the batter. When I saw my Aunt L. first make these, I was completely awestruck. She used a cast iron griddle that left characteristic concentric rings on the bottom of the cakes.

And then she taught me this, which I thought the height of elegance, a trick so deft and dainty as to be just about as much fun as donning her dress-ups:



But of course, you can always roll your crepes like a denim-ripping miscreant:


The denim-ripping miscreant was also responsible for the roast apple-banana-carrot-currant filling. Delicious.