Making Crêpes

Last night I made an International Dinner with several friends who also just came back from studying abroad. We started out with an Italian red wine (Montepulciano d'Abruzzo), French brie cheese and crackers, then moved on to Yorkshire Pudding and Chicken Tikka Masala from England (while the chicken is certainly an Indian dish, it's very much a part of the British cuisine), and an Italian arugula/pear/walnut/Pecorino cheese salad. Although we were quite stuffed at that point, we then had ragù (a northern Italian meat sauce) with ziti pasta with a Spanish red wine. Even though none of us studied in Spain, several of us visited Barcelona, so we made an exception.

After watching the animated version of Anastasia, in honor of our friend who studied in St. Petersburg, we ended the meal with fabulous strawberry nutella crêpes from France. It was my first time making crêpes, and they were so good and so easy that I now want to experiment with different versions, both sweet and savory.

One of our beautiful crêpes

While this picture is from Flickr, I think it accurately represents the scrumptiousness of our crêpes. We were too busy inhaling them to photograph them!

Here's the very simple recipe we used:
1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. milk
1/4 c. lukewarm water
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 pinch salt
Mix and let stand at least 30 minutes. Cook over medium heat. Makes about 6 in a large pan.


I'll leave you with a quote I just came across in a reading for one of my classes, about language acquisition and the relationship non-native speakers have to languages that they study. The quote is from Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, spoken by a German character speaking in his non-native language of French:

Avec toi je préfère cette langue à la mienne, car pour moi, parler français, c'est parler sans parler, en quelque manière - sans responsabilité, ou comme nous parlons en rêve. Tu comprends?

With you, I prefer this language to mine, because for me, to speak in French is to speak without speaking, in a sense - without responsibility, as we speak in a dream. Do you understand?

At least for me, it does a good job of epitomizing what experiences using a foreign language can be - almost unreal. And I think that we all experienced a bit of that dreamlike, intangible entrance into another world during our months studying abroad.