(pleasant music) - Hi, I'm Chef Jacques Pépin and this is "American
Masters At Home". - For me, there is nothing
easier to make than crepes. When I was a kid, my mother
made crepes all the time. When Claudine was
born, my daughter, she would bring
someone from school. They get up, they sit at
the counter, I make crepes. And you see, I just
put a skillet here and I put the large
one, seven inch bottom. I'm going to put a
good tablespoon of
butter on top of it. Yeah, a good tablespoon. And by the time this is melted, I'm ready to make the crepes. So here I have a third of
a cup of flour, one egg. Whoop, that's it. Add a little bit, I
have half a cup of milk. I just put a little
bit of the milk, a little dash of salt and
a bigger dash of sugar. And then I mix. Now, remember that
you do your crepes, whether you do them for sweet, or whether you do them
to stuff them with fish, or with meat or
anything like this, he doesn't really matter,
the crepe is the same. Now notice what I did here, I mix it, but only with
some of the liquid. When I only have a little
bit of liquid in it, the thread of the whisk
will make it very smooth. If I put all of the liquid
in it, then I may have lumps. So now I can put the
rest of the liquid in it. And as you can see here,
my mixture is very thin. Here, you can see
our liquid it is. And you can see also that
my butter, now it's melted. I will add the butter to
it, mix it and that's it. I'm ready to do the first crepe. Now about a quarter of a cup
of mixture, I put it here and spread it all around. It's better to put
less than more in it. 'Cause even if you
have a little corner where you have a
little bit of missing, we can always add it. Now it has to cook
about a minute, a good minute on one side. It could even be, the
batter could even be slightly more liquid than that. Usually the first crepe
they say is for the dog. No, not for me, I
use the first crepe. And I turn it, okay. Only time that I
put butter in it is when I melt the butter
to add to the mixture. I don't have to do
anything else now. If you don't want to put butter, you can put a tablespoon
of oil instead. So you cook it about 30
second on the other side. Now it's very loose
so it's easy to flip. Eh, regard. And then now I
slide it this way. Okay. Now, second crepe. Notice that I put the
batter in the corner here and I spread it out very
fast and I shake it, and a little more, too. Okay. Now, as soon as the
batter touch the pan, it will coagulate and set so the speed at
which you spread it, determine how thin the
crepe is going to be. So, you don't put
it in the center, you put it in the
center, people do this, it goes all over the place. And so no, you put
it here on one side and spread it out this way
to really spread it out. And as I said, even if you have a little
bit missing it's okay. Now you can see the side
of that crepe is getting, so I usually lift it up,
turn it, nice brown color. It could be a little
browner than that. But, that side of the crepe
is always the nice side. I mean, it's nicer browning. So you turn it upside
down in the pan, I flip it so that when
you fold it to serve it, this is what you see on top. So that's an important part. And with a third of a cup
of flour, as you can see, I would do about
six crepes at least. And those are large one. Usually crepes are done
into four or five ounce pan, but then you have to
serve several per person. Here I serve only one or two. Here it is, so I flip it. I put it this way, and again. I did it again here from
this side, spread it fast, shake it, shake it,
shake it, that's it. And actually, it could even
be slightly more liquid. I put a bit of water in there. When it very liquid like this, you will see that the side
of the crepe become like a, like little hole all over
the place, like lace. And we call it that lacy crepes. Okay, two crepes like
that per person is fine. Okay, again. Now, when I was a kid, usually we had the
crepes with confiture, you know, as a dessert. So I have some crepes here, maybe a tablespoon
of apricot jam. Sometime we just put
sugar in the middle. Sugar and some butter. Sometime grated
chocolate on top of it. So you can have it this way. Here, I can fold
it, and as you see, that side is a nicer side. So this is a side
which should go on top. Folding it in fourths like this. Some of the time you
can do it this way and roll it that way. Another way of rolling it. Sometimes just with a
bit of sugar on top. Easy, inexpensive, a
dessert fit for a king. This is how you make crepes. Happy cooking. (pleasant music)
