Chasing the Crepe

"Quimper has a quaint charm, with narrow streets, timber framed houses, and enchanting little footbridges that span the three rivers flowing through it.  At the train station, I picked up my rental car and headed toward the center of town with one destination in mind: Place au Beurre.  Translation: Butter Square."  – from chapter "Brittany / Crepes"










Passion for celebrating local flavors is a simple reversion to tradition and common sense. After spending so many generational years in America celebrating nothing more than the convenience of canned, processed, and fast foods, we now backtrack to simplicity and realize that whole foods, unprocessed, must come from somewhere close enough to find relatively fresh.  France is an original

case study in regional cuisine.  Brittany, for example, as Ann Mah traveled to find out, has been known for buckwheat and butter since at least the 15th century.  Leave it, then, to nothing more than the genius of necessity to combine these two products into a thin pancake so to clothe any number of other fresh-to-market ingredients such as cheeses, poultry, eggs, butter itself, or caramel.  As America currently chases its local scene trying to answer the question 'what is this region's food,' France has grown through hundreds of years of agriculture and sustenance to offer up landscapes, buildings, markets, cafes and, as is the case in Quimper, Brittany, a long line of authentic creperies.

"During the fifteenth century, Duches Anne of Bretagne first planted crops of buckwheat in the region.  A Breton noblewoman, Anne loved her native country with a fierce loyalty, so deeply that–despite marriage to two kings of France – she fought to maintain its independence as a duchy.  Part of this independence was self-sustenance, and as a wise and prescient ruler she encouraged the

cultivation of buckwheat, recognizing it as a nutritious plant that grew quickly and easily in the area's poor soil.  Thus buckwheat spread throughout the region, and Anne established herself as a beloved ruler."

For those have been participating in the regional cuisine of Brittany, it is known that a fine mixture of buckwheat and white flour produces the perfectly thin, savory wrap.  The only thing missing to finalize the promise of the perfect crepe is what is known as beurre de barratte: Breton butter.  It is

here, at this point in coming to understand French cuisine, how critical time and process is to the culture.  In the old days, entire days might be set aside for crepe making; butter, such a crucial staple in all cultures, had been taken quite seriously by the peasant farmer of old, "it begins, she told me [dairy farmers wife], with cream, which is fermented so its thick and slightly tangy.  It is beaten in the butter churn...to whip the fat out of the liquid 'until it forms grains.' She then drains the thin liquid and washes the butter, dousing it with water at least three times."  More rinsing, then salting, all of which takes about two hours from start to finish, from buckets of soured cream to molded sticks.

 If we watch and listen closely to trends in modern American cuisine, we find that chefs right now are not only harkening back to their own respective regional or local roots, but the concept of slow food is taking shape before our eyes, in which patience in process is actually now in vogue.  For the French peasant of old, patience was essential to sustenance, trade and culture; for the modern American patience in the process of looking to tradition in an exceedingly impatient culture is an intellectual exercise, but one that is well worthwhile.  How oddly ironic it is that the contemporary traditional Frenchman now complains how impatient (Americanized) their own food system has become.  The

Frenchman's contempt for all things American can be traced directly to what they perceive as a loss of ritual in food, language, and romance.