Crepe

Yes, you could serve these crepes before they've been caramelized in sugar, but why deprive yourself?

My friend Keena lives less than a mile away and has a plum tree she can't keep up with. In early fall, she makes jam with as many plums as she can and sends me home with a big grocery bag full of them every time I see her. I'm not much of a canner, so I began sautéing them and using them as a topping for yogurt and porridge, and as a filling for these simple buckwheat crepes. While buckwheat groats have a pretty distinct flavor and can be a hard sell for many folks, buckwheat flour is commonly used and adored in both sweet and savory crepes. For this recipe, use oval-shaped Italian plums (or prune plums) if you can; they're nice and firm and lend themselves well to sautéing—or just plain snacking. Morning Notes: The crepe batter needs to rest for at least an hour, so plan accordingly or make the batter and refrigerate it overnight. If you go that route, the crepes cook best when the batter is at room temperature, so let it sit out for at least 30 minutes before cooking them.

Paper-thin crepes aren't so fussy. "They're almost simpler than pancakes," says pastry chef Garrelts.

After a full day of fasting during the holy month of Ramadan, these atayef are a welcome treat. Like all traditional foods associated with special holidays, somehow they taste best at the right time. But that shouldn't stop you from making these unforgettable moreish sweets at anytime of year. And by moreish I also mean Moorish, with a flavor and fragrance that is exotic, complex, and evocative of a culture that goes back to ancient times. These are divine.

This lightly sweetened, crepe-like dessert is a great way to end any meal, be it breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It's delicious with crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream.

This is a very simple recipe for crêpes that can be filled with all kinds of savory ingredients or turned into a sweet dessert by omitting the herbs and black pepper and adding a touch of honey. I like them sweet-savory: Spread a little bit of sweetened yogurt over a Chestnut Crêpe, roll it, and drizzle with honey. It makes the perfect snack. If you cannot find chestnut flour, use a combination of 1/2 cup (70 g) superfine brown rice flour and 1/4 cup (35 g) buckwheat flour.

The perfect blank canvas to make your breakfast sweet or savory.

The crêpes can be made 1 day ahead and refrigerated, wrapped in plastic wrap. To reheat, wrap them in foil and warm in a 200°F oven.

Beer, traditionally found in this dish, ferments the batter and adds flavor.

Crêpes are easy indeed to make and are a most useful resource for simple but dressy main courses and desserts. What is helpful, too, is that you can make a good number while you are at it and freeze the extras, ready almost at once for many a quick meal.

The raffinatezza—refinement—of the food of Teramo is legendary. And the Teramani propose that it was, indeed, among them that crepes—called crespelle or scrippelle in dialect—were first fashioned. It was much later, they say, that their delicate, eggy secrets traveled to France via the gastronomic exchange during the epoch of the Bourbons. Often one finds the scrippelle plumped with a stuffing of mushrooms or a truffled paste of some sort, then gratinéed. Sometimes, they are composed into a timballo—a lovely molded cake, its layers spread with savory filling. Though they are luscious and a genuine part of the culinary heritage of the region, these fall too far, for me, from the ingenuousness of la cucina Abruzzese. The following, though, is a version of scrippelle that is more homespun, the one we eat always at a lovely Teramana osteria called Sotto le Stelle, Under the Stars. Our ritual is this. At about eight o’clock, we stop by at the Bar Centrale (the place most intelligently furnished with the splendid labels and vintages of Italian and French wines in all of Italy south of Rome, all of it accomplished with Abruzzese grace and humility by a man called Marcello Perpentuini). There we chat with Marcello and take an aperitivo. A bit before nine, Marcello telephones Antonio, the restaurant’s owner, orders a bottle of wine for us and tells him we’re on our way. We walk the few blocks through the quiet streets of Teramo to the little restaurant. Our wine has been opened, some lush plate of local salame and fresh, sweet pecorino laid on our table with warm breads, and, perhaps best of all, someone back in the kitchen is making our scrippelle.

Many people associate particular years of their childhood with the television shows they watched or the sports they played. In my family, intervals of time were marked by food. The break between third and fourth grade was the summer of crêpes. My parents had just returned from a trip to Brittany, and my mother was determined to re-create the handiwork of their famous crêperies. I got on the crêpe bandwagon, too, and borrowed her Teflon-coated electric skillet on the weekends. While my sister entertained all the neighborhood kids in the pool, I set up my backyard crêpe stand and spent the afternoon flipping and filling to the sounds of “Marco . . . Polo . . . Marco. . . .” These lemon-hazelnut crêpes are a little more refined than those childhood concoctions (banana-chocolate was my specialty in those days!), but they still remind me of those joyful afternoons in my makeshift crêperie.