The Delicious Dessert India Forgot

The classic French delight Crepes Suzette was a dish once available in India, along with the garden-variety caramel custard, in cosy clubs/gymkhanas and more old-fashioned restaurants -- like The Society at Ambassador Hotel in Mumbai or on Park Street and Chowringhee in Kolkata (Great Eastern Hotel or Mocambo). It was a beautiful example of a dish from the gracious era of slow cooking

Serving it was a high art.

When you ordered it, an old-time chef, in a stiff white top hat, with a giveaway Goan name like Chef Rozario or Chef Peter or Chef Gomes, would roll a trolley, with a burner built in it, up to your table.

In a little frying pan he would warm up in pre-made crepe in the boozy orange sauce, flambé it and gently ease it onto a plate and place the enticing dessert before you the blue flame still magically blooming.

Caramel custard -- which is now ubiquitous and available in as strange places as Nagori Hajjan Milk Centre and Udupi Krishna -- has survived the old-style restaurant revolution that virtually saw the death of clubby foods like Welsh rarebit, Tea No 1 and Tea No 2, mulligatawny soup, prawn salad, vol-au-vents, Croque Monsieur, mushrooms on toast, orange souffles etc.

Crepe Suzette is well-nigh impossible to come by these days in India and is not even served at Suzette Creperie, Bandra, north Mumbai, which gets its name from this iconic dessert. Perhaps that is so because a restaurant would need a liquor license to have it on its menu.

It was apparently accidentally invented in 1895, when a young French waiter was creating a crepe dessert for the prince of Wales (later Edward VII) at a restaurant in Monte Carlo, when the cordials caught fire and, voila, he had a new dessert. He wrote about its origins in his autobiography.

He named it Crepes Princesse in honour of Edward (crepe is a feminine noun). But Edward suggested it be named for a young woman at the table that day and so scrumptious Crepes Suzette was born, whose creator promised that a bite of it could turn a cannibal into a civilised man! He was later gifted a jewel-encrusted ring by the prince.

This story was disputed by the famous food bible Larousse Gastronomique and there are several other tales about its origin, like the belief it was the prop for a comedy act, because pancakes flambéed would attract the attention of the audience.

I simply love this dish for the boozy fruity punch it has, which comes from sauce called buerre Suzette made from caramelised sugar, butter, an orange-flavoured liqueur, fresh orange peel, fresh orange juice.

The hot sauce is poured generously over a folded freshly-made crepe and the whole thing is lit up.

Given it's no longer available in India, or I cannot find it, I have to wait to visit my ebullient foodie cousin Vinay in Greenwich to have it. He knows my favourites and always takes me to the crepe-serving French café Meli-Melo near his home that serves an exquisite Crepes Suzette and a range of wonderful sorbets along with other kinds of stuffed crepes (savoury and sweet).

Something got in my head the other day -- maybe nostalgia for Meli-Melo fare-- and I thought I would try to make Crepes Suzette at home. Adapting a recipe I found on Good Food BBC, I cooked it up and was astounded to find how quick and easy it is to make and how close to the original it tasted.

It's a wonderful dish, quite simple to put together and one forkful and you will be a devotee for life.

Crepes Suzette

Serves: 6-7

Ingredients

For the beurre Suzette:

• 2 tbsp freshly grated orange peel or zest, preferably from mandarin oranges
• 250 ml freshly-squeezed orange juice or Raw Pressery fresh Valencia orange juice
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2-3 tbsp Cointreau or any orange flavoured liqueur (please see the note below)
• 1 tsp butter

For the crepes:

• 2 eggs
• 1 cup flour
• Pinch salt
• 1 cup milk
• ½ cup water
• 5-6 tbsp butter, for frying the pancakes

Method

For the crepes:

• Whisk the eggs, milk, water together.
  Keep aside.
• In a bowl, mix the flour with the salt, and gradually add the egg-milk mixture, whisking all the time till it is thick batter.
  Keep aside.
• In a non-stick frying pan warm 1 tbsp butter over medium heat.
  Pour in, with a ladle ½ cup of the batter and quickly spread like dosa, so it's thin and round.
  Cover and fry 1-2 minutes till firm and flip and fry on the other side.
  It should not overcook and must just gain a few light red dots.
  Fold into quarters (ie fold twice) and take out of the pan and keep aside on a plate, covered.
• Repeat for the rest of the batter.
  You will get around 8-10 crepes.
• Keep the crepes aside, covered, so they stay warm, while you make the sauce.

For the beurre:

• Mix together the lemon juice, orange juice.
  Keep aside.
• Warm the sugar, over medium heat, in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, monitoring it carefully, till it melts, browns and becomes a dark syrup.
  Add in the butter.
  Take off heat and then add in the juices, slowly, because they will sizzle.
• Return the saucepan to heat and allow the juices to amalgamate with the sugar to form a thin syrup, warming it hardly a few minutes.
  Add in the orange zest.
• Take off heat and add in the liqueur.

Assembly:

• Place a folded pancake in a shallow bowl.
  Pour a generous amount (4-5 tbsp) of the still hot sauce over it and serve immediately.

Zelda's Note: If you don't have access to an orange-flavoured liqueur, make your own by mixing 1 cup Triple Sec, available in many a liquor shop, with 10 gm freshly-grated orange peel, 120 gm sugar, 1 gm dried orange peel.
Alternatively use orange-flavoured vodka (both Smirnoff and Absolut market a variety) or the bitter apertif Aperol.
If you prefer, serve with a dollop of whipped cream/ice cream or a sprinkling of icing sugar or julienned sugared orange peel or fresh fruit or tinned mandarin segments.
But the classical way of serving it, so it does not become too sugary sweet, is without these accompaniments, apart from a few pieces orange peel.
Flambéing your Crepes Suzette at home is a more skilled art and is best avoided.

• REDIFF FOOD