Monday, August 04, 2003

On Sunday I reclaimed the title of Crepe Queen.  Pete O’Toole-like awhile, I flipped the crepes in the pan, in midair.  It was amazing.  I am a goddess.  With the beautifully-flipped crepes I made Gateaux de Crepes a la Normande, a sort of crepe layer cake, with applesauce sprinkled with almonds between each crepe, sprinkled with butter and sugar, baked for half an hour, and flambéed with some cognac.  I am now also heir apparent to the Flambé Sovereignty, albeit very nearly a handless one.  I really must get a better tool than my Nascar Bic lighter.  But the flames were impressive, and the resulting taste was, at last, not unpleasantly alcoholic-y.  The applesauce I made by cooking peeled and chopped-up apples for twenty minutes or so, tossing them with sugar, and boiling them until they were good and soft before stirring in a bit of cream and some cognac.  Piece of cake.  I just smeared some on top of a crepe, sprinkled with pulverized almonds, and kept building up.  No problem.  Very impressive.  Perfect French food. To celebrate my brilliance, I let Eric cook dinner.  The thought was this.  Since we’re doing so awfully wonderfully well, why not use this embarrassment of timing riches we have to revisit some of the highpoints of this great voyage we’re coming to the end of?  Better yet, why not have Eric revisit them?  While I sit on my ass?  Brilliant.  So let’s start at the very beginning, shall we?  Potage Parmentier.  Chopped leeks and potatoes in water, simmered for something less than an hour, seasoned with salt, mashed up with a fork or a food mill or a potato masher, enriched with cream or butter, with parsley sprinkled on top.  That’s it.  It’s fucking brilliant.  The cleanest, simplest, loveliest taste in the world.  Eric and I very nearly polished off two quarts of the stuff ourselves.  And whilst eating this manna from heaven, we watched “Devil’s Playground,” a documentary about Amish teenagers going through “Rumspringa,” when they venture out into the big bad world and experience what there is to experience before deciding whether to join the Amish or not.  Holy shit.  It was, dare I say, brilliant.  Quite an experience, slurping down a meal that very nearly could convince me in the existence of God whilst watching a movie that delved into the nature of faith.  Wowza.       8:29:10 PM    comment []