Crepes from the Indian dessert counter

You may have heard about a diner who went to a fancy restaurant, looked at the elaborate menu and ordered a dish that sounded most appetising: baby spuds sauteed in mustard seeds and curry leaves, cocooned inside a crisp and lacy crepe. The dish turned out to be a masala dosa.

The description is exotic, but a dosa, indeed, is a kind of crepe. Generally described as a thin, light pancake, crepes are prepared with a batter spread and cooked on a hot griddle, pan, or even a tawa. But that is putting it simplistically, for it is actually a very versatile dish, sweet or savoury, that comes with various flavours. Some eternal cribbers may insist that pancakes and crepes are not the same, but I believe they come from the same family.

The batter used for a crepe varies. You can use wheat flour, all-purpose flour, rice flour, gluten-free flour, buckwheat flour, semolina, different kinds of dals, etc. A chef once told me that he often prepared his crepes with potato starch, which added taste and crunch to his dish. Another chef used an egg batter for his egg foo young and hoisin-braised roast duck crepes, which worked especially well for people allergic to wheat or other carbohydrates.

You get different kinds of crepes across the world, from French crepes to Japanese pancakes and Vietnamese rolls. India has various regional versions, too — from the much-loved folded dosa to the Maharashtrian ghavan (made with ground rice batter) and East Indian patishapta, prepared with flour, rice flour or semolina, with a delicious filling of thickened milk and grated coconut.

We all know our Crepes Suzette — said to have been named (though later contradicted) after a beautiful young woman. It is a delightful French dessert of citrus-flavoured crepes with a sauce of caramelised sugar and butter, topped with brandy or liqueurs and flambeed. Russia’s wheat flour blini has all sorts of fillings — from minced meat to cheese and fruit. And I, for one, cannot forget a superb Belgian crepe I had at a friend’s place long years ago. Enveloped inside the soft crepe, prepared with a thin, flour-based batter, was a mouth-watering mix of ham and cheese.

Asia has some superb crepes. The Indonesian dadar gulung is a street food favourite, prepared with coconut and rice powder. Malaysia has its apam balik, flavoured with crushed peanuts and sweet corn. Vietnam is known for its banh xeo, a rice powder pancake with coconut cream, and I cannot forget a crepe that a Vietnamese friend prepared for us with shrimp, peppers and ripe mango. The bottom of the translucent, rolled rice paper showed a strip of orangish-red mangoes, topped with thinly cut green and red capsicum, shreds of basil and mint leaves and finally, a layer of steamed shrimps.

North India’s chilla or cheela is a crepe, even though it is not rolled. So is pesarattu, prepared with a green gram batter. I remember how I looked forward to my breakfast of pesarattus, with a dollop of upma wrapped inside, at Delhi’s Andhra Bhavan when I lived in the neighbourhood.

The wonderful bit about crepes is that you can experiment with the filling as you wish. And there are enough options for vegetarians. I remember in particular a crepe with a filling of mushrooms, spinach and cheese, layered with a nutty sauce tempered with sauteed garlic.

A chef from Kolkata once served a superb crepe that stays etched in my heart. He had reduced grated aam papad, mango juice and lime juice into a thick syrup — and then stuffed it into fluffy wheat crepes. He did a Cointreau flambe while serving it, too. “I have an aunt called Sujata, and I thought that Crepe Sujata was a nice name,” he said. “It’s our very own Indian version of the French Crepe Suzette.”

Patishapta

Ingredients

For the batter

Flour 100 g

Rice flour 50 g

Milk 220 ml

Oil To shallow fry

For the filling

Coconut (grated) 100 g

Sugar 50 g

Palm jaggery 50 g

Thickened milk 100 g

Method

Mix the two kinds of flour in a bowl. Add milk. Stir the mixture well, ensuring that there are no lumps. Keep it aside while you prepare the filling.

In a pan, cook grated coconut, with sugar, jaggery and thickened milk. Cook till it thickens, and then take it off the pan. Let it cool.

Heat a well-greased pan, put a dollop of the batter on it, and spread it out into a circle. Put some of the filling on the pancake and fold it. Roll it once more, and take it off the stove. Serve hot or cold. You can also add some thickened milk on top of the patishapta before serving.