Net crepes, step by step

Surprise, “roti jala” or netted crepes are not on wikepidia! This kind of surprised and disappointed me. So far, they’ve had roti john and teh tarik.

I was convinced every Singaporean or vaguely Singaporean food could be found in wikepedia. Someone please drop them a note? This meal started off as a question to H about what he wanted for dinner. Because my marriage is a democracy, I always ask what he’ll like for dinner and then try to steer the conversation in a direction that uses up any leftovers or early expiring items in the fridge (there’s always some manipulation in every democracy after all). Interestingly, H never ever actually says what he wants to eat, he’ll always use something vague like “something light” and “easy to prepare” (this is the part he’s afraid his wife will turn into a harrassed sweaty monster over the stove, it happened before) and then “not rice” and “maybe something like bread” and “is there any more breakfast beef?”. I don’t know what it is with H and processed meats. He loves bacon and sausages and corned beef. It worries me how much nitrates and nitrites he’s consuming. I try to ration these items and let him have them only once a week in one of those fry ups. Anyway I try to decipher what he actually wants to eat and most of the time he always exclaims beaming and happy “that’s exactly what I was thinking of eating!” when its presented to him. Well if you actually thought of it, you could say it out in the beginning right

I had some leftover beef curry, so decided to make these quick and easy crepes to go with it. A great tip is putting in the oil into the batter itself so with a non stick pan, there’s no need to grease the pan at all. Just make the crepes on an oilless pan and the oil in the batter will come out and self grease the pan.

 Here’s the recipe

2 cups flour

1 1/2 cups water

1 cup whole milk

1/4 cup neutral tasting oil like corn oil

1 teaspoon salt

A pinch of yellow food colouring

Just whisk everything in a large bowl. If you can’t get rid of lumps, you’ve got to sieve it or the lumps will clog up your cup device (see below). I just whisked mine for sometime and it was ok.

 

This is a roti jala cup. A cup with 5 small holes punched into it about 3-4 mmm diameter would work fine too.

 

Heat up your non stick pan and scoop the batter with the cup and then swirl in a circular motion. As soon as the white spots in the middle of the picture turn yellow, its cooked. Flip onto a plate. There’s no need to flip the pancake to cook the other side, its cooked through.

 

Now put 2 crepes on a plate. The one below was not so lacy. I was distracted and looked away so a huge amount of batter ended up in the middle of the pan. Its ok, roti jala is very forgiving.

 

The lighting was poor, it was raining again! Fold in half.

Fold again and ready to eat dipped into your favourite curry!

 

And H loved it!