Crêpe with breakfast egg and ham, asparagus and tomato

You never see this. And you never will. It's quite unfair of me to show you something that you cannot have but I am sorry to say this is a one-time thing, its existence in the world a singularity and based upon transitory unique conditions, something that simply cannot be duplicated even by me. Then I ate it.

And man, is it ever good. I managed to land on a combination of deep intrigue. 

The thing that we do that you do not that makes our crêpes better than yours is our butter is browned on the stove separately in a small pan, this is what those tiny sauce pots are for, so it changes flavor to deep nuttiness, then whisked directly into the batter. If you saw this done you'd think it quite mad because the batter contains egg and butter is hot right off the stove but with confidence and without stopping the butter whisks in and moves and cools as it goes before it can do any harm. Now, the butter changed the batter to one with deep flavor that ordinary crêpe batters with regular butter that is not browned don't have.

Of course the batter must rest awhile, it takes awhile for the flour to absorb the liquid. The wait of at least 20 minutes makes a very big difference. It is required. So don't rush it.

There you go. Now you know.

The chips off the spiral cut ham never stop. I almost opened a package of  bacon then I thought, no, you have that ham. Use it. Until it's gone.

Buffalo cheese. Kind of like brie but much deeper. It eventually melted on the plate by the heat of the crêpe. It is very different. 

The orange tomato is hardly acidic. I would say its pH is neutral. It has tomato flavor that grocery store tomatoes or hothouse tomatoes or hydroponic tomatoes do not have.

The asparagus has a flavor imparted to it by the cast-iron pan that cooks it. It's actually a Magnalite pan anodized cast iron whatever that is. The company went out of business due to honoring their 100year guarantee. People sent pans back that they destroyed themselves. Too bad. They're very good pans. You can still buy them on eBay. So, cast-iron then. 

The asparagus is arrayed in the pan in a single layer all touching the pan. The pan is hot on high. The object is to burn the asparagus but only along one stripe. Butter is added to hot pan with asparagus flattened in it. The lid slapped on tight. 

American butter is about 20% water. When the butter hits the pan it spits water and steams inside the pan steam-cooking the asparagus while the surface of the pan is singing each individual asparagus spear along a single line. The pan is shaken at first to distribute the butter inside without messing up the lined up asparagus inside. You must stand there without moving the pan and determine when the asparagus is cooked without looking and when the burn-stripe is developed. I do this by smell. The moment I smell burnt vegetable I shut the thing down. It takes, say, two minutes on high heat.

That burned stripe on each asparagus spear makes all the difference in the world. You can actually taste the cast-iron pan, it comes across as hearth or as campfire, something very Old World.

The crêpe is already high egg and liquid to flour ratio, as far as batters go, then with the additional yolk pouring out over everything on the plate and mixing with everything, it's just outstanding. Each bite is a bit different from the other bites depending on the combination you picked up with the fork and each is outstanding.

All this with a crêpe. I'm telling you, if you could capture this, reliably copy it, and market it, you'd make a mint.