Passport & Plate - Babushka's blinis (pancakes)
Russian Federation | Thursday, March 13, 2014 | 4 photos
Ingredients
Milk – 1 liter
4 Eggs
Wheat flour – 400 g
3 tablespoons of sugar
Pinch of salt, pinch of baking soda
3 tablespoons of vegetable oil
Small piece of butter
How to prepare this recipe1. Whip eggs with flour and sugar, than add milk, salt and soda
2. Mix all together. Batter should be watery, without clods. Add more milk if necessary.
3. Leave for ten minutes, then whip again and add vegetable oil.
4. Pour out your batter with a ladle on a frying pan, wait for a couple of seconds and turn it over. Your traditional Russian pancake (so-called blin) is ready!
5. Take it carefully with your fingers or shovel and put on a plate. Put some butter on it.
6. You can eat your blinis with red caviar (so Russian!), sugar, jam or anything you like.
PS The Russians have a proverb: The first blin is always a failure.
Try again!
The story behind this recipeI was raised by my Granny (Babushka, as we call all grandmas in Russia) in a small town on a bank of the river Volga. My Granny was an excellent cooker, but I was quite useless in the kitchen. She always said that I would never get married.
The best dish my Granny cooked was blinis (Russian variety of pancakes). The main difference between these two is that pancakes are much thicker.
When I was a kid, cooking blinis was a special ritual.
Every morning a mouthwatering smell of blinis woke me up, and I came to the kitchen in my pajamas. A new-born blin was sizzling on a cast-iron pan, and my Granny took it with her fingers, turned it over and then put on a plate. It was extremely hot, and seemed to me Granny had wonder fingers.
As I grew up, I became a good cooker myself. But what I still couldn’t do was to take a blin with my bare fingers and turn it over. I used shovels and forks, and my Granny always laughed: “Take it with your fingers, common!” Oh no. I did, cried and blew on my burned fingers. Too hot, damn. Unfortunately, when cooking Russian blinis, shovel might be quite useless, because a blin has to be very thin and a shovel can break it. So, I never fully succeed without my Granny’s help. My blinis were tasty but much thicker than they had to be.
My beloved Granny died of cancer in November, and this is the first spring I celebrate without her.
The Russians have tradition of Maslenitsa – a week before Lent when everybody cooks blinis and pastry. This year me and my boyfriend also followed the tradition. “I’ll mix the ingredients – I said. – And you turn blinis over please, because for me it’s impossible”. “All right, – he said. – Your Granny died, so I’ll be the person who turns your blinis over”.
Maybe I’ll get married nevertheless.
