Making Russian Blini

One of my favorite Russian foods is blini, or pancakes. Russians call them pancakes, but they are really just crepes. I didn't even know blini was a popular staple here! Now, I try to eat them as much as possible along with my other favorite: borscht.

Lyaysan and I wanted to get together and I suggested that we cook something because it's cheaper than eating out and it's fun cooking with other people. She asked me what I wanted too cook and I just said, "Something Russian." I'm a horrible decision maker. I really want to learn how to cook Russian foods because I like them and it's a lot harder to find ingredients for the things I can make in the USA. She suggested that we make blini. I agreed because I love blini and I've also been pretty intimidated to try to cook them myself.

When Katherine and I were in Irkutsk the woman who ran our hostel made us blini every day for breakfast. She made it look easy because she'd been making them for years, but I just kept thinking, "How do they not burn?" Honestly, it's just a think layer of batter on a flame. As I watched Lyaysan make the blini I realized that it's actually kind of hard to burn it, and even if you do they don't really taste burnt.

I would provide a recipe here, but I'm not going to pretend I know how to make blini. Watching her cook I realized that you, honestly, just have to try it out and adapt to your liking. She used about 8 eggs, 8 cups of milk, a pinch of salt, a few tablespoons of sugar, some flour to make it thick (but it was still watery), and she added some oil so she didn't need to oil the pan. She made the first one and then we tried it and adjusted to our liking. This recipe made a ton of blini. You cook it like a normal pancake but with less time on each side.

With our blini we used sweetened condensed milk and chocolate spread to make it taste sweet. What I like about blini is that you can basically eat it with anything. Sometimes I'll order it sweet with bananas and chocolate, other times I'll order it with sour cream and chicken. You can even eat it plain which is common too. When we were in Irkutsk we spread jam on them. So, as you can see there is no right way to eat blini.

Have you ever eaten blini? What's your favorite way to eat it?

Cabbage and Noodles

When I was living with my grandma she often stopped at this pierogi place and buy a bag of pre-made cabbage and noodles. It was my favorite. Who knew cabbage and noodles could taste so good. I've been struggling to cook here in Russia because I'm not familiar with a lot of the ingredients and they make a lot of stuff from scratch (like I had to make my own evaporate milk once). I've been trying to find recipes with as few ingredients as possible. Russians love their cabbage and pasta, so it's a bonus if I can find recipes including these items. I stumbled across this really simple cabbage and noodle recipe and was so happy with the results. For just a few ingredients it was very flavorful.

This was the second time I attempted this recipe and both times it turned out great (except the first time I added WAY too much pepper. Check and double check the amount you need to add and don't add 3 teaspoons of pepper like I did).