SC - Re: Ruzzige cake

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Adamantius wrote:
>
>The blini recipes I've seen tend to be what I would imagine are the
>deluxe version, normally involving a yeast-raised buckwheat-flour
>batter*, sometimes also containing cream, and into which beaten egg
>white is sometimes carefully folded at the last minute before cooking. I
>imagine there are simpler versions, but when I think of blini I think of
>the Russian Tea Room on New Year's Eve, and the complicated version
>seems the closest to that sort of presentation.


The great Elena Molokhovets, in A Gift to Young Housewifes (the Russian
cooking bible of imperial times - that´s the one where many of the cake
recipes begin with something like "take 70 egg yolks and beat them for an
hour") has the following recipe for "The very best pancakes" (bliny samye
luchshie) :

"Prepare a batter from 1 1/2 glasses wheat flour, 2 1/2 glasses buckwheat
flour, 2 1/2 glasses warm water, and 3-4 spoons yeast. After it has risen,
sprinkle on 1 glass buckwheat flour and let the batter rise. When the stove
is lit, an hour before cooking, pour 2 glasses boiling milk onto the batter
all at once and mix until smooth. When it cools, add salt. (2-3 eggs and 1/8
lb butter may be added also.) Let the batter rise and, without stirring
further, fry the pancakes as indicated in the Remarks (that is, spoon batter
over the bottom of the burning hot pan and fry the pancakes on top of the
stove or, preferably, bake them on hot coals in a Russian stove. When the
pancakes begin to rise and brown, drizzle butter over them. If they are
fried on top of the stove, turn them to finish cooking and stack them up by
the side of the stove to keep warm.)"

She also has a recipe for crepes (blinchiki) and the translator´s notes add:
"Blinchiki are similar to French crepes. They are very thin unleavened
pancakes that may be filled or not, according to circumstances. Filled
blinchiki are known as blinzes among the American Jewish community."

>Blintzes seem to be more along the lines of a sweet or almost-sweet
>version of canneloni: an eggy pancake, usually much larger than blini,
>made from wheat flour and eggs, milk, etc., normally rolled around a
>filling, sometimes fried after rolling and sealing. Not unlike a spring
>roll filled with fruit, jam, cheese, etc.


In Iceland, we make almost identical very thin pancakes. They are either
eaten with sugar, or spread with jam and whipped cream and folded into a
triangle. They are considered about as Icelandic as you can get, and I
invariably serve them on the first day of summer (late April, the
temperature is rarely much above freezing).

Nanna