For his birthday breakfast this week, my true-to-his-culinary-culture Russian requested bliny, the very thin, very-Russian pancakes that are used here as a base for just about anything you could think of, sweet or savory. He was good enough to tell me exactly how his mother always made the bliny, since my pancake experience is limited to the thick, fluffy pillows that New Englanders like to scarf down on Sunday morning before jumping into their plaid flannel outer jackets and Bean Boots and tromping through the woods to collect maple sugar buckets. I mean, not all of us do that.
Anyway, since it was a special birthday weekend, I wasn’t going to just make the bliny and stuff them with plain tvorog or sour cream like most Russians do before getting into their huge fur hats, tying up their pet bears and trudging through the snow to buy vodka before heading to ballet practice. Not all of them do that. After finding a single whole vanilla bean (40 rubles!) at the store, I decided to dress the bliny up a bit with homemade creme anglaise, or vanilla sauce. One of the more interesting pieces I’ve read about vanilla sauce was done by Michael Ruhlman, and can be found here. I used his recipe exactly, and it came out just as beautifully as he describes it. For convenience, I’ll repost the recipe at the bottom.
The bliny were a raving success, paired not only with the vanilla sauce, but with a jar of his mother’s homemade wild blueberry preserves, a bottle of maple syrup I’d brought from New Hampshire, and–of course–sour cream and butter on a few of the Russian’s.
Bliny
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
2 cups water
1 egg
1 tbsp baking soda
butter
Combine all ingredients except butter, and use a hand mixer to liquefy. Pour thin batter onto a hot nonstick or oiled griddle, and cook for about 30 seconds on each side. Stack on a plate, with a swipe of butter between each, so that they don’t stick together.
Serve with absolutely anything. I’ve seen bliny with berries, creams, cheeses, different meats, mushrooms, potatoes, cabbage–whatever whets your appetite. Evidently, they’re particularly good with blueberry preserves and vanilla, both at the same time, and with maple syrup:
Creme anglaise
Recipe by Michael Ruhlman.
4 parts milk/cream : 1 part yolk : 1 part sugar
8 ounces (~250 mL) milk
8 ounces (~250 mL) cream
1 vanilla bean split down the middle
4 ounces sugar (~125 mL)
4 ounces egg yolk (about 7 large yolks)
Combine milk, cream, and vanilla bean in a sauce pan and bring up the heat until just before it simmers; remove from heat and allow the bean to steep while you prepare an ice bath (a large bowl of ice, with a small bowl set in the ice, with a strainer set in the bowl—you’ll be straining the hot sauce into the cold bowl to halt its cooking).
Combine the eggs and sugar and whisk to combine (some people add the sugar to the cream which is fine, too).
Scrape the vanilla beans out of the pod and into the cream (put the pod in some sugar for vanilla sugar).
Bring the cream just to a simmer, whisk some of it into the yolks to temper them, then add the remaining cream while whisking. Pour it all back into the pot, strirring with a heatproof rubber spatula over medium heat until it’s thick, a minute or two or more depending on your heat. Don’t boil it or you’ll harden the egg. Immediately strain the coats-the-back-of-a-spoon-thick sauce into the ice cold bowl and stir with the spatula until it’s chilled.
