Leningrad has been gone for a long time, though in these almost-Soviet days it seems a more recent memory than it should. Nowadays, of course, that city on the Gulf of Finland has been renamed St. Petersburg.
I notice, though, that for certain Russians, and for certain memories of those who lived in Leningrad during its Soviet incarnation, the name comes back. I can teach about Dostoevsky's Petersburg or today's, but when I remember 1987, I remember Leningrad.
In our dormitory at Leningrad State University, I lived with two other American students and two Russian students in a two-room "blok" with our own entryway and toilet/shower room. We lived quite amicably, though we were the exception; most of the students on our program did not get along with their roommates.
Our Russian roommates were both from far away: Liudmila from Novosibirsk, Siberia and Nadezhda from Izhevsk, on the far side of the Urals. Nadya turned out to really be from Udmurtia -- from a small village called Iuberki where the inhabitants were Udmurt peasants. (The Udmurts, like many people scattered across the Russian North, speak a Finno-Ugric language as their native tongue and speak Russian only as a second language.)
Eventually -- some five years later -- I would visit Iuberki and meet Nadya's parents and siblings for myself. Their house was amazing -- a peasant hut with a huge Russian stove (which they still used for cooking, along with the gas stove in the passageway). Attached to the house were the various outbuildings -- the barn for the cow, the outhouse -- conveniently connected by passageways so that you didn't have to go out into the cold and snow in wintertime to take care of business. Near the house were elaborate vegetable gardens, a huge hay barn, and a banya. I spent 5 days with the family in summer one year, during haymaking season, and like the suburban girl that I am was allergic to hay and unable to help. The result was that I read a lot of Krestianka (or Peasant Woman) magazines and fixed the house and its environs in my memory. (Wish I'd taken more pictures...)
In 1999 I was in St. Petersburg for the summer with a group of students, and Nadya came all the way to visit to meet my future husband who had also come over, from America. I was renting a two room apartment from a dear friend and thus she was able to stay with us for a few days.
The first thing she did was head to the kitchen to make real Russian bliny for my boyfriend.
Nadya's mother may have taught her to make them in the Udmurt peasant hut; she taught me in the Vasilevsky Island kitchen that quickly began to feel like Leningrad again.
I'm sure she was so skilled that her pans didn't really matter; when I got back to the States I tried to use regular or non-stick frying pans, but ended up buying crepe pans at Williams-Sonoma. I keep them specially seasoned just to make bliny at home -- which when my children were small was literally every weekend, sometimes Saturday and Sunday.
Here's the recipe, adjusted for American conditions:
1 1/2 cups milk
1 egg
about 1 cup of flour
about 1/2 - 1 t. baking powder
a dash of salt
a bit of sugar, depending on how sweet you want them; for me 1-2 T. is plenty
Whisk the milk and egg together and then add to the dry ingredients, whisking well so there are very few lumps. Heat the pans and add butter. (My bliny are as good as they are because I do NOT spare the butter!) Keep the gas at about medium.
Pour on a small ladleful of batter at a time, swirling the pan to get the blin to be thin and round, maybe 6 or 8 inches in diameter. Watch until the bubbles come and the edges curl just slightly. Carefully flip the pancake (find the right spatula for this) and brown the other side. It will only take a few minutes for the first side and maybe a minute for the second. (My daughter used to request "white pancakes," i.e. the ones that came off the pans first, before they really heated up.)
Continue as above, adding butter to the pans every time. (You can do the more economical Russian thing if you want: cut a small potato in half, stab the non-cut side with a fork to make a kind of brush, and dip the cut side into a dish of vegetable oil to oil the pans between pancakes. This works fine and gets just the right amount of oil on the pan -- but it is not as tasty as butter!!!) I keep two pans going, and when a pancake gets stuck or ripped in some way, I sneak it off the pan and eat it bit by bit. (Remember the Russian saying: pervyi blin komom, the first pancake comes out in a lump, and don't despair. You need to get the pans, the butter, the quantity of batter, the spatula just right for it all to work perfectly!)
This recipe makes about 6 or 7 pancakes. You need to keep trying until you figure out what thickness you like and how to achieve it. They are delicious served the American way, in a stack with maple syrup, fork, and knife, and in that case they don't need to be as thin. We tend to eat them as what my son called "roll ups" -- spoon jam or even sour cream on the pancake and roll into a tube to eat with your fingers. For roll ups they taste better when they are thinner!
You can fill them with anything you like. Red caviar is good, but jam or preserves are fine as well. I have a clear recollection of applesauce and sour cream in that Leningrad apartment, but I don't see how it can be correct... Applesauce is not a very Russian dish. Maybe Steve and I made applesauce while Nadya was cooking the pancakes?
I more or less worked this recipe out myself through trial and error; Nadya taught me with a liter of milk and a small bag of Russian flour... not quantities I necessarily want to or can mimic. For the family I usually make two batches; for a crowd I make more.
Last week for my students I think I made five rounds of batter -- so many pancakes that they actually sent half a dozen home to my children for an after school snack!
I notice, though, that for certain Russians, and for certain memories of those who lived in Leningrad during its Soviet incarnation, the name comes back. I can teach about Dostoevsky's Petersburg or today's, but when I remember 1987, I remember Leningrad.
In our dormitory at Leningrad State University, I lived with two other American students and two Russian students in a two-room "blok" with our own entryway and toilet/shower room. We lived quite amicably, though we were the exception; most of the students on our program did not get along with their roommates.
Our Russian roommates were both from far away: Liudmila from Novosibirsk, Siberia and Nadezhda from Izhevsk, on the far side of the Urals. Nadya turned out to really be from Udmurtia -- from a small village called Iuberki where the inhabitants were Udmurt peasants. (The Udmurts, like many people scattered across the Russian North, speak a Finno-Ugric language as their native tongue and speak Russian only as a second language.)
Eventually -- some five years later -- I would visit Iuberki and meet Nadya's parents and siblings for myself. Their house was amazing -- a peasant hut with a huge Russian stove (which they still used for cooking, along with the gas stove in the passageway). Attached to the house were the various outbuildings -- the barn for the cow, the outhouse -- conveniently connected by passageways so that you didn't have to go out into the cold and snow in wintertime to take care of business. Near the house were elaborate vegetable gardens, a huge hay barn, and a banya. I spent 5 days with the family in summer one year, during haymaking season, and like the suburban girl that I am was allergic to hay and unable to help. The result was that I read a lot of Krestianka (or Peasant Woman) magazines and fixed the house and its environs in my memory. (Wish I'd taken more pictures...)
In 1999 I was in St. Petersburg for the summer with a group of students, and Nadya came all the way to visit to meet my future husband who had also come over, from America. I was renting a two room apartment from a dear friend and thus she was able to stay with us for a few days.
The first thing she did was head to the kitchen to make real Russian bliny for my boyfriend.
Nadya's mother may have taught her to make them in the Udmurt peasant hut; she taught me in the Vasilevsky Island kitchen that quickly began to feel like Leningrad again.
I'm sure she was so skilled that her pans didn't really matter; when I got back to the States I tried to use regular or non-stick frying pans, but ended up buying crepe pans at Williams-Sonoma. I keep them specially seasoned just to make bliny at home -- which when my children were small was literally every weekend, sometimes Saturday and Sunday.
Here's the recipe, adjusted for American conditions:
1 1/2 cups milk
1 egg
about 1 cup of flour
about 1/2 - 1 t. baking powder
a dash of salt
a bit of sugar, depending on how sweet you want them; for me 1-2 T. is plenty
Whisk the milk and egg together and then add to the dry ingredients, whisking well so there are very few lumps. Heat the pans and add butter. (My bliny are as good as they are because I do NOT spare the butter!) Keep the gas at about medium.
Pour on a small ladleful of batter at a time, swirling the pan to get the blin to be thin and round, maybe 6 or 8 inches in diameter. Watch until the bubbles come and the edges curl just slightly. Carefully flip the pancake (find the right spatula for this) and brown the other side. It will only take a few minutes for the first side and maybe a minute for the second. (My daughter used to request "white pancakes," i.e. the ones that came off the pans first, before they really heated up.)
Continue as above, adding butter to the pans every time. (You can do the more economical Russian thing if you want: cut a small potato in half, stab the non-cut side with a fork to make a kind of brush, and dip the cut side into a dish of vegetable oil to oil the pans between pancakes. This works fine and gets just the right amount of oil on the pan -- but it is not as tasty as butter!!!) I keep two pans going, and when a pancake gets stuck or ripped in some way, I sneak it off the pan and eat it bit by bit. (Remember the Russian saying: pervyi blin komom, the first pancake comes out in a lump, and don't despair. You need to get the pans, the butter, the quantity of batter, the spatula just right for it all to work perfectly!)
This recipe makes about 6 or 7 pancakes. You need to keep trying until you figure out what thickness you like and how to achieve it. They are delicious served the American way, in a stack with maple syrup, fork, and knife, and in that case they don't need to be as thin. We tend to eat them as what my son called "roll ups" -- spoon jam or even sour cream on the pancake and roll into a tube to eat with your fingers. For roll ups they taste better when they are thinner!
You can fill them with anything you like. Red caviar is good, but jam or preserves are fine as well. I have a clear recollection of applesauce and sour cream in that Leningrad apartment, but I don't see how it can be correct... Applesauce is not a very Russian dish. Maybe Steve and I made applesauce while Nadya was cooking the pancakes?
I more or less worked this recipe out myself through trial and error; Nadya taught me with a liter of milk and a small bag of Russian flour... not quantities I necessarily want to or can mimic. For the family I usually make two batches; for a crowd I make more.
Last week for my students I think I made five rounds of batter -- so many pancakes that they actually sent half a dozen home to my children for an after school snack!
