Make a pancake batter and fry in thin cakes. Then spread them with a layer of anchovies, butter and a layer of caviare. Sprinkle with minced shallots, cayenne pepper and lemon-juice. Roll up and serve hot as possible.
January 12 — No. 12
Russian
A zakuski-style rolled blin, written in the shorthand of a cook who assumed you already had a pancake batter in your repertoire. The whole dish turns on the pancakes being thin, pliable and freshly made.
- The batter is left to youThe original assumes a plain thin pancake batter; a crepe-style batter of flour, eggs and enough milk to make it pour thinly, rested half an hour, is the safest reading. A yeasted buckwheat blini batter is closer to the Russian original if you have the time for it.
- Thin means thinCakes thick enough to be American-style will crack when rolled. Pour a scant 3 tablespoons into a hot buttered 7-inch pan, swirl immediately, and cook until just set — under a minute a side.
- Anchovies and butterMash 4-5 oil-packed anchovy fillets into 4 tablespoons of softened butter rather than laying whole fillets down; a smooth anchovy butter spreads to the edges and does not tear the pancake.
- Caviare, then and nowAt the time this was written the word meant salted sturgeon roe, considerably cheaper in Russia than elsewhere. Any firm-grained roe — trout, salmon, lumpfish — works here; add it last and fold it in rather than spreading, as the eggs burst under a knife.
- SaltAnchovies plus roe is a great deal of salt already. Do not salt the batter heavily and do not season the filling beyond the cayenne and lemon called for.
- ShallotsMince very fine and use sparingly, about one small shallot for eight cakes. Raw shallot in a rolled pancake reads much stronger than it does in a dressing.
- Heat is the hinge"Serve hot as possible" most likely refers to the pancake rather than the filling — roe turns grainy and dull with sustained heat. Fill and roll the cakes as they come off the pan and take them straight to the table; do not hold them in a warm oven.
- YieldEight rolled pancakes, cut in half on the diagonal, will serve four as a first course or six as part of a spread of small dishes.
Rolled pancakes with salt fish and roe belong to the Russian zakuski table, the array of small salted, pickled and smoked things served with vodka before a meal proper. The ancestor here is the blin, traditionally a yeast-raised buckwheat pancake associated with Maslenitsa, the butter week before Lent, when they are eaten with sour cream, melted butter, herring and caviar. Books like this one, in an era when a day-a-dish calendar of "all nations" was a fashionable format, tended to compress a whole national cuisine into one emblematic plate, and the choice was almost always caviar. The recipe's brevity is telling: it assumes a reader who can make pancakes without being told.