Russian Pancakes!!

Blini – The Russian Pancakes

Blini are thin pancakes made of yeast dough. They are the main component of Russian board at Shrovetide, served as a symbol of Sun and Spring. Blini are also popular throughout a year, being served with different fillings and topped with sour cream or butter. The Russian word for blini is блины and alternative spellings include blintzes, bliny and blinchiki. When talking about a single pancake the singular form блин is used – blin, blintz, or blintze. Below is the recipe for cooking delicious Russian blini.

Ingredients

• 3 cups wheat flour
• 3.5 cups milk
• 3 eggs
• 0.5 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoon sugar
• 0.5 lbs. butter
• sour cream

Preparation

1. Dissolve the yeast and sugar in 1 cup of warm milk.

2. Add another 2.5 cup of milk.

3. Add salt, eggs, butter, 3 cups of flour and mix until the mixture is smooth.

4. Cover with a cloth and set aside in a warm place.

5. When the batter becomes bubbly, begin to bake blini on a pre-heated pan. Try not to disturb the batter as you bake blini.

6. Spread the blini with melted butter.

Tips for Serving Blini

1. Serve the blini hot, topped with a spoonful of sour cream.

2. You may also serve the blini with red or black caviar instead of sour cream. But really you should use sour cream :D

Unit 6

One of the first animated cartoons I had seen when I was a little child was about a young kid who did not want to wash himself and all his things were avoiding him.  The reason why I am posting on the blog about this is because when we first started going over rooms and items in the house the first thing that came up in my mind was this animation.  The animation names quite a few of the vocabulary words we studied this unit but it also includes location words like under and next to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xypy4CCcE4

блинчики

This is one of the many dishes that we sometimes eat in my household, and is personally my favorite meal.

Here is the Russian blinchiki (блинчики) recipe:

Ingredients

2 ¼ cups of milk (молоко) or water (вода)
3 eggs
1 ¼ of flour
1 tbsp of sugar (if you want your blinchiki to be sweeter, you can use 2tbs of sugar)
1 tsp of salt
3 tbsp of vegetable or olive oil

Directions

1.    Mix the eggs, salt and sugar in a mixing bowl until thoroughly blended.
2.    Add milk or water to the mixture and mix well.
3.    Stir in flour, mixing well to make sure that there are no lumps in the mixture.
4.    Add vegetable oil to the batter (жидкое тесто) and mix well. Leave to stand for 10-15 min.
5.    Oil a skillet (Смажьте сковородку маслом). Pour the batter on the hot oiled skillet and cook on one side until golden then flip the blinchik over and brown the other side.
6.    Serve (подавать) sweet crepes (сладкие блинчики) with jam (варенье), sour cream,honey (мёд), syrup, melted chocolate, whipped cream, and fruit.

Very tasty! You will lick your fingers! (Так вкусно, что пальчики оближешь!) 

My trip to St. Petersburg, Russia

December 2012, I had the amazing opportunity to compete internationally at St. Petersburg, Russia in a piano competition.  Having never been to Russia before I experienced a massive culture shock. Initially I did not enjoy my time there but at the end of the two weeks I realized it was an incredibly cultured place.

The Hermitage

   

A synagogue that we went to

 ,   

CEBEP - name of an amazing cake/pasty/sweet shop

  

  

Watched Gergiev (very famous Russian conductor)

 

Conducted an orchestra

 

 Conducting at an Opera - Mariinsky Theater

Look! The River is starting to freeze!

Random Stuff

  

 

By far my favorite image....we needed to keep the cakes frozen that we got from CEBEP and the freezer in our hotel  was way to small for it and it was below freezing so we simply hung it outside the hotel room which was on the top floor.

All photos are credited to my father (except the last one...that one is mine)