Dom Petroff Blinis (Frozen)

TAST­ING NOTES FROM THE CURATOR

The pride of the Slav­ic kitchen, bli­n­is are tra­di­tion­al­ly made from wheat or buck­wheat flour and leav­ened with yeast. They are slight­ly thick­er than French crepes, and have a savori­ness to them rather than sweet­ness, which make them the ide­al ves­sels for all sorts of top­pings oth­er foodstuffs.

PREPA­RA­TION OR PAIRINGS

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, you have bli­n­is with sour cream and smoked salmon. Our selec­tion of Dom Petroff Smoked Salmon is an excel­lent place to start when you con­sid­er a light bli­ni-based meal. Of course, straight out of Russ­ian tra­di­tion, caviar is an excel­lent way to go too. But bli­n­is have no tru­ly des­ig­nat­ed top­pings. Have them with hon­ey and berries, crème fraiche and smoked fish with lemon and dill, Brie and cran­ber­ry sauce, jam and lemon curd, choco­late spread or Nutel­la and banana, kim­chi and fried quail egg — your din­ing list is endless.

FROM A HAP­PY ACCI­DENT, A THOU­SAND YEARS AGO

Accord­ing to Russ­ian lore, a wan­der­er over­cooked his break­fast oats into a thin sol­id disc in a pan and cre­at­ed what could be con­sid­ered the very first pan­cake. Because of their round shape, these round capes that came to be called bli­n­is were incor­po­rat­ed into the Slav­ic fes­tiv­i­ties at Maslen­it­sa, a day to wor­ship the sun. More mod­ern tra­di­tions took over and bli­n­is have become the cen­tral part of what is affec­tion­ate­ly called but­ter week, a promise of new begin­nings at the end of win­ter. Of course, you can have them any oth­er time of year now, too.

Storage Instructions

Your bli­n­is can be stored frozen for up to a month from the date you receive it. Defrost them in the refrig­er­a­tor the night before you plan to use them. Alter­na­tive­ly, you can leave them out on the counter to defrost for no more than 3 hours. To reheat the bli­n­is, place them in the oven at 170°C (drop to 150°C if your oven heats doesn’t main­tain a con­stant tem­per­a­ture) for 7 to 10 min­utes. Alter­na­tive­ly, you may also pop these in the microwave for 30 sec­onds to 1 minute.