cheese – L. A. K.

Being Russian, we get to enjoy a lot of different kinds of pancakes, a wonderful diversity of pancakes that I think greatly enriches life. (The big, fluffy, American pancakes usually eaten here are actually considered a kind of omelet, at least among my mom’s side of the family, at least after we first moved here.)

Today I want to teach you (and the future me reading this) how to make сырники, really delicious Russian cheese pancakes I remember fondly from my childhood and have just this year finally learned how to make myself. I am also going to share with you оладьи (oladi), small fluffy pancakes made with kefir, and an old, traditional recipe for блины (bliny), Russian crepes that my mom remembers from her childhood and which she shared with me for my birthday this year.

Сырники (Syrniki, Cheese Pancakes)

Very early on in the pandemic, when one day I had half a tub of ricotta left over from making lasagna, my maternal grandmother, who had covid at the time but didn’t know it yet (and who is thankfully alive and well, knock on wood), spent an inordinate amount of time with me over Skype teaching me how to make сырники, she in Moscow watching me in Massachusetts and guiding my hands through the physical process.

Here is the recipe, modified a bit to reflect my own experience with it.

As a note before we start, I am going to assume you have an effectively infinite supply of:

all-purpose flour
olive oil

I am also going to assume that you are wearing an apron or a shirt you don’t care about, and that your skin is either covered or emotionally prepared to dodge hot oil.

You will want the following:

16 ounces ricotta cheese—a small half-container, or half a large container
2 eggs
2 teaspoons sugar
½ teaspoon baking soda
4 tablespoons flour, with a peak of flour rising up from the spoon
some blueberries or frozen blueberries or another berry or anything else you might like in fancy pancakes—no more than a quarter cup or so, nothing overwhelming

Having gathered that, you will now do the following:

Mix everything together in a big bowl. It should turn out liquid—not too thick.
Pour enough olive oil into a large non-stick pan that the pan is comfortably coated in olive oil. Leave it uncovered on the stove at medium heat to heat up.
Pour some flour onto a big plate in a small mountain. In addition, coat a cutting board with flour. (This is of course more flour, not included in the 4 tablespoons you mixed into the ricotta.)

Scoop up some of your ricotta mixture with a large spoon and plop in onto your flour mountain. Drizzle some flour on top of it. Gently, reach your hand into the flour under the blob and scoop up the blob. Toss it between your hands a few times, touching only the floured parts, not getting into the wet insides, rolling it about and smushing it a bit. This part is baffling, especially the first time, especially watching an experienced pro, but it gets much easier after a few tries.
Your ricotta blob won’t gain any actual structural integrity, but at some point it will feel less like liquid and more like liquid with a substantial amount of flour-covered surface tension. Place your precious flour-coated ricotta blob on the flour-covered cutting board. Repeat until you have four or so delightful ricotta-mixture blobs on your cutting board.

At this point, your pan and the olive oil should be hot. You can test out that the pan is hot by taking a bit of flour and dropping it into the pan, which is something my grandmother likes to do because she is epic. The flour should sizzle in a way that is frankly violent and terrifying to anyone who is not a grandmother.
Scoop up your ricotta blobs and plop them onto the pan. Smush them a little with the flat part of a spatula. Because your pan is hot (and you made sure your pan was hot), your blobs should sizzle aggressively. This is important. Sit and feel the violence of this particular part of nature and contemplate that we as a species have turned it into something delicious, because some things in life are beautiful and because of course we have.
Once your blobs have formed a nice crust on the bottom, flip them over. Lower the heat and cover the pan and let your blobs cook through to their insides for a little bit. While these pancakes are cooking, get to work on the next round of blobs.
After a while, remove the lid and flip the pancakes over a bit more until you are satisfied with the crusts on both sides. (This is where I diverge a bit from my grandmother’s initial advice, which was more organized.)
Remove your cheese pancakes. Replenish the olive oil, add more blobs, and repeat until you are out of ricotta mixture.

Serve immediately with honey and/or sour cream and enjoy.

Оладьи (Oladi, Kefir Pancakes)

Another pancake that is similar to сырники is оладьи (oladi)—оладьи are made with кефир (kefir) rather than ricotta cheese (though I think you can make them with other dairy products instead) and come out smoother, more pancake-like, and less cheese-pancake-like. Almost three years ago, or two years before I started drafting this blog post, in August in 2018, my good friend Masha, whom I met in 7.02 and who at the time still lived in Boston, came over and taught me how to make оладьи. The recipe we used is here. It is a very very special memory. We were squeezed into my tiny kitchen and Masha taught me how to use our roommates’ (who are also very close friends and are one of the two also Russian) cast iron pan. (They later gifted us a cast iron pan when they moved out to their own new home, and thanks to Masha I know how to use it.)

Both of my grandmothers have made me оладьи, just as both of my grandmothers have made me сырники, though their recipes produce smaller, limper cakes, while Masha’s are fluffy and more solid. I especially fondly remember from my childhood оладьи with small apple slices in them, still crispy even in a cooked pancake. All options are excellent.

(And I have very fond memories of my paternal grandmother, who lives in Perm, saying “Практика, Лидия, практика” while teaching me how to cook.)

Here are the оладьи that Masha and I made, so perfect and fluffy:

A translation of the recipe we used, with some of my own embellishments—

Here is what you will want:

½ liter kefir
1 egg
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
olive oil

And here is what you will do:

Beat the egg lightly with a fork. Add the kefir and stir. (The recipe suggests warming the kefir up a bit in the microwave first to bring it to room temperature, since you’ve probably refrigerated it.)
Stir in the sugar, salt, and flour. Finally, at the end, stir in the baking soda.
Stir the mixture and let it stand for 15-20 minutes.
If you would like, stir in berries or thinly chopped apples—a satisfying but not too great density of berries or thinly chopped apples.
Heat a frying pan and pour in some olive oil. When the oil is warmed up, reduce the heat.
Spoon some of the pancake batter on the pan to form small pancakes, multiple pancakes on the pan at a time. Cook over low heat. (The recipe suggests cooking without a lid over medium heat if you have a heavy pan with a thick bottom, or on low heat with a lid if you have a light teflon pan. The important thing is that the pancakes have a chance to cook all the way through.)
Serve with sour cream or honey or jam or berries or anything else.

Traditional Блины (Crepes)

I got to see my family for the first time in a long time for my birthday a few months ago. My mom asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and my answer was cakes: lots and lots of cakes, cakes for every meal. For one of our cake meals, my mom made pancakes—specifically, my mom made traditional Russian блины (bliny, crepes), following a recipe we do not usually use because it involves too much butter. It gives a feeling of a very special and loving multigenerational full circle—my great-grandmother Lydia, whom I was named after, used to make traditional блины for my mom and this year my mom made them for another Lydia: me. It feels like a meal and a love shared over a century, a bridge by people who are lucky to have overlapped—my grandmother, my mom, and me, Lydia; and my mom, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother Lydia—connecting two lives that did not overlap—us two Lydias.

Here is a loose translation of the recipe my mom used—

You will want the following:

300 g all-purpose flour
300 ml milk
7 g dry yeast
70 ml butter
3 eggs
60 g sugar
1 tablespoon sea salt
200 ml water
olive oil

And you will want to do the following:

Combine the eggs with the sugar and salt and beat thoroughly until an even layer of foamy bubbles appears on the surface. Add the yeast, butter, flour, milk, and water. (The recipe notes that it is better to add warm, recently boiled water—but make sure you don’t kill the yeast with the heat.) Mix well so that there are no lumps and the mixture becomes homogeneous. (My mom notes that she added everything at once and mixed it in a blender. It turned out great and is easier, so you should probably do that instead.)
Cover the container with a towel and put it in a warm place (the recipe suggests a warm place by the radiator) for 40-50 minutes.
Thoroughly mix the risen dough and leave it in the warm place again. (My mom notes that she did not do that.)
Without stirring, cook in the usual way for pancakes: preheat the pan and lightly grease it with oil. (The recipe suggests using a culinary brush or half a potato to grease the pan.) Gently scoop the dough from the top with a ladle and pour it into the pan, letting it spread evenly. When the surface of the pancake is dry, flip the pancake and fry the other side.
Serve with caviar, butter, sugar, jam, or honey. I have very fond memories from my childhood of блины (our usual recipe, not this one) buttered and then folded into quarters for the butter to melt and then sprinkled with sugar; they are alternatively very good buttered and then with caviar spread over the butter and then the crepe rolled, or with sugar sprinkled on or a light coat of jam or honey and then rolled. Many magical options, all excellent—best to enjoy a few of each.

Here are some photos of our crepe experience (crepe-sperience, if you will):

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In case you see any of them and are considering looking for them, here are my things that appear in these photos or were barely off-screen:

This large non-stick pan, which I bought because my parents had the same pan and liked it. It has lasted three years so far and stood up to near-daily heavy use with none of the usual non-stick pan misery and speedy demise. I don’t think I’ve ever had a non-stick pan last three years. I have no complaints and am very happy with it, which for non-stick pan is a huge compliment. I liked it three years ago and I still like it a lot now.
This huge lid with ridges on it that fits on any size large pot or large pan. I have one and I bought one for my parents because I like it so much.
This dish set we bought when we first moved into our apartment. We bought it because our friend we subletted from had the same dish set, and when we tried to remember what we thought of it we couldn’t remember it at all, which is an excellent compliment. We have since broken a few of the pieces, but most of the set survives six-ish years later.
This very pretty set of small plates that I bought more recently to complement the surviving dish set after we broke all the small plates. They are all different and all pretty and a small happy experience of their own to add to meals.
These mixing bowls, which we bought because our roommates had them and moved and then we missed them (the roommates, but also the mixing bowls). The roommates also had colorful lids for the mixing bowls, which I will probably end up buying eventually.
Happy and colorful yet classy and sturdy and grown-up measuring spoons.
My adorable powder blue toaster, which I chose entirely for its color and aesthetic and which brings me joy every single day, even when I do not use it, and which I will never regret paying a little extra for just because I like the color.
My adorable powder blue tea kettle, which matches my adorable powder blue tea kettle and has a glorious extra feature of keeping my hot water hot after it has boiled and after I have forgotten it, so that when I remember it again I do not have to boil it again, thereby risking forgetting again and starting the whole tragic cycle anew.