Moscow breakfast with (Bela)Russian pancakes

Thiemo Fetzer — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:06:15 +0000

Tasty Russian pancakes

While I was in Moscow visiting Alena I also tried to learn some Russian cuisine or at least pretend to. While it seems quite difficult to get the exact type of cheese that was used to make these pancakes, they however, still taste quite delicious with sour cream and jam – right now, its plum season, so I actually eat them with plum jam.

Here I write up a recipe that is somewhat similar, however, as it appears we can not get the exact type of ingredients back home in Germany – so it requires some trying out.

Basically, the recipe is something like this.

Put together about 250 grams of dried Quark or Cottage Cheese – it may have up to 10% fat, I try to use quark with only 0.2% fat and it works out quite fine, except for the slight sour note due to the Quark. You should try to get dry Quark which does not contain too much water.
Add three to four spoons of sugar (you can even use liquid sweetener, to reduce the calorie count). Add cinamon as you wish – I like a combination of quite a fair amount of cinnamon – two tablespoons and some
The ideal light breakfast to start the day. Note the Vodka and the Baileys bottle in the back.

vanilla extract.
Add one egg
Add flour, about 100 grams – but you can vary in the amount, you should see that the dough does not get too thick.
Add some baking pouder (1 teaspon) and a hint of salt.
Now all you need to do now is to mix this into a nice dough – I usually only used a big spoon. It is a good exercise early in the morning.

And here you go. All that is left is heating the pan with some oil or butter and you are ready to go with cooking those delicious pancakes.

I also tried slight variations – such as filled ones, filled with cherries (for this, the dough needs to be quite thick) or filled with blueberries. However, I also made a salty version with onions and ham, with some pepper. After some trying out, they all turned out to be delicious.

However, the traditional ones are best eaten with sour cream and some jam. Very very tasty!

Ok…here is a small update. I wrote that I tried to make salty ones. For the dough I used 250 grams of 0.2% fat quark and 200 grams of 10% fat “Schichtkäse” (its basically a Quark with less water but more fat). Then I added some salt, black pepper and onions and ham.

They turned out to be quite good. I made some meatballs and ate all together with fried Zuccini. For the Zuccini – make sure to use only little oil, as they would just suck up the fat. Then add quite a fair amount of garlic, salt, black pepper and some herbs, whatever is in the garden.

Freigeist Blog - Jakobsweg, Pilgern und London » Cooking

Moscow breakfast with (Bela)Russian pancakes