Caviar and blinis キャビアとビリニ

At one time, we were into caviar including "fake" caviar made from kelp and other ingredients. But after all our experimentation, we decided caviar was not worth it. We rather prefer salmon caviar (or "Ikura") and other fish roe. But the occasion called for caviar and champagne this time, so I got Israeli Osetra caviar from a local gourmet grocery store. We decided to make blinis as the caviar delivery system. My wife dug into her recipe box and found this recipe. We tried several blinis recipes when we were in our caviar tasting mode and decided this was the best among them. We used sour cream. (We were not prepared to make creme fraiche) and garnished with chopped chives.

Certainly, the combination of caviar, blinis, sour cream and chive was perfect. We did not have a particularly special champagne and opened Champagne Philippe Prié Brut Tradition which was pretty good.

The below was the entire setup. We even took out our caviar server (on the lower left).

This is the 1 oz (30grams) we got.

The blinis were good but a bit denser than we expected.

Ingredients:
3 cup milk, warm to 110 degrees
1 tablespoon butter, at room temperature
2 egg yolks, beaten
3 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup buckwheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 egg whites, at room temperature and beaten until stiff
1/4 cup butter, for cooking

Directions:
In a bowl dissolve the yeast in the milk. Stir in the butter. Cover and allow to sit for 10 minutes.
Stir in the egg yolks.
Sift together the flours and salt. Slowly stir into the yeast mixture. Mix well.
Fold in the egg whites and mix thoroughly. If necessary add some more milk to get the right "pancake" consistency.
Preheat griddle over medium heat and melt some of the butter. Drop the batter, a tablespoon at a time onto the griddle a couple of inches apart. Cook until the cakes are lightly golden on both sides, about 1 1/2 minutes on each side. Repeat until all the butter and batter are used up. Drain the cakes on paper towels. Sprinkle with the salt and serve warm with caviar and creme fraiche.

As a special treat this was very good. Next time we may add more milk as necessary to get a thinner consistency. Its astounding how fast 1 oz of caviar can disappear!