recipe: blinis

So a week ago I made some home-cured salmon in my own fridge, but now I needed something to go with it! I had already sliced it for sandwiches, and I was now itching for something else. Bagels being in short supply in KL, I decided to make little blinis to serve it on!

Please note that this was when I stumbled out of bed on a Saturday morning so I wasn't really about to go shopping for ingredients. Rummaging in the kitchen gave me just about what I would need for a quick attempt...

My blini was in essence just a tiny pancake. Wanting a little bit more earthiness, I decided to substitute some of the regular flour with some wholemeal flour. 

• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup self-raising flour
• 1/2 cup wholemeal flour
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup milk

It was so early in the morning that I couldn't bring myself to even sieve the flour, so I just put all the dry ingredients into a bowl and mixed in the wet ingredients gradually with a whisk.

While waiting for my non-stick pan to heat up, I roughly chopped up some leftover rocket to  add to the blinis for some colour. 

One problem I had with adding rocket to sandwiches is that if it is unchopped, it gets messy to eat as it falls out of the sandwich. I figured that if I added the rocket on top of the half-cooked blini, it would adhere to the batter, and yet not turn that dark-green color of cooked vegetables.

I flipped the blinis over when bubbles started to appear on the surface of the batter - it shouldn't take longer than a few minutes!

Having run out of rocket, I decided to make a few pepper blinis, since rocket does have a peppery note to it. I cracked the pepper onto the surface of the blinis just before flipping them over.

The blinis also refrigerate quite well, and can be prepared and heated up just before serving.

Note: this recipe makes about 30 blinis.