Bleenies / Blintzes / Crêpes

Bleenies were one of the first "indigenous" foods I learned to make on my year on a student exchange in Soviet Ukraine. I wish for the life of me I could recall exactly how we used to make them, but I do recall it was really easy, and not really a recipe per-se but just tossing a few things together. It almost always involved some sort of soured milk product - either something like kefir that had been intentionally soured, or milk that had gone off, which happened a lot with their shoddy milk supply chain.

This recipe is one I got from a Romanian woman who served them at a BBQ she hosted last summer. It is easy to throw together, and pretty flexible too. In fact, the "recipe" she gave me did not really list the amounts of anything except the 1 litre of milk! So I've put some solid numbers on those ingredients in the many times I've made this since then.

• 1 litre milk
• 70 to 100g sugar
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 to 2 and 2/3 cups flour (see below)

Beat your eggs, then dump everything except the flour into a 3 litre container and whisk it all well. Start adding your flour first with 1 cup of white and 1 cup of whole wheat. This is probably thick enough for how many people make these - in general bleenies are similar to pancakes but the batter is much thinner and still rather watery. I usually mix the batter first with the 2 cups of flour, and then slowly add white flour and whisk hard until it is "about right", which is just as it starts to no longer be really liquidy. You'll notice in your whisking that lines will start to appear in the top of the batter. For me in these videos I started with the 2 cups, then added another 1/3 cup, and then another for a total of 2 and 2/3. That may have been just a tad too thick.

Preheat your skillet - on my stove that is about 4. I use a smallish cast iron skillet that is the size of the bleenie I want. The mixture should be liquidy enough to just fill the bottom of the skillet when you pour some in. I'll have to measure the amount I use but I'd guess it is about 1/4 to 1/3 cup at a time. You cook about 2 minutes on one side, and you will notice that the colour changes around the edges and works its way to the middle. When it is almost to the middle it is time to flip, then cook another minute on the other side.