Blinis
- Howie Bulka
- Jul 26
- 10 min read
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Howie's Missive
In 1985 it seemed all of Hollywood was having lunch at La Toque, a chic and celebrated restaurant on the Sunset Strip. The Nouvelle Cuisine had recently arrived in America and in kitchens throughout the city a miraculous transformation was taking place. As the bastions of classical cuisine came tumbling down, a new generation of talented young chefs emerged. It was a time of unabashed creative freedom. Wit and whimsy entered the realm of the treasured haute cuisine. Beef Wellington and Duck a l'orange were suddenly and hopelessly passé as ‘Saumon Beurre Blanc’ and ‘Confit de Canard’ entered the repertoire. Provimi veal and dry martinis were replaced by Sushi and Chardonnay. Stylish restaurants opened all over town which embraced this new cuisine, offering a more casual ambience in tune with contemporary lifestyles. Food became fashionable and restaurants became theater. These were wild and wonderful days to be cooking
It was a Wednesday lunch. The restaurant was fully booked. I was working the grill, Mitch was on fish and Chuy was on the cold station. Things were not going smoothly. Ken, our dear leader, would usually expedite or work the middle if we got slammed, but he was who the fuck knows where. There must have been twenty tickets flying and my mis was getting dangerously low.
I was mounting beurre blanc in the middle of a service, for god’s sake. Mitchell's glasses were fogging. A Rosti potato ordered with golden caviar had been sent out with Beluga caviar by mistake. It was returned to the kitchen. I began furiously grating another potato as Mitchell took the warm, crispy potato pancake in his hand and slurped the entire mound of creme fraiche and a full ounce beluga caviar into his mouth. He remained still, momentarily oblivious to the chaos around him. His cheeks bulged, one side and then the other, as he slowly savored this mouthful of pure bliss. He swallowed and then posed a simple question.
"Have you ever eaten too much caviar?", he asked.
Imagine the magic in the air when two days later the man appeared. He arrived at the kitchen door in a wrinkled tan suit, with an igloo in one hand and a briefcase in the other. He was thirsty. He spoke little English. Clearly, he had traveled far to peddle his precious wares. Mitchell and I would come to believe that this swarthy foreigner had been sent to us by a higher power. An audible gasp emerged when the man opened the igloo. Resting on a bed of blue ice packs was perhaps 10 kilos of caviar. Triple zero beluga from the Caspian Sea. The best caviar in the world.
“I think this is our opportunity to eat too much caviar”, I offered.
We haggled and postured and haggled some more until we arrived at a price. Our mysterious friend proved quite adept at negotiation. We purchased 1/2 a kilo of Beluga caviar for Two-hundred-and fifty dollars. A steal for sure but still a lot of money on a sous-chef’s salary. A kilo, a kilogram, is one thousand grams. Half a Kilo is five hundred grams which when divided by 28, the number of grams in an ounce, equals just a hair under 18 ounces. If we further divide by 2, the number of gourmands, Mitchell and I had just bought 9 ounces of caviar each, at a cost of fourteen dollars an ounce. Half the wholesale price. We scored!
I should point out that in 1985, Beluga Caviar from the Caspian Sea at fourteen dollars an ounce was more than just a whopper of a bargain, it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Our $250 purchase would be equivalent to about $750 in today’s dollars. But today no amount of money will buy you Caspian Sea Caviar harvested from wild sturgeons. Sadly, Caspian sturgeons are severely depleted and wild Caspian caviar is largely banned. Instead, caviar is harvested from farmed sturgeons which is, to some, equal in quality, but its meager supply has made it crazy expensive. Today, world class Beluga caviar farmed in the Caspian Sea is selling for not less than two-hundred dollars an ounce. Our little orgy of caviar consumption in today’s market would likely cost four thousand dollars.
Favors were called in. Ken and Tom agreed to cover our dinner shifts with the understanding that their stations would be set and ready for service. Mitchell and I would work lunch service, clean up, drop the stocks and then jump on the formidable dinner mis; julienne for the papillote, tourné for the coq au vin, scallop mousse for the truite farci, ginger juice for the rabbit loin and finally the sauces, the marvelous sauces of this new cuisine, now umpteen copper pans lined up on the piano, bubbling away, reducing into thin air, concentrating. There was beurre blanc and beurre monté for the fish station, where the sauces were finished a la minute in the pan with a squeeze of lemon or a pinch of fines herbes. There was bordelaise, port and green peppercorns sauce for the duck breast, which we served with Pommes Anna and a few leaves of wilted spinach, whole grain mustard sauce perfumed with fine aged sherry wine vinegar for the chicken, a pureed sauce of garlic confit, brandy, demi-glace and cream for the lamb loin, La Toque’s signature dish. The dinner shift would find them buttered and perfumed, neatly arranged in stainless-steel bain maries on the pass. Finally, we could turn our attention to the preparation of a proper caviar service.
There are many ways to eat caviar. There are those who believe that caviar is best eaten unadorned, naked and without accompaniment. To those purists, caviar requires nothing more than a spoon. A true connoisseur knows how to use their tongue to press the caviar against the roof of the mouth, so that the eggs ‘pop’ against the palette. There are traditionalists who believe a ‘proper’ caviar service requires a polished silver tea tower laden with toast points, crème fraiche, chive, sieved egg yolk and crowned with the precious caviar on ice, undisturbed in its blue tin. There are those who believe that Blini and sour cream are de rigueur. Us nouvelle cuisine kids had limited use for purity or tradition, but we weren’t savages.
Unable to decide between Blini or Rosti, we chose both. Blini batter is simple enough to make, but it requires sourdough starter, which is complicated, so I paid a visit to Damiano, the owner of Mr. Pizza on Pico Boulevard. I delivered pizza for Damiano when I was in High school. He remembered me fondly, weirdly, correctly as “the kid who drove that piece of shit Chevy Nova” and happily gifted the cooks of La Toque an occasional pint of his sourdough starter, one of which was now contentedly bubbling away in a deli container in my locker at the restaurant. I raided the pastry fridge for a few orphaned egg whites, and with scale, whisk and bowl in hand, I made small work of the blini batter. While the batter rested, I joined Mitchell on the cooks’ line.
Every cook at La Toque was adept at making rosti. They were a hot item. There are only three ingredients in a rosti, Russett potatoes, canola oil and salt. The devil is in the details. Each Rosti was prepared from scratch, a la minute, at time of service. We would shred potatoes to order with a handheld box grater and then squeeze them in a tea towel to remove the excess moisture. Acting quickly, before the potatoes begin to oxidize, the cook must push a loosely formed ‘puck’ of potatoes off the end of an offset spatula, a burger flipper, into a six-inch nonstick sauté pan mostly filled with very hot oil. It’s a bold move in the middle of a busy service. When the rosti is brown around the edges, it is flipped to reveal the golden goodness, the appetizing allure of a crispy potato. The rosti is cooked briefly on the second side and then removed to an icing rack. Done correctly, the rosti will be crisp as a potato chip on the exterior with a fully cooked, but soft and creamy interior, providing the contrast of crisp and creamy that has served to make French fries irresistible to our species. At La Toque the rosti was served with a generous dollop of house made crème fraiche, finished with snipped chives and a squeeze of lemon juice, and a choice of either golden caviar, whitefish roe, or a full ounce of Beluga. It was presented to the guest as a tidy construction of concentric circles. A sprig of watercress artfully strewn to soften the geometry of the plate. The “Rosti Potato with Crème Fraiche and Caviar” was an exercise in restraint and excess on the same plate. It was hot and cold, salty and rich, crisp and creamy all at once. Simply brilliant.
The patio would provide privacy and a level of casual elegance well suited for decadent consumption. A table was set. Martin would be our server. In the kitchen, Mitchell and I were attending to the last-minute details before coming to table. Earlier in the week, a bottle of Stoly had mysteriously disappeared from behind the bar and found its way into the ice cream cabinet. It was retrieved and put on ice alongside a bottle of Crystal. Crème fraiche, minced egg, chives et al, were laid out in petit tulip bowls, each with the tiny silver spoon. The caviar, in its blue tin was laid, unopened, upon a bed of crushed ice, flanked by two mother-of-pearl spoons. A silver spoon, it is argued, reacts with the salty roe and leaves a metallic taste in the mouth, distracting from the pure flavor of the caviar. At the last moment a dozen Petite Rosti and as many blinis were tucked into folded linen napkins, plated, and sent to the table. Mitchell and I washed our hands, reversed our tunics and still dressed in our chefs’ whites, proceeded to the patio.
Both in our twenties, Mitchell and I had more experience cooking in high end restaurants than we did dining in them. We were giddy with delight as Marty deftly opened the Crystal and poured the champagne into tall flutes. We toasted.
"Have you ever eaten too much caviar?"
I broke the seal and placed the open tin of caviar back onto its bed of ice. Each steel-grey egg was plump and perfect. With the tip of my mother-of-pearl spoon a drew a line dividing the caviar into two equal halves. Our mission was clear. We began.
The details of that afternoon on the patio at La Toque are a bit fuzzy to me now. Partly because it was thirty years ago, but also because I was in a caviar-induced stupor, a delirium induced by pure pleasure. I know that we were ‘a table’ for two hours. I know that we were well behaved, nothing spilled, nothing broken. I know that we killed the Crystal, made a respectable dent in the Stoly and left the table unassisted. This has all been documented.
What I remember most from that afternoon is how marvelously delicious everything was. I had eaten beluga caviar before but as a tourist, a little taste perhaps when opening a new tin at the restaurant or on a canapé at some posh event, but I had never really eaten caviar in quantities large enough to fully taste it, to allow the caviar to loll around in my mouth, to feel the eggs pop against the roof of my mouth and to experience the rush of fatty unctuousness when they do. Caviar is crazy delicious. The Cristal paired so brilliantly with the Beluga, a thrilling pas de deux of powerful flavors and perfumes, cleansing the palette, restoring the soul, bracing me for the next glorious bite. We were a few bites into our orgy of caviar consumption, when we realized that we had hardly made a dent in our tin of caviar. Mitchell watched with eyebrows raised as I put aside the dinky mother of pearl spoon and with a soup spoon, dove deep into my side of the can. I put a full ounce of the magic pearls on a rosti slathered in crème fraiche and devoured it. And then I did it again.
I learned many things that afternoon on the patio of La Toque. I learned that rosti potatoes, blini, crème fraiche and all the other caviar accoutrements, while tasty and well intentioned, are simply superfluous. Caviar is indeed best eaten with just a spoon. A mouthful of good caviar is a riot of flavors and textures. Incredibly nuanced, it deserves, requires, one’s undivided attention. I also learned that Caviar is rich. All eggs are full of fat and sturgeon eggs are no exception. It’s not so easy to knock back nine ounces of caviar, but with our big boy spoons, freed from the constraints of garniture or decorum, we did so.
And I learned that Vodka plays an important role in the service of good caviar, I just can’t remember what it is.
So dear reader you must be wondering. Have I ever eaten too much caviar? Mitchell and I were nine ounces of caviar, one bottle of Cristal and indeterminate shots of vodka ‘to the wind’ as they say, yet as we sorted out a tip for Marty, we were ‘shmearing’ the last few eggs of the caviar out of the golden tin with cold blini. As we got up to leave, I was full, I was satiated, I had experienced bliss at that corner table on the patio of La Toque, but if you offered me one more bite, I would have taken it. I’m not sure if that says more about me than it does about the magic and allure of caviar, but to answer the question, no, I have never eaten too much caviar.
How to Make Blini
Yields App. 3 Dozen Blini
Note that this recipe, while offered as an accompaniment to caviar, also works well as a bed for gravlax or smoked salmon. For an elegant brunch dish make the blini larger, perhaps four inches in diameter and serve the fish of your choice and the garniture discussed in this month’s missive; crème fraiche, chopped egg, chives, red onion, etc. Serve the blini as composed plate or family style, allowing guests to build their own. A little bowl of warm clarified butter served on the side is a nice touch.
185 g Sourdough starter
265 g Milk, not too cold
215 g All-purpose Flour
2 Teaspoon Instant yeast
1 Tablespoon Salt
85 g Egg whites
50 g Canola oil
a.n. Additional Canola oil or clarified butter for cooking the blini
To Prepare the Batter
Beg, Borrow or steal a couple cups of sourdough starter.
In a mixing bowl whisk the sourdough starter into the milk.
Combine the Flour, Instant yeast and salt. Whisk the dry mix into the milk mixture.
Add egg whites and Canola oil. Mix to combine.
Allow the batter to rest at room temp for 30 minutes.
Whisk again to make a smooth batter.
Refrigerate the batter until time of service.
To Cook the Blini
Get a large skillet, preferably cast-iron hot over a low flame.
Put a bit of oil or clarified butter into the hot pan to lightly coat the entire bottom.
Using a tablespoon or large soup spoon, pour the blini batter into the hot pan to make a circle roughly two inches in diameter. (or any size you prefer). Repeat to loosely fill the pan.
Cook the blini slowly, allowing them to rise and get well browned on the bottom edges. Flip the blini with a flat (fish) spatula. Cook briefly on the second side.
Remove to warm oven while you finish cooking the remaining blini.
Serve warm with a mountain of good caviar and accompaniments.
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