Quote Originally Posted by emka71aln
I like blini with sour cream. If there's no sour cream, sugar or jam is good too. But the difference between what Americans know as pancakes (like you can buy at the Waffle House in any good southern town) and Russian blini is the thickness - pancakes are a lot thicker and cake-like. You can argue with that statement all you want, but it's what I've observed from 15 years of American pancakes and several wonderful Russian friends (in Russia) making blini. I'd never eat either with fish or caviar though.
Well, I don't know about your American pancakes, but when a British chef cooked for us his English pancakes with sugar and with lemon juice they were exactly the same thickness and texture as our Russian blinis. That's your normal Russian blinis, but then there's also the yeast dough blinis which are thick and of course there are the so-called oladyees, which are usually smaller in size and can be both thin and, if made with yeast, thick. Then, there's a wealth of morkovnye, kartofelniye etc. oladyees made with carrots, taters, etc. respectively. And they too can vary in thickness. I suspect you know a two three families in Russia and you base your judgement exclusively on their personal culinary preferences. And it simply means that those friends of yours prefer the thin variety but the thick one exists in great abundance it's just that it has never been your luck to run into those who prefer them over the thin ones. I have the opposite problem - most of my friends prefer the thick ones and I just hate them (the thick blinis).