Brideshead Revisited

BLINIS with CAVIAR

A few years ago I was visiting my family for Christmas and my parents and I were trying to find something to watch on television. My sisters had long since disappeared upstairs to watch The Real Housewives of New York, so we felt free to let our dork flags fly. My dad pulled out his boxed set of videocassettes from the 1981 version of Brideshead Revisited and started to reminisce with my mom about how, in their first year of marriage, they used to wait all week for a new episode of the eleven-part miniseries to air, my dad rushing home from his job as a teaching assistant to make it in time. My mom found out she was pregnant with my older sister during the course of the miniseries, and she fell so in love with Lord Marchmain’s levelheaded, insightful mistress, Cara, that she decided to name her next daughter after her (since Ande already had a name).

After hearing all of this I reluctantly decided to break my own rule of never watching a movie before reading the book. At first I wasn’t sure about the movie—the opening is all noisy cannon fire and muddy 1980s colors—but soon Jeremy Irons’s voice drew me in and I was hooked. I picked up my dad’s old copy of the book that night and spent the rest of my visit reading the book during the day and watching the miniseries with my parents at night.

One thing the show couldn’t hope to capture as well as the novel is Evelyn Waugh’s beautifully descriptive food scenes, my favorite of which takes place when Charles Ryder has dinner with Rex Mottram. They eat a “soup of oseille, a sole quite simply cooked in white wine sauce, a caneton à la presse, a lemon soufflé,” and “caviar aux blinis” whose “cream and hot butter mingled and overflowed, separating each glaucose bead of caviar from its fellows, capping it in white and gold.” They eat happily to the sound of the duck press in the background—“the crunch of the bones, the drip of blood and marrow, the tap of the spoon basting the thin slices of breast.”

I returned to Brooklyn after Christmas, just in time to work a dinner shift on New Year’s Eve, followed by a brunch shift on New Year’s Day, which also happens to be my birthday. As a baker, I had gotten used to never having my birthday off, since New Year’s Day is one of the biggest brunch days of the year (resolutions be damned—hangovers need biscuits). So I slogged through my birthday brunch shift, feeling just the tiniest bit sorry for myself as I rolled brioche after brioche with my sticky, cramped fingers.

It finally came time, after a two-hour walk-in refrigerator deep clean, for me to leave. I was so exhausted that I didn’t even notice that my bag was significantly heavier upon leaving than it was when I had left the house that morning. I got on the subway, opened my backpack to take out my book, and instead pulled out a huge bottle of champagne and a tiny tin of caviar left over from the New Year’s Eve special the restaurant had run the night before. Attached to it was an order slip with “Happy Birthday!” written in scratchy handwriting and the signatures of all the cooks. Much to the horror and confusion of the woman next to me I actually burst into tears right there on the G train—total body exhaustion mixed with pure, unadulterated joy sometimes has that effect on me.

I had never eaten real caviar before, and I rushed home so quickly I almost cracked my head open on my icy stoop. I stepped out of my boots and, unable to help myself, ate two tiny spoonfuls standing in the kitchen in my coat and bare feet, wiggling my toes with each briny crunch, before finally deciding to give the caviar the respect it was due. Rex Mottram and those blinis… with their mingling of cream and hot butter and their sprinkling of chopped onions still on my mind, I immediately set to work whisking and frying, feeling lucky, and tired, and loved.

BRIDESHEAD REVISITED

Blinis with Caviar

Makes 3 to 4 dozen

2¼ teaspoons active dry yeast (1 packet)

½ cup warm water (110°F)

¾ cup all-purpose flour

¼ cup buckwheat flour

½ teaspoon kosher salt

2 large eggs, separated (place whites in the refrigerator until ready to use)

½ cup buttermilk

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus more for frying

½ teaspoon sugar

Caviar, crème fraîche, chopped red onion, and chopped fresh dill, for topping

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water in a small bowl and set aside until foamy, about 10 minutes.

In a small bowl, sift together the all-purpose flour, buckwheat flour, and salt.

In a large bowl, beat together the egg yolks, buttermilk, melted butter, and sugar. Mix the yeast-water mixture into the egg-buttermilk mixture. Now slowly pour the wet mixture into the sifted dry mixture and stir until smooth. Cover and place in a warm spot for 1 hour.

After about 50 minutes, beat the chilled egg whites to stiff peaks. Gently fold them into the batter.

Melt some butter in a medium skillet over medium-high heat. Using a 1-tablespoon scoop for consistent sizing, scoop the batter into the skillet. Fry until golden brown on each side and serve warm, topped with caviar, crème fraîche, chopped red onion, and dill.