Cornmeal Blinis with Sour Cream & Caviar

The origin of much of my inspiration for becoming a lover of cooking, was the apartment of my aunt and Russian uncle in Washington, D.C. It was there that I had lunch with Count Sergei Cheremetev, the childhood best friend of the man who killed Rasputin. At that lunch I discovered flavored vodkas chilled to oily smoothness, there that I learned to eat blini—the fire-and-ice vodka first, then the rich, buttery, caviar-laden buckwheat flour blini that both calmed and enhanced the vodka burn. There I ate, after the blini, guinea fowl braised in 1907 Malmsey served on a bed of kasha and wild rice, the sauce made from the braising juices, and drank with it an 1891 Sercial Maderia. I was fifteen.

Much later after eight years at Harvard where I cooked more than I studied, I opened the restaurant Stars in San Francisco and there we invented the cornmeal blini, without caviar, since who could afford it until we were famous. If you don't have caviar, you can substitute thinly-sliced smoked salmon, as we did back then.

Serves 4-8, making at least 8 blini.