The Ukrainian lunch of your dreams

Back at Katrya and Vasylyna’s bakery in Lviv, a masterclass in how to make a stuffed pastry called vertuta - it’s the lunch of your dreams.

It is Friday and we are in the small bakery in the north of Lviv, where Katrya works with her friend Vasylyna. It’s always a highlight of my time in this city - the delicious baked goods which the young women produce in such a tiny space is frankly miraculous. There’s always something new to try, always something I’ve never tasted before - and watching the girls at work is always a showcase of their exceptional skill.

This Friday, Katrya was making vertuta - a spiral shaped filled pastry, made by first stretching some pliable dough impossibly thin over an oiled work surface. Katrya began with a circle of dough balanced on the back of her hands, gently stretching it out to a square before placing it onto the table and deftly tugging at the sides, just enough to pull it outwards without tearing. Somehow the small disc of dough became enough to cover the whole table - ready to roll up with a filling inside. Katrya had prepared a bowl of shredded cabbage, cooked until almost soft, with some fermented cabbage for extra flavour, and tomato pulp mixed through. Others had a mix of crushed potato with ricotta and herbs - and a few had a sweet filling: home made rose petal jam with walnuts. I’d tried some rose jam pastries in Bessarabia last summer and Katrya decided to make her own version. The jam was thick and fragrant, the nuts from the local market were fresh and not at all bitter, and she spooned a little strawberry jam inside for good measure.

The pastries, in their tight coils, sat snugly on baking trays to rest for a few minutes before going into the oven. While we waited, drinking some strong coffee and watching out of the window as fog drifted over the hills, Katrya poured some thin yoghurt into cups, added zaatar and smoked salt and some chopped chives, and sprinkled  some home made curd cheese on top, to go with the vertuta.

We tried the cabbage one first: cutting it into quarters, that wafer thin pastry shattering into perfect shards, generously filled with the vegetables: it was totally delicious. Then the potato one: still light and soft, comforting and a perfect match with the yoghurt. I was already full but obviously not too full to try the rose jam one - released from its caramelised pool on the baking tray, sticky and crunchy with the nuts: fabulous.

But lunch was still not over. Katrya came back with another plate, bearing an enormous slice of a special layered ginger cake she’d made called Piernik Staropolska. The spiced dough is matured for three weeks in the fridge before baking - then each layer is sandwiched with a sharp plum or apple jam, then it’s covered in a chocolate glaze and kept in the fridge again for a few days before it’s finally ready. Not the sort of cake you can whip up without considerable forward planning. The flavour was complex and quite unique - similar to the slightly funky note of sourdough - balanced by the jam and smooth chocolate sauce. She packed me up another slice to take back to the hotel for later - where it made a rather special late night snack with a cup of tea.

The snow in Lviv had turned to sleety rain that night, and while I waited for a cab back to the hotel, we talked about Katrya’s home town of Kakhovka - still occupied by the Russians - who had just killed two French volunteers by firing across the river Dnipro into Beryslav where the relief team were delivering supplies. The tragedy of what’s happening to Kherson is unbearably awful - you can read Zarina Zabrisky on X/Twitter for an eye witness account - or her colleague Paul Conroy

The Kramatorsk Diaries

on here. But this is Katrya’s home: the home that she misses so much, the home that she and her mother will go back to, when it is deoccupied and rightfully part of free Ukraine again.