Kruchenyky

The story

Kruchenyky are thin slices of pork or beef rolled around a filling, browned and then baked or braised. Chef Ievgen Klopotenko explains that the name comes from rolling the filling into the meat, and he presents kruchenyky as a dish for the festive table. The filling changes from kitchen to kitchen. Common choices are mushrooms, cheese, prunes or sauerkraut, and in Cherkasy region cooks use ground meat, pâté, prunes and nuts. Klopotenko pounds six thin slices of pork, spreads them with chopped prunes and walnuts, ties each roll with kitchen thread, fries the rolls until golden and bakes them for 20 minutes in a sauce of carrot, onion and tomato paste with a sprig of rosemary. A Ukrainian holiday-menu version from the news site Vikna takes another route: it fills the pork with mushrooms fried with onion and seasoned with basil, oregano, marjoram and thyme, coats the rolls in flour, browns them and simmers them in broth for an hour. This recipe brings the two fillings together, mushrooms with prunes and walnuts, and finishes the pan juices with sour cream. The rolls can be tied a day ahead, which leaves only browning and baking for the day of a dinner; slice them over mashed potatoes or buckwheat and add a dish of pickles.