Vareniki

Ukrainian grandmothers everywhere love to boast about how many vareniki their grandchildren can eat.  And whenever you call round to Baba's, she's usually making vareniki. As soon as we got in from school Baba would have a plate of vareniki ready for us on the table. My brother and I would compete to see who could eat the most. He invariably won, easily polishing off 16 in a sitting, but I always put up a good fight (I could manage at least 12). Now, 200 miles from Baba's, we get food parcels of frozen vareniki and little pouches of her gravy, ready to serve at a moment's notice. 
Delicious, comforting and quintessentially Ukrainian.

Makes 6 main course servings (approx 45 vareniki)


For the potato filling 
1lb King Edward potatoes 
1 tsp salt 
175g Lancashire or Wensleydale cheese (or to taste)
A knob of butter (optional)
Salt and white pepper 


Boil the potatoes in salted water until soft. Drain and dry over a hot stove. Mash and allow to cool slightly before adding the cheese, and butter if using. The mash should be firm and fairly dry. Add seasoning and leave to cool while you prepare the dough. 

For the dough
1lb/450g plain or 00 flour
2tbsp vegetable oil
1 medium egg, beaten (you may not need it all) 
1/2 tsp salt
A jug of water 


Sift the flour into a large bowl. Make a well in the centre. Add the oil, half the egg (if it needs more liquid, add the rest later) and the salt. Now add water gradually, mixing with a spoon to bring the ingredients together. 

Use your hands to form a smooth dough. It should be soft, but not wet. On a floured board, knead the dough until elastic and shiny (this will take anything from 5-10 minutes). You can leave the dough to sit in the bowl, covered with oiled cling film, for up to 30 minutes. 

Roll the dough on a lightly floured board to roughly the thickness of a 10 pence piece (a couple of millimetres max). It might be easier to deal with half of the dough at a time, in which case leave the rest under oiled cling film or a damp cloth). Use a round cutter or small glass (Traditionally Baba uses an empty Nutella glass - which I have done here) to cut out circles of dough. Take one circle at a time and stretch a little by pulling out the dough - a bit like making pizza. Then use a teaspoon to spoon balls of the potato mixture onto the dough; put the filling on one end - just below the middle and not too close to the edges - and fold the other half of the dough over to make a half moon shape. Pinch the edges to make sure the dough is sealed and the potato won't escape during cooking. Continue until all the dough is used up (you may not need all the potato). Lay on a floured baking sheet, leaving space between each varenik so they don't stick. Cook immediately, or freeze on the baking sheets before transferring to food bags. 

To cook
Add vareniki to a large pan of boiling water. Stir once and leave to simmer. The vareniki will rise to the surface after a couple of minutes, at which point you should cook for another minute. Add a glass of cold water to stop the cooking, and spoon out carefully using a slotted spoon. Serve on hot plates, with mushroom gravy, onions fried in butter until just the wrong side of golden, sour cream (smetana) or tomato ketchup.

Variations
Add onions fried in butter or vegetable oil to the potato mixture instead of, or as well as, the cheese. Or replace the potato filling with sauerkraut. Cherries are a popular sweet filling (these are often deep fried and served dusted with a little icing sugar).