Rose petal jam & walnuts vertuta pastry
Cuisine: Odessa
Author: Maria Kalenska
Prep time: 90 mins
Cook time: 40 mins
Total time: 2 hrs 10 mins


Ingredients
  • 1 kg filo pastry
  • 600 g walnuts
  • 800 ml rose petal jam
  • 100 g butter, melted, plus extra for greasing
Cooking method
  1. For the filling, finely chop the nuts or chop in a blender. Mix nuts and jam in a bowl. If the mass is too thin, add some more nuts.
  2. Heat oven to 170°C. Butter a baking dish. Divide the dough into 8 parts. Roll each part into a ball and wrap in cling film or cover with a towel so that the dough doesn’t dry out. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Grease the work surface with plenty of butter. Roll the dough ball with a rolling pin in a circle. Oil your hands. Use your fingers to stretch the dough in the centre so that the table is visible through the dough. Use your fingers to stretch the dough around the edges in small sections around the entire perimeter of the circle until the dough becomes thin like tissue paper. Try to prevent the formation of many holes during stretching.
  3. Along the long edge of the dough lay out the filling like ‘sausage’ and carefully wrap it in the dough. Spread the filling with your hands evenly throughout the roll. Take the roll at both ends and slightly beat on the table so that the filling is better distributed and the roll is even more stretched along the entire length. Put the roll on the table and carefully twist. Ready twists with a filling roll like a ‘snail’ and put in a baking dish. Repeat for the remaining pieces of dough. From this amount of dough and filling you will get 8 twists, 4 for each form. When laying out rolls, don’t fold them too tightly so that they bake better. Put vertuta pastry in the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes until light brown.
My tips and tricks
For this pastry you can use any jam that you have. And it doesn’t matter if it is very thick or slightly fluid, with the help of nuts you can thicken the filling. This vertuta is tasty hot as well as cold: during the baking process, butter turns into delicious caramel. If you let vertuta to cool down and cut it into small pieces, it will resemble baklava, and will be a pleasant addition to a cup of strong coffee without sugar.

Maria Kalenska Gastronomy Blog | http://www.myodessacuisine.com/recipes/rose-petal-jam-walnuts-vertuta-pastry/