Katerina Mostova arrived in Luxembourg in February 2022 after fleeing the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv alone. The 41-year-old photographer had already fled her home city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine 10 years previously when Russia started invading the Donbas region.
Last year, she found herself fleeing for the second time - this time arriving in Luxembourg, where she has been staying in a refugee shelter.
“I never imagined I would be here,” she said. “At the start it was stressful but now I understand how things work here.”
Mostova is in the process of setting up her own photography business in the Grand Duchy and also hopes to launch a board game to help people learn languages. She was already working on the board game in Kyiv when Russia invaded her country and is now ready to make it accessible to those wanting to learn English, German and Ukrainian.
While finding Ukrainian food is challenging in Luxembourg, she was surprised that the traditional gromperekichelcher are very similar to deruny - also a type of potato pancake - which she grew up eating.
“It’s a very common dish in Ukraine which people eat regularly,” Mostova said. “It’s similar to Luxembourg’s national dish and it’s very cool that this is a dish we have in common. But deruny has a distinctive Ukrainian presentation.”
People have different names for deruny in various regions of Ukraine: draniki, beci, plyatsky, tertukhy, kartoplyanyky. The dish is typically served with sour cream but it can also be eaten with cheese and ham, meat or vegetables. Deruny is usually fried but some people prefer baking it.
Mostova decided to make deruny with mushroom sauce, which she often ate growing up.
Pancake ingredients
4 medium-sized potatoes
1 onion
1 egg
1 garlic clove
3 tbsp flour
A pinch of ground pepper and salt
Sunflower oil for frying
Mushroom sauce ingredients
400g mushrooms
Thick cream
1 onion
1 egg
Ground pepper, salt
Sunflower oil for frying
Method (pancake)
Peel the potatoes. Grate them on a coarse or fine grater. The size doesn’t matter; it’s a matter of taste.
Peel the onion. Grate or finely chop the onion in a blender.
Mix the grated potatoes and squeeze out excess liquid to make the deruny crispy.
Add grated or pressed garlic.
Add the egg, flour, salt and pepper to taste. Mix and fry on a hot skillet.
Method (mushroom sauce)
Fry the onion until golden brown.
Slice the mushrooms and fry separately until the moisture evaporates.
Add flour and fry for an additional 3 minutes, stirring.
Add the onions to the mushrooms, ground pepper, and salt. Mix and cook until thickened.
