Meet my childhood arch-nemesis: buckwheat kasha
Except I ❤️ it now.
Hi friends,
As we continue on with our tour de whole grains, I have another excellent option on offer: buckwheat.
When I was little, buckwheat kasha was my arch-nemesis – and if you’re Ukrainian like me, you know what I’m talking about.
Every Ukrainian mother makes it a habit to remind her children that they must eat their kasha, “Nado kushat’ kashu!” This is part of a nationwide propaganda campaign to position kasha as the food that makes children grow big and strong. Failure to eat kasha results in threats you’ll grow up weak – and let’s face it, probably stupid too. (Eastern European parents invented tough love...)
But children hate buckwheat kasha. Seeing kasha on my dinner plate – instead of, say, potatoes or macaroni – would always be a major bummer and the only salvation would be to drown it in ketchup.
When we moved to America and I found myself in a Russian-speaking summer camp, kasha continued to haunt me at lunchtime. This time overcooked, painfully mushy, and completely inedible.
Now that over 20 years have passed and the trauma has faded away, I’ve come to love buckwheat, and appreciate it both for its nostalgic and nutritional properties. Read on for my take on Ukrainian buckwheat…
P.S. No time to read now? Pin the recipe for later.
Gyula, Hungary. It is very close to the border with Romania.
I learned from my husband, who survived World War II on kasha, NEVER to make it in any form for him. He was so malnourished that he was sent to his hometown hospital to be fed a meal three times a week (with no kasha) in 1943-44.