buckwheat casserole (kasha varnishkes)
(omnivore with a vegan option)

recipe by m-c

just the recipe

what I was looking for

Spring is what I was looking for, and not getting. Well, if I can't have warm breezes and frequent sunbreaks, then give me comfort food. Mentally, I'm retreating to Eastern European food, frizzled onions, rich gravies, lots of starch, and dark meat.

what I made

A casserole based on the buckwheat casserole (kasha varnishkes) recipe in Mollie Katzen and Walt Willett's Eat, Drink, and Weigh Less, page 242, with gravy from page 197. My version stems partly from Mollie and Walt, partly from fond memories of the Standard Delicatessen in my old neighborhood in Chicago, where I first ate meat on Friday and where I added a new skein of Eastern European cooking to braid in with my grandmother's recipes.

This recipe has a lot of steps, but the idea is simple: a casserole of a light, fluffy grain in a luxurious gravy, with many vegetables (and meat, if you like) and the unexpected addition of bowtie pasta. Stick-to-your-ribs cooking.

Mollie and Walt have two recipes, one for the casserole and one for the gravy, and in neither place do they suggest or even mention the possibility of combining them to make a gravy casserole. My version combines the two recipes to make a casserole that includes the gravy in the casserole pan rather than serving it on the side, as one often does with gravy.

chit-chat

Buckwheat groats (kasha) might be a new ingredient to you. To make groats the indigestible outermost hull of the buckwheat is removed (and often made into therapeutic pillows, of all things), and the inside, the whole grain, is crushed. There are four grades, fine, less fine, coarse, more coarse. All cook up fluffy, with a mild, meaty flavor. If you can't find them in your neighborhood, Wolff's is a great source (and probably where a local store would be buying from).

The words "groats" and "grits" come from the same ancestor, as does "grit" ("a piece of grit in my eye," "grit your teeth"). "Groats" can be used as a singular or a plural ("groats is" or "groats are"), although I'm comfortable with only the plural.

Now that I've introduced you to buckwheat groats, I'm going to start calling them kasha.

"Kasha varnishkes" is Yiddish and means beautified (varnished) kasha.

The combination of a whole grain with a pasta is surprising, but I know of another dish in which it occurs, koshary, one of the noble casseroles of the Middle East. You can find an excellent recipe in Paula Wolfert's Mediterranean Grains and Greens (HarperCollins, 1998, pages 180-181).

And I can't find one offhand, but I'm pretty sure there is at least one dish from the Iberian Peninsula that uses the fine pasta called fideos with rice.

grades for my version

healthy	B	A treat food, but pretty darned healthy for a treat.
fast	D	Many steps.
easy	B	No step is hard, most are pretty easy, but cooking over a high flame always requires attention and skill.
cheap	B	You'll have to pay a premium for dried mushrooms and kasha unless you live in an Eastern European neighborhood.
delicious	A	O my babushka, sing me a lullaby of gravy casseroles.

yield

4 servings

equipment

   a medium-sized (4 cups) microwavable bowl

   a microwave oven

   a stovetop-to-oven casserole (enameled cast iron is ideal)

      a pancake turner (for a straight-sided casserole)
                       or a long-handled spoon (for a round-sided casserole)

   a medium-sized (2-quart) pot with a lid

   a kitchen tongs

      a slotted spoon, oval or round, makes no difference

   a kitchen scissors

   a dishtowel

   a big fork (a small one will do if you don't have a big one)

rehydrating the dried mushrooms

I can't get fresh porcini mushrooms most of the time, even though I live in Mushroom Heaven (Seattle), so I use a mixture of dried and fresh mushrooms to get that inimitable flavor of porcini.

ingredients	Mollie+Walt	m-c	why?
dried porcini mushrooms	---	¼ ounce	tastier
red wine	---	½ cup	tastier

   Put the dried mushrooms in a microwavable bowl, and pour the red wine over them. The dried mushrooms will float, but eventually they'll sink once they're microwaved.

   Microwave them one notch below High for 2 minutes. Push them under the surface again and nuke them for another minute. Set them aside to rehydrate.

the sofrito

Many, many dishes start with frying chopped-up vegetables in fat. There are two such mixtures canonical in French cooking, mirepoix and duxelles; two in Italy, soffritto and gremolata; at least one in Spain, also called sofrito; and numerous others across the globe. I'm calling this mixture a "sofrito" because I hope it will be a recognizable term for at least some readers and useful for others to learn (and I'm using the Spanish spelling because Spanish is way heck of a lot more a world language than Italian).

ingredients	Mollie+Walt scaled [1]	m-c	why?
oil [2]	1 Tablespoon canola oil, ½ Tablespoon olive oil	1 ½ Tablespoons olive oil	tastier
yellow onion	⅜ cup minced	1 whole chopped rough	tastier, easier
shallot	---	1 whole chopped fine	tastier
garlic	1 teaspoon minced or crushed	6 whole cloves chopped rough	healthier
Notes
[1]	Scaling here is unusually complicated because I'm combining a recipe that serves 8 scaled back to 4 with a recipe that serves 4, no scaling needed. At least there were no fifths and thirds.
[2]	For a once-a-year treat, use bacon fat instead.

         Put the oil in the cold stovetop-to-oven casserole. Put in the onion, shallot, and garlic (lots of good onion family in this dish) and stir till every bit is moistened with the oil. (Usually you sauté the onions and shallots first and then add the garlic, but here you're going to be adding more ingredients soon, so no worries about overcooking -- burning -- the garlic.)

Put the casserole on a brisk flame and let it sit undisturbed till the onions and shallots brown a little and you can start to smell the garlic, 3-4 minutes.

Stir the mixture once and let it sit undisturbed till the onions and shallots resume browning, 2-3 minutes.

Turn down the heat under the casserole.

the kasha

Kasha comes in four grinds, any of which is OK for this dish. It also comes toasted/roasted or raw, either of which is also OK for this dish. Even if you get the toasted/roasted kind, you will toast them further here.

ingredients	Mollie+Walt scaled	m-c	why?
kasha	½ cup	½ cup	no change
egg (optional)	---	1, slightly beaten	tastier

Mollie and Walt don't toast the kasha with egg, and Mollie's cooking from her mother's recipe, so I'm sure her way is authentic. But I learned to do it with egg, so I'm doing it my way.

Add the kasha and the beaten egg to the sofrito and stir them in. Keep stirring until the egg is cooked, 1 minute. Then let the kasha cook undisturbed over a low flame till it's toasted, 4-5 minutes (you'll probably be able to smell the change).

the oven and the pasta water

Preheat your oven to 350°.

   Fill your covered pot ¾ full with water -- you're going to be cooking pasta in it -- and salt it to taste. (I like mine to taste like the sea, or like blood. Others like it milder or stronger.) Put it on a high flame and bring it up to the boil.

the gravy base

If you eat meat but you're not big on livers (poor you!), you could use dark meat of chicken, or duck breast, or ground turkey instead.  If you don't eat meal, you could use already-cooked lentils instead.  You just want something dark-tasting to play off the assertive flavor of the kasha.

ingredients	Mollie+Walt scaled	m-c	why?
chicken livers (optional)	---	1 oz.	tastier
flour	2 Tablespoons unbleached all-purpose	2 Tablespoons Wondra	easier [1]
Notes
[1]	Wondra doesn't clump up.

Turn the heat under the casserole back up to high.

Now add the chicken livers and the flour. Scrape aside enough space so the livers are directly on the bottom of the pan, not resting on a bed of sofrito and kasha. Sprinkle the flour around, distributing it evenly.

   Chicken liver is hard to cut raw, which is why you're waiting till it has cooked a little. Let it cook on one side till it's firm, 1-2 minutes, flip it over and let it cook on the other side, 1 minute. Then holding your knife in your dominant hand and your tongs in your helper hand, grasp the liver and slice it into as many thin slices as you can. (Similarly, you'll want to cut up any other meat you've swapped in; lentils, bless their little hearts, need no slicing.)

the veggies

ingredients	Mollie+Walt	m-c	why?
fresh mushrooms	¼ pound sliced	¼ pound sliced	no change
baby spinach	---	2 handfuls	healthier
thyme	a pinch of dried thyme	a teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves	tastier, healthier

Toss in the mushrooms, spinach, and thyme, and stir them around to wilt the spinach.

the pasta

ingredients	Mollie+Walt scaled	m-c	why?
small bowtie pasta [1]	⅜ cup	¼ cup	healthier [2]
Notes
[1]	If you can't find small bowties, use some other small shape. Whole-grain pasta works well with this dish because its grainy texture is disguised by the other ingredients.
[2]	I'm using Mollie and Walt's recipes to try to get a general feeling for portion sizes, not to measure them to the gram. I figure I've added so many extra ingredients to the dish, I might as well cut back a little on the pasta.

When the water in the pasta pot has come to a full boil, throw in the bowties, stir them around to keep them from sticking on the bottom, and let them boil away till they're a little short of done. (They're going to cook more when they're mixed in with the kasha, so you'd like them a little harder than usual at this point.

      When the bowties are cooked (5-6 minutes), instead of pouring them through a colander as you usually would, fish them out of the cooking water with a slotted spoon and add them to the kasha. Put the top back on the pot to keep the cooking water warm.

the rehydrated mushrooms

   Fish the dried mushrooms out of the red wine, snip them into tiny pieces with a scissors, and add them to the kasha.

the liquids

Messing around with two recipes simultaneously makes for complicated adjustments. Mollie and Walt's kasha recipe (scaled) calls for 5/8 of a cup of water at this point and the gravy recipe calls for 2 cups of broth for a total of 2 ⅝ cups. That ends up way too soupy when you combine the two recipes.  I'm using the red wine from the dried mushrooms plus broth to make 1 cup; if you're still short, use a little pasta water to top off the cup.

If you've been following the omnivorous options (chicken livers and egg), use chicken broth. If you've left those ingredients out, use a vegetarian broth like onion broth or mushroom broth.

ingredients	Mollie+Walt scaled	m-c	why?
liquid	2 ⅝ cups	1 cup	tastier [1]
Notes
[1]	More liquid makes the kasha soupy.

   Add to the red wine left in the microwavable bowl enough broth and pasta water to make approximately 2 ½ cups of liquid.

   Microwave the liquids to get them hot but not boiling.

Stir the hot liquid into the other ingredients in the casserole. Scrape down the bottom and the sides of the casserole to be sure nothing is sticking there that will burn.

the flavorings and garnish

ingredients	Mollie+Walt scaled	m-c	why?
scallions	1-2 minced	3 chopped rough	easier
fresh dill	1 ½ teaspoons minced	1 Tablespoons chopped rough	easier
black pepper	to taste	to taste	no change

Divide the chopped scallions and dill in half. Stir one half into the casserole and set the other aside in a nice bowl to serve at the table as garnish. (If you're as absent-minded as I am, put the bowl on the table right now instead of hoping to remember it later.)

Stir the amount of black pepper you like into the casserole.

Put the cover on the casserole and put it into your 350° oven. Let it cook covered for half an hour.

   Then take it out of the oven and put a dishtowel between the top and the main part of the casserole pot. Let the casserole sit undisturbed for 15-20 minutes. (The dishtowel will absorb any excess moisture.)

   Remove the dishtowel, throw it in the laundry, and fluff the casserole with a fork, lifting and turning gently so as not to crush the kasha.

Serve from the casserole and encourage everybody to add more scallions, dill, and black pepper.

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