Food Friday-Kasha for Dummies Edition

 Most people I know who make kasha make it according to the recipe on the Wolff's kasha box. It involves toasting the kasha in a beaten egg in one pan and sautéing onions in fat in a different pan, (and of course chicken fat is best in this case). You then heat up chicken stock to boiling in a third pan and pour it over the toasted buckwheat. The kasha cooks in the stock and while THAT is simmering away you boil bowtie noodles and add them to the cooked kasha.

This creates a delicious kasha. My father swore by this kasha making method. I rarely made kasha because the thought of having to use four pans to make one side dish just seemed like too much of a bother. Our many summertime visits to Netcost, the Russian supermarket, got me hankering for kasha again. 

I don't know exactly how I learned that often Russians don't use a stovetop to make kasha but bake kasha in an oven. I ended up stumbling into a much easierand less cooking pot intensive method of kasha making.

My father loved using fine grained kasha. I have been loving this giant grained kasha. 

Like most grains, kasha needs a 2:1 water to grain ratio. My husband, who cleans up after Friday night dinners has learned that saving the pan juices from our chicken, in a container is a good thing to do. The layer of fat that collects at the top of the container acts as a seal and helps to preserve the yummy chicken juice for longer in the fridge.

I put the kasha into a parchment paper line baking sheet and added the three small containers of chicken juice that were in the fridge. If I had some chicken soup around I would have added that but I didn't. I forgot to let chopped onions cook in the pan in some fat before I added the kasha. I also could have added some fresh or dried mushrooms.

I covered the pan in foil and let it bake in the oven until the kasha grains had softened. How long did that take??? I am going to guess about 45 minutes. 

After the kasha was done I boiled up about half a box of bow-tie noodles. There is no law about the perfect bow-tie to kasha proportions.

I could have used more noodles or less. I adjusted the seasoning after everything was done .part of the adjustment was adding some dried onions because I had forgotten to cook onions and the beginning of the booking. I added LOTS of black pepper and only a little salt---because I can't eat a whole lot of salt and my guests are welcome to salt their food to their heart's content.

My father used to make his kasha with powdered chicken soup. I really hate the chemical flavor of the stuff although there are cooks that i respect who use it regularly. Baking the kasha makes it a dish that can be made with little fuss and not that many dirty pots. Once I discovered this method, our kasha consumption has increased a whole lot.

So what else are we eating??

We are having chicken that flavor-wise is sort of from somewhere along the silk road. I used soup hawaij and Bell's Seasoning and some of the ground coriander and cumin mixture my daughter bought me. as a last minute addition to the pan I added a few dried limes after soaking them for a couple of minutes and then cracking them open. It smelled heavenly while cooking.

My parents used to add Bell's seasoning to a great deal of their cooking. For many years, I avoided it because it seemed just too stodgily New England. Lately though I have been thinking about Bell's as being a sort of mild New England curry mixture. It blends really well with both Indian flavorings as well as with Middle Eastern ones. The Bell's pushes an earthy flavor to the mix. And it smells exactly like my childhood.

Shabbat Shalom! And as my friend Cindy's Bubbie used to say, "C'mon Y'all! it's time to bench licht"