Kasha Varnishkes
A FAVORITE old family recipe. A lot of this is experimentation, approximation, and “to taste” measuring. Also, Wolff’s Kasha is hard to find in the store. Often found in the "non-American foods" section with matzah, potato pancake mix, borscht, gefilte fish.
Ingredients:
- 1 pkg. of small or medium pasta shells (16 oz)
- 1 pkg. (13 oz) Wolffs Kasha Med Buckwheat kernels (or equivalent, bulk buckwheat groats, but the texture will be different)
- 1 large onion
- 1 egg (beaten)
- oil
- salt
Directions:
- Boil water. Add salt and a little oil to keep the shells from sticking.
- Add pasta shells. Cook 10-15 min.
- Drain and place in large mixing bowl.
- Warm up the frying pan.
- Take the kasha/buckwheat and mix it in a medium bowl with a beaten egg.
- Dump the mix into the warm frying pan.
- Keep stirring over low heat until it dries.
- Boil some water in a pot. When it boils, spill it into the kasha/buckwheat mix and stir over low heat until the excess water evaporates. How much water do you pour? Good question. Just enough to see the water level between the grains.
- Dump kasha/buckwheat into large mixing bowl with pasta shells.
- Everybody’s favorite part. Get that onion. Chop that onion. Do your best acting and pretend like your eyes aren’t on fire. Dump the onion in the large mixing bowl with the rest.
- Salt moderately and mix in some oil (maybe between ½ to ¾ cup–you’ll have to experiment here. Remember, you can always add more, but you CANNOT ADD LESS.) Mix that sucker up real good.
- Dump it all into a large cooking pan (glass pan is best). Bake 45 min. at 350° with a little water in bottom of the pan. I strongly recommend taking them out once or twice during cook time to sir them a little or you will get, how do I put this gently… excessively crispy pasta on the top. And possibly smoke inhalation.
PRO TIP: If you can master cooking the kasha and the pasta at the same time, save the water that you drain out of the shells for step 8.