Kasha Varniskes

Name: Kasha Varniskes
Yield: Serves Four to Six
Cuisine: Russian
Ingredients: 3–4 onions, thinly sliced; 45 ml/3 tbsp rendered chicken fat (for a meat meal), vegetable oil (for a pareve meal) or 40 g/1½ oz/3 tbsp butter (for a dairy meal); 300 g/11 oz/1½ cups whole coarse, medium or fine buckwheat; 250 g/9 oz mushrooms, sliced; salt and ground black pepper; 200 g/7 oz pasta bows; 25 g/1 oz dried well-flavoured mushrooms, such as ceps; 500 ml/17 fl oz/2¼ cups boiling vegetable stock or water

Preparation info

Serves
Four to Six

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Complete Guide to Traditional Jewish Cooking

By Marlena Spieler

Published 2016

About

This combination of buckwheat groats, mushrooms and bow-shaped pasta is a classic a Shkenazic dish from Poland, Ukraine and Russia. It may be an acquired taste, but for anyone who has grown up eating this, it is a taste of home and childhood.

Ingredients

25 g/1 oz dried well-flavoured mushrooms, such as ceps
500 ml/

Europe
Russia
Ukraine
Poland
Pasta
Eastern Europe

Method

Put the dried mushrooms in a bowl, pour over half the boiling stock or water and leave to stand for 20–30 minutes, until rehydrated. Remove the mushrooms from the liquid, then strain and reserve the liquid.
Heat the chicken fat, oil o