Buckwheat kasha with wild mushrooms and onions is a classic piece of Eastern European comfort food you need to try. I was ignorant of it for a long time, and I can’t believe it took me so long to get around to it. For me, it’s a dish that’ll always be tied to a particular day. Here’s what happened:
I was outside in the yard when a car pulled up. After a car door shut, I heard women talking, and the unmistakable cadence of an Eastern European accent. “Russians?” “Here?” “Of course, they’ve come for the mushrooms”. I thought grimly. I didn’t think they’d venture this far into Wisconsin past Willow River Park, since there’s as many types of slippery jacks there as the day is long.
Fearful, I went back to the house before I going over to say hi and meet/inspect our visitor, making sure the fresh hen of the woods and honey mushrooms I’d picked that morning were covered up and hidden in the fridge behind all the cabbage and beets I could find. Afterword, I made sure to wash my hands, arms and face to remove any mushroom smell. If I know one thing, it’s that more than anything else in the world Russians have a lust for wild mushrooms, so you can never be too careful.
I walked out of the house, smiled, and said hi to my girlfriends colleague Anastasia from who’d stopped by for the afternoon. She came carrying a large sack of some food stuff in a curious looking yellow bag. “I brought you kasha!” She said enthusiastically. Before I could tell her that I didn’t have any of the wild mushrooms around she would demand as tribute for such a gift, and ask if she would accept beets in their place, she starting telling us all about the kasha.
The Rice of Russia
Anastasia told us that buckwheat kasha was the “rice of Russia” and that, at the beginning of the year while Americans had gone and scooped up all the skim milk, white sugar and fettuccine (or whatever it is we eat) she and her family had stocked up on kasha like the end times were coming. Lowering my guard, I asked her how she liked to cook it. A few different recipes came up, but cooked with onions and mushrooms was the one that stuck with me. Kasha with onions and honey mushrooms would be on the menu that evening, a fitting combination with the way Russians love their honey mushrooms, I thought.
The pyramidal shape of the groats/seeds is unique, the remind of me beechnuts in a way.
Grateful for the new-to-me food to play with, on a whim, I asked Anastasia if she liked mushrooms (a great conversation starter if you’re ever around someone from Eastern Europe). Her eyes visibly widened, and, like clockwork, she started gushing about how much she loved them, and all the different ways her family enjoyed them. Before she left, I made sure to give her my largest hen of the woods to say thank you, and the happiness in her eyes as she carefully cradled it to her car made this mushroom hunting Scrooge’s day. Funny enough, she’d never been mushroom hunting in the U.S. yet. Now that she knows, I give it until next season until she’s picking her own. 🙂
I used aborted and non-aborted entolomas for this batch, but any mushrooms will work.
More than pancakes
Most people in America will know buckwheat as a flour, maybe one that makes a really good pancake. I’ve always loved a good buckwheat pancake, and I relied the flour occasionally to make gluten free dishes like crepes and Italian pizzoccherri noodles for diners here and there. I also like the color it gives to my scrapple. But somehow, someway, cooking with buckwheat groats/seeds escaped me until earlier this year. I knew they were a thing, I just never had an excuse. Suffice to say I’m ashamed it took me so long.
This makes a nice 12 inch pan full, because you’ll want it.
One bite and you’ll see why it would be easy to eat your weight in Kasha. It has the tender give of white rice, but a deeper aroma and flavor from the roasting process. Just like rice, it’s super versatile, and useful in everything from soups, stews, pilafs and side dishes to breakfast. It’s just a hardworking, delicious starch.
The toasty-ness gives it a natural affinity for caramelized onions, mushrooms, butter, poultry fat, and, strangely enough, pasta. Along with cabbage soup, a simple dish of cooked kasha is one of the national dishes of Russia. If you want to try some for yourself, Uvelka Brand is what Anastasia brought us, and said it was the brand she preferred from back home.
What follows here is essentially the simple kasha recipe with mushrooms and onions Anastasia related to me as we spoke. And it is so addictive it could probably make slippery jacks taste good. I used aborted and non-aborted entoloma mushrooms, and I prefer my onions cooked quite dark. Some fresh dill is optional. Passing butter at the table is not.
Buckwheat Kasha with Wild Mushrooms and Onions
Ingredients
Kasha
- ¼ teaspoon salt plus more to taste
- 2 cups water
- 1 cup roasted kasha/buckwheat groats*see note
Mushrooms and Onions
- 4 tablespoons animal fat especially duck or chicken fat, or unsalted butter
- 8 oz yellow onion 1 large diced ½ inch
- 12 oz wild mushrooms
- Fresh chopped dill or your favorite herb optional
Serving
- Unsalted butter softened, for serving
Instructions
Kasha
- Bring the kasha and water to a boil in a small pot the the ¼ teaspoon of salt, then turn the heat to low, cover, and cook until the kasha is tender, about 15-20 minutes, then keep warm.
Mushrooms and onions
- Meanwhile, in a large pan, cook the onion on medium high heat in the fat until starting to brown and fizzle around the edges, then remove from the pan and reserve (can be done ahead of time). I like my onions with a touch of black on them. Leave some fat behind in the pan.
- Add the mushrooms to the pan with 1/4 cup water and cook on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the pan is dry and the mushrooms are wilted and cooked. Add another spoonful of fat if needed.
Finishing
- Season the mushrooms to taste with salt and pepper, then add ¾ of the onions to the pan, along with the kasha, double check the seasoning, adjust until it tastes good to you.
- Stir in the dill, and serve with the remaining onions spooned on top, along with extra chopped dill and soft butter at the table. It reheats very well.
Notes
Laughing so hard. We have lots of Eastern Europeans in these parts and their fervor for mushroom hunting is like no one else’s.
Thanks Laura. Non-mushroom hunting readers here may have a little trouble understanding the humor here, but it’s ok. I so envy their collective hunger for mushrooming, especially as family units. I think American culture could learn a lot from them. No lie, I’ve seen groups of women with hair nets and walkers in the woods who’ve interrogated me about where I got all my slippery jacks.
I love all your posts and while I regret not having access to many of the ingredients you use, living in the desert, the photography, recipes and your enthusiasm are simply delightful. Thank you.
Thanks Kim. I do travel to AZ every year to see my grandparents and I make a point of gathering barrel cactus fruit every time I’m there. If you haven’t tried those, they’re very good. I’m always on the look out for new things when I go to the desert, unfortunately I go in Jan-Feb so there’s not a lot available.
Recipe looks great, I can’t wait for the mushroom season to come back around and try it. I was wondering, have you tried cooking wapato/arrowhead? Curious about your thoughts on cooking with it.
Wapato is great eating, by all means if you can get some try it. Also, if you find a spot you can harvest some near the metro shoot me a message and I’ll come show you how. There’s a few different species around. I’ve only had the smaller ones, the big ones should be even better. It can be really tough to break through the mass of roots in some of the ponds and wetlands they grow in.
Hello Alan,
Sorry I have not written in a while. I enjoy your postings even though a lot of them are a bit esoteric for me and getting the ingredients essentially impossible.
Just curious how the saffron milk cap harvest was this fall and whether you tried the fricando recipe I sent you some time ago.
I will definitely try the Kasha recipe.
Jorge
hey Jorge. Unfortunately this year I was focused on writing my forthcoming book on plants and working on a few different projects that ate up all my time. Believe me, the fricando is still on deck as soon as I can get some saffron milkcaps. The large species that grow close to me have been absent for years now, and the only dependable patch of L. thyinos is hours away. Hopefully this year. Be well.
Roasted buckwheat is easy to cook in rice cooker, on rice setting, with the same proportion of water to grain as in rice. My zojirushi makes very nice and fluffy buckwheat. (Authenticity statement: I am from Russia.) 🙂
YES! Kasha with mushrooms and onions!
My Mom was a great cook, but her older sister, my Aunt Zelda made the best kasha in the known universe. You are close, but Auntie Zelda crisp fried her onions with a little salt in chicken schmalz, pulled them out of the pan and then briefly toasted her kasha (though it was already the roasted kind) in the same pan and fat where the onions had been just to coat the seeds with a little fat. Then she added the water and more salt to steam the kasha. She would turn it off at some magical moment of almost doneness, wait about 5 minutes and then fluff it with a fork while stirring in the onions. This was the kasha that dreams are made of.
This year I caught the slippery jack flush as they were poking their slimy little heads above the pine needles and I brought home about 3 kg of perfect small buttons one Friday after work. I fried a bunch till they were crispy carmelised, like the onions, and their chocolaty/mocha overtone was absolutely perfect in the kasha. Seriously better than the honeys could have been. I think slippery jacks are hands down the best for kasha but I think that honeys make the best pierogi, and the honeys were really good in the mushroom and lentil pâté en croute I made for the vegan Christmas eve dinner. It was a change from our traditional Christmas eve reindeer roast, of which we keep a supply frozen, purchased whenever one of us passes through the Helsinki airport. When our kids were small my husband told them he caught them on the roof.
I gotta try this Alan
It’s reaaaally good.
Think I need to move to MN.
Where it seems random, purposefully wandering, groups of Eastern-European-accented women who converse away (with authority, enthusiasm & confident expertise) about wild mushrooms & traditional comfort food cooking are commonplace. So much so, that as they walk together, they instill trepidation & suspicion into the protectively territorial heart of the local Forager/Chef only to have said Fchef in a matter of hours, sing their praises & gleefully beg them to take his gift of personally wild foraged Maitake in exchange for a bag of humble grain & a recipe?
Clearly, these are the women of my ancient, ancestral tribe & my lone, wandering heart has longed since childhood to be in their midst & feel their magic again.
It gives me so much happiness to see the Eastern European population out gathering foods as a family unit in my area, really something that most Americans could learn from them.
This reminds me of my mom’s kasha varnishkas recipe! It’s almost exactly the same, she just added some bow tie pasta to it. You’ve inspired me to make this ASAP!
(We are Czech: )