[Sca-cooks] cooking with Kasha

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

William de Grandfort wrote:
>  > > Kasha is Buckwheat groats.  Other grains go by other names. I have never
>  > > seen a 'wheat kasha' or 'rice kasha', etc...  only buckwehat kasha.

  Jadwiga Zajaczkowa wrote:
>  > 'kasha' is just Russian for 'groats'. :)
>
>I misspoke (mistyped?).  In the U.S., the only 'Kasha' I have seen 
>is buckwheat.
>Cracked wheat is generally termed 'bulgur', and so forth.  There may 
>be rice kashas
>somewhere out there, but I have never seen them. :)
>
>William de Grandfort

Kasha is a Slavic term that is *generic*. It means, according to what 
i found, "gruel" or "porridge", in other words, softly cooked grains, 
or what we in the US tend to call "hot cereal".

You won't find any other grain commonly sold in the US as "kasha". 
Because if you want other grain porridge, you buy "cream of wheat" or 
"oatmeal", for example. But if you spoke Slavic, your end product of 
either of those would still be kasha.

The use of the term "kasha" for buckwheat came to the US with 
immigrants from Eastern Europe and Russia, especially with Jews. For 
most of my life, the only kasha i ever saw in packages was not only 
buckwheat, but packaged by specifically Jewish companies. I assume 
that was because where this specific ethno-cultural group had come, 
buckwheat was their common cooked grain.

I believe it extremely unlikely that you will find any other grain 
packaged as kasha, except, perhaps, in a market which is oriented to 
Slavs and sells imported foodstuffs. But now that i think twice, why 
would they sell kasha? Kasha is what you end up with after cooking 
grains a certain way. The uncooked grains are just whatever they are, 
wheat, barley, buckwheat (ok, not really a grain), spelt, etc.

Thinking that buckwheat = kasha is erroneous. It doesn't. But because 
of packaging, many in the US believe it to be true. When i talked to 
my Russian boyfriend about "kasha", he wasn't certain what i meant, 
because kasha doesn't mean a specific grain.

What you are getting in that yellow box is buckwheat that has been 
hulled and roasted. For clarity and linguistic correctness, you're 
better off calling it buckwheat.

Anahita
a fan of soba (Japanese buckwheat noodles) and crepes from Brittany 
(made with "Saracen wheat", French for "buckwheat"), neither of which 
is kasha nor is it made from kasha