Kasha Varnishkes

Author Notes

This one crept just a little too close to my fortress walls. Eating it, smelling it, preparing it felt like nostalgia had open wide its gullet and swallowed me whole. It was as if my grandma were there in the kitchen with me. It’s still there as the smells linger– a time warp so strong that I can almost hear her voice, feel the wind as she passes through the hallway saying, “I’m only staying until 4p” and I see myself as I was as a kid. Eating this satiated a hunger I didn’t know was there. I knew food had this power, but I didn’t realize it could be so intensely visceral. #totallyunpreparedforthis.

Kasha varnishkes is a dish of sautéed onions tossed with pasta and buckwheat groats (the hulled, roasted kernels of buckwheat). It’s mainly associated with Russian Jews and more specifically, Grandma Irene.These kasha varnishkes were purely my grandma’s. It may be the only thing she ever really made. It’s peasant food, pure and simple, but nutritiously rich in iron, protein from the egg and a heaping dose of indelible memories.

Kasha itself kind of tastes like nothing, or like nothing with a little dirt thrown in. But once it is cooked in chicken stock, lavished with caramelized onions that have been fried in chicken fat or butter, then folded in with bow-tie noodles, it becomes an ideal medium for sopping up flavors. Next time I’ll add porcini mushrooms, which I think would complete this dish. I added chestnuts here, which I think enhanced the flavor brilliantly with texture and sweetness and a whole extra layer of nostalgia.

I used to pick chestnuts with my family growing up. Our friend’s backyard had huge old trees that yielded more than they could ever eat. The harvest was always a cold affair and the spiny green chestnut cases were about as ready to part with their fruit as I was for eating this dish. Even thick leather workman’s gloves didn’t protect us from puncture wounds. At home, my dad broke into them with a butcher’s knife and then we got to the task of cutting, roasting and peeling. Now that chestnuts are in season, I just had to.

In shelling these chestnuts, my manicured office hands melt into kitchen hands that touch and taste. The rough shells of chestnuts, pried open for the meat. For every one one I toss into the bowl, I eat. The soft onion skins set aside from their inhabitants. My hands become my mom’s hands, my grandma’s hands then my hands again. Kasha varnishkes is simple kitchen work worth every ounce of chopping, peeling, sauteing and roasting. And maybe one day I’ll walk into a room carrying a huge steaming bowl of kasha varnishkes and announce that “I’m only staying ’till four,” knowing full well that the statement is for me alone, because if I don’t aspire to an arbitrary limit I will never leave. Not today, not ever. This dish proved she never has. —Amanda