Buckwheat

Week: 0
Ingredient: Wolff's Kasha (buckwheat groats)
From: Martin’s, Harrisonburg, VA
Recipe: Creamy Kasha (Buckwheat) Cereal¹

My best friend recently discovered she has a gluten allergy. I bought her The Gluten-free Gourmet Cooks Comfort Foods for Christmas, but she already had it. So, I kept it for myself, and I will have a reference for cooking gluten-free when she comes to visit in the future. I browsed through the cookbook, and that's where I found “Creamy Kasha Cereal.”

The recipe was perfect for a blog post because (1) I have never cooked buckwheat, and (2) I had all the ingredients on hand. So, why did I have buckwheat on hand if I never use it? I had actually had a box of buckwheat sitting in my pantry, untouched, for quite a long time. I bought it after a trip to Ukraine, where I first ate this form of buckwheat. The plan was to try to recreate some of the Ukrainian food I ate, but I never got around to it. Fortunately, buckwheat has a long shelf life!

The buckwheat I ate in Ukraine was served with vegetables and a little meat, quite unlike this sweet breakfast dish. I prepared the recipe as written with one substitution: dried cherries instead of dried cranberries. While it was cooking, I was a little skeptical. The chocolaty aroma was nice enough, but it just did not look appealing. It was brown, lumpy, and watery. Despite cooking it longer than the recipe indicated, the wateriness did not go away. (Maybe I measured wrong?) Adding the cream at the end improved the appearance, but it was still a rather homely dish.

But, all's well that ends well. It was actually very tasty, like oatmeal but with a slightly different taste (buckwheat-y!) and texture (groat-y!). In fact, the texture was quite pleasant—not at all pasty like oatmeal can sometimes be. It was quick and easy too.

Conclusion: Buckwheat is an ingredient worth using. I won't be serving “Creamy Kasha” for company any time soon, but it is certainly good enough for a family breakfast. The recipe leaves plenty of room for variation—change up the fruit, add some nuts, use honey instead of brown sugar, etc. Next time I cook buckwheat, I'll probably try it in something savory—a pilaf, perhaps. If nothing else, buckwheat is a nice alternative to oatmeal once in a while.

If you are wondering why this post is not about capon, it is because I decided I wanted a proper roasting pan before cooking my Capon. I ordered one, and it should arrive soon. The capon was frozen when I bought it, so it won't hurt to keep it in the freezer another week or two. :)

¹Bette Hagman, The Gluten-free Gourmet Cooks Comfort Foods (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004), 127.