Lillie's Kasha

Today would have been my Grandma Lillie's 101st birthday.

She was the first child born to Austrian immigrants on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1908 (two brothers and a sister would follow). The family of six lived in a tenement, where the bathtub was in the kitchen, and when it was nice outside, the kids slept on the fire escape.

While health food was in no way a priority during her youth, she was not closed-minded to her vegetarian daughter-in-law and unconventional machatainisteh**.

Although she spent most of her life being kosher, once she tried shrimp cocktail in her 70s, she never looked back. In her 80s, she started the ritual of making fresh vegetable juice every day. At Halloween, she always made me share with her my good chocolate. And if not for her, the word "pulkies" (as it relates to both chicken and childrens' thighs) would not be part of my vernacular.

Food--and getting you, and you, and you to eat it--was one of the most important things in her life. So in honor of her birthday, I will share her recipe for Kasha wit da bowtie pastas (fah you, my giddilies).

Kasha--big in Eastern European cuisines--is actually buckwheat groats (and if that doesn't sound healthy enough, I don't know what to tell you). It contains all kinds of dietary fiber, and I hear they call it Jewish soul food. Here's my grandma's recipe told to me over the phone by Esther:


Kasha with Varnishkes

• 5 onions chopped
• 1/2 cup of vegetable or olive oil
• 1 box of coarse buckwheat groats (2 cups)
  
• 2 eggs
• a box of bowtie pasta cooked and drained
  
• 4 cups water
• 1 tsp salt
  

In a large pan, saute onions in a LOT of oil. (Esther says: "I remember several times saying 'You don't have to put so much oil in!' but she did anyway, and that's what makes it so moist.) Cook until almost brown, put them aside.

In a large pot, empty box of buckwheat. Crack two eggs into the pot and stir to coat. THEN turn on medium heat and keep stirring until kasha is what Esther calls "flaky." (DO NOT TURN ON HEAT UNTIL AFTER EGGS ARE COATED) Add salt.

Add boiling water to the pot and simmer for 9 minutes.

In a third pot, you should have your varnishkas (bowtie pasta).

Mix the three parts (onions, kasha, bowties) together and serve with a smile.


(I'd like to point out two things about this image: 1. the fist full of chocolate cake that nevah woulda happened had that been my mom holding me. Unless it was carrot cake. But generally, it was my grandma's goal in life to fatten me up. And 2. my nails were done in red, which--I think for a two-year-old--was a pretty advanced devotion to beauty. Click to enlarge.)

**Machatainisteh: (mach-uh-tain-nist-ah) Any female relative related by marriage, but usually used to mean your son or daughter's mother-in-law; your grandchildren's OTHER grandmother. Yiddish is one of the few languages with a word for this relationships. Source.