You see, I know "kasha" as Polish, meaning, more or less, cereal; of all the kashas, buckwheat is the most-loved. (Queen Anne Jagiellon preferred buckwheat to the luxury item of the time -- rice.)
From my shiny cookbook:
Poles were great fans and connoisseurs of cereals, known as kashas. These "kasha traditions" also go back to the old days. One can write much and colourfully about the ritual importance of kashas in the old Slavic cuisine. "The feeding of the young with kasha" spoke of an engagement and "women's kasha" denoted matchmaking. In pagan times, when wanting to ensure a long and successful life to a newborn child, gifts of kasha, honey, and cheese were offered to the goddesses of birth.
Polish housewives knew many ways of serving cereals. Thick, nourishing soups were cooked with them; they were eaten with milk, baked and roasted in the oven, flavored with pork fat, butter, oil and cheese, seasoned with mushrooms and plums, served with various meats (it was some centuries later that potatoes appeared) and liberally covered with sauces. The Poles' fondness of kashas was recorded in the Old Polish proverb which said that "a Pole will not allow anyone to blow on his kasha", meaning that he will not let himself to be led by the nose.
Coolness; so it's definitely an Eastern Europe thing. (My mother tells of watching her mother and a friend's mother preparing, side by side, for specific occasions, near-identical dishes, one named in Polish and one named in Yiddish.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2002-08-20 01:28 pm (UTC)From my shiny cookbook:
Poles were great fans and connoisseurs of cereals, known as kashas. These "kasha traditions" also go back to the old days. One can write much and colourfully about the ritual importance of kashas in the old Slavic cuisine. "The feeding of the young with kasha" spoke of an engagement and "women's kasha" denoted matchmaking. In pagan times, when wanting to ensure a long and successful life to a newborn child, gifts of kasha, honey, and cheese were offered to the goddesses of birth.
Polish housewives knew many ways of serving cereals. Thick, nourishing soups were cooked with them; they were eaten with milk, baked and roasted in the oven, flavored with pork fat, butter, oil and cheese, seasoned with mushrooms and plums, served with various meats (it was some centuries later that potatoes appeared) and liberally covered with sauces. The Poles' fondness of kashas was recorded in the Old Polish proverb which said that "a Pole will not allow anyone to blow on his kasha", meaning that he will not let himself to be led by the nose.
Coolness; so it's definitely an Eastern Europe thing. (My mother tells of watching her mother and a friend's mother preparing, side by side, for specific occasions, near-identical dishes, one named in Polish and one named in Yiddish.)