a Jewish friend of mine gave me a recipe that he said was his grandmother's recipe for something called if I'm pronouncing this correctly Kasia varnish cos I'm not Jewish I'm a New England white guy so what do I know that's as close as I think I can get it as far as a pronunciation there were two things about this recipe that really appealed to me one is it's made with pasta and I love pasta and the other is that it's made with caramelized onions and I really like caramelized onions the third major component is something I've never worked with before whole buckwheat or buckwheat groats which I had a tough time finding I think would have been a Jewish deli as he told me about and this is what I bought and I had to ask what is this is this the right thing it's all in Russian I can't read any of this but they assured me this was whole buckwheat so that's what I want to make today I want to make this Kasia varnish cos the onion is going to take the longest to cook because as I mentioned this has to be caramelized and that's going to take 30 to 40 minutes get them really well caramelized so I'm gonna start these first you need a couple of medium onions up about maybe 8 ounces each that's 227 grams I'm using one onion because this is nearly a pound I'm cutting down through once and then I'm gonna cut across this way because I want kind of like I want this to ask for its caramelized I want these to be like strings I think it'll give me a nicer texture to go with the pasta the directions just say to cut the onions up coarsely so I guess I would say chop them according to your comfort level whatever you feel like doing I'm heating a large cast iron skillet you don't need to use cast iron but I've got it in someone said you've got oh why don't you use it in your videos putting in a good three tablespoons I think here of fresh chicken fat I say fresh because I gathered this up just yesterday when I made a lot of chickens stock and this was the fat that came to the top so I filtered it saved it for this and to caramelize onions you started a fairly high temperature this is like medium-high but as this cooks and the moisture cooks out you're gonna turn the heat down lower and lower and lower until your cooking finally at the lowest temperature you don't want to brown me up some onions quickly on the outside you want to slowly brown them all the way through that caramelize the onions and this could take 30 to 40 minutes mangoes my timer okay these have been cooking for 40 minutes and you can see how much those have caramelized down so I'm turning the heat off under these and then I can set these aside I've got a medium saucepan here which I'm going to add an egg and then I'm gonna beat that up pretty well using a granny Fork here and then I'm going to add this is one cup which is 170 grams 170 of buckwheat this is whole buckwheat groats all right that looks good now I'm going to bring the heat up under this pan to medium and I'm going to start cooking this until the egg starts to look dry I'm turning my heat off here that looks pretty good egg is pretty much all cooked I'm not seeing any moisture in there that looks fairly dry now what I have here is 2 cups which is 473 millilitres of chicken stock this happens to be homemade chicken stock but I've been heating up to the boil and I need to break this up and get it all separated again and then bringing this up to heat I'm going to bring this up to a boil while I'm doing this separating work here this has come up to a boil so I want to put a pinch of salt in there I'm not a big pinch and then grind some black pepper in there give that a final stir with a fork put a lid on that and then I'm going to move this to a back burner where I can cook that on a simmer for I'm guessing who knows 10 15 20 minutes whatever it takes to see all that chicken stock absorbed this took 20 minutes to get this pan to the point where there was no liquid in the bottom so this has been cooked tender and dry I've brought water to a boil in a saucepan I'm gonna a good pinch of salt to that then what I have here is two cups which is about three ounces or 85 grams by weight or bowtie pasta otherwise known as far fella I'm using tricolor pasta or rainbow pasta because I think it'll look better on a plate but standard white pasta should be fine I need to cook this until it's al dente package directions say 12 to 14 minutes I put my skillet back on the stove and I've got just a medium heat under this more or less to warm this pan up I cooked my pasta actually for 11 minutes because I didn't want to overcook it and then I groats in there and I just need to stir all this up until it's evenly combined okay take a little taste of that I was going to need some salt so generous pinch of salt in there stir that in and then this should be ready to plate I plated a little both of this for myself so I can enjoy this for kind of like a noontime lunch I want to see what this tastes like mom it is good it's got a bit of a nutty flavor from the buckwheat you can taste the onion in there the pasta is good Wow I mean it's mild so I'd say this would be a good side dish to go with like a bold meat like lamb but it's great this is good stuff for my first experiment with it so excuse me I'm gonna go enjoy my kasha varnish cos for a printable PDF copy of this recipe with step-by-step photographs visit my website mobile home gourmet calm and look on the homepage or in the recipe archive