Kasha
In English, kasha usually refers to the pseudocereal buckwheat or its culinary preparations. In Slavic languages, "kasha" means porridge. In some varieties of Central and Eastern European cuisine, kasha can apply to any kind of cooked grain. It can be baked but most often is boiled, either in water or milk, but the word can also refer to the grain before preparation, which corresponds to the definition of 'groats'. The word "kasha" is used in Belarus, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Moldova, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine.
The English-language usage of kasha, which refers primarily to buckwheat, probably originated with Jewish immigrants, as did the form קאַשי kashi.
In Ashkenazi Jewish culture
As an Ashkenazi-Jewish comfort food, kasha is often served with onions and brown gravy on top of farfalle, known as kasha varnishkes. Kasha is a popular filling for knishes and is sometimes included in matzah-ball soup.In Poland
In Polish, cooked buckwheat groats are referred to as kasza gryczana. Kasza can apply to many kinds of groats: millet, barley, pearl barley, oats, as well as porridge made from farina. Bulgur can also be referred to as a type of kasza in Polish.As Polish blood sausage is prepared with buckwheat, barley or rice, it is called kaszanka.
Annual per capita consumption of groats in Poland was approximately per year in 2013.
In Russia
The largest gross buckwheat consumption per capita is in Russia, with per year, followed by Ukraine, with per year. Buckwheat comprises 20% of all cereal consumption in Russia.In Russian, buckwheat is referred to formally as гречиха, or colloquially as гречка, which gave rise to the Yiddish words gretshkes/greytshkelach and retshkes/reytshkelach.
Kasha is one of the Russian traditional dishes. Together with shchi it used to constitute staple foods for poorer people. This fact is commemorated in the Russian saying, "щи да каша", which literally translates as "shchi and kasha are our food".
Butter is often eaten with most kasha recipes, hence another Russian saying: "кашу маслом не испортишь", which translates to "you cannot spoil kasha with butter".