Made sticky and savoury through boiling and adding sauteed onions, it was ever present in families’ multicourse meals
Buckwheat has long been used in traditional Ukrainian-Canadian winter meals as a filler for cabbage rolls, as a breakfast cereal and even as a replacement for wheat flour in breads.
Traditionally in Ukraine, buckwheat has appeared on plates as hrechanyky, savoury crochets of whole buckwheat grains mixed with ground meat, as mixed filling with eggs in the baked dumpling piroshky, or as kasha, a replacement for starchy potatoes, which can be mixed with vegetables and broth to make a pilaf.
There are varieties of all of these dishes in Poland, Russia, and other countries that brush shoulders with Ukraine. Some use fish, others use more dairy.
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In Canada, when the first wave of Ukrainian immigrants came during the 1890s and early 1900s, access to rice was non-existent, as it had been in many northern regions of Ukraine. The tradition was maintained to fill cabbage rolls with buckwheat because it grew easily in Canada’s prairie soil. Today Ukrainian-Canadians often choose to make “lazy” cabbage rolls, by making a layered casserole of alternating buckwheat and onions, and cabbage leaves. Buckwheat flour pancakes are also a fusion of the American version of wheat flour pancakes, subbing in the dark grey flour for white flour.
I have vivid memories of steam wafting out of the pot as Mom lifted the lid. Then, she lifted the limp blanched cabbage leaves out of hot water and placed them into a bowl of ice water in the sink. Minutes later, the leaves were considered safe enough for our young hands and the assembly-line production of cabbage rolls and perogies continued.
My older sisters and I were routinely enlisted to help make the traditional Ukrainian-Canadian staples for Christmas, Ukrainian Christmas on the Julian calendar, and sometimes for Easter. While our extended family was not considered large by some standards, we always had some uncles, aunts and cousins over during the festive seasons.
Buckwheat, with its gritty texture, made sticky and savoury through boiling and adding sauteed onions, was always present in these multi-course meals. Hidden inside cabbage rolls, side by side with the rice-filled variety, buckwheat was a constant presence in my family’s yearly meal rituals.
I didn’t care too much for the buckwheat cabbage rolls. They had a stronger flavour and coarser texture than did the moist rice variety. It is only in the last few years that I have grown to love buckwheat, for all the things I hated about it in my youth, and for new properties that I had no knowledge of all those years ago.
Because it is gluten-free, buckwheat has been a nice addition to my current wheat free baking, which has included a grey-skinned apple pie. Boiled whole, sweet buckwheat cereal has entered into my breakfast repertoire, thanks to a recipe from one of my older sisters.
I owe my interest in buckwheat to one of those same sisters who helped in my mom’s kitchen decades ago. Buckwheat’s tall, thick stems have taken up residence in one area of my garden, and once the clusters of small white flowers start to open, it sees much activity from bees and other pollinators.
When harvested, they dry in small bunches under the stairs next to the washing machine. Once removed from the plant stalk and free of chaff, the seeds are used as a source of sprouts during the long frigid prairie winters.
Learning how to harvest buckwheat by hand has had its challenges, but I think I have the method down. The first year I grew buckwheat, I hand-plucked each seed off the plant. I don’t recommend that method.
Thinking back to when my sisters and I helped our mom make cabbage rolls and perogies, I remember comments from the peanut gallery, our dad, about how the ones we made were too big or too irregularly shaped. To this day I am not sure I would win any prizes on my cabbage rolling skills.
That may be why, decades later, when I crave the coarse, sticky texture of buckwheat rolls, my default is to go with the lazy route. Pulling out my casserole dish, layers instead of rolls are what I produce. As my husband says, “so long as it tastes good, esthetics be damned.”
