It’s an Ashkenazi-Jewish comfort food.  All I know is that my paternal grandma used to cook Kasha and she was born in Odessa, raised in the East End of London, spoke Yiddish and English fluently and talked often of the cholent (bean and meat casserole) that she used to love when she lived in the East End.  Many years ago I started to cook kasha (roasted buckwheat) but it didn’t taste like grandma’s dish until one day she gently suggested that I add some onion to the grains.  I added my own flavouring of a teaspoon or two of marmite.  Delicious.  When we travelled in Ukraine we found out that it is staple in the Russian and Ukrainian diet and is a “poor man’s” food.  I’m not proud – so poor or rich I would choose to make this dish and remember Grandma Katy when I eat this nutritious “comfort food”.