Spaetzle! A Swiss Culinary Odyssey

After receiving an email from a dear friend who not only identified the strange kitchen implement posted from my apartment, but confirmed my timing instincts regarding the soft boiled egg (yes, five minutes.  No on toast, but to be eaten with a spoon with salt and pepper - if you have any other recommendations regarding the eating of the soft boiled egg, please post them!).  So, the thing is NOT a meat grinder but a ricer or a food mill, and it is used in this part of the world to make spaetzle.  It seemed like a simple enough kitchen challenge.  Why I chose to experiment with spaetzle before trying the soft boiled egg, I will never know, but I did meet that challenge this evening, and here are the results.

Carol?  Lan?  Heather if you're out there?  Do you remember the time in college, when we were living at Ludwell, when I decided it was a good idea to try to make seitan from scratch and ended up filling our kitchen sink with an enormous amount of wet flour, waiting for it to turn into something nutritious and delicious?  It never did.  Making spaetzle, unless you happen to be a Swiss German grandmother, was a somewhat similar experience.

Mom?  Is this the same thing as rivvles that you tried to tell me about once?

So, I didn't fill the sink with flour this time (although clean-up entailed a little more elbow grease than usual...).   After looking it up on www.allrecipes.com I found a recipe for German Spaetzle with Sauerkraut that looked somewhat authentic.  Here's how it went...

First, I assembled my ingredients, pretty simple:  flour, eggs, water, olive oil, salt...

Then, I got my water boiling, in my cute little Swiss pot!

I made my well and filled it with eggs...

Added some water, mixed, and then the fun began...

Not a meat grinder

Waiting for the spaetzle to float to the top

Then there is layering.  Who knew that spaetzle was like lasagna?  Only with sauerkraut instead of cheese.

Draining (sink not so full of flour)

Layering.  Unfortunately there's not much color contrast between the sauerkraut and the spaetzle, but that doesn't mean it's not delicious!

And then top with fried bread crumbs.  How could you go wrong?

Mmmmm.... Fried bread!

Assemble...

Needs more fried bread!

Enjoy!

Spaetzle!



OK.  The spaetzle was ok.  For all of the effort (in prep and clean up) of 'Jutta''s recipe that I halved (the original would serve many, many people PLENTY of spaetzle), it was ok.  And I will be eating it for quite a while.  So if you have any tips on how to eat leftover spaetzle, please let me know!