"In short, this is one recipe guaranteed to improve your life."
Felicity Cloake
Even though it's a beautiful day - one of those perfect sunny days, not too hot, not too cold, there have been a few ups and downs so far. Mostly ups, but some downs - improved - nay more or less banished by a walk - but yes, I could do with a recipe guaranteed to improve your life. So spätzle - an idea which has been sitting in my ideas list for a while now. Something sort of ordinary - and an ordinary kind of blog exploring a particular dish - and also an ordinary dish. What potatoes are to the British, rice to Asians and pasta to the Italians, spätzle are to the Swabians in Germany's south west, and Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, eastern France and the mountainous Italian province of South Tyrol, as well. Although it's only the Swabian version which has official recognition from the EU.
Now I have never made spätzle but I do remember having them long, long ago on a school skiing holiday in Austria, where they were often served with the delicious dinners. The holiday was a complete failure for me in terms of the skiing. I failed miserably and by about lesson four I and a friends sort of opted out. But it was fun otherwised and we visited Salzburg and Innsbrück I seem to remember. The scenery was beautiful and the food was good.
So when Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen published a recipe (her version in the opening photograph) a while ago I was enthused enough to add it to the Ideas list. Well she does say:
"It manages to be both dumplings and noodles at once, and as good tangled with cheese and herbs and bacon and vegetables and as it is alongside a hearty braise."
Furthermore various recipes that I saw said things like 5 minutes to prepare, 10 minutes to cook and there was usually a maximum of four ingredients - disregarding salt and pepper. So why would you not give it a go?
Now that I have perused quite a few recipes, from the famous, the almost famous and the homely housewives, I realise that one of the reasons I have never attempted this is having been put off by the method. Well actually the choice of method - and in addition it, like many basic 'simple' recipes has a multitude of variations.
Felicity Cloake of course takes you through most of the possibilities, beginning with the flour - ordinary old plain flour 00 flour, flour and some semolina. I believe originally they may well have been made with spelt because that's what the peasants grey in that area of Europe. They date the recipe to the 18th century, although Wikipedia says that some medieval illustrations may suggest that they are much older than that. And the name? It means little sparrows - why? Well originally they were shaped by hand and they looked like little sparrows. Not now.
The tricky thing is how you shape them however. The expert housewives of the alpine regions, seem to prefer putting some batter on a board, and then scraping little pieces off with a knife into the boiling water - and Felicity Cloake seemed to prefer this method in the end. Deb Perelman, on the other hand said:
"it simply didn’t work for me as I ended up with a lot of large, flabby pieces and I wanted daintier ones. A thicker batter might have worked better."
and apparently Nigel Slater, who watched somebody do this thought that it was all a bit tricky. Looks fraught with potential disaster to me I have to say.
Then there's the colander method, or the slotted spoon which is a variation of the colander. Somebody swore by their Chinese spider strainer. Yotam Ottolenghi recommended the slotted spoon and Deb Perelman, after initial disaster, eventually chose this method:
"I quickly found pressing a thick colander of batter over a boiling pot of water very unpleasant. And hot. And awkward. ... Once I switched to a colander with more than a dozen holes that could sit over the pot of water and put on some potholders, I got the swing of things quickly."
Although she did provide this bit of advice:
"I found it was important to use only a little batter at a time (and even less if your pot is smaller) because if you push too much batter in at a time, it becomes one freakish megaspaetzle as opposed to hundreds of tiny twisty ones."
As I said, Felicity Cloake preferred the traditional method, one reason being - and I can see the sense in this - that:
"unless you hold it well away from the heat, the batter has a tendency to weld itself to the metal in the process."
Have you been put off yet?
Of course if you live in those spätzle making regions there are various implements that you can buy that have been made specifically for the purpose or you can try a potato ricer - if you have one of them as well. Deb Perelman tried that but was not impressed because:
"it dumped one hamburger-sized spaetzleblob in the pot and was quickly relieved of its spaetzling duties."
Or - again if you live in one of those spätzle making regions you can buy them ready made in your local supermarket.
I guess it's a dish that just shows that technique is important when it comes to cooking some things, and the technique is dying because people don't watch their mothers or grandmothers doing it. You have to practice and you mustn't give up on a first try. Start out small and don't expect perfect results. A bit like pancakes, about which even the chefs say the first one is for the chef, because it's never good.
Once you've got your spätzle cooked - they float to the surface like gnocchi, some say to toss them in oil or butter, some to dump them in iced water, some just water, and some just eat them straight away. The danger I guess is that they will all stick together, so yes, it's important to toss them with something I think.
I'm offering three more recipes for your consideration Spätzle from Daring Gourmet; Herby käsespätzle with caramelised onions from Christiane Mackenzie via Ottolenghi - she is one of his Test Kitchen gurus' sister and English pecorino squash spätzle from Matthew Carver - well somebody had to give it a go with pumpkin. The Italians in the Tyrol area sometimes add ricotta and/or spinach to the mix, which is not surprising really.
Once you've made them you can do anything with them, from just tossing with butter and cheese, frying them with bacon, mushrooms ..., tossing them in some kind of sauce -
"there are a million ways to enjoy spaetzle — and I would like to discover each of them, you know, between sets of crunches — but we enjoyed the heck out of browning it in a pan with butter, and tossing in minced shallots and herbs." Deb Perelman/Smitten Kitchen
Give it a go next time you feel like playing around in the kitchen. It might be your next best thing to have for dinner - and pass the recipe - once you have found the one that suits you - on to your grandchildren - or children.
"it uses only three ingredients that I’m willing to bet you already have at home? And cooks in two minutes? What I’m saying is: you could have spaetzle for dinner tonight, and I think you should." Deb Perelman/Smitten Kitchen
POSTSCRIPT
October 2
2023 - Stephanie at lunch in WA
2022 - Summertime - more please!
2020 - Great expectations
2019 - A guilty purchase
2018 - Nothing
2017 - Am I back to the beginning?
2016 - Fashionable salt
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