My grandmother made these homemade noodles or "spaetzle" quite often when I was a child. She served them with kielbasa and sauerkraut. There are many commercial spaetzle makers that form uniformly shaped noodles but, instead, my grandma scraped her dough off a cutting board into the boiling water by hand. This is the way that her little German grandmother made them.
This recipe makes enough spaetzle for two people to eat as a side dish. We make four batches for our family's dinners.
In a large soup pot, bring several quarts of water to a boil. Add a couple of slices of onion and a pinch of salt to the water.
Prepare the spaetzle dough as follows:
One cup all-purpose flour (I use King Arthur brand unbleached white)
One egg
Enough water to make a sticky dough (about 1/3 cup)
Mix ingredients , turn dough out onto a small cutting board.
Using a sharp knife, scrape a small amount of dough (about the size of a nickel) into the boiling water. Continue until all dough is used, spooning out the cooked spaetzle as they float to the surface. Butter and serve.
You can also add spaetzles to homemade chicken or turkey soup. We add them to the bowls after the soup is fully cooked. They soak up all of the broth when added directly to the soup pot.
We recently enjoyed a big batch of spaetzle for my birthday supper. It is very similar to the Hungarian nokedli (sp?). My mother always scraped her dough out of the bowl and into the pot with a spoon. Such happy memories from the humble noodle! :-)
Posted by: Kimberlee | November 25, 2007 at 09:51 PM