Sons & Daughters

My mother.
My mother makes the best food.
Sometimes she'd make Spätzle, and my sister and I would steal a few noodles before they went into the oven until the cheese melted over them.

Because I found some Spätzle flour in our cupboard (and after the insects-in-flour-scare of the cookies), today I made some. It was easier and quicker than expected, although there were a lot of dishes involved. Spätzle are a Swabian noodle type, originally made by scraping the dough from a wooden board into boiling water where they float to the top when they are done. These days there are Spätzlepressen if you are making a potato kind or Spätzlereiben for the egg-type. I have a Reibe (it looks a bit like a flat grater that attaches to the pot), so I made the egg Spätzle with some added parsley in the dough.

The recipe is quite simple:
One egg for every 100g of Spätlzeflour, plus some water to make the dough more elastic
I used:
300g flour
3 eggs
120ml water
A pinch of grated nutmeg

You need to beat the ingredients together until the dough becomes elastic, quite a task for the arms. After letting the dough rest for 10 minutes, beat it again.
Then use the Spätzlereibe to drop the dough into boiling water.
When the noodles float to the top after a short while, use a ladle to scoop them off.
I then fried an onion and added the Spätzle and some cheese to a pan until the cheese had melted. Some salt and pepper and it's a done deal.

Elastic dough.