Spätzle

Every time Lidl or Aldi has "Alpen Week" in the UK, daughter Kate makes a mad dash over the border to Northern Ireland to fill up her freezer with Spätzle and Bratwurst.

And every time the family is here we talk about how easy it is to make them oneself but like this year, we again failed to take the hour to make any this visit, relying on the (very good) supermarket packets. I think we only had one "proper" (non-BBQ or restaurant/beer garden) cooked meal this last visit done by Angie with her lovely turkey in a cream & cream & cream & more cream sauce with Spätzle.

I was however prepared for all the excuses and had bought a very simple flat, stainless steel Spätzle "machine" which would easily fit in the hand luggage.

Today the family tried it out. And it worked, And they tasted good but Kate thinks she needs to work on her dough. The consistency was perfect, Charlotte did a great job with the machine but the feeling was they were a touch heavy. As Kate later reported, she will try adding sparkling mineral water instead of tap water next time, a trick often used here. However, I stressed to her she needs to beat the living daylights out of the batter, preferably with a wooden spoon until bubbles start forming during the beating session. Resting the batter is controversial, even amongst Germans.

Spätzle are actually not German but Swabian which covers both sides of the Bavarian & Baden-Wurttemberg borders. It is a poor man's dish - flour, water, eggs, salt & perhaps a pinch of nutmeg.

Here a video with (delayed) English subtitles for the basic "how to do".

When you get the hang of the basics, the real professional stuff starts when you add roasted onions and a good strong hard cheese before popping in the oven to melt and produce your first real Allgäuer Kässpatzen. And by that time you will be fluent in Swabian dialect.

Here for Kate a video from a Michelin star (& TV) Cook who has his place down the road from us who doesn't add any water to the batter - just flour, eggs & salt. No resting & very quickly into the pan before adding cheese, some of the cooking water & onions/chives. Really speedy, no oven.