Ted Belding shared a pointer to a New York Times article on spaetzle, and I was suddenly hungry. The recipe called for 7 eggs and a bunch of equipment that I didn't have, so I improvised and made something approximating roggenspaetzle (rye spaetzle) with one egg, some rye flour, and a bit of milk.
The exact proportion of "some rye flour" was a little bit wrong, or perhaps my technique was off, so I ended up with more like a dumpling and less like a noodle, but still: delicious.
The grand advantage of writing down your midnight snack is that instead of dropping $4 on cafe and wireless, you can drop bits of eggy batter into boiling water and learn a new recipe. Next time, I'll try using the cheese grater as my spaetzle maker.
Some recipes, to get a sense for proportion of eggs to flour in the ingredients. If you're not weighing the flour, note that 125g of flour is on the order of 1 cup of flour, plus or minus; see the flour calculator for details.
Bavarian Kitchen: 400g flour, 3-4 eggs, 1 cup water
Spaetzle.DE, Grundrezept: 500g flour, 5 eggs, 150-250ml water
Chef Koch: 500g flour, 3 eggs, 250ml water; some nice photos of technique
Roggenspaetzle, Chef Koch: 250g rye flour, 4 eggs, 200 ml milk.
All Recipes: 1 cup flour, 2 eggs, 1/4 c milk
Tyler Florence, Food Network: 1 cup flour, 2 eggs, 1/4 c milk
Still more experimenting to do before this is a reliably perfected recipe, but how hard can it really be?
Hey Ed-
Glad you enjoyed the Spatzle :) 7 eggs seems like quite a lot though (the NYT recipe calls for 2).
My standard go-to reference for German recipes is Dr. Oetker: http://www.oetker.de/oetker/rezepte/kochen/kartoffeln__nudeln/spaetzle.html (in German)
I think I have their English translation cookbook; I'll send you a photocopy of the Spaetlze recipe from there when I'm back in A2.
See also here for a fairly detailed walkthrough and pics: http://www.amiexpat.com/2009/03/02/real-german-cuisine-kasespatzle-spaetzle-with-cheese/
This, to me, is how they should look (though I usually put gravy on them instead of cheese and onions): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kaesspaetzle_mit_Ziebeln.jpg
The Heidelberg used to have pretty decent Kaesespaetzle; haven't eaten there in a while though. Metzgers has Spaetzle as a side dish option, but they're too thin for my taste...
-Ted
PS once you master Spaetzle, just add mashed potatoes and you basically have gnocchi (you'll have to shape/tear off those individually into the water though, since the dough's thicker)
Posted by: Ted Belding | December 24, 2011 at 04:45 PM