7 oz all purpose flour
2 eggs
5 tbsp water
1 pinch nutmeg
several sprigs parsley (about a cup chopped)
butter/olive oil
Place a large pot of water on the stove to boil. Weigh out the floor in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the center. In another, smaller bowl, beat the eggs with the water and nutmeg. Add some of the liquid to the middle of the flour well and mix the flour in gradually. This is a lot harder than it sounds. I find that when doing something like this its best to try to assign one 'wet' hand and one 'dry' hand, but of course even that tends to break down sometimes. Needless to say, one's hands become useless, over gobbed with sticky wet spaetzle dough. If your eggs are of the larger variety, you may need to add slightly more flour. The final dough should not be too wet.
Roll out the dough on a well-floured surface to a thickness of about a centimeter*. Cut a vertical strip about a centimeter thick. Form the spaetzle by cutting this strip into little 1 cm (or desired thickness, but try to be uniform for cooking time purposes) bits. Repeat until all of the dough has been formed into spaetzle.
Once the water is boiling, add salt and the spaetzle. While the spaetzle boils, chop the parsley. Boil until all of the spaetzle floats to the top. It is helpful to test one (or many) spaetzle(s) for done-ness. Drain in a colander, then return to the pot. Add the parsley and a bit of butter/olive oil**. Toss together and serve immediately.
*Some spaetzle recipes preach the utility of extruding one's spaetzle through a colander. This idea is seductive in its simplicity. I mean, hey, not only am I multitasking with the colander (THE VERY TOOL I WILL LATER USE TO DRAIN THE SPAETZLE), but I'm also saving time with the rolling pin, floured surface, etc. Let me say, it is extremely difficult to extrude spaetzle through a colander. The dough is sticky and not terribly flow-able.
**It is all about personal fat preference here. I used a mixture, roughly 1 tbsp butter and 2-3 spritzes of oil.
No comments:
Post a Comment