Family Spätzle

January 21, 2011 Stephanie 2 Comments

I carefully reviewed the instructions…

“…stir until fairly smooth – consistency similar to puppy poop…”

Puppy poop? Sadly, I tried to envision what that could mean, having never closely examined it before. I asked J if puppy poop was like how people refer to baby poop.

This was going to be an interesting recipe.

I grew up eating spätzle, prepared by my Oma and Opa and by my dad. I never really thought about it, I knew it was a German dish and just accepted that it was what it was. It wasn’t until I started thinking about recipes that I thought to look up spätzle, and I found that there are many regional variations on the dish. The way my family makes it seems to be the less popular version, but it always reminds me of my childhood.

Every time I’ve gotten spätzle at a restaurant, it looked very different to the version I was used to. It was more of a squiggly chubby noodle shape, instead of the near-dumpling shape I always enjoyed. This page on the German Food Guide offers some insight to the dish, some of the different ways people shape it, some different recipes, and other neat facts about how it’s made. There’s even a way to make it with beer! (I might need to try that next)

We usually had it topped with a simple butter and breadcrumb sauce, but my dad would sometimes experiment with other kinds of sauces or other ingredients in the batter. I vaguely remember having carrot spätzle at least once…

Back to the puppy poop (just when you got it out of your head)… I wanted to post a family recipe, rather than finding inspiration on other sites or in cookbooks. I emailed my dad for the recipe, knowing that he didn’t have it written down. He wrote it the way he thinks, and as I read it I could picture him mixing together the ingredients the way he’s done since I was a kid. And I laughed out loud at the comparison of the batter consistency to puppy poop.

It was perfect.

Spätzle, inside — This style of Spätzle can be pretty dense inside, almost like a dumpling.

Recipe after the jump!

I may have ruined the effect by putting some structure to it, but I thought it might be easier to follow with some measurements and instructions.

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Recipes

Grilled Tuna Melt

January 19, 2011 Stephanie 1 Comment

I’ve never really been a big fan of sandwiches. I think it’s because I find that the bread gets in the way of the filling. My mom said that as a kid, we’d go out for burgers and she’d only have to get one for my sister and I to share – I would eat the meat, and she would eat the bun. Weird.

We don’t even have a loaf of bread on hand regularly. It just doesn’t get eaten fast enough.

On the odd weekend, however, I’m really in the mood for a grilled cheese or tuna melt. After a morning at the farmer’s market, we love to come home and throw together something special.

The bread has gotten better, too! Now that J bakes bread, we sometimes plan for our weekend sammiches and he bakes up a fresh loaf.

I like to put all sorts of crazy junk in my tuna melts. Usually, I assess what we have on hand and try to find something crunchy, something spicy. My favourite ‘something crunchy’ has to be chunks of Granny Smith apple. The tartness is amazing with the other flavours. Apple slices also make a great side, along with some crunchy dills.

Another important part to this process, for me, is the selection of the perfect mustard. I don’t remember ever making a tuna melt without mustard, and we always have a selection of interesting mustards to choose from (mostly from Kozlik’s, at St. Lawrence market). I like to use really grainy mustard in the mix, usually with names like ‘Double C’. So much fun!

The main thing to take away — the recipe below is just an example. It was what I made on a particular day, with what I had on hand and what I felt like eating. Feel free to substitute – add thinly sliced veggies, olives, different cheese, omit the mustard (what!?!)… just don’t add anything that will make it too wet and sloppy.

Grilled to perfection on a grill pan with a panini press. Would be just as yummy done in a frying pan.

Recipe after the jump!

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Challenges, Recipes

Daring Confit & Cassoulet

January 14, 2011 Stephanie 13 Comments

What the heck is a cassoulet? I had heard the word before, but wasn’t too sure what it was before it became the Daring Cooks’ challenge for January.

Cassoulet is a particular kind of white bean stew that originated in France. It’s become one of those dishes that ignite debates over who made it first, and what recipe is authentic. Sorry to offend, folks, but mine isn’t especially “authentic”, being vegetarian. There is usually a lot of meat involved.

One of the things that you see in many cassoulet recipes is duck confit. One of the requirements of the challenge was to make some kind of confit, and again there were some veggie options. I had to look up what a confit was, exactly, since I’ve always heard it associated with duck. Basically, ‘confit’ is used to describe a few things, in particular a method of preserving food by cooking it in a fat. In the case of meats, they are usually cooked in their own fats. For things like garlic, it is cooked in oil.

I made garlic confit.

So what exactly does one use garlic confit for? You can use it much the same way you might use a baked garlic – the cooking process mellows out the flavours, and gives it a creamy spreadable texture. This makes it (and the oil it’s cooked and stored in) easy to use in dips, soups, sauces… just about anything. Being a big lover of garlic, I thought this would be a fun thing to try making.

That done, I had to decide how to retain the spirit of a cassoulet without the meat. I opted to make the seitan sausages from last month’s challenge, and use them in the stew. I also added some smoked paprika to add some depth to the flavour.

I’m pretty sure it didn’t taste like a real cassoulet, but it was really good!

Vegetarian Cassoulet - closer — Vegetarian Cassoulet

Our January 2011 Challenge comes from Jenni of The Gingered Whisk and Lisa from Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. They have challenged the Daring Cooks to learn how to make a confit and use it within the traditional French dish of Cassoulet. They have chosen a traditional recipe from Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruhlman.

Recipes after the jump!
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Recipes

Cheddar Apple Bundles

January 12, 2011 Stephanie 1 Comment

This is another in a series of recipes I made to try and use up some apples I had rolling off of my kitchen counter.

Why did I buy so many apples, you ask? Because I’m crazy! First, I bought a bag of MacIntosh apples, and then I heard that Cortlands were good, so I bought a bag of those… and then I bought a bag of my favourite kind, Granny Smith.

I am an applepotamus.

This adorable dish is great for weekend brunch. It sounds like a weird combination to some people – apple and cheddar really isn’t that odd of a pairing! At the same time, it is hard to decide whether this tastes more like a savoury dish or a dessert.

Although sweet from the apple, the dough is not especially sweet, so it’s perfectly fine for a main course!

This sounds weird, but the apple and cheese melted together to make a sort of gravy inside the parcel. It was a tasty mix of sweet and salty, all oozy (but in a good way)!

Cheddar Apple Bundles - ready to eat — Ready to eat...

Recipe after the jump!
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Steph Food

Family Spätzle

Grilled Tuna Melt

Daring Confit & Cassoulet

Cheddar Apple Bundles

A Love Story