Spaetzle, mountains, and intriguing areas of Italy

The kids are back at school.  All is quiet on the Cote d’Azur as the tourists have flown back to the far corners of Europe from whence they came.  We can start thinking about Autumn and writing blog posts (oh, that last bit is about me, not you!).  During the Summer we spent two weeks wandering around the Dolomite mountains in Alto-Adige, Italy. The area is very confusing, and therefore incredibly interesting.  Everything is bilingual Italian/German.  The vast majority of people living in the region speak German as their first language, although they officially live in Italy. And, many of them speak Italian badly or with a very heavy German accent. The fabulous thing about the valley we stayed in, aside from the mountains, Heidi fields and quaint villages, was the food. They’ve taken the best of Austrian and Italian cuisine: spaetzle, frankfurters, sauerkraut and wonderful cakes along with great coffee, pizza and gelato.  Lucky we were hiking and biking all the time.  That way we could stuff ourselves with all these goodies! “Spaetzle?” you say. “What is spaeztle?” Well, you’re in for a treat!  It’s……..dare I say it without getting my Italian passport ripped out of my hands……even better than pasta! It’s a batter made of flour and eggs.  You drop bits of it into boiling water to create puffy little morsels.  It’s not pasta exactly, but not dumplings either.

Yearning for more spaetzle

After coming home, we had a longing to eat Spaeztle again.  A fabulous German friend of mine gave me the recipe for it years ago.  She used to make it for me often when I lived there. Another fabulous friend gave me a spaetzle maker years ago too, so all I had to do was scramble through the cupboards to find the recipe and spaetzle grater, and voilá!  Off we went!  Lucky that I have these thoughtful friends around to help me on my spaetzle quest.  It’s really very easy to make if you have the grater.  The hand you see in one of the photos below is that of my 10 year old son.  He also made the batter.

Alternatives to try if you can’t find a spaetzle grater

If you don’t have a special grater, never fear!  You can use a colander with big holes in it, or a flat grater and a knife, or even (so I read somewhere), drip the batter off a fork.  I think the last method would be pretty tricky and you might get big lumps of batter in the water…..when you use the special piece of equipment you see in the photo above, you dump a large spoonful of batter into the white plastic chamber and then run it back and forth over the grater part.  The strips of batter fall into the boiling water and cook almost immediately. You need to then scoop them out with a large spoon with holes in it (what are those spoons called?) and put it into the sauce you have already prepared ahead of time.

I made a sauce with cream, speck that we brought back from San Candido, and peas.  You can use pretty much any sauce that you would use for pasta, such as ragù, tomato or cream and cheese sauces.  You can also eat it as a side with a little butter or oil added to it so that it doesn’t stick together.  Just for the record, unlike spaetzle, this eating it as a side thing is something you should NEVER do with pasta, especially if you have an Italian coming to dinner!

Travel photo of the week

This magnificent landscape is in the Dolomite mountains in north-eastern Italy.  Here you can only see two of the three peaks that tower above you as you ant-hike far below them.  the day we were there (and I imagine on my other days too) there were climbers who made it to the top of these pinnacles.  you could see their tiny figures sitting on the top and swinging their legs into the void.  As I have a bit of vertigo, I had enough trouble with some of the trail that ran along the moiddle of the scree slope far below, without going to those crazy lengths.

By Lisa Watson

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Spaetzle with cream, peas, and bacon

Spaetzle: Alto Adige's Ingenious Answer to Pasta. find out how to make it easily at home.

Course entree, first course, Main Course

Cuisine German, Italian

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 minute minute

Total Time 11 minutes minutes

Servings 6 people

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups All-purpose flour 440 g
• 4 Eggs
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1 cup Water 250 ml
• 1 pinch Nutmeg

For the Sauce

• 3/4 cup Single cream
• 100 g Cooked Peas
• 150 g Cubed Speck or cooked ham 1 cup

Instructions

• Put the flour, salt and nutmeg in a bowl.
• Add the eggs and half the water.  Mix everything together.
• Add the rest of the water bit by bit and mix until the batter is thick.
• Bring a large pot of salted water to the boil.
• Use the spaetzle grater, or a colander, or a flat grater to drip bits of batter into the water.
• It will puff up slightly and cook immediately. Scoop it out and place it in the already prepared sauce.

For the Sauce:

• If you are using speck, sauté it in a little olive oil until it is cooked. Boil the peas in salted water.
• Drain the peas. Drain the speck on a paper-towel to remove the oil.
• Gently heat the cream (but don't let it boil). Add the speck (or cubed ham) and peas. Don't add salt as the sauce will already be salty enough.

Notes

Spaetzle is also good reheated.  Just add a little oil or butter to it after it is cooked, and then keep it in the fridge.

Now for something completely different

Here’s a recipe for Pad Thai: not Italian at all, but made with noodles, so I guess it vaguely enters into the category of distant cousin to Italian cuisine. Pad Thai is an all-in-one dish from Thailand and Laos.

Noodles are eaten at many festive occasions in Asia to signify long life.  It is an absolute no-no to cut them, therefore shortening your life.  I wonder if this tradition is the unknown reason why the Italians have a large aversion to cutting spaghetti.  “Italian” noodles did originally come from China, after all!  In fact, all noodles all over the world are said to have originated from the Chinese ones.

Why pad thai is called pad thai

In Thailand and Laos rice noodles are used to make this delicious street-food called Pad Thai that is also eaten at festive occasions. The dish was imported from China by Thailand’s prime minister during the Second World War, and given a Thai twist with the signature flavours that identify Thai food; lime, coriander, and fish sauce.  It was also renamed Pad Thai to help Thai nationalism and stop people from eating so much rice so that Thailand could export more of it (and therefore make more money!). Amazingly, the strategy worked and Pad Thai has become a nationally recognized dish!

The secret to making a good pad thai

The making of Pad Thai is more of a description that a recipe.  It’s very difficult to quantify as it depends on the taste of the cook who is making it.  A Lao friend told me recently that when making this type of dish, you taste it all through the cooking process then adjust the ingredients to suit. I have tried to measure the ingredients here, but generally I do it by the “handful”. This is quite a foreign concept in Western cooking.

The first couple of times I made this I rushed around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to cook it as everything cooks so quickly.  Since then I’ve refined my technique a little and have everything pre-prepared and lined up on the bench next to the wok in the order they’ll go into the Pad Thai.

So, here’s a little something different from me. I look forward to hearing if anybody tries it, and how it goes!

By Lisa Watson

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pad thai

Learn to make pad thai at home

Course Main Course

Cuisine Asian

Prep Time 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time 5 minutes minutes

Total Time 25 minutes minutes

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

• 1 clove garlic chopped or crushed
• ½ block firm tofu cut into small cubes
• 150 g 5mm rice noodles 5.5oz
• 1 Egg
• 150 g prawns (or pre-cooked chicken) shrimp about ½ - ¾ cup
• ½ cup peanuts roughly ground
• Lime juice from 1 lime
• 1 cup bean sprouts
• 1 small bunch spring onions
• For the Sauce
• ¼ cup salty fish sauce
• ¼ cup sour Tamarind pulp
• 1 Tbsp white sugar or palm sugar
• Chili powder to taste

Instructions

• First prepare all the ingredients: chop the garlic, spring onions and tofu.  Have everything ready on the bench to be thrown into the wok.  I precook the shrimp as I can’t seem to get my wok hot enough.
• In a small pot, mix together the ingredients for the sauce and heat. Taste it to see if you like the salt/sweet sour combination.  Remember that the flavours will not be as strong when added to the Pad Thai.
• Soak the rice noodles in hot/boiling water for about 5 - 10 minutes.  When they’re ready to cook you should be able to wind them around your finger.
• Now, are you sure that everything’s ready?  The cooking goes fast, so there’s no time to prepare anything!  Right off we go then! Heat some vegetable oil in a wok until it’s very hot.  Throw in the garlic.  Let it sizzle for a couple of minutes, then throw in the tofu cubes.  Cook them, stirring constantly, until they are brown.
• Drain the noodles and add them.  Add half the sauce and stir until the noodles can be broken between your fingers….this may only take a couple of minutes.
• Push the noodles to the side and add the eggs.  Scramble them and then stir everything in together.
• Add the shrimp or chicken (precooked) and stir.
• Add more of the sauce all through this cooking period. Take off the heat.
• Add the beansprouts  and spring onions.  Add the lime juice. Stir.  Sprinkle with ground peanuts.
• Eat it hot!  After a couple of tries, it gets less nerve-wracking to make.  As long as everything is ready to go, it’s easier than pie! When you get confident, you can start throwing in handfuls of things: more or less of each ingredient, depending on your tastes.