Hooray!

Looks like Joseph Skvorecky is coming out with a new book in English, which is great news. Skvorecky is one of my favorite authors, along with Jim Harrison. I wonder how long it will be before the book hits U.S. shores?

Servus, Gregg!

According to the Loewenblog, it looks like Berhalter’s days at TSV 1860 are numbered. Given the way he was playing before his benching, it’s no wonder.

I can relate

Michelle, of JeweledConcrete, on why she likes Munich.  I can definitely relate to most items on her list, especially the bread, Victualienmarkt and beer gardens.

Fussball in America

Stephen Webb is not as funny as he thinks he is. At least I think he is trying to be funny.

Even More Spaetzle

This time epicurious has a recipe for Colander Spaetzle that I’m gonna have to try. Looks yummy.

Minga

Spider Murphy Gang with pictures of my favorite city:

Another Munich video:

60 ist unser leben

Posting this as a fan of TSV 1860 München. Been a fan since 1967.

More Spätzle

After posting about last night’s Käsespätzle and reading other people’s experiences with making the recipe, I realized that I had a few more words to say.  For one, there are almost as many recipes for spätzle as there are people who make it.  Some people use milk in place of the water, like Mark Bittman. (And no, Mark, spätzle is not from France, nor is it pronounced “spay-tzul,” as you claim in your book, How to Cook Everything.)  Others have been known to add things like chopped spinach and other herbs to the dough. And for Passover, I have been know to use matzoh meal in place of regular flour. All of which makes spätzle  a very easy and versatile dish.

Käsespätzle

This was the third week of Christina’s Real German Cuisine challenge and this week’s recipe was Käsespätzle, or Spaetzle with Cheese.

I usually make this dish about once a month. My daughter calls it the German version of mac and cheese. For the challenge, I decided to use a modified version of my usual spätzle recipe:

3 cups flour
2-3 eggs
1 to 1 1/2 cups water
pinch of salt
sprinkling of nutmeg

by substituting 1 cup of whole wheat flour for one cup of the regular flour. I also added in some finely chopped parsley.

Getting ready to make the spätzle – my mise en place

I mixed all of the above until the dough was smooth and showed some bubbles (about 30 seconds) and left the dough to rest for about 30 minutes and started on the things I would mix into the spätzle. For us, this would be some leftover wild mushrooms we had in the refrigerator in place of some of the chopped onions called for in the challenge’s recipe (my daughter isn’t overly fond of onions). I also cheated and used pre-grated cheese.

Making the dough

I chopped the mushrooms and onions into small dice and sauteed them in a bit of butter until the onions were translucent and the mushrooms had softened.

I then put on some water to boil, preheated the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, and sprayed some Pam into a Pyrex baking dish and on my spätzle maker.

My ancient spätzle maker

When the water came to a boil I poured some of the spätzle dough into my spätzle maker and grated them into the water. When the spätzle rose to the surface, I waited about 30 seconds and transfered them to the baking dish.

Cooking the spätzle

The first layer

I then layered on some cheese and some of the onion/mushroom mixture before proceeding to make the next batch of spätzle. I repeated the above process until I’d cooked all of the spätzle dough and used up all the mushroom/onion mix. I topped the whole thing off with some more cheese and popped it into the oven for about 10 minutes.

While the käsespätzle was baking, I made a fennel-celery salad I first saw on Mark Bittman’s blog, and poured myself an Ettaler Doppelbock.

finished product 1

The final product

My Ettaler Doppelbock