Adventures in Spätzle.

We have been experimenting with spätzle recipes around here lately.  My main motivation was to figure out how to subtly work more vegetables into Lulu's diet without a fight (did I mention that she's now three?).  So, I figured that spätzle would be an easy way to do so.

First up was Spinatspätzle (spinach spätzle).  Quickly blanching spinach and then pureeing it in the blender with the water was the only extra step to spätzle and, man, was it tasty!  You couldn't taste the spinach at all (for better or worse), but you could certainly see the color!

told you it was GREEN!!!

wienerschnitzel, carrots, and spinach spätzle

Tonight, it was beet spätzle. We had an extra roasted beet rolling around our freezer (from what I don't know), so I decided to puree it the same way I did the spinach and see what happened.  Lulu was supervising my cooking--quite a challenge to deal with sticky spätzle dough, boiling water, and a curious toddler all at the same time!

 You can definitely taste the beet, but it's a very subtle flavor. I think these would be delicious with poppy seeds!

the chef with her creation

look at that gorgeous color!

I can imagine a really kitschy Christmas side dish with beet and spinach spätzle--red and green.  What do you think?

Bittman's Beer Bread

I made Mark Bittman's beer bread recipe last weekend and it was delicious. It was so easy, I even baked two batches! I used Spaten Optimator, fyi.

We had it for dinner with some brats and wurst. Yum!

Pretzel Brot

Inspired by these, I thought I'd try making my own.  I had wanted to tackle this project this past weekend, but our kitchen was otherwise um, occupied.

So, I spent the day working at home (in part to avoid students trying to add into my classes) and was able to weave in this baking project into my research work.

I'm not especially pleased with the Laugenbrezel recipe that I used--the dough was very, very sticky.  I think next time I try these, I will use my regular pretzel recipe from Martha Stewart's cookbook instead.  I had light Jarlsberg cheese, smoked turkey breast, and diced orange bell pepper for the inside.  (Lulu is fascinated with the orange bell peppers for some reason, so I bought the smallest, lightest one I could find last time I was at the store, even though we didn't need one)

The first one I tried definitely looked um, mangled.

You can see the orange bell pepper sticking out on the top there

But, I started to get the hang of it by the end.

Not too shabby--held together during boiling with no leakage

I made six stuffed pretzel rolls and plan on bringing them with me to school for lunch next week.

various levels of success

I boiled them in baking soda-ed gently boiling water prior to those photos--that's why the one sort of split in two. I had to be really careful, too, like I was cooking knödel/dumplings.

But, twenty minutes in a 450F oven, and they all looked very tasty!

fresh from the oven!

And I'm quite pleased with the later ones I did--they look just like the commercial stuff I ate last week:

Look at that beauty!

but they certainly tasted a LOT better!

Next time, I think rather than dicing the bell pepper, I might leave it in slices. Ditto for the cheese. And I think a thin schmear of mustard would bring it all together in a nice way.

Will definitely have to experiment with these again!