friederike's Reviews
7 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 7Sort by: Title 
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Culinaria Germany
By Konemann
Ullmann Publishing - 2006
Basic Spaetzle / Spätzle, Grundrezept : page 330
See Spätzle as a kind of German pasta. In fact, the main ingredients (1 egg per 100 g flour) are exactly the same! This basic recipe is easy to whip up and works very well. Just remember to put the cooked Spätzle in sauce or butter right away when they are cooked, without letting them cool - just as with pasta, they will soak up sauces and flavours better while they are hot.
We served these with Mixed Mushrooms in Cream Sauce, which worked well enough.
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I wasn't impressed. I knew it would be a lot of work - blanch the cabbage and carefully remove the leaves, make a filling, stuff the cabbage leaves, then braise the whole thing - it took me three hours from start to end. Unfortunately, though, the result wasn't as comforting as I hoped it would be - actually, I didn't even find it tasting nice, let alone delicious.
It was partly my mistake, too - instead of 2 tbsp of coarse rye bread croutons, I used one whole slice (about 4 tbsp), and I found that taste to be surprisingly strong (too strong). I also also used crumbs instead of croutons, which was probably a good idea.
But I also had a few problems with the recipe instructions. First, they tell you nowhere how to remove the cabbage stalk. Do you need to halve the cabbage first? Probably not. Should you perhaps remove the cabbage leaves one by one? I tried that and had a success rate of 1:3, meaning small vs large tears - not good. Finally, I just used a small knife and poked around so long until the stalk came out bit by bit in pieces the size of a finely chopped onion. If you have a melon ball spoon, try that, it'll probably help. I also blanched the cabbage for 40 min, as after 20 min it still seemed quite difficult to remove the leaves. My guess is that you really need to remove the whole stalk, as the boiling/simmering water can then penetrate in between the leaves and soften them up.
Then, the bacon cubes. Judging from where they appear in the list of ingredents, you'd expect them to be part of the stuffing, but they're not mentioned in the instructions at all. I just left them out (I only realized once I had neatly parceled my cabbage leaves anyway). I also only used half the bacon slices, as that already completely covered the bottom of my pan.
Finally, when the dish was done braising, the sauce was way more liquid than I had expected. I reduced it quite a bit, then added the sour cream expecting that would additionally thicken the sauce, but it did not. It also looked like the sauce and the sour cream had separated, which of course didn't help either. I omitted the paprika, I thought that was superfluous. Also, although the parcels had been braised in the sauce for an whole hour, I was surprised to find that the stuffing hadn't taken on any flavours of the sauce at all.
Edited two days later:
This dish serves about 5-6 (I always had one parcel, DH had two, if possible, and you'll be making eight of them).
Looking back, using more bacon would have been a good idea; we had the leftovers yesterday and tonight, and both times I fried a few bacon cubes before adding the cabbage and sauce to the pan. To my surprise, DH said he hadn't noticed the rye bread flavour until I told him, and once he paid attention to it, he actually quite liked it.
I was also thinking whether using less stock and adding another can of tomatoes instead might be a good idea - it looked like too little sauce, but in the end it was just enough. We served it with rice, although potatoes would have been the more traditional choice.
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Cheese Spaetzle / Käsespätzle : page 330
Very delicious! I rather liked that the proportions of ingredients could were easily re-scalable (think 1 egg per 100g flour etc) but I'd rather add a few more onions (roughly one per 100g flour).
Luckily I had a Spätzle-maker (very fancy, but very simple, too), so I didn't need to cut the Spätzle; but there's definitely no need to reheat the Spätzle in a pan or in the oven, just layer them in a bowl with cheese and onions and cover with a lid until you're ready.
Serve with a salad (lamb's lettuce would be a very typical Swiss choice) or vegetables and enjoy!
Edited 1 July 2014:
I made a portion using 3 eggs, serving two as a main dish; also used 2 large onions and 150g cheese. This was well-balanced, but a bit too much for the two of us. For two, you can better use 2 eggs, and serve it with a salad and (perhaps) a small dessert.
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Eel Soup / Hamburger Aalsuppe : page 160
I absolutely loved this! BF and I still talk about it after more than 2 years. Living in Hamburg at the time and standing up at 4am to go to the traditional ‘Fischmarkt’ to get the eel when it was freezing cold may have been part of the charme, though...
Amendment 6. Nov. 2009:
I’ve made this dish again, albeit with modifications: I used app. 450g smoked eel instead of 800g fresh eel, and roughly half of the amount of vegetables and other filling, omitting the asparagus and substituting it with the other vegetables. For the other ingredients (meat, broth, etc.) I used the amounts given. Enough for 3-4 persons.
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Rheinländischer Sauerbraten : page 213
I suppose that it was like it was meant to be (after all, Sauerbraten literally means sour roast, although the meat is braised rather than roasted), but I found it rather sour. Not necessarily a bad thing, just rather unexpected - I had previously read that the acid is used to tenderise the meat.
If you use one big piece of meat make sure that you turn it once in a while in the marinade, otherwise the marinade won’t reach all areas. Also, make sure that the meat indeed IS dry before you fry it.
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Very nice, and quite easy too! Once you're done with chopping up all the veggies, all you need to do is add a little seasoning, and then warm up the sausage right at the end. I would probably add the carrots and potatoes a little later next time, so the carrots retain their crunch.
I also made the mistake and added the sausage directly to the stew to heat it up, which made it a little dry - it's probably worth it to just heat it very carefully in a seperate pan, without bringing it to a simmer.
I used a pointed cabbage instead of a savoy cabbage (shopping list misunderstanding), and half chorizo, half 'metworst' (= the pork sausage you're supposed to use).
Results in about 5 servings. As you'll end up with half a cabbage and half a celeriac, you might consider to make a double portion and freeze the rest. This is what I did, though for the second portion I used only metworst, and also added some leftover turnip from last week's Beef and Ale Pie
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Veal Stew / Gestowtes Kalbsfleisch : page 252
The veal was expensive, and the result did not match the cost. I suspect the fault rather lies with me than with them, though I couldn’t put my finger on it...
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