Things I have learned

Sp ä tzle are a specialty from the South of Germany and to my knowledge also popular in parts of Switzerland, Austria and Hungary. Sp ä tzle are a variation of egg noodles. They are served as a side dish like noodles, or as a main dish (for example cheese sp ä tzle or simply fried with an egg). I am aware of 3 different ways to make sp ä tzle: With a sp ä tzle press which results in lengthy Sp ä tzle, with a Sp ä tzle hobel (also called spaetzle maker) which results in drop-like or more round Sp ä tzle also called Knoepfle, Knoepfli (or buttons), and last but not least manually made Sp ä tzle using a dough-scraper (or knife) and a wooden cutting board. In the following blog post I use a spaetzle maker. Most often I use my spaetzle press when making spaetzle, but for a change I decided to use my spaetzle maker. I tried in the past to make spaetzle manually, but presently I am not good at it (I have to look for a more suitable dough-scraper). So lets get star...

I only learned how to make good caramelized onions in the last 12 months when watching a YouTube video. Somehow I thought for most of my cooking life that I knew how to make fried onions despite never being totally happy with my results. Fried onions are used for example as a topping for German (Swabian) Sp ä tzle (spatzli, spaetzle, spatzli). My mom always fried the onions with relatively lots of heat and sometimes the onions where coated with a little flour. But my efforts were never close to even that version. About 4 years ago I once tried a recipe from the Modern Cuisine book that advocated to "make" a large batch of super caramelized onions in a pressure cooker with zero effort. The result was a "brown onion-soup". It did not resemble fried onions and I did not like the result at all (probably I made a mistake when I followed that recipe). Beyond that I never really encountered a "good" recipe how to make caramelized onions. I guess I never picked up...

A Semmelknödel is a bread dumpling/ball specialty from Bavaria (South Germany). In Germany it is known as "Bayerische  Semmelknödel". Until 2 years ago this was a disaster every time I tried to make it in Canada (I come back later why). Semme lknödel are typically served with a creamy (mushroom) sauce or with a saucy meat-stew. Lets get started. Semmelknödel in Bavaria are made from stale old buns or old white bread (K nödel made from "rye-wheat or black bread" are called Schwarzbrot knödel and K nödel made from soft-pretzel buns are called Brezn-K nödel). Here in Canada I have settled on using old baguettes for the  knoedel/balls. In todays recipe I cut two baguettes into thin slices and put them into a large bowl. The  baguettes are about 4 days old. My base recipe assumes 500g of stale, relatively dry white bread or buns. The  Semmelknödel in the pictures represent about 800g of baguettes, so everything is scaled .    Cutting the 2 stale baguette...