Got into a developmental mood last night. Decided it was time to work on my German cooking again and test out a recipe that I haven't tried before. So, I busted out my Culinaria: German book, called up my hungry friend, and grabbed wine.
Decided to do a recipe based out of a region of Germany called North Rhine-Westphalia. The dish? Münsterländer Töttchen, aka Münsterland Veal Stew. I picked it because for one, the ingredient list is relatively easy to find products. Two, I will readily admit I usually suck at making stew. In the past, I generally wind up with crappy thin soup with stringy, tough meat much like my father does. I wanted to see if I am genetically predisposed to shitty stew-making. For a side item, I chose spätzle, egg noodles I made time and time again when I worked in a German kitchen. The biggest difference with that would be instead of using an arm-busting noodle press like I had in the past, I would be attempting to use an old-fashioned "shaving" method.
The stew had me start off by essentially making a quick veal stock. Simple enough. Carrots, celery, onion, a bit of parsley and green onion simmering with some veal for an hour or so- child's play. The oddest part about that was the recipe called for the onion to be 'spiked' with one bay leaf and two cloves. What the fuck is a spiked onion? The book didn't say and Google just wanted to give me soup recipes, so I opted to just throw the cloves and bay leaf in with the rest of the stock veg.
While that was working, I got my spätzle dough together. Spätzle is a very simple noodle, just eggs, flour, a smidge of spices and salt, and water. The kicker is that the dough has to be incredibly thick and sticky, which can make it a beast to work with and a bitch to clean up. My dough ready, I got a pot of very salty water boiling and began to attempt to shave the dough off a wet cutting board to create noodles. It was doable, but what a load of crap. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I would much rather use the arm-buster. Shaving resulted in a lot of inconsistent sizing, which made pan frying later a bit sketchy. Anyway, once the dough hit the water, it only took a couple minutes for it to cook and float to the top. Skimming the noodles out, I dropped them into a mixing bowl with ice in it to keep them from overcooking. Once all of the noodles were made, I rinsed them and strained them, then coated them in olive oil to prevent sticking while I finished the rest of the stew.
Once the stock was finished, I strained it and removed the meat, putting that to the side while I chucked the rest of the veg in the garbage. Grabbing a new pan, I proceeded to sauté chopped onion in clarified butter. The onion was supposed to cook until translucent, but I got distracted and they wound up caramelizing a bit- oops. Whatever, wasn't burnt! I then sprinkled flour over the onions, whisking it in, to essentially create an onion roux. Threw in some wine, a bit of the stock, the veal, and voila! A couple minutes reducing and I had a sexy looking stew. Seasoned it with a bit of salt, pepper, sugar, and mustard, and it was ready to eat.
Using the rest of my clarified butter, I pan-fried the spätzle umtil it was lightly crisped, then put the noodles in bowls and topped it off with the stew. A quick refill of the wine, and bam- chow time!
I was overall happy with the outcome, though now that I've done it once, there's definitely stuff I would do differently next time. For starters, have stock made ahead of time, and make it really concentrated for a more robust flavor. I'd simmer the meat in the stock all day, get it really melt-in-your-mouth tasty, and then once dinnertime was actually on me it'd tuen into a 5-10 minute pick-up. Suuuuper easy. As for the spätzle, I'm wishing for an arm-buster for Christmas.
If you want to try this yourself, look for the cookbook Culinaria: Germany. The stew is on page 214 and a good spätzle recipe is on page 330. Or e-mail/message me and I'll send it to you.
Prost, dahlings!
