I always loved noodles, perhaps because this was the first dish I learned to cook. Well, not really cook from scratch, but I helped my grandmother drop the fresh dough into boiling water. Watching the transformation of this lump of raw dough into a delicious noodle, I was hooked for life. During my childhood, I watched my grandmother make noodles of all kinds from simple flour and water dough or an egg-enriched dough for fancier noodles. Some were essentially pinches or tears of dough; others were thinly rolled out sheets of dough and cut with a knife into angel hair strands or wide or irregularly shaped “kluski” — noodles. Thus, noodles were always close to my heart and whenever I encountered noodles on my travels, I always took time to learn how they were made.
Years later on a business trip to Memmingen, a city of about 42,000 residents located in the Swabia region of Germany’s Bavaria, I was invited to a Bavarian dinner at the lovely chalet home of Hermann Pfieffer, a German steel cable manufacturer. Hermann’s wife Sieglinde, an accomplished cook, served hirschgulasch, a venison stew with a large bowl of irregularly shaped parslied noodles. The noodles were homemade and tasted like those my grandmother made in my childhood. At the end of the meal, I complimented Frau Pfeiffer and thanked her for the hours it must have taken to make so many noodles by hand. “Oh, no, not by hand,” she said and led me into the kitchen where she showed me a spaetzle-making gadget, a Spätzlehobel she called it, sitting atop a large pot of water. “It goes quickly with this special tool.”
I was reminded of Frau Pfieffer’s spaetzle on a recent trip to China when I was served mian pian, a chicken vegetable soup with bits of hand-formed noodles. The noodles in this Chinese soup had an uncanny resemblance to Frau Pfeiffer’s spaetzle and also tasted like the noodles my grandmother prepared.
I thought about how a simple paste of flour and water, sometimes with an egg and a pinch of salt, became a ubiquitous staple that nourished mankind for over 4,000 years?
Quick research into noodle history did not provide a clear answer as to the origin of noodles. Many regions of the world claim invention of noodles. There is also historic evidence that this relatively simple discovery was made in many far-flung places, not just one. Probably noodles are a consequence of the domestication of cereals — wheat, millet, spelt, maize, millet, rice and other grains which, according to food historians, started about 10,000 years ago. Early man recognized that these grains had to be crushed or ground into flour and cooked in a liquid to be edible. This early gruel was eaten initially as a thick soup or porridge. But if the gruel was lumpy, the lumps were, in fact, rudimentary noodles. Over centuries, by trial and error, cooks made stiffer dough, adding eggs and salt, which permitted drying and easy transportation assuring their popularity and longevity.
One thing is clear: the story that all of us learned in elementary school of Marco Polo bringing noodles to Italy in the 13th century is just that – a story. In 2005, Chinese archeologists discovered a sealed bowl containing long, thin yellow noodles made from several varieties of millet flour which were determined to be 4,000 years old! There is ample evidence that cooking a simple flour and water dough preceded Marco Polo’s Chinese adventures and was popular in Italy during Roman times. Although noodle dough was “invented” in many locations, Chinese and Italians cooks developed more varieties of noodle than cooks in any other country.
Noodles were often made from dough leftover from making bread or dumplings. Frugal cooks would boil the dough remnants in water or stock for a quick meal. In her book On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, with Love and Pasta, Jen Liu-Liu writes that early Chinese noodles were bits of leftover bread dough thrown into a pot of boiling water. My grandmother threw leftover varenyky dough (a filled Ukrainian dumpling) into a pot of chicken soup.
The prevalence of commercially-made noodle products and their quick preparation has relegated home noodle-making to a dying culinary art practiced by a handful of aficionados and some ethnic groups that still make noodles and their stuffed relatives – varenyky, pierogi, ravioli, tortellini, manti, pot stickers and pelmeni. With the importation of pasta machines to the US several decades ago, pasta making became popular for a while. Those cooks who tried their hand at pasta-making can attest that fresh pasta tastes far superior to even the best-bought pasta.
But a special machine is not necessary to make noodles. A pasta machine or a spaetzle-maker, which I received as a parting gift from the Pfeiffers in Memmingen, are effective tools if you want to produce a more uniform product. But the noodle will taste delicious nonetheless if the dough is pinched, torn, forced through a large-holed colander, slid off an oiled cutting board with a spatula or cut with a knife and cooked for a few minutes in boiling salted water or broth and its rustic hand-formed appearance adds to its charm and shows that special care was given to the meal.
While Frau Pfeiffer served her spaetzle with hirschgulasch accompanied by dilled buttered carrots and a tablespoon of lingonberry jam, spaetzle can also be a side to other meats – pork schnitzel, roast beef, sauerbraten, roast chicken or chicken paprikaş and grilled sausages.
Here is the recipe for the spaetzle I enjoyed at the Pfeiffers. I will post the recipe for hirschgulasch, the venison stew, at a future date.
Spaetzle – serves 6
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
⅛ teaspoon paprika
4 eggs, slightly beaten
¾ cup + 4 tablespoons water
4 quarts boiling water
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons parsley, chopped
Combine flour, salt, nutmeg and paprika in a large bowl. Stir with a whisk to combine. Add eggs and ¾ cup water and stir until you get a smooth, soft dough.
Bring a large pot of water to boil and add salt.
Butter a serving dish with 1 tablespoon butter and place close to the cooking pot.
Make spaetzle using one of these two methods, each of which produces a different shape noodle. The cutting board method, which is the traditional method, produces long, irregular noodles (Spaetzle means little sparrow); the colander or spaetzle-maker produces small round button-shaped noodles (Knöpfle):
Spray a heat-resistant cutting board (large enough to sit on top of cooking pot) and the blade of a sharp knife with cooking spray. Spread ¾ cup of dough in a thin layer on the cutting board. Use back end of the knife to cut and slide small strips of dough off the cutting board into the boiling water. Dip the knife into the boiling water to release the noodles. Cook noodles for about 5 minutes. Lift out with strainer into the buttered serving dish, dot with butter stirring periodically so the spaetzle do not stick and continue forming and cooking noodles.
Or, spray a large-holed colander or spaetzle-maker with cooking spray. Add dough in ¾ cup portions to either device and with a spatula or funnel on the spaetzle-maker* push the dough into the boiling water. Cook for five minutes, lift out with strainer and repeat with remaining dough.
Before serving, garnish spaetzle with parsley and dot with more butter as needed.
Although this recipe produces plain spaetzle, German cooks occasionally flavor the dough by adding spinach or grated cheese or even minced calf’s liver.
* A spaetzle-maker is available at Sur la Table. http://www.surlatable.com/search/search.jsp?N=4294967064&Ntt=spaetzle+maker
Photo credits: Slava Johnson