Cooking has always been a release for me, a stress reliever and a source of pride. There are very few things that I won't try to cook (anything with ham being one of the few). I love trying new recipes and creating new dishes with what I have on hand. Jason often says that we never have the same thing twice because I very rarely measure things and just throw in a little of this and a little of that until I feel the dish is complete. One of my other loves (besides my husband) is travel. I love seeing new places and trying new foods when traveling. When I'm at home in the kitchen I like to not only create dishes from not only places that I have been but also place I would like to go and besides indian food I don't think there is a cuisine that I haven't tried at ome point in time. Tonight's dinner was inspired by Germany with a little bit of Polish sausage thrown in for good measure.
I can't remember the first time I had spaetzel but I have loved it from the beginning. I have bought packages of it at the grocery store before and put it in different dishes at home and Jason was always less than enthused with it so I have been determined for a while to try to make my own and show him how good it could really be. I found a recipe on foodnetwork.com for a roasted red pepper spaetzle with a mustard cream sauce so I though I would give that a try.
I usually have a jar of roasted peppers on hand but after tearing apart the pantry I realized I was out so I had to make my own. I set the burner to a medium heat an placed my peppers on the burner until they were slightly black on all sides.
Once they were blackened I put them in a bowl and covered them in plastic wrap so they skin would sweat off. I let them sit for a while and then peeled the skin off and took out the stems and seeds and put them in the food processor. I added some Laughing Cow cheese (I love this stuff!!) and a little chicken broth and blended it up. When it was blended I added water, flour, eggs, parsley and salt and mixed it up.
While I was mixing the dough, I had sliced up some polish sausage and was frying that on the stove. I also had a pot of water coming to a boil so I could cook the spaetzel. This is about the extent of the multitasking I can handle at one time.
Once my water was boiling it was time to give the spaetzel a bath. I place about a cup of the dough into a large holed colander and used a spatula to push it through the holes and into the boiling water. This part was a bit labor intensive and in the future I think I will be purchasing the spaetzel maker we have at work to make my life a bit easier.
After they took a little bath and floated up to the top I let them drain and started the process all over again until all the dough had been turned into spaetzel and was cooked.
While that was draining I started on the sauce. I melted a little butter and added some shallots and cooked until they were soft and then deglazed the pan with a little white wine. Then I added some cream and horseradish mustard and cooked until it thickened a bit. Once it was thick I added a little shredded parmesean cheese and added the spaetzel and sausage to the pan. The sauce wasn't really enough to coat everything and got a little too think so I threw in some more cream and a little chicken stock to loosen it up a bit.
Overall this dinner was pretty successful and the spaetzel was very yummy. I would try a different sauce in the future but Jason liked it enough to try it again so it just goes to show that homemade beats store bought every time, well at least in this house it does.
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