Spätzle? Oui, oui… and I love them.

      Alright, not very French, but who’s French here? Pyrenean Mountain Girl comes first! Well that accounts for the lamb. I acquired the Spätzle via more Luxembourgian and Germanic influences. They are simple, delicious, nutritious & cheap to make.

      This Recipe made me two simple meals:

1. A full Spätzle meal: Spätzle with sautéed bacon with Parmensan
2. Spätzle as a side: Spätzle with pan fried lamb chop cut in from my local Turkish butcher.

So First things first, The Spätzle batter:
The Spätzle batter

      This is easy, Just take 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup white unbleached flour. (You can use just white flour, but the whole wheat adds some texture that I like, as well as makes them healthier). Add an egg, and 1/4 of a cup of water. Add some Salt/Pepper/Nutmeg/Parsley to taste.
This is what the batter should look like
      Make sure the dough is soupy like a thick pancake batter, rather than a doughy pasta batter. While you’re making your dough, throw a pot of water on your stove and get it boiling the way you would cook pasta.

      Once the water is boiling, dump small amounts of dough into the boiling water with a spoon.

      You’ll know that the spätzle are done when they float to the top. The next step is to sauté some bacon and onions in a pan.

      Once the Onions and Bacon are nice and gold, like above, return the drained spätzle to the pan. Mix them in and add a little water. The water loosens up all stuck juices at the bottom of the pan, returning taste that would otherwise be lost to the pan.

      Serve with fresh Parmesan cheese grated generously, and some fresh ground pepper.

      The Best was 2 days later- I pan-fried some lamb chops in my cast-iron pan, and afterwards, I reheated the left-over Spätzle in the same pan. It was even better than the first time around. Sometimes leftovers can be even better than the first time.

      I complemented it with my favorite –and famous– simple green salad. I recently featured it in the Voilà Nicole television pilot. Check it out here: