Home Made Käsespätzle

My Landlady, Mrs Diebold is a true swabian lady. She cooks a typical german lunch everyday , i.e. Germans only eat one warm meal a day. It's quite a surprise for me who eat warm meal three times a day. So to introduce a real swabian Käsespätzle to me, she invited me for lunch one day. And I'm even allowed to take pictures of her Käsespätzle!

Käsespätzle is actually a German version of mac and cheese. I would even dare to say that it's more refined than your usual mac and cheese because, they used more than two types of cheese for taste and the noodle is made from scratch. Käse means cheese and Spätzle is a type of egg noodle, literally spätzle means little sparrow, I guess it's because of the irregular form of the noodles. The most important part of a Käsespätzle is the cheese, since the taste and the smell of a Käsespätzle depends solely on the cheese. So, strong smelling cheeses are recommended. For example, my landlady used a combination of three types of Cheeses : Bergkäse (a gruyere-like cheese), good quality Allgäuer Emmenthaler and old Gouda. The cheese should be grated and mixed evenly. For the Spätzle dough, it should be noted that the consistency should look like this

So let's start!

Fill a grater (Hobel) - a special gadget invented only to make spätzle - with some spätzle dough
then ... start to grate, grate and grate

once the spätzle boils and float to the water surface skimmed the spätzle and put aside in a pot spread a handful of cheese combination on the hot spätzle and cover to retain the heat repeat the process again and again until the pot are full At the same time caramelized onion should be prepared Once the onion is caramelized put a spoonful of butter into the onion spread the caramelised onion on the Käsespätzle. According to my landlady, a true Käsespätzle should have a lot of melting cheese "fiber", before it can be considered a well made Käsespätzle Käsespätzle should be eaten with some green salad Once I've eaten Mrs Diebold's Käsespätzle, I'm hooked. Her Spätzle is so well made, it's chewy and soft at the same time, the cheese combination fits the spätzle perfectly, it lend a salty and cheesy taste without making me feel bloated. and my favourite part is the sweetness of the caramelised onion. After I've eaten her home made Käsespätzle, I tried to order Käsespätzle at a German restaurant in Ulm, and it was such a dissapointment! It's too creamy and the onion are deep fried with batter. You really can't compare the quality of home-made food. After the dissapointment I swore off restaurant spätzle and always begged Mrs Diebold to share her Käsespätzle lunch, everytime she makes it.