Hans-Walter Rix (Director of the MPIA) made this German classic for me, in preparation for an attempt on Käsespätzle I plan to make later this week.
Get some water boiling on the stove and salt it. Mix 200 g flour (about 1.5 cups) and plenty of salt with 2 eggs until smooth. Add water (the word is that soda water works better than flat water, but we did not perform any comparison) a bit at a time and stir until you get a dough that is slightly foamy and flows, but which is not fully liquid.
Pour the dough onto a small cutting board and fling small bits of it into the boiling water with a flexible knife. Boil for a few minutes until the noodles are solid. Drain and then either serve with butter, or else sauté with butter and serve with salt, pepper, and cheese.
If you make the dough too liquid, the noodles become too small and water-logged. Interestingly, the liquid can be replaced with broth or puréed spinach to vary the taste. Top Spätzle makers have a large ricer that looks like an enormous garlic press to make consistent noodles from the dough. I think PMC may have one of these?
I loved spätzle for the first time in 1998 in Munich and when it was time to leave, my host made me a present of a large garlic-press-like spätzle maker. I'm keen to see how it performs on batter/dough of the correct consistency. Is that measured in Rix, the ideal thickness being 1 Rix?
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