Swiss Apple Pasta

Keywords:	Dessert ¦ Swiss cuisine ¦ Homemade Pasta ¦ Traditional ¦ Dessert Pasta ¦ Apple
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You'll find spàtzli [shpatetslee] all over German-speaking Europe, but apple spätzli for dessert is a rather unique contribution from the Swiss canton of Thurgau, right on the German border just across from where they built the Zeppelin. Apple are such a religion that the canton is sometimes called 'Mostindien' - Ciderland.

Apfelspötzli (also spätzle)
300gr flour
pinch of salt
2 tbsp sugar
pinch of cinammon
3 eggs
1 apple
1 glass apple juice
Breadcrumbs
50gr butter
More sugar and cinammon

Sift the flour and make a well. Add the eggs. Here I used a large Moroccan gsâ bowl in cherry wood. Please excuse the funny colors, I made this and the following three pictures with a tilt-shift lens and 3 shots HDR, a bit of fancy digital trickery with modest results.

Mix in the apple juice, sugar, salt and cinammon. Break the yolks and mix the liquid.

Combine everything with a wooden spoon. You can also do this in a mixer.

Add enough flour or enough liquid to obtain a smooth dough liquid enough to go through pea-sized holes (see below). You can always add a little liquid later if too hard.

We will now mix an apple with the spätzli dough.

Peel the apple and grate it finely ...

... be quick and don't let it turn brown.

As soon as you have finished grating the apple, add it to the spätzli ...

... and mix it in. Don't let the apple turn brown.

Plan your workspace with a pot of salted boiling water in the center, a dish inside another filled with hot water to keep the spatzle hot and the spätzli dough on the side. Add a plate to put your tools down, a strainer and kitchen gloves. Ready to go!

As a Swiss lover of world cuisine, I go to great lengths to acquire fancy pots, pans and all sorts of ethnic cookware. I'm glad to say that at last there was one cooking implement I could buy locally. This stainless steel spaetzle scraper is a metal board with holes with a circular shape to fit nicely on a pot of boiling water.

When the water is boiling, take a ladleful of dough and drop it on the spätzli scraper.

Use a plastic scraper to force it through the holes.

Continue until all the dough has gone through. Here is what it looks like from below.

Boil until the spätzli are hard. Make several batches and remove cooked spätzli to the hot bowl on the side. Add some butter and move them a little to prevent sticking.

Remove with a sieve.

This dish is flavored with breadcrumbs. If you don't have any breadcrumbs on hand or just don't like industrial breadcrumbs, do as follows. Place thin bread slices in an oven heated to 60-80C° and let them dry for 30 minutes or as long as it takes for them to be totally dry and crumbly.

Place the dried bread slices in a mixer.

Melt the butter in a large pan with a thick bottom.

Use a large spoon to delicately place the boiled spätzli into the frying pan and butter.

Move the spätzli around so that they are evenly coated with butter and gradually add the rest.

Swiss and German cooks rarely sauté spätzli but Alsatian chefs do. The sautéeing browns them and adds some crispiness and taste. I warmly recommend this although in Thurgau I don't think anybody does it. Move constantly to prevent any sticking.

When your spätzli start turning nicely brown on the ridges, add the breadcrumbs...

... and mix thoroughly.

Sprinkle with granulated sugar and cinnamon, toss and call your guests to the table.

Serve warm...

... with vanilla ice cream for instance. Really delicious!

Since I published this article many people have asked me about my spaetzle scraper. I went back to the shop but they no longer stock it, and there is no marks of any kind on the utensil. Finally I found the exact same spaetzle scraper on Amazon.com for only $18!