Spaetzle

I had the strongest craving for dough today.... sent husband to pick up Chinese dumplings on the way home and I started making spaetzle. My original plan was to follow the recipe from the Smitten Kitchen; however, I did not have 7 eggs. I consulted three sources: the Smitten Kitchen, the Cooks Illustrated and the City Tavern Cookbook. I decided to try my most trusted Cooks Illustrated recipe for spaetzle, followed by the chilling step and saute instruction from the Smitten Kitchen after seeing that the City Tavern Cookbook took similar steps too.

Note: The Cooks Illustrated recipe said to put boiled spaetzle into a warmed and butter bowl whereas the other two sources instructed to put cooked spaetzle in an ice bath and tossed with oil.

Here's what I did:

1) Mixed the ingredients for the batter and let it sit for 10 minutes
2) Prepared an ice bath and a bowl with a small amount of olive oil
3) Scraped a small amount of the batter through a colander using a hard spatula into a boiling pot of water (lightly salted)
4) Took out the floating spaetzle and dunked into an ice bath, followed by a light toss in the oiled bowl
5) Melted a small amount of butter in a pan and saute the spaetzle until lightly golden. Sprinkled with chopped parsley

The process of scraping the batter through a colander was very labor intensive. I was not sure if everything was done right, but the consistency of the batter was very stretchy. It was hard enough moving the batter from one bowl to another, let alone pushing it through little holes to form little long strings of noodles. Fortunately, the spaetzle turned out great. I loved the nutmeg flavor in the spaetzle and the texture was awesome. The husband loved it.

So, I've already order me a spaetzle maker and will definitely make spaetzle again. It would be so cool if I could make spaetzle the good old fashion way, but I think I will spend my time looking for good sauces to go with the spaetzle.