German – Stephfood CLONE

I remember waking up while it was still dark out, and being bundled up in the back of a van to go to “the market”.

My Opi (a colloquialism based on the German word for Grandpa, Opa) and Mr. Little would be in the front, sometimes talking but most often quiet. I would have a goodie bag in my clutches, full of treats (ahem – SUGAR) to keep me alive for the trip.

We were on our way to the Kitchener Farmers’ Market.

Thinking back on it now, I have no idea why a market like that would have appealed to me. Moreso, I have no idea why Opi would have wanted to bring a hyperactive little girl to a farmers’ market in a city a couple of hours away. It turned out to be one of my favourite things, and is still one of my fondest childhood memories.

If there is one thing that I have inherited from my Opi, it is a love of cured meats and strong cheeses. For years, I ate vegetarian, and when I first chose to eat cured meats again (on a trip to Germany, no less), I was reminded of him. That’s another story entirely.

Kitchener Market Salami: before and after

The market seemed like a different world to me, when compared to the shiny grocery stores we usually got our food from. I hated going to grocery stores. I loved going to the market. There were so many bizarre things to hold my attention – pigs’ heads, doll clothes, cheese, pickles, preserves and hand-crafted knickknacks. I’m sure there were also vegetables, but that wasn’t on my radar at the time. At one point, we walked through a door and found ourselves on a walkway above the livestock auction. This was not at all like anything I had seen at home.

I would usually sleep on the way home, exhausted from the day’s adventure.

Once home, we would dig in to some of the day’s haul. There would be delicately sliced cured meats, hearty sausages, pickled fish and stinky cheeses. It didn’t matter to me that I would come home smelling like dirty socks (see Limburger), but my Mom certainly wasn’t impressed.

It was something special that I shared with my Opi, a food ritual that brought us together.

Kitchener Market: Saturday Stalls

Now, visiting markets is something I love to do with J. We get overwhelmed by the crowds, the strange organization of stalls, the vast quantities of produce, but there is always something to catch our attention. Each market is different, with different products and a different culture. This is my first time back to the Kitchener market, and my first time there without Opi.

To be continued…

(Note: the first photo is actually taken at St. Jacob’s Farmers’ Market… my choice of photo will make sense in the next post.)

I carefully reviewed the instructions…

“…stir until fairly smooth – consistency similar to puppy poop…”

Puppy poop? Sadly, I tried to envision what that could mean, having never closely examined it before. I asked J if puppy poop was like how people refer to baby poop.

This was going to be an interesting recipe.

I grew up eating spätzle, prepared by my Oma and Opa and by my dad. I never really thought about it, I knew it was a German dish and just accepted that it was what it was. It wasn’t until I started thinking about recipes that I thought to look up spätzle, and I found that there are many regional variations on the dish. The way my family makes it seems to be the less popular version, but it always reminds me of my childhood.

Every time I’ve gotten spätzle at a restaurant, it looked very different to the version I was used to. It was more of a squiggly chubby noodle shape, instead of the near-dumpling shape I always enjoyed. This page on the German Food Guide offers some insight to the dish, some of the different ways people shape it, some different recipes, and other neat facts about how it’s made. There’s even a way to make it with beer! (I might need to try that next)

We usually had it topped with a simple butter and breadcrumb sauce, but my dad would sometimes experiment with other kinds of sauces or other ingredients in the batter. I vaguely remember having carrot spätzle at least once…

Back to the puppy poop (just when you got it out of your head)… I wanted to post a family recipe, rather than finding inspiration on other sites or in cookbooks. I emailed my dad for the recipe, knowing that he didn’t have it written down. He wrote it the way he thinks, and as I read it I could picture him mixing together the ingredients the way he’s done since I was a kid. And I laughed out loud at the comparison of the batter consistency to puppy poop.

It was perfect.

Spätzle, inside — This style of Spätzle can be pretty dense inside, almost like a dumpling.

Recipe after the jump!

I may have ruined the effect by putting some structure to it, but I thought it might be easier to follow with some measurements and instructions.

Continue reading Family Spätzle

Tag: German

Kitchener and St. Jacob’s Markets – Part 1: A blast from my past

Family Spätzle