Cheese and shallot Spätzle bake

I have already shared one of my Spätzle recipes here, and here comes another one. To the first recipe I added some bell peppers, but today I'm just making my basic shallot Spätzle bake. Maybe I'll have to explain again what Spätzle is to those who aren't familiar with it. Spätzle is a German dish, Swabian egg noodles or small dumplings, mostly eaten as a side. I however feel that Spätzle can make wonderful stand-alone dishes and therefore use it as the main star of these recipes. It's great weekend food as well.

Spätzle dough:

400g wheat flour

4 eggs

1tsp salt

250ml water

Bake ingredients:

4 shallots

4 garlic cloves

1tbsp olive oil

150g emmental cheese

First caramelise the shallots in olive oil, and also fry the garlic.

Make the Spätzle dough by whisking the dough ingredients into an even batter. It should be fairly moist, yet elastic. Bring a large saucepan of water to the boil and press the Spätzle dough through the largest setting of a potato ricer straight into the heavily boiling water. Do this in small batches, but make sure that the water is always boiling, otherwise it could lead into dissolving of the dough structure into the water. After a couple of minutes the Spätzle start floating on the surface, and then they can be taken out.

Add the cooked Spätzle to the shallot and garlic pan and mix. Put the mixture into an oven dish, you can make one large dish or several smaller ones. Grate the cheese and place it on the top of the bakes.

Bake at 200C for about 20 minutes until the cheese topping is golden brown.

Enjoy with a lovely Riesling and a fresh side salad!

Your VegHog