Austrian Meal

Remember the song 'Raindrops on roses ...' from the Sound of Music? - 'cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudel, doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles' it went . I took inspiration from the song and prepared a meal of noodles (and a few other dumplings) with apple strudel. I am presenting a vegetarian Austrian noodles and dumpling meal today.

It was hard trying to put together a meal from a country where the main dishes are usually not vegetarian and the non-vegetarian component is usually the entire dish. That leaves little room to convert the recipe to a vegetarian one. Noodles and dumpling are the exceptions and so I decided to make a meal with them. Kärntner Kasnudeln or noodles from the province of Carinthia are one of our favorite cheese noodles. I have made them a few times before. Though each noodle has to be shaped individually they are easy to put together and taste great. This was the dish around which I built the menu.

In addition to these noodles I made spinach, bread and potato dumplings. The spinach and the bread dumplings are a great way to use up day old bread rolls. I know this sounds backward but for this meal I made a couple extra bread rolls the previous day so I would have leftovers. I served Gruyere white sauce over the dumplings. I made Apfelstrudel for dessert using a wonderful homemade flaky pastry.

I have always wanted to make Apfelstrudel but did not care for puff pastry. This recipe uses a homemade pastry that is really easy to make. The rolled out pastry sheet is then filled with apples, breadcrumbs, raisins and cinnamon. The kitchen smelt great for hours after I baked it.

Fresh cheese is needed to make Kärntner Kasnudeln and I use quark. Whole Foods used to keep this cheese in stock. But apparently they have very few takers for this cheese in summer and stopped stocking it. They offered to order it for me. I had to wait two weeks until it arrived but it was worth the wait.

My original plan was to make Kasespatzel or Austrian macaroni and cheese along with all the other noodles and dumplings. The day I made this meal, I had planned to cook Kasespatzel after I was done with everything else. But once I looked at the quantity of the food already cooked I decided to drop it. The spinach, bread and potato dumplings are usually eaten fresh. However, I made the bread and potato dumplings a day ahead. My plan was to make this meal for dinner. But it took too long and the light was fading so I decided to stop, store what was already prepared and start off again the next day. In hind sight I think that was a wise decision. Because of texture issues we enjoyed the not-so-moist dumplings more than we would have enjoyed the just-out-of-the-water-bath ones. Once the meal was served everyone enjoyed it and that was the most important part.

As they in Austria, Guten Appetit!

Here are the recipes for the dishes on the menu

• Kärntner Kasnudeln 
• Spinatknödel (Spinach Dumpling) 
• Semmelknödel (Bread Dumpling) 
• Erdäpfelknödel (Potato Dumpling) 
• Gruyere White Sauce 

And for dessert

• Apfelstrudel (Apple Strudel)