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This is the third installment of my (Alicia) culinary adventure through Germany. There will be one more German food post after this and then we will be moving on to Ecuador!
This has been such a fun little adventure and has made my husband and I excited to go to Europe one day and eat the 100% authentic versions of the meals we've had. I'm a little sad the month is ending but excited for our next "trip" to South America! But I still have 2 more German dishes to share with you and this week's dish is Käsespätzle and I got the recipe from Kimberly at The Daring Gourmet again. Käsespätzle
Described as German mac and cheese, don't be fooled into thinking it's the same just with spätzle instead of macaroni. The German egg noodles, spätzle, are layered with Jarlsberg cheese (or another good Swiss cheese), and caramelized onions and then baked. It is so much more delicious than mac & cheese.
The Jarlsburg Swiss pairs so well with the caramelized onion to give you this great depth of flavor. And the noodles themselves are quite delicious, though I'm having a harder time explaining the flavor of them.
My tips for making käsespätzle:
I didn't make a side dish with our käsespätzle because I felt it didn't need one, I did feel like we did need a large helping of green salad on the side though. You know, for digestion.
Please make this! It's the dish you've been missing your whole life. It's so good and actually very easy to make. There's really no excuse ;)
Have you tried any of the other dishes I've highlighted? What are your favorites? Let us know in the comments below!
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Hello our beloved readers! It's Alicia here with another post from my month of German food. If you missed the previous post, basically every month I am picking a different country and making one authentic (as possible) meal a week. This helps me to spice up our meal plan, and have fun cooking again.
Last week I made bratwurst with himmel und erde (heaven and earth). And it was so good! This week I decided on a German classic, Schnitzel! On the side we made a Swabian Potato Salad. I got both of these recipes from The Daring Gourmet. Kimberly is German so I thought I couldn't get more authentic than that! Traditional German Schnitzel
Schnitzel is essentially a very thin, breaded porkchop. It's crispy on the outside and nice and tender on the inside. Usually you have to pound your boneless pork chops until they are about a 1/4 inch think, but my local grocery store sells pork chops that thin already. Perhaps I should have pounded my chops out to be more authentic or traditional. But I also have two very needy children at home so I thought this time saver was ok. I also bought them bone in because it was $3 cheaper per pound for the same thickness and cut of meat but with a bone. I was able to easily cut the bone off and have my boneless chops.
I really stupidly forgot to salt my pork before I breaded it. I'll blame mom brain for that one. But it wasn't a huge problem I just salted the whole thing after it was done frying. But next time I will surely salt my meat before putting the toppings on. These cook up nice and fast so they kind of perfect for those days when you don't have a lot of time. And they were so good! I can only imagine how good they would be if I didn't forget to salt them. I mean look at that beautiful golden color. Just lovely. We squeezed some lemon juice on ours and it was just perfect. Swabian Potato Salad
Swabia is a region in the southwest of Germany, and that is wherethis recipe comes from.
When I started this culinary adventure, I asked my friends and family what their favorite German dishes are. One answer I got was German Potato Salad. I am not sure if this is the same salad they were talking about, But if it wasn't, it should be. This is honestly one of the best potato salads I've ever tasted. Ok, it's the best. Seriously, the flavors were just so amazing! And confession, I didn't read this recipe until 20 minutes until before we were going to eat it. I had forgotten about a side dish until I started making the schnitzel. I had to call my husband and ask him to bring me key ingredients, like the potatoes. So, I didn't do my due diligence on this recipe either, and it was still one of the best things ever. I took some shortcuts by slicing up the potato before I boiled it, and obviously I didn't let it sit for the hours it needed. But when I took the leftovers out of the fridge the next day to have for lunch. WHOO! It was so good! So I'm excited for the next time we make this and I do it correctly. This salad deserves it. So be warned that this is not something you just whip together (though it will still be good), the potatoes do need to marinate for an hour or so. It's worth it though, believe me. The leftovers are divine.
Have I convinced you to go to The Daring Gourmet and try these recipes out? Please do. They are so good! And if you do please come tell us what you thought! Or have you decided to try this experiment in your own menu plans? How is it going for you?
Next week I am making Käsepätzle, so be sure to come back and check it out!
Did you know that the first Thursday in November is Men Make Dinner Day? Well, it is, and today would be that day!
So, I want to publicly express my gratitude for my amazing husband who makes me food on the regular. Since becoming pregnant I really have not been doing my fair share of the work around the house. I've gotten better, but especially in the beginning of my pregnancy, if PH didn't make dinner, nobody made dinner. If PH didn't do the dishes, nobody did the dishes, if PH didn't do the laundry, take out the trash, pick up clutter, vacuum, sweep, dust, mop, mow the lawn, clean the pool, do any other household chore, it did not get done. I am a firm believer that whatever the size of your household everyone needs to share the load. I just stopped doing my part and my husband was doing the work for two. He has never once complained about my lack of helping. He has never once made any kind of comment about being the only one getting anything done around the house. When we painted the nursery he had to get up into the hard to reach places and he ended up hurting himself, and still no complaining on his part. He is a real trooper and I love him so much. He is also a great cook! So, here is a list of some of the things he has made for me.
Remember my Halloween party appetizers? PH made the chicken wings! I'm thinking it's time to start cooking up some tasty side dishes for Thanksgiving and I am certain that he has some great ideas up his creative sleeve!
Then there was the time that PH went all out and sort of became a guest blogger (although I wrote the post, but he made the whole meal and made the table look awesome for my picture taking). He made this awesome grilled rasperry chipotle pork! I think some people stop grilling in the fall winter because it's so cold, but if you live in the heat of Arizona like we do, the fall is an awesome time to grill! You don't have to worry about dying of heat exhaustion while grilling! My birthday party was this past Sunday and PH made one of my favorite dishes. Stuffed shells! According to my sister in law Jessica and her mother Stuffed Shells are not a real Italian dish. I'll have to believe them since they are Italian, but I still think it's delicious! PH found out that growing up my mom would make stuff shells for me on my birthday as my birthday dinner and he had never had them. So he tried his hand at them and he loves them too! (What is there not to love about pasta, tomato sauce, and cheese?) Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of them because we ate them too quickly. Family came over and helped us out so they were gone really fast! I promise you though, if you want an easy tasty, Americanized Italian meal, stuffed shells is the way to go!
Hi there everyone! It's Lindsey and I'm doing my first post for a new series. I have a goal this year of eating healthier, losing all the weight I've gained since PH and I started dating, and being better about meal planning and prepping.
I know these goals are similar to the goals many people set for themselves with the new year, so I thought, "hey, I should share a healthy recipe every week!" This is going to be great for all of us! It'll keep me on track with my goals since all of you wonderful readers and followers will be expecting a recipe each week, and you'll get to profit from it since I'll try new recipes and only share the ones I like! I decided to call it Renny's Recipes. Renny is a nickname I was given by some friends in college, and it makes for a nice title don't you think? This week I'll be sharing with you how to make some amazing and delicious Zucchini Lasagna!
Not only does this recipe up the vegetable factor, but it lowers calories and carbohydrates since you use zucchini in the place of lasagna noodles. It's also great for people with gluten issues. There is no pasta here, and it tastes great!
I originally found this recipe on a website called Skinny Taste, which you can find here. I've made a few tweaks to it which I will share with you here in Photo form. First and foremost I want to talk about my mandolin. Alicia got to be the cheater on our Friday favs and share two, so I didn't get to talk to you about my mandolin. I love my spiralizer for making long thin zoodles that are more like spaghetti noodles, but for this recipe, and many other recipes, the mandolin is where it's at. It'll slice your vegetables lengthwise and make them nice and even, which is especially handy when you're using them in a lasagna dish like this one. I actually have two mandolins, because PH had one before we got married, and I bought one before we got married too, specifically to make this recipe. You can find mandolins similar to mine here (this one has a bowl to catch the slices of veggies in), and here. I promise you, a mandolin slicer makes all the difference in the world! The first time I made this recipe, PH was very skeptical. I made it for a family with a mother undergoing chemotherapy treatments and a little girl that was getting tested for Celiac's disease. This was the first dish that came to mind, and of course, if I was making it for them, I was just going to make enough for the two of us as well! I can tell you, it was a huge hit, and when I told him I was making it this week, PH was pretty happy about it.
I adjusted the measurements in this recipe for what I used to feed PH and I. Don't worry, we still had PLENTY of leftovers. I've linked to the original. She makes hers in a 9x13 pan if you'd like a larger lasagna.
This lasagna is delicious and you'll love it! I served it with fruit since I'm trying so hard to have good balance in our meals. You could do a nice side salad, or some garlic bread! I really never understood a side of bread with pasta, but garlic bread is delicious so I never complained. Now you can have some and not feel guilty about it! Just heat some french bread in a 450 degree F oven with some butter and garlic spread over it. When it gets a little toasty it's done! Let me know what you serve as a side to your lasagna, and if you get a mandolin, give me a review on the difference it makes in your meals! |
Creators of Hot Cocoa Bombs! (copyrighted)
Author
Helen Reynolds: Mother of six children , grandmother to eleven! I love to cook, craft and create things and I especially love doing that with my family, So, when my lawyer daughter, Lindsey, my artist daughter, Madalynn, and I came up with the idea of Hot Cocoa Bombs, this blog was born. Then, one more daughter, with her technical and science skills, plus creativity has joined in to round us out! Read more about us here! Archives
June 2024
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