Essen war sehr lecker!!

Due to Oktoberfest and in honor of Eric's heritage, I decided that once a week for the rest of September I'm gonna make something German.  This began last night!  Other than grilling some bratwursts and German coleslaw, I haven't really tackled German cuisine so I was a little nervous.  I looked up tons of recipes and finally decided on a couple for the month.  I also asked Eric for his opinion and took that into consideration.  After an hour or so of searching, I decided on making Beef Rouladen, Spaetzle, and Gurkensalat.  Here is how my journey with German went!

To start, I made the Gurkensalat.  This had to chill in the fridge so I made it a couple of hours before hand.  This is basically cucumber and onion salad in a sour cream/vinegar dressing.  The ingredients for this dish were:

Cucumbers

Onion

Sour Cream

Vinegar

Sugar

Salt

Dill

To start, I sliced the cucumbers and onion thinly.  Then put them in a bowl and tossed them with a little salt.  They sat for about 30 minutes while I whipped together the dressing.  The dressing was just sour cream, vinegar, dill, and sugar put into a bowl and whisked together.  

 After the 30 minutes, I folded the cucumbers in with the dressing and threw it all in the fridge until it was time to eat!

The next thing I worked on was the Beef Rouladen.  The ingredients for this were:

beef

dijon mustard

salt

pepper

onion

pickles

bacon

beef broth

sour cream

bay leaf

peppercorn

cornstarch

To start, I chopped the pickles and sliced the onion.  I salt and peppered both sides of the beef and coated both sides in dijon mustard.  Then placed 1 piece of bacon on each piece of beef and covered them with onions and pickles, dividing it among the 4.  The beef was then rolled up like a jelly roll and secured with toothpicks.  Some of the stuff fell out but that's ok, there was still plenty left still inside. 

So then, I heated some oil in a pan and once it was hot, put the rouladen in the pan to brown on all sides.  I probably left them in for about 2 minutes or so per side.  Once they were brown, I added beef broth, peppercorns, and a bay leaf.  This came to a simmer and was covered and left to cook for about 1.5 hours.  

While this was cooking, I began making the spaetzle.  The ingredients were:

all purpose flour

nutmeg

salt

pepper

sugar

eggs

milk

So I mixed all the dry in one bowl, and then all the wet in another.  Then, making a well in the dry, I added the wet. Then mixed it together and let it sit for about 15 minutes.  

There aren't a whole lot of pictures of this process b/c I had to use both hands and quickly.  Once the dough rested, I had a pot of simmering water and put a colander above it.  Then, using a spatula, I squeezed the dough through the holes so it fell into the liquid.

Ideally, the dough would have fallen in and the product after boiling would look like this:

However, I had some serious issues.  The dough started cooking to the bottom of the colander.  Eric thought he could take over and get some out but then it just got worse so we looked for other things with holes to push the dough through.  In the end, Eric came up with a martini shaker lid...You can only imagine how well that one worked too.  Our dough, that was supposed to make enough for 6 servings made maybe...o I'd say 1/2 serving.  It was a messy disaster! We did take the small amount we had though, and cooked in a pan with some butter.

Luckily, we still had noodles leftover from the night before so we just threw those in with the spaetzle and heated it up.

When the rouladen was done, I removed it from the pot and created the sauce.  To the sauce, I added a cornstarch slurry and the sour cream.  I didn't need to add salt or pepper b/c it was already pretty tasty.  Once the sour cream was melted in with the sauce, I added the rouladen back to the pot and let it cook for a couple of minutes per side.

Once we gave up on the spaetzle, the rouladen was done and we were ready to eat.  Eric had already eaten over half the gurkensalat at this point so we didn't eat it with our meal.

Unlike the spaetzle, the Rouladen was DELICIOUS!! It was so good Eric went back for another roll, which we had to split.  The sauce was great on the noodles and the beef.  The pickles gave a great hint of tartness.  I thought the beef was going to be a little tough and dry but it cut up beautifully.  Even though the spaetzle was a disaster, I will still say that my first attempt at German cooking was a success just b/c the rouladen and the sauce turned out so well.