Schnitzel with Noodles

I realize it's been quite a while since I've made a post. Here's a little snapshot of our cooking adventures from about a week and a half ago. We initially intended to participate in a German-themed event, complete with authentic German food. To make a long story short, we weren't exactly thrilled with the changes in the menu for this year so we opted to prepare our own German dinner. As you can see by the picture of what is simmering away on the stove, we prepared schnitzel, spaetzle, and red cabbage. When all was said and done, the red cabbage was really the only thing we prepared from scratch, but the dinner was still pretty good.

You might be asking, just what are schnitzel and spaetzle? Good question. Here's a little background before I go on to describe how we prepared them.

Schnitzel, or "slice," of meat originated in Austria. Wiener schnitzel actually has nothing to do with the hot dog chain. "Wien" is the city that we, in America, refer to as Vienna. Traditional Wiener schnitzel is made from veal pounded flat and then coated in flour, egg, and bread crumbs before being fried. We weren't able to acquire any veal at our local grocery store, but we did find some pork that had already been prepared as schnitzel. As you can see from the picture below, the pounding and breading had already been done.

The schnitzel is then deep fried in about a quarter inch of cooking oil. 

So then, what is spaetzle? Glad you asked. Spaetzle is actually a German egg noodle. It is typically served with meat and gravy and is typical of the cuisine of southern Germany and Austria. While a number of different recipes for spaetzle are available, we typically just buy dry spaetzle and then boil it on the stove as we would any other type of pasta. This time, we also just made our gravy from a mix. 

As I mentioned above, we did make the red cabbage from scratch. You can find the recipe on an earlier post. Ours is prepared in the Danish style without the heavier spices that are typically part of the German red cabbage.

Here is everything all served up and ready to be enjoyed. Guten Appetit!