germany

Even as the crocus flowers begin to bloom through the receding snow elsewhere in the world, it’s still winter in the Alps… Fresh snow and empty slopes.

After a couple of fun, exciting and adventurous hours on our skis – riding the mountains on a cold day, we all can’t wait to finally take a break in a wooden, warm, and cozy alpine hut. As soon as we sit down, we loosen our stiff, frozen boots, put our wet gloves on the wood fired oven next to us and exhale. It’s time to reward ourselves.

In the German-Austrian Alps, we have a popular nourishing and highly delicious meal to fuel our bodies with a lot of energy, but also to warm our hearts. It is called ‘Kässpatzen.’

Because of its roots in the region of ‘Allgäu’ (Allgaeu), famous for old castles, colorful lakes, and high mountains, it is very famously known as ‘Allgäuer Kässpatzen.’

‘Käs’ or ‘Käse’ means ‘cheese,’ • ‘Spatzen’ or ‘Spätzle’ are a special kind of short, self made egg noodles.

The story goes that a few hundred years ago, the alpine region was very poor, and most people were farmers who lived and worked very hard on their farms in the mountains. The days started early and they didn’t have many options of food or ingredients to choose from for lunch. But what they did have enough of every day, was flour and eggs from their chickens. If you add water and salt to it, stir and beat the dough by hand, you already have the base to make ‘Spaetzle.’ It will be enough, when you see bubbles in the dough.

Ingredients • spätzle

500 g of flour

5 beaten eggs (always 1 egg per 100g flour)

1 tsp salt

200 ml +/- water (until you reach a creamy texture)

Ingredients • kä s

400 g Mountain cheese (alternative Emmental cheese)

4 onions

3 Tbsp butter

1 tsp sugar LINK TO EASY

Check out this quintessential Baltic, like the Mountain Chee se for this recipe, crumbly unprocessed and delicious cheese, and how to bring more cheese intelligence your own to the table, HERE.