STILL NEW YORK-HUNGRY

8. Nonna Stella's Spinatknödel (Hi-Carb)

These are the hefty vegetarian siblings of Semmelknödel (bread dumplings) and "25. Mushroom Dumplings with Leeks" .

I found the recipe in Everyday Cooking, the second cookbook by the creators of the worldwide popular German cooking app KitchenStories. (Sorry, it's only available in German. But if you're up to a challenge...)

Like Semmel- / Pilzknödel, you often get them served in the neighboring states of the Alps: Southern Germany, Austria, Switzerland and, yes, South Tirol (Alto Adige), which is the northernmost province of Italy, but where the official language is German (80%). No, you must not understand this. And, yes, it's too complicated to explain at this place – this is supposed to be a cookbook, not a history book.

But I can tell you – as the kid of a family that lived about 40 miles from the Alps and frequently vacationed there, too – that you have to earn these guys.

With hiking, hill climbing, abseiling & zip lining (yay!), or, in Winter: skiing (my parents), sledding (me), (snowshoe) hiking (we all), and all day long.

It figures. I mean: Before you can eat, you gotta be hungry. Right?

Right!

But I didn't only choose this recipe because it evoked surprisingly positive (yet not idolized!) memories of my parents and me as a family, but also because my Novel FMC, Laura Zimmermann grew up in the shadow of the Alps as well and experienced the weekends / vacations spent there as some of the most carefree and happiest times of her life... before it all imploded.

It evokes the same loving memories in MMC, Vince Romano, who's Nonna (grandmother) is from a little village between Bolzano and Merano in South Tirol and amply supplies her children and grandchildren – and the guests in the family's restaurant in Little Italy – with the yummy Schmankerl of (her) home.

We "three" can confirm that there's nothing like childhood soul food to lead us through and out of the dark when we slip back down the slippery slope into the Black Rabbit Hole of our traumatic past.

But enough of looming, and persisting, trauma now!

NOW we celebrate the happy memories and what's GOOD in life, despite the traumatic quicksand we still find ourselves in. And part of that are those.

I could interest you? Very well! Then off to the kitchen!




Serves: 12 Recipe says 8, but I'm not Mrs. Paul Bunyan, so normal-sized ones for the rest of us.

Prep Time: about 1.5 hrs incl. resting / cooking times

Degree of Difficulty: Easy




WE NEED

1 large onion Used a red one – mixes nicely with the spinach.
2 garlic cloves Probably 3 or 4.
120 gr / 4.3 oz. butter
400 gr / 0.9 lb. fresh spinach
250 ml / 1.1 US cup milk Full fat for taste.
2 Eggs
3/4 tsp grounded nutmeg Best would be fresh nutmeg, but... I know

500 gr / 1.1 lb. Knödelbrot This is lastly stale (white) bread (& rolls) from the day(s) before from a bakery. You can use toast, too. Just let it dry in the open air before using it. But real bread is always better.

70 gr / 2.5 oz. Parmegiano Reggiano And only that as it's of protected origin, means: you get real Parmesan – as opposed to the often inferior grate you get in the supermarkets, more to serve.




WE DO

1. Grate the Parmegiano and finely chop onion + garlic.



2. Melt 70 gr / 2.5 oz. butter in a large pot and sauté the onion until glassy. Then add the garlic, frying it for another minute. Pour the mix into a (small) bowl, and wipe the pot.



3. Heat about 2 in water in the same pot and blanch the spinach for about 1 minute. You'll think don't have a pot large enough for the amount – I had to use my Kompanietopf (the largest one I own

Remove the spinach with a skimmer, let it cool and squeeze the water out with your hands. Here, it
"reduced" to a ball not larger than one of the dumplings – but after I picked it apart, it was "back"! Also, I had to quench it with cold water as otherwise I'd have scalded my hands



4. In a high vessel, mix spinach, milk & eggs, and season with salt, pepper + nutmeg. Put the Knödelbrot into a large bowl and pour over the spinach mix. Mix well and let it rest for 10 minutes covered, e.g. with a kitchen towel.



5. Add parmesan + onion mix and knead – yes, with your hands! – until you have the desired texture, which should be firm yet soft & sticky. Yes, that is possible. Therefore hand-mashing. You feel it



If necessary, add some lukewarm milk or breadcrumbs. Let the mix rest another 10 minutes, then shape 8 - 12 same-sized dumplings.



6. In a food steamer, bring water to the boil and steam the dumplings for about 15 minutes. I gave my parents' steamer away as I never seemed to cook anything requiring it and it hogged space. You can also use a sieve, which fits into the pot and closes it as tight as possible. (You don't wanna burn extra energy by the steam leaving the pot through too large gaps, now that's energy's counterbalanced in gold bricks, right?)




7. Melt the remaining butter in a pan, sprinkle it onto the dumplings (or pour it into a soup plate, put them on top and then) grate some parmesan on top, season with black pepper and then



Guten Hunger!