Spätzle - the German Pasta of choice

My family's connection to Germany is four generations ago, but family heritage is strong. My dad's family identifies totally with being Germans, and our family gatherings always featured German foods like Grama's Potato Dumplings. While not a single family member can speak fluent German today that doesn't stop the these Wisconsin-Germans from appreciating their heritage.
Now blend that with Todd's Wisconsin family which are pretty much German, except for some Hungarian escapades, and we now have kids that are 3/4 German, give or take some Swede, French and English, etc... And as my Mom, is fond of saying when talking about her Irish ancestors, "Quality over Quantity..."

Ah, the great American melting pot....

Anyway, I'm fascinated with how food is so tied to our culture, our family, our communities and in some cases our own identities.
Tonight, we decided to have some Hungarian smoked sausages that we just happened to have from Shwai's Meat Market over by Milwaukee (Check out the website, it's soo cute!) and Spätzle, the german pasta.

As Todd decided to make it fresh, who was I to stop him? Pictured at the top of this story is our Spätzle maker that we also just happen to have in our pantry. I told you we are Germans....

The Spätzle dough is very simple. Two eggs, one cup of flour, a pinch of salt and mix. It should have a wet consistency so it "falls" through the Spatzle maker easily. Pictured above is Todd's version, a bit soupier than I prefer but let's see what happens.

It falls through the metal slots quite quickly but as the boiling water (with chicken broth) takes the little pasta clumps, they keep their form. Because this is fresh pasta, it only takes minutes to cook.
After draining the Spätzle, we like to fry it a bit to "stiffen" it up. From this you can add all kinds of sauces but we went straight out of the pan for dinner tonight.The sausage was delectable and as Tom Schwai says on his website, the meat is very low fat, ummm, okay, I'll buy that. The Spätzle was delish and the green beans tasty.

Serh Gut!