Simple foods often are best. A great example is spaetzle (literally, “tiny sparrows”). Ubiquitous throughout Eastern Europe, these egg dumplings are essentially flour, eggs, salt and water or milk. Some recipes add a little nutmeg, a little lard, some chicken broth, but the whole taste purpose of spaetzle remains unchanged. It is to be a bland transport for the sauce of the meat that shares its plate.
Spaetzle dough is chopped, pressed through a large-holed sieve or put through a spaetzle machine, which can be either a hand-crank contraption or a combination dough feeder and grater. The doughlets are dropped into boiling water or, less usually, a saute pan where they are cooked in butter or bacon drippings.
Spaetzle are sometimes dressed up with chopped parsley or toasted bread crumbs.
Superior spaetzle should have whatever the Germanic languages call “al dente,” never undercooked and hard, never mushy or paste-like.
Peter Tschurtz, owner of Fritzel’s Country Inn, 377 Rand Rd., Lake Zurich, says the restaurant serves “about a million pounds of spaetzle a year. We’ve even sent it frozen to California.” Other good spaetzles are at the Hungarian restaurant Paprikash, 5210 W. Diversey Ave., where it wears chopped parsley; and — surprise — there’s hard-hitting spaetzle at Ditka’s, 100 E. Chestnut St., where the former Bears coach offers it bathed in the garlicy, fatty juices that ooze from his signature “Da Pork Chop.”