Spaetzle: Part 1

SPAETZLE: small dumplings of a type made in southern Germany and Alsace, consisting of seasoned dough poached in boiling water.
ORIGIN from German dialect Spätzle, literally ‘little sparrows.’
In my last post I mentioned making speatzle. I also called it noodles, because that's what a cookbook had told me they were. When I made them though, they tasted like dumplings, so I like the definition I got from my dictionary (above) better. It just makes more sense. And now I feel like I can begin my journey into the realms of speatzle. You're welcome to join me!

Monday, January 7, 2013:
What you are about to see is the leftovers from my first meal of speatzle. I combined the cooked speatzle with pre-cooked ground beef and oven roasted carrots:

I found the recipe I used made a lot of these little dumplings. BUT I didn't follow the recipe exactly. The dough seemed to be too dry and I ended up adding a little too much water. I then added more flour to try and even it out. It worked I guess, I've never had these kind of noodles before, so I don't exactly know what the consistency of the dough is supposed to be, or what the end result is supposed to taste like.

Here is the recipe I started off with:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup milk
4 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup water
a pinch of salt

1. I combined all of the ingredients, beat well (everything stuck to my electric mixer), and got a pot of water boiling.

2. I had no columbine or speatzle strainer with 1/4 in.-ish holes, so I attempted to push the dough through a grater (backwards), but by this point I had added too much water and the dough was too sticky. I added the extra flour and ended up dropping the dough off of two spoons into the boiling water out of pure frustration! After a couple of minutes/when the pasta floated to the top (sometimes it needed help, because it had gotten stuck on the bottom...but if it wasn't ready it just sunk back down and floated up when it was ready), I transferred the speatzle to a bowl of cold (the book recommended ice cold) water. And then drained it and set it aside.

3. Once all of the speatzle was cooked I took a fry pan, put some oil in it, and re-heated the dumplings, meat and roasted carrots together, and added a few spices.

Voila!

Does anyone have any tips, tricks, or ideas? Any family or favourite recipes that they know and love? I figure practice makes perfect applies to speatzle just as much as it did with pizza, and feedback will be welcome :)

(p.s. recipe from Simple to Spectacular by: Jean-Georges Vongerichten & Mark Bittman)