Kärntner Kasnudeln (take 2)

My German class went to a Lindt chocolate factory yesterday. We got to the train station and left at 10:05. The trip was about an hour, and though we didn't go over the Semmering Pass as we expected it was still a good trip. We were a pretty loud group of Americans, but oh well, it was fun. The chocolate was delicious and for lunch I tried chicken liver at the local restaurant by the train station.



It was interesting. I could eat it again I guess but it wasn't my favorite.

After a brief nap and trip to Spar to get regular, non-hard boiled eggs, I practiced for about 45 minutes and was ready to try to make this dinner again.

So with an actual egg, I put the ingredients together for the dough and mixed it. The blob rested for half an hour in the bottom of one of our pots. It was too wet so I added more flour. I wish I had had saran wrap or something to spread the dough out on. I sprinkled some flour on the oven baking sheet we have.



Raw egg is not appetizing. I realized that I didn't save the egg white of the first egg I mixed into the dough, and I needed egg white later to seal the dumplings. So I got a 2nd one out, saved the egg white in a glass, and swallowed the yolk. Ehh.

So it took me about an hour to realize that I needed a lot more flour, and I still don't think I added enough. It started looking like a ball of dough that I recognize on cooking shows. We don't have a rolling pin here so I spread the dough out with my hands and then grabbed the nearest rolling pin shaped object in the kitchen, which was my Sprite bottle.



The potato cheese filling, i.e. the only thing edible I cooked.

Problems started when cutting the dough with a knife was very messy. The dough was still too sticky and wasn't cut easily. I eventually formed 9 of the ugliest looking circular dough pancakes I have ever seen. I then realized that I had roughly 4 times more filling than I could stuff in the dumplings.

I put a dollop of filling on each "circle" and spread the egg white I saved around the edges with my fingers. I folded the dough over and sealed them up. Looking back I wish I had only done half so I could try to fix my mistakes.



I dropped in 4 of my dumplings into boiling water and took the first one out after about 12 minutes. I spit it up immediately. The dough was practically uncooked. I waited a few minutes before trying each of the others, and they progressively got less inedible. But it was undoubtedly a failure in terms of producing something I could eat. Not even a lot of butter would have saved them.



Sadly, I threw them out and washed up my dishes. My dinner, which had taken almost 4 hours because I have never worked with dough before and was half-assing the entire process (and I spent some time talking online with friends, too) turned out to only consist of way too much filling. After the mashed potatoes I made the other night when I couldn't finish attempting the recipe because of hard-boiled eggs, I was not too pleased eating all that filling.

Our kitchen smelled of undercooked dough and failure.

Tonight I made pasta and it was delicious. I have no idea what kind of cheese I bought, either.