Back in our first trip to Seattle, Minh and I stumbled across a German restaurant on the edge of town. I can’t remember what it was called or where exactly it was located.. all I really remember from that day was being extremely tired (from a flight, only a few hours of sleep in the car, an early hike at the base of Mount Rainier, and lots of driving around and arguing with Minh… I was pretty cranky)…. and I vaguely remember our meal. And this was when I first discovered that Minh (and I) was IN LOVE with beer, sausage… and spätzle!!!
For a long time, we didn’t know what to call this dish because it came as a side on our sausage plate, and we just referred to it as the cheesy side. Minh SWORE that it was some sort of mac’n’cheese, while I thought it was more like a doughy “rice” with cheese. Eventually, we determined that it was spätzle, and we went on a mission to find some nearby.
Which brings us to… OLD WORLD VILLAGE in Huntington Beach. I’ve only been to Old World a handful of times, but we new that there was supposed to be a “good” German market and deli there, so we stopped by in search of good sausage. Imagine our delight when we found out that they were selling spätzle! The woman who helped us (the owner maybe), was a little bit weirded out by the fact that we wanted to buy a pound to take home (since they were serving it in the dining area), but she was very helpful in telling us how to prepare it at home. It came already boiled, so we just had to saute it with some butter and melt some cheese into it. We also bought a pound of dry “hot’n’spicy” sausage and headed home to make dinner.
Hot'n'Spicy SAUSAGE!!! (dry and cooked)
Delicious grated mix of cheeses...
Saute that spätzle in HOT BUTTER!!!
It turned out pretty good… I went a little crazy with the butter, so it was a bit “greasier” than perfect, but the balance of the cheese and the spice of the sausage made it a pretty good dinner for two. We even had some German beer to round out the meal.
Dinner and a movie...
Think Tran 