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Made from flour, eggs, butter and bacon, Kniddelen are as simple as they are delicious. For top chef Lea Linster, the dumplings are one of her favourite foods: “As a child, they were my comfort food, guaranteed to cheer me up whenever I was sad.”
Order the venison at “Les Ecuries du Parc” in Clervaux and Chef Marc Arend will serve it up with champignons, cinnamon-spiced red cabbage and – a true Luxembourg classic – “Kniddelen”, or dumplings, garnished with bacon fried in a little butter.
In particular in winter, dumplings go down a cosy, warming treat. Traditionally, they are eaten predominately in the Austrian Tyrol, in Thuringia and Bavaria in Germany and in Bohemia. In a castle near the northern Italian town of Bolzano, a fresco from 1180 depicts five dumplings in a pot – the earliest known pictorial evidence of the delicious doughy balls! In the Middle Ages, dumplings, mostly made from leftovers, were a popular hearty food, especially among the poor.
The “Appetit-Lexikon” published in Vienna in 1894 defines dumplings as “boiled or baked balls of very diverse composition and size”. And indeed, they can be made from pretzels, bread rolls or potatoes, with spinach, prunes or liver, for example.
Most fine-dining restaurants look down on dumplings as not being “refined” enough for their menu. But wrongly so. Take, for instance, potato dumplings: These are often presented to diners with lashings of flavourful sauce and slices of exquisite winter truffle. What’s more, potato dumplings are considered “the kings of dumplings”.
Not least because making them is a real kitchen marathon, requiring two-thirds raw potatoes, one-third cooked potatoes and a great deal of time and patience. Cooking dumplings for four requires finely grating at least two kilos of raw potatoes and then squeezing the liquid out of the grated mixture with a mesh dumpling bag and a lot of muscle power. The dry mixture is then combined with the cooked potatoes, which have been squeezed using a dumpling press. This forms a dough, to which a few drops of lukewarm cooking water are added, along with some of the starch that separated from the liquid after squeezing. Next, balls are formed from the dough and steeped in water, brought to the boil beforehand, until they float to the surface.
For people in Thuringia, “A Sunday without dumplings is no Sunday at all.”
Many families enjoy eating leftover dumplings the next day, cutting them into thick slices and frying them, giving them a lovely golden crust. A simple, yet tasty meal that only adds to the great love and appreciation for homemade dumplings and all that goes into making them.