Unsere Besten Maultaschen - Up close und persönlich

Whew, now that I've wolfed down all my Maultaschen, I'm ready to externalise. As I'd mentioned in my previous post, I found a very good recipe online containing the typical pork, spinach, bread and egg stuffing. I thought the bit about the bread was absolutely innovative and would never have guessed that it (apart from the obvious addition and purpose of eggs) was responsible for holding everything together!

Maultaschen do exist in several other flavours, but for a first attempt, I didn't want to stray too far from the model I had. This will be my own version of events, or how I made mine.

For the stuffing, I defrosted 250g of frozen spinach, and with the water obtained from the spinach, softened about 200g of stale bread. Then I cooked 350g of minced pork and added it to the bread and spinach and blended it all very finely. Lastly, I folded in 2 beaten eggs, 1 tbsp each of salt, ground nutmeg and dried thyme.

For the dough, I beat 3 medium eggs with about 100ml of water and added about 400g of flour in gradual doses, kneading until all the flour is absorbed. I don't see why I couldn't have put the flour in the bowl first, then add the eggs and water, 'cos it seems easier, but I followed the recipe, thinking the result would have differed! Let the dough rest for at least 30 minutes (I left it for longer because I actually forgot about it with all the multi-tasking going on) before rolling out the dough into very thin sheets.

If like me, you have a Kitchen Aid with a pasta machine fitting, good for you. If you don't, good luck! I've been there before, rolling out pasta sheets with a rolling pin and I have to warn you, you'd regret it if it's meant for guests! All that effort should only go towards rewarding yourself!

Now, to the serious stuff. Cut pasta sheets into rectangles of whatever dimensions you prefer (I'd recommend a breadth-length ratio of 2:3), but I avoided cutting out rectangles that were too long as they became harder to seal.



Spread a layer of stuffing over each rectangle, leaving a border of about 0.5cm on all sides.





As seen in the picture, fold the lower breadth-wise border onto the stuffing, and pat lightly to remove air pockets separating pasta from stuffing.





Fold one more time to form a roll, again patting lightly to squeeze out air pockets.






Wet the other breadthwise border and fold it over the roll, pressing lightly to ensure that it sticks to the roll.






Pinch both sides of the roll to seal in the filling. If you're afraid of the Maultaschen disintegrating during cooking, fold in the sides one more time to get a sort of double seam.





Voilà! Now you have Schwäbische Maultaschen! Leave them to dry for about an hour. Avoid piling them, even if they're well-coated with oil or flour, as the moisture inside will still manage to permeate the pasta sheet and cause them to stick.



Achtung! Regardless of size, I've learned that you need to cook them for 20 minutes, so that the layer of pasta that has been folded into the stuffing gets cooked, too. When I boiled the first batch, I was impatient, and thinking they were smaller than the ones I had in Tübingen, lopped off 5 whole minutes from the cooking time. Ein Fehler! (A mistake!) :) The insides were slightly firm, and admittedly unappetising, so I had to boil them again.

There are many ways to serve Maultaschen, but the most common, as in my first encounter, which turned out to be my favourite, is in der Brühe (in broth):


A clear beef or vegetable broth is best, with a tiny sprinkling of parsley and fried onions. (I had a soup mix, sorry! The fried onions weren't fried by me, either!) Do not be tempted to cook Maultaschen in the broth itself, otherwise your broth would get all starchy and murky.

The other way I prepared them was by cutting them into thin slices (after boiling them), frying them in butter until they were slightly scorched (not unlike Chinese potstickers),


then stirring them in a creamy cheese sauce before topping them off with more crispy fried onions:


I'll definitely be making a vegetarian or salmon version one of these days!