Spinatknödel

Tirolean bread dumplings bound with spinach, rolled by hand and served under brown butter and grated cheese

Origin: Tirol & South Tyrol, Austria

From the journey of Spinach.

The Alpine Knödel is one of the great thrift dishes of Europe, and the spinach version is the one Tirol is proudest of. Its foundation is stale bread. Across the Austrian and South Tyrolean valleys, white rolls too old to eat were never thrown out; they were cut into cubes, dried, and kept as Knödelbrot, and a household's dumplings were only as good as the bread it had saved. The cubes are soaked in warm milk until they collapse, then bound with egg, flour, sweated onion, nutmeg, and a very large quantity of squeezed, finely chopped spinach, which is what turns the interior a deep marbled green. The technique that decides the dumpling is the squeezing. Cooked spinach holds an extraordinary volume of water, and any of it left in the mixture will dissolve the bread into paste and the dumplings will disintegrate in the pan. Tirolean cooks wring it out in a cloth until it is nearly dry, and then wring it again. There are two ways to serve them and both are orthodox. In Brodo, sitting in a clear beef broth with chives, they are a first course. Dressed with brauner Butter, butter cooked to a nut brown, and a heavy fall of grated Grana or Parmesan, they are a plate in their own right, and that is the version the mountain huts serve to walkers. The dish belongs to both sides of a border that moved. Tirol was divided in 1919 and the southern half became Italian, so Spinatknödel and canederli di spinaci are the same dumpling in two languages, and South Tyrol serves them with Parmesan because it is now in Italy.

Ingredients

Dumplings

  • 300 g stale white bread rolls (Knödelbrot), cut into 1 cm cubes
  • 250 ml warm whole milk
  • 600 g spinach, washed
  • 1 whole onion, finely chopped
  • 40 g butter, for the onion
  • 3 whole eggs, beaten
  • 60 g plain flour, plus more if needed
  • 2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
  • 0.5 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • 0.5 tsp freshly ground black pepper

To Serve

  • 100 g butter, to finish
  • 80 g Grana Padano or Parmesan, finely grated
  • 2 tbsp chives, finely sliced

Method

  1. Put the bread cubes in a large bowl, pour over the warm milk, and leave for 20 minutes, turning once, until completely soft.
  2. Wilt the spinach in a dry pan over a medium heat for two to three minutes until fully collapsed, then tip into a colander and cool.
  3. Squeeze the spinach in a clean cloth until no more water comes out, then squeeze again. Chop it finely.
  4. Melt the 40 g of butter and soften the onion over a low heat for six to eight minutes without colouring. Cool.
  5. Add the chopped spinach, onion, eggs, flour, parsley, nutmeg, salt, and pepper to the soaked bread and work it together with your hands until it just coheres.
  6. Rest the mixture for 15 minutes, then test one dumpling: roll a ball, simmer it for eight minutes, and see whether it holds together.
  7. Roll the mixture into balls about 6 cm across with wet hands, pressing firmly so there are no air pockets.
  8. Lower the dumplings into a wide pan of barely simmering salted water and poach for 15 to 18 minutes, until they float and are set through.
  9. Meanwhile, cook the 100 g of butter in a pan over a medium heat until it foams, then turns nut brown and smells of hazelnut.
  10. Lift the dumplings out with a slotted spoon, drain briefly, and serve with the brown butter poured over, a heavy scatter of grated cheese, and chives.

Notes

Six hundred grams of raw spinach reduces to a surprisingly small ball once squeezed, and that is correct. Knödelbrot is sold ready-cubed by Austrian and German grocers. Otherwise use any plain white roll or loaf, cubed and left out overnight to dry properly. The mixture can be made a day ahead and refrigerated, which firms it and makes rolling easier. Leftover dumplings are excellent the next day sliced thickly and fried in butter until crisp, then finished with a beaten egg, which is Knödel mit Ei. The same method with speck instead of spinach gives Speckknödel, and with cheese Kaspressknödel, which are pressed flat and fried.

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