Liechtenstein - Käsknöpfle

Käsknöpfle is the National Dish of Lichenstein and consists of boiled dumplings with cheese and toasted onions. How do you toast onions??!

Ingredients: 

• 300 grams flour
• 1-1/2 teaspoons salt
• 3 eggs
• 150 ml water
• 1 large onion
• 150 grams mixed grated cheeses 

 Place the flour and salt in a fancy chrome mixing bowl.

 Break the eggs into a different bowl to beat. This is the eggs just before we beat them to within an inch of their life.

Add the defeated eggs along with the water to the salty flour.

 
Mix well. JD is mixing so hard he needs a wrist brace to protect his arm.

 The mixture will be a gloopy consistency like this with bubbles rising to the surface. Cover with a tea-towel and leave for 30 minutes to thicken.

 While you're waiting get started on the onion. Slice it and fry it in a bit of oil. We decided to fry the onions because the internet held no information about toasting onions!

 Grate some cheese. We used gruyere and cheddar.

 Once the mixture is even thicker then you can get a pan of boiling salted water ready. The recipe suggested letting the mixture drip through a colander into the water to make tiny even dumplings. The mixture we had was too thick to go through our colander so we ended up with huge lumpy dumplings instead. Dollop the mixture into the water with a spoon and remove to drain when they float to the surface. Some had to be encouraged to float as they seemed content to just stick to the bottom of the pan instead.

 During all the excitement the onions got caramelised (burnt) but that should just add more flavour to the dish :D

 Put the dumplings in a bowl, top with the cheese and onion and serve with a generous spoon of apple sauce.

We were suspicious of how this food would taste but it was surprisingly great. The apple, onion and cheese all went really well together and flavoured the plain dumplings to make for a tasty dish. JD said that more apple sauce and onions would've made it better and he's right. Also the original dish must be made in a volcano at high speed because the cheese is supposed to melt on the hot dumplings but by the time I'd finished boiling them all in batches the dish had lost it's heat. It was still nice though and I'd try it again now I've had a go at boiling dumplings. If anyone knows how to toast onions send in the answer on a postcard, please :)