INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

Combine the flour, eggs, and salt in a bowl and mix to make a pasta
dough. Then add a little water and knead until it has a firm but
elastic consistency.  To make the filling, melt the butter in a skillet
and fry the bacon  with the onions until both are quite translucent.
Combine the bacon  mixture with the sausage meat.  Moisten the hard
roll in water, press dry, and put through the meat  grinder (better
than the food mill or food processor), along with the  bacon mixture,
cooked spinach, ground meat or smoked farm sausage,  leftover roast,
etc.  Then fold in the eggs, parsley, and seasonings;  mix together.
The filling should be very spicy indeed.  On a board that has been
sprinkled with flour, roll out the dough into  rectangular sheets
(about twice as wide as you want your  'Maultaschen' to be).  Take a
tablespoon measure and put little dabs  of filling at equally spaced
3-inch intervals all down the middle of  one side of the sheet of
dough.  Mix together the egg and canned milk  and apply it to the
spaces in between, the outer edge and the fold  line. Fold the plain
half of the sheet of dough over to cover the  filling, press down
firmly on the spaces around the little packets of  filling, and use a
pastry wheel or knife to separate the packets into  3-inch square or
diamondshaped 'Maultaschen'. The process is similar  to making ravioli.
Cook thoroughly in beef stock or boiling salted  water for about 10 to
15 minutes, dpeending upon the size of the  'Maultaschen'.  They'll bob
up to the surface when they're done;  remove them with a slotted spoon
and allow to drain.  Serving suggestions:  Cut an onion or two into
half-rings, fry in butter until golden brown  amd empty the contents of
the skillet over the 'Maultaschen' on the  serving dish. Serve with
slippery potato salad or a mixed green  salad. Certainly if anyone were
to insist that 'Maultaschen' were the  most delicious of all Swabian
specialties, I[=Horst Scharfenberg]  would hardly be prepared to deny
it.  In fact, as indicated earlier,  I suspect that 'Maultaschen' would
have very good chances in a  four-way international competition with
ravioli, won tons, and pirogi  for the championship of the Roughly
Rectangular Pasta with Meat (plus  Miscellaneous) Filling division.  It
has been said that 'Maultaschen' were originally invented in order  to
allow Swabians to keep eating meat during Lent by concealing it
beneath the pasta shell and amidst the spinach filling from the eye  of
the parish priest (if not the omniscient Deity Himself). The  following
recipe is typical but far from definitive, especially where  the
ingredients for the filling are concerned.  Feel free to use  whatever
you have on hand or whatever your fancy (or your conscience)  dictates.
From:  THE CUISINES OF GERMANY by Horst Scharfenberg Simon &
Schuster/Poseidon Press, New York, 1989 Posted by:  Karin Brewer,
Fidonet COOKING Echo, 7/92  From Gemini's MASSIVE MealMaster collection
at www.synapse.com/~gemini

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