Maundy Thursday Maultaschen

Ingredients for 8 servings:

• 1 pack of dough (pasta dough), roll out as thinly as possible
• 500 g leek
• 500 g spinach, fresh
• 5 rolls, stale or dumpling bread
• 5 eggs
• 2 m.-sized onion(s)
• 1 bunch of parsley
• 4 tbsp oil
• 3 tsp salt
• ½ tsp nutmeg
• ¼ tsp pepper
• 0.12 liters of milk

Instructions

Working time approx. 1 hour; Cooking/baking time approx. 30 minutes; Total time approx. 1 hour 30 minutes

For the filling, slice the dry rolls. Mix the rolls or dumplings with the eggs and let stand for a while. Knead them with your hands frequently, adding a little milk if necessary. There shouldn’t be any hard pieces left, but it shouldn’t be mushy either. The consistency should be more like bread dough. Choose a slightly larger bowl, as the vegetables need to be added as well. Clean the spinach, onions, and leeks. Cut the onions into the smallest possible cubes and the leeks into the finest possible rings. Strip the spinach of any tough stems. Finely chop the parsley. Heat the oil in a pan and sauté the onions and leeks until soft. The onions should be translucent and the leeks soft, but not brown. Add the spinach leaves to the pan and cover with a lid until the leaves have collapsed. When the contents of the pan have cooled sufficiently, add them to the bowl with the softened rolls, add the chopped parsley, and knead everything thoroughly with your hands until a homogeneous mixture forms. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste. There are two ways to shape the Maultaschen: Rolled, which results in more pasta dough per Maultasche: Lay the entire pasta dough flat on a table and spread the entire mixture onto the pasta dough. Leave 2 cm free on each long side. Then brush the free edges with a little water to make them stick. Don’t use too much water, or it won’t stick anymore. Then roll the whole thing up from one long side. This creates a long, thin sausage. Carefully press the free edge of the pasta dough to make it stick. This sausage is then cut into slices of any width. However, they should be wider than they are long. When forming pockets, you can fit more filling in: Cut the pasta dough into rectangles, brush each one with a little water all around to make it sticky, and place a portion of the filling in the middle. Then fold the rectangles in half and press the three free edges together to make the whole thing tight. If you cut them into smaller pieces, you’ll get “Soup Maultaschen” (souped dumplings) as a soup garnish. The roulades or parcels are then placed in simmering, but not boiling, broth. When they float to the top, they’re done. Depending on the size of the pot, work in “layers” here; if there are too many Maultaschen in the pot, they tend to stick together or to the bottom of the pot.