Swabian Maultaschen with Homemade Sausage Meat

It was home-made sausage meat in the freezer (remnants of: meat loaf according to an Eastern Swiss recipe - with the food processor), in the garden the spinach sprouts en masse and after a long search I found a ready-made pasta dough that I really wanted to try. So: Maultaschen had to be found. With the finished pasta dough, it was almost quick cooking. The recipe makes 24 pieces for dough sheets of 10x15 cm.

Harvest the spinach, wash it and cook it in a sufficiently large saucepan in a little salted water until it has collapsed. This takes a maximum of 1 minute. Drain and cool in ice-cold water (this is how it keeps its fresh green color). Roughly chop with a knife. Chop the onions, fry them in a pan and make the farce for filling the dumplings together with the sausage meat, minced meat, eggs and spinach. Add the parsley, finely chopped. Knead everything well. If it is still too moist, add breadcrumbs until you have a malleable meat-spinach mixture. Season to taste with salt, pepper and nutmeg. There was also a trace of alpine chilli.

Roll out the dough. The finished dough was 100x30 cm. The division into 10x15 cm sheets of dough was easy. Pre-perforate with the pastry wheel. Place the meat farce on each plate with a tablespoon. Distribute evenly on all plates, keeping a margin of 1 cm. You should still be able to close the dough sheet well. Brush the edge with water and fold the ends of the dough on top of each other and press down - a fork will help.

I used the steamer to cook the Maultaschen. 25 minutes with 100% steam on the lightly greased perforated sheet. Then they are already ready and taste much better than in a saucepan with water.

For all those who have to or want to cook in water: For this, the farce should be much more spicy because it will diffuse into the cooking water. Bring salted water to the boil in a pot and let 5 - 6 dumplings steep in boiling water for 15 minutes. Then take them out and, if not used immediately, let them cool on a rack. This comes from my recipe for Swabian Maultaschen with kale. There you will also find the information if you want to make the pasta dough yourself.

Maultaschen can be served in meat or vegetable broth or eaten without broth with potato salad. They can also be eaten with cheese or egg gratin. I've also baked them in the oven with sauerkraut and cheese. I'm afraid that the production with the homemade sausage meat will now become the standard for reasons of taste. P.S. Incidentally, the pasta dough failed. The next time the pasta machine turns again for the Maultasche.