Rice flour is the ingredient for rice noodles. They have different texture, color,

appearance and mouthfeel than wheat flour noodles of the same shape but if you are stuck in a

recipe, go ahead, substitute with vermicelli weight by weight. You can also use a more

commonly available Asian noodles for some odd-named variety a recipe calls for, just like you

can substitute one Italian pasta for another in most recipes. The result may not be authentic but

the dish will taste the same.

Spätzle is a somewhat more distant cousin, mostly in German and Eastern European

cooking (it is called galuska in Hungary and kluski in Poland). Spätzle is really a fresh,

homemade irregular-shaped egg pasta, the size of cherries, that look like tiny dumplings. Its

blessings is in its quick preparation yet it also tastes good with a slightly chewy consistency of al

dente macaroni. Spätzle is so rough and irregular in shape, that it holds sauces very effectively

like many tiny little spoons.

With a little experience you can put spätzle on the table in less than 10 minutes. Put the

pot of water on to heat and mix the flour, water and egg into a medium-stiff dough, something

like a soft yeast bread dough. Form it into small chunks and drop into the boiling water. It is

ready three minutes later. Drain and serve.

Experienced cooks can make spätzle with nothing but a small board and a spoon with

which they scrape little pieces of dough into the boiling water. But if you are making more than

or 8 servings, a spätzle-maker is handy. I came across two kinds. One is a flat, rectangular-

shaped metal tool with large holes that looks like a flat grater. It has hooks to hold it firmly on

top of a pot. You place some of the dough on top of it while it sits over the boiling water, and

scrape it back and forth with a spoon until you press the dough through the holes, then continue

with the rest of the dough. The second type is a food-mill-like tool with a handle that rotates a

paddle on the bottom. The paddle presses the dough through holes into the boiling water. This

also has hooks to firmly set it over a pot of boiling water. Both are efficient, easy to use.

Italian gnocchi is similar to spätzle but you make it with semolina instead of standard

household flour. Italians, who like variations on a theme, add other ingredients besides the flour

to cook cornmeal gnocchi, potato gnocchi, ricotta gnocchi to name a few.

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