Austria: Cooking Around the World with Camilla (CATWWC)

"The hills are alive with the sound of music..."

This photo was from my cousin Katie's year-abroad. She captioned this: "Lake Wolfgang/St. Gilgen Village: Birthplace of Mozart's mother and opening sequence of the movie."

Since we can't all go on a "Sound of Music" tour in Austria, like the boys' Aunt Katie-Cakes... we traveled, by tabletop, to AUSTRIA for dinner tonight on our cooking around the world adventure.

A couple of things that came to mind when I think Austrian food: Wiener Schnitzel and Apfelstrudel. 

There are scant few things that I just absolutely do not eat. I know, I know that there is a difference because 'don't', 'can't', and 'won't'. For this commentary, I am using them interchangeably. Fava beans, sadly, I don't eat because I'm allergic to them. But I have eaten fava, lots when I lived in Italy, and I love them! One thing I won't eat is veal. So, Wiener Schnitzel is out.

And when I looked at the extensiveness of making apple strudel, I decided that was too much for tonight. I could buy puff pastry dough, but you know me... I'll put that on the list of things to make another day. So, Apfelstrudel is out, too.

I'm not sure they actually made, or served, this dish in Sister Maria's Nonnberg Abbey, but we pretended that they did. And while I am not a big macaroni and cheese fan, the other three Manns who live in my house are. So, Dylan made his version of Kloster-Auflauf (Convent Pudding).

Ingredients

• cooked pasta (we used rigatoni, the original calls for macaroni)
• 2 C organic milk
• 1 C dried bread crumbs (I used panko bread crumbs)
• 1/2 C ground almonds
• 1 diced red bell pepper
• 3 eggs
• 1 C shredded cheese (we used mozzarella, the original calls for parmesan)
• 1/4 C melted butter
• 1 T minced parsley
• 1 T minced garlic

Procedure
Cook the pasta in salted water until it is just tender. Scald milk and pour the liquid over the dried bread crumbs and ground almonds. In a large flat-bottomed pan, soften the garlic and red peppers in a splash of olive oil. Beat the eggs and mix all of the ingredients together. Pour the mixture into a deep ovenproof baking dish and top it with the reserved crumbs and more cheese. Bake the pudding in a moderate oven (350 F.) for about 1 hour or until it is done. Serve with a green salad.

One dish was all we could manage tonight, but we did locate Austria on the map and talked a lot about conscious eating and why it's important to make good choices in the food you choose to buy and put into your body.

Enjoy my tabletop travels. Join me in whipping up a dish or two. If you do cook something from one of these countries, I'd love to hear about it. Feel free to comment on the posts themselves or email me at constantmotioncamilla at gmail dot com.

This Knight of the Global Table Adventure is signing off for now. We'll be wrapping up the 'A' countries with our next foray into tabletop travel. We're off to Azerbaijan next.