\n1. It has now lost two games in a row to the worst soccer team in the world<\/a>.
\n2. Famously neutral Switzerland has either invaded or fired artillery into Liechtenstein numerous times in the last 60 years. Despite this, the two countries still somehow have very close relations.<\/a><\/p>\n
There are two plausible candidates for national dish of Liechtenstein, and neither is terribly difficult to make, so we did both.\u00a0 Let’s start with the less decadent one – Ribel.<\/p>\n
Ribel is a porridge made of corn meal and milk. Boil milk with a little butter and salt, add corn meal, remove from heat, wait fifteen minutes.\u00a0 It’s so quick we didn’t even get a picture of the preparation, although you’ll see it in our final picture.\u00a0 Ribel is often eaten for breakfast, with jam or sour cheese.\u00a0 Not much more to say about it, honestly.<\/p>\n
So let’s get on to the MORE decadent one – K\u00e4skn\u00f6pfle!<\/p>\n
Kn\u00f6pfle is the Swiss German term for spaetzle, little chewy pasta bits that you may be familiar with.\u00a0 We made a somewhat related Hungarian version, nokedli<\/a>, when we did that meal. K\u00e4s, on the other hand, is the Swiss German word for cheese. Pasta covered in cheese.\u00a0 Oh my god, what’s not to like HERE?<\/p>\n OK, so first order of business was to acquire cheese.\u00a0 As long as you use a mix of alpine cheeses, you’re going to be in the right ballpark.\u00a0 We went with Apenzeller and Gruyere:<\/p>\n However, a truly authentic Liechtensteiner K\u00e4skn\u00f6pfle also uses something called “Sura K\u00e4s”, literally “sour cheese.”\u00a0 This is a regional specialty from the Swiss \/ Liechtenstein \/ Austrian Alps that DOES NOT travel well, and as such is basically impossible to find in North America.<\/p>\n After some conversation with the friendly staff at the cheese shop, we decided that an appropriate way to get some tangyness into the mixture would be to use French “fromage blanc.”<\/p>\n Much grating later, and we had a big bowl o’cheese.\u00a0 Which I appear to have forgotten to photograph.\u00a0 Fortunately, I did get a picture of a cutting board full of onions, because lord knows there’s no way I couldn’t have just borrowed one of those from literally any prior entry in this blog.<\/p>\n But no, rest assured, dear reader, that these are the ACTUAL onions we used for THIS recipe.\u00a0 We spare no effort for authenticity.* (*note: we spare MANY efforts.)<\/p>\n OK, cheese grated, onions browning, time to make the dough – and here is where we ran into a slight problem.\u00a0 We grabbed a family recipe from r\/Liechtenstein that sounded nicely authentic.\u00a0 However, it turns out the author had made a SLIGHT typo in their units, and called for 100 cL of water instead of 100 mL of water.<\/p>\n When you put 10 times the amount of water called for in a dough recipe, it becomes batter.<\/p>\n To be fair, this is really my fault – I should have looked at the amount of flour, looked at the LITER of water ready to go, and thought to myself, “Self: you have done a lot of cooking at this point.\u00a0 Perhaps you should maybe double check this against another recipe before you pour this all in.” Sadly, dear reader, I did not.<\/p>\n The author of the reddit post was quite gracious when we asked about it later, and the post has since been corrected.\u00a0 And once we adjusted, the recipe was great, so we’re very grateful to them for sharing it.<\/p>\n Just to see what would happen, we tossed in a cup of sugar and tried baking this, and it turns out what happens is a thick, gummy, pancake.<\/p>\n Could have tried baking it longer, I suppose.\u00a0 But who has time to pay attention to the leftovers when there are CHEESY DUMPLINGS to be made?!?<\/p>\n Second batch of batter mixed (we used double the eggs, in line with a few other recipes we found), and allowed to sit for a little bit, we were just about ready to go.<\/p>\n Now all we needed was a Kn\u00f6pflehobel.<\/p>\n “A what now?” we hear you ask.\u00a0 A Kn\u00f6pflehobel!\u00a0 Actually, we didn’t have one of those, so we used a Spaetzle press that my colleague Stephan was kind enough to loan us. Eggs for scale.<\/p>\n This is a NON trivial piece of kit.\u00a0 And the dough is quite thick, so forcing the dough through the press into a pot of boiling water took some serious effort.\u00a0 I don’t always make K\u00e4skn\u00f6pfle, but when I do – it’s arm day.<\/p>\n These things actually cook pretty quick.\u00a0 Only a minute or two in the boiling water, and out they come.\u00a0 After a few batches, we had a bowl full of dumplings.<\/p>\n At this point, all that was left to do was dump the k\u00e4s into the kn\u00f6pfle, mix well to let everything blend and get gooey, and then plate everything up with some applesauce and cherry jam.\u00a0 Our local liquor store, which is generally excellent, somehow failed to have ANY Liechtensteiner beer in stock, so we went with a nice Austrian lager instead.<\/p>\n From upper right, working clockwise, K\u00e4skn\u00f6pfle with fried onions, Riebel with cherry jam, applesauce. Not the most chromatically varied meal, but oh my goodness… who cares? The cheese on the kn\u00f6pfle was gooey and pungent and AMAZING.\u00a0 Could probably have used even a little more tartness from the fromage blanc, but this recipe is unquestionably a winner.<\/p>\n The Reibel was fine – a bit less exciting, but a good side dish.\u00a0 The jam was definitely an important part of keeping it interesting.\u00a0 And the apple sauce did help cut the richness of the K\u00e4skn\u00f6pfle.\u00a0 All in all, an excellent meal, and I can’t wait to try the real thing when we’re in Peru this summer.\u00a0 I mean Liechtenstein.<\/p>\n Llamas? Really?<\/p>\n Next up, back to the Baltics!<\/p>\n Recipes: Ever since we’ve been together, which at this point is now 22.5 years and counting, Leigh and I have joked that we want to take a tour of the tiny countries of Europe.\u00a0 Not Luxembourg, of course, that’s WAY too … Continue reading ![\"Swiss](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/20250129_183844.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Fromage](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/20250129_184737.jpg\")
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\nThis stuff’s pretty good – it basically tastes like mild sour cream, with a texture closer to cream cheese.\u00a0 I’ve been eating the leftovers spread on bread with jam for breakfast.<\/p>\n![\"Onions.\"](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/20250129_185721.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Dough](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/20250129_182610.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Gummy](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/20250129_193743.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Knopfle](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/20250129_183654.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Spaetzle](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/20250129_180304-rotated.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Making](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/20250129_190749.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Knopfle\"](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/20250129_191731.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Liechtensteiner](\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/20250129_192659.jpg\")
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\nK\u00e4skn\u00f6pfle<\/a> – (We used 8 eggs instead of 4)
\nRiebel<\/a> – (The recipe says “1\/3 water and 2\/3 milk.”\u00a0 Pretty sure that means 1\/3 LITER of water and 2\/3 LITER milk.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"