What’s the first thing that you’d do when you arrived home late after work? For me, I’d head straight to the fridge and scavenge whatever leftover food or ingredients that’s left from my weekend adventure in the kitchen and whip up a simple meal. However this trick works only if I just cook for myself, not when you have a hungry boyfriend to feed as well.

Luckily T’s mum came to my rescue, and prepared one of her signature dish, noodle soufflé (Nudelauflauf), ready to be shoved into the oven when we arrived home. Isn’t she a gem? This is the scene before being baked in the oven. As you can see, the noodle is topped with thick slabs of butter and those thin strands are cheese.

It’s really a very simple noodle dish with lots of butter, cheese and eggs. Absolutely a taboo dish if you’re having a diet. Well I was too hungry to count the calories that evening and chomped down almost half of it because it was too yummylicious Here’s the golden brown noodle topped with melted cheese and butter after being baked in the oven.

The layers of noodle baked together with eggs.

Here’s the recipe for the Nudelauflauf aka noodle soufflé serving 2 to 3 adapted from Thorsten’s mum:

Noodle Soufflé

You need these:
1 cup of sour cream
3 or 4 eggs (it depends on your liking)
400g of spiral noodles or pasta
Salt and pepper to taste
250g of grated cheese (Gouda or Edam)

Preparations:
1. Cook the noodle according to the instructions of the packet. If you like your noodle to be a bit crunchy, don’t cook them too long.

2. Mix the eggs and the cream well.

3. Grease your casserole dish with butter and alternately place the cooked noodle, egg-cream mixture, cheese, salt and pepper layer by layer.

4. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese and the egg-cream mixture at the top layer. If you want the extra kick put some thick slabs of butter on top.

5. Bake for 40 minutes at 180°C in the oven. Occasionally check that the top of the dish is not burnt by placing an aluminum foil over it half way through baking, and test the inner layers of the dish with a fork. When it comes out clean, then it’s cooked!

Feel free to add some slices of ham or broccoli if you like.
Guten appetit!