Water Sparrows - A childhood favourit

My BFF reminded me not to forget a very old childhood dish to post on my blog. Nowadays I hear nobody telling me they feed something like that to their children, but with so many ready made sweets, jogurts and desserts there is no need for it any longer.
Our families did not have so much money and a dessert or a sweet treat was not eaten every day. Grandma loved these just to serve after a Saturday bowl of vegetable soup, so everybody felt full after the meal.

Since less and less people like to cook each day and complete family meals like breakfast and dinner get shared less is a pity.  So many small traditional recipes just fall into the darkness.

You can serve them as a treat for the adults too, so I made both compotes to go with it.
Water sparrows served with apple sauce and cinnamon was my favourite, but serve them with salted caramelized mango swimming in dark brown rum and you have a fancy dessert for the grown ups.

recipe:
8 heaped tbsp flour
4 tbsp of water
2 eggs
1 pinch of salt
1 pinch of nutmeg

Get it together in a bowl and when lump free let it rest for 30 minutes.
In a big pot with boiling salted water, use teaspoons and drop in some of the batter. Let it cook on the top for a short and then  drain.
You can get them into a pan of browned butter before you serve them.

applesauce
cinnamon

1 mango
2 tbsp muscovado sugar
1 pinch of fleur de sel
1 tbsp butter
4 tbsp Captain Morgen brown rum

Peel the mango and in a pan combine butter, salt and sugar and let it melt, add the mango cubes and let that caramelize a bit, add the rum and cook until the mango is soft.

Bring everything together and enjoy the soft pillows with the slight bite in the middle.

If you have some little sparrows left over, let them go cold and store them in the fridge. You can make a savoury dish with them when you fry off some chorizo and onions and toss the leftovers in.