Netflix members will know how much ‘earned media’ (free publicity) Eggos Waffles got from its ‘co-starring’ role on Stranger Things. Now, another (real life) Eggo-maniac has branched out to creating retro-newstalgic waffle recipes…
Chef, cookbook author, waffle lover Samin Nosrat will tell you she was raised on a steady diet of Eggos toaster waffles – every Saturday morning. But that hasn’t kept her from becoming one of the most notable of the current ‘new breed’ of millennial chefs and a devoté of waffles in all their forms and manifestations…
Good Things
Nosrat first caught the collective eye of the masses with her Food Network series (and cookbook of the same name) Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. The cookbook won a James Beard Award.
One imagines how gratified – and tickled – she felt when it emerged early in the Netflix fantasy series Stranger Things, that the protagonist, Eleven, prefers Eggos over all other foods. But that’s literally another story…
From her latest cookbook, Good Things, we receive her gift of ‘the only waffle recipe you’ll ever need’.
‘Thanks, Marion…’
Nosrat claims she got her first taste of home-made waffles from Marion Cunningham, known far and wide for her updates and adaptations of classic Fanny Farmer recipes. In particular, a yeast-raised batter she still swears by.
“My kitchen sister Amy Dencler, then a cook and now the chef at Chez Panisse, invited me over for breakfast,” Nosrat recalls. “My teeth shattered the lacy edges and sank into the center, releasing more of that toasted yeast flavor.”
“Marion (Cunnigham) called them ‘the best waffle I know,’ and I couldn’t agree more,” Nosrat shares. “Marion’s recipe — and a couple [of] variations on it — is the only one I’ll allow in my kitchen.”
The low-down…
It’s a slow-rise recipe. Nosrat says it’s best to mix up the batter the night before if you want them for breakfast the next day.
“I have not been able to achieve that texture with any other batter, and certainly not from a batter that doesn’t rest overnight,” Nosrat told CNN Life contributor Karla Walsh. “These waffles are lacy, light and crisp, with the perfect capacity to absorb maple syrup. They’re just so good.”
The recipe is reproduced in its entirety – with all the comments and tips – at the bottom of Walsh’s post, linked above.
My take
I love waffles, too. Ask anybody who knows me. What most of them don’t know is, I have half a dozen different waffle irons – one for every occasion!
I have yet to try Nosrat’s derivative, newstalgic yeast waffles. But I swear I can almost taste them, just from her description!
~ Maggie J.