Buttermilk Waffles

Both Teri and I grew up eating waffles made from a mix. Krusteaz or something like that. Over this past two weekends though, I was inspired to make pancakes and waffles from scratch, and with buttermilk. A couple of notes on buttermilk – even though it’s fresh, it smells like its gone bad. Even though its been refrigerated, occasionally it has lumps, and even though it looks like milk and you can cook with it, it tastes like crap. Ok – so I made waffles this weekend, and they were ridiculously good. The recipe is simple – I got it from Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything”. All the things you’d expect to be in waffles were in here – flour, sugar, baking soda, butter, salt. But the key was the eggs – separated, with the whites beaten until they picked up a decent amount of volume and held their shape for just a second before falling down. I folded these into the batter and the waffles came out crisp, light, and decadent all at the same time. We topped off the waffles with fresh organic pears and strawberries, with a bit of lemon squeezed over them, and rounded out the meal with some Full Circle Bacon [damn right]. It was good enough to eat both Saturday and Sunday.