Eats

some culinary commentary from the past week:

A lifetime quest culminated for GREAT waffles reached a happy ending last Sunday morning.
Okay, it wasn't an obsessive quest in the sense of Javert's pursuit of Jean Valjean, but every couple of months I'd get a hankering for waffles, find a recipe to make and suffer inevitable disappointment with the spongy or dense or gooey (or some combination thereof) result.

But I found the holy waffle grail in one of my favorite cookbooks, the excellent How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. His Overnight Waffles came out light, crispy and divine, blasting away the cloying layer of self-criticism that usually denies me enjoyment of my own kitchen labors.

Bonus: they're dirt simple...my kind of cooking. Mix up some flour, sugar, salt, yeast, and milk, let it sit overnight. Next morning, separate two eggs, mix the yolks in with the batter and whip the whites until you get soft white peaks, then fold it in. Voila.

I also tried out what is (so far) my favorite easy roast chicken recipe, courtesy Jamie Oliver. I despise 'celebrity chefs' on principle, but this book came in over the counter and I was impressed with a few of the recipes when I leafed through it.

So the herbed roast chicken is top notch, and not much more bother than a plain one. The skin is nice and crispy, the potatoes I threw in the pan with it cooked up a treat, and the leftover bits made for a fine gravy.

The bird's carcass is going into stock for a tortilla soup tomorrow, watch this space for details.