March 2009 – inuyaki

Crispy Waffle’s Crispy Waffle

I inherited a waffle maker from a friend a few months ago, but the romantic notion of making waffles on weekend mornings ran into a few obstacles, namely finding a good reliable waffle recipe and the motivation to cook after rolling out of bed. Last week, I found both.

Sheryl, a Filipino American ex-pat in the Netherlands, runs a food blog called Crispy Waffle, and her “Easiest, Crispiest, Yeasted Waffles” recipe is a great example of truth in advertising. Instead of baking soda and baking powder, she uses yeast as a leavener and lets the batter rise overnight in the fridge. I followed her recipe exactly and cooked the waffles for around 5 minutes. Here’s what I got:

UPDATE: Check out my Filipino Spaghetti 2.0 post for another version of this dish)

Filipinos love spaghetti…so much so that it’s a staple at fast-food restaurants in the Philippines, including American franchises like KFC and Wendy’s. The Philippines biggest fast-food chain, Jollibee, offers burgers, fried chicken and spaghetti under one roof, and lucky for me, there’s a bunch of them here in California.

Filipino spaghetti is sweeter than a traditional Italian spaghetti, usually from the addition of sugar or banana ketchup to the sauce. It’s other defining characteristic is hot dogs, which sounds weird to non-Pinoys, but it acts as a salty counterpoint to the sweet sauce. (I always knew there was a reason I was partial to Spaghetti O’s with Sliced Franks when I was a kid.)

I generally freestyle my spaghetti, but I always start with a plain sauce (like canned Hunt’s or Del Monte) to use as a base since other ingredients are going to be added. A friend who makes her own excellent version of Filipino spaghetti swears by Prego. I prefer using sugar as a sweetener instead of banana ketchup since it’s something I always have on hand.