This isn't a recipe. No, it's the story of a very expensive stick, and how it brought a family heirloom back to life.
A while back, maybe a year, my mother passed on a cast iron waffle maker to me. I loved it. The problem was that although all the metal pieces were there, and in excellent condition, the wooden handles had been lost to time. I parked the waffle iron on a shelf, intending to sort it out. Time passed.
My grandmother remembers my great-grandmother making waffles with this when she was a girl. I put stuff on top of it, looked at it on occasion, and thought 'I need to do something with that. I really want to use it.' Recently, the First Reader exercised his handy-man skills, and finished enlarging my cast iron display wall. Now, I could finally hang most of my handled cast iron pans. In the process of clearing the shelf where my pans had been stacked, I uncovered the waffle iron. I looked at it, sad.
Then, I turned to the First Reader a week later and asked: how hard would it be to make handles?
I showed him the waffle iron, we measured the holes where the handles had been. He disappeared, and a little while later came to say 'let's go out.'
Shortly afterward, he was in woodoworking heaven. We'd trekked to the nearest wood-crafting shop for a specific 5/8" hardwood dowel. While we were there, I found some paduak wood and was enraptured to find it was as lovely in person as I'd imagined for the Hatrack. But the reason we had come, and what came home with us, was a single mahogany dowel.
I took the Little Man and ran the grocery-shopping gauntlet. When I came home, a smiling man led me to the kitchen, and on the stove was my waffle iron! The very same one handed down from mother to daughter in my family for generations.
"We should have chicken and waffles!"
So we did.
And it was very good.
My great-grandma's waffle iron with serviceable handles.
Will it waffle? With plenty of grease, yes it will! Took a few tries to get the pan heating per side and batter ratio to fill right.
Detail of the top with manufacturer.
Chicken and waffles. So much love.