WAFFLE-IRON MAGIC

How come a waffle iron gets treated like the good china, dragged out only for the holidays? It may well be the most underrated, underused tool in the kitchen, as if some mad chef fused the power of a professional broiler with the ease of a griddle.

These days, almost all waffle irons are labeled “Belgian.” Once, this meant they made waffles with super-deep pockets to catch lots of jam and whipped cream. Today, it mostly means “round” (as opposed to June Cleaver’s square waffles) and “small” (about a 7-inch diameter, or at least an iron that’s just big enough for individual servings, not the giant models from the ’50s and ’60s that made landscapes of waffles).

The following recipes work best on an iron without super-deep pockets but with decided pockets nonetheless, maybe ¼ inch deep. All the recipes were tested on one of these 7-inch round irons, but you can jury-rig them for most other models, even square ones, by using only a portion of the iron, or making several stuffed sandwiches at once in various quadrants of the larger waffle iron, or even making one super-large waffle from a sheet of puff pastry.