Fig Flavored Goat Cheese, Cornmeal and Bacon Waffles

Crunchy bits of bacon, the subtle sweetness of fig and the heartiness of corn meal make these savory waffles a perfect item for Valentines breakfast.
By Jill Mant

I’ve been seeing so many recipes for savory waffles lately and I’ve  just been jonesing to try one. Since it had been snowing like crazy for days and I was obviously preparing for hibernation I had already made a chili, a spicy sausage and chicken soup and a frittata. Why not make waffles for dinner?

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I tossed ingredients around in my head for a while. I knew there was that log of goat cheese with fig in the refrigerator. It was from Cotsco so I would have to make something out of at least half of it; after all who could eat a friggin pound of goat cheese? And cornmeal. Certainly cornmeal would belong in a savory waffle. And bacon. Everything’s better with bacon, right? I headed into my lab to work on my experiment.

The Brit had been home all day writing grants and was thrilled when I called him to the table for dinner. As he went to sit down he looked at the lovely plate I had placed in front of him, cocked his head to the side and asked “Seriously? This is dinner?”

“Didn’t you ever have breakfast for dinner as a kid?”, I asked.

“Well, we used to have Pancake Wednesday’s”, he responded.

“So this is Waffle Friday”, I retorted.

“I don’t like waffles.”

Ohhhhh……

So I didn’t even write this up over the weekend. The problem was I thought they were delicious, but now I didn’t know. Perhaps in my snow induced gluttony I had become non-discerning?

Isn’t it funny how the slightest set back can make you feel insecure. The truth of the matter is that Colin always loves what I make for dinner so if he doesn’t care for one thing that doesn’t mean that it is bad. But that was exactly what I feared.

The recipe I had made produced three large, hard crusted waffles. I must confess to eating mine all up, but Colin had stated that he was “full up” about three quarters of the way through his. I placed the uneaten waffle in a zip lock bag and stuck it in the fridge.

Today when Margo came over I served her the third waffle for lunch. I watched with baited breath as she took the first bite. “Don’t you want some syrup with it?” I asked. “Nope”, she had answered.

I explained to her that I had made some thyme infused maple syrup to put over the waffles when we ate them on Friday night. “that sounds really good,” she had responded, “But these are so good alone that they don’t really need it.”

“Really?” I asked. “You like them?”

“They’re wonderful; really delicious,” she said.

I was absolved! I sat down to write up this post.