Imagine yourself standing in darkness. You are like stone - cold, blind, unaware...
Suddenly, for just a moment - so gradually and subtly that you hardly even notice - you feel something warm stir inside you. Before you can think about it, the feeling fades and you slip back to unconsciousness.
Later - days or even weeks later - you feel that quick, fleeting glow again, deep within yourself. You feel it for just a moment, just long enough to notice - before it slips away from you again.
Each day, as the weather gets warmer, you come briefly to life - soaking up the minimal warmth, feeling a stirring throughout your body, as fluid spreads out to your extremities and back again. Each day, you wake a little bit more for longer and longer periods, only to slip back into insensibility as night falls and the temperature drops below freezing again. Each day, the flow of fluid under your skin grows stronger - starting as a trickle, then a steady flow, then eventually a torrent as the weather gets warmer and warmer, as spring comes closer and closer.
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Green plants are amazing. They take sunlight, water and carbon dioxide and through a mysterious process that we call photosynthesis, transform them into oxygen and sugar. An individual plant takes what sugar it needs for its immediate use and converts the rest to starch for long term storage. As the plant needs additional energy, it converts the starch back into usable sugars. It allows plants to grow and reproduce. It allows seeds to sprout and grow independently from a parent plant.
When we take the newly formed sugars from sprouting seeds, we call it malt and make beer out of it. When we take the sugars from maple trees, we condense it and make maple syrup.
Making maple syrup is easy, at least in theory. Learning to make GOOD maple syrup can take generations. Each winter, when weather conditions are right, maple sugarers collect sap from Sugar Maple trees. They boil the thin, watery sap until most of the moisture evaporates, leaving behind a sweet, golden-brown syrup.
Don't be fooled by the illustration on a can of maple syrup. The picture of a farmer in a red paid jacket and a cap with ear flaps emptying buckets of sap into a horsedrawn sledge is more a symbol of maple sugaring than a reflection of reality. In the old days, the sap was gathered in tin buckets from taps that a farmer would bore by hand. He would haul the raw sap to the sugarhouse, where he would boil it for days until it was reduced to syrup. During sugaring season, he could expect to stay up for weeks at a time, grabbing catnaps by his wood-fired evaporator as opportunity permitted, stocking the fire and checking the consistency of the syrup every few minutes.
Modern equipment has made the process much more farmer-friendly. Most maple farms, or sugarbushes no longer collect the sap from each tree, or tap, individually. A vacuum system takes the sap directly from each tree and transports it directly to the sugarhouse or to a centrally located holding tank, where it is collected once a day. Raw sap, as it comes out of a maple tree, generally has a sugar content of about 2%. It takes approximately 45 gallons of sap to make a gallon of finished syrup. Rather than boil all 45 gallons of sap, a modern sugarer will process it with a machine called a reverse osmosis water extractor. This machine forces the sap through a filter with a very fine membrane. Water molecules slip through the membrane under high pressure, but the larger sugar molecules do not. By using an extractor, a sugarer ends up with a sap with a sugar content of 7-8%, meaning that he only needs to boil 12 gallons of sap - a huge savings in time and energy. "That's the glorious thing about the extractor," says Morris Putnam of Putnam Brothers Sugar House in Charlestown. "You can run it 24 hours a day and stockpile a smaller amount of liquid. That lets you get some sleep."
After the sap goes through the water extractor, it is pumped to an overhead holding tank, then via a gravity feed, goes to a oil-fired boiler that reduces the sap even further. Once the sap has gone through the primary boiler, it is drawn into an open "finishing pan" where the sugarer can supervise the final stage of boiling personally. "You've got to be able to see the sap at that stage," says Putnam. "Syrup can be tricky. You have to reduce it enough, but if you reduce it too much, it crystallizes in the bottle as it cools and customers don't like that." The sugarer filters the syrup and bottles it while it is still hot, ensuring sanitary conditions and a tight seal on the container.
There is a world of difference between real maple syrup and the "pancake" or "breakfast" syrup that you buy in a grocery store. Those syrups are usually colored corn syrup that MAY contain as much as 2% real maple syrup as flavoring - in other words, sap. Real maple syrup is made entirely from evaporated maple sap and contains no more than 33 - 35% water.
Consumers' taste in maple syrup is changing. Traditionally, the lighter grades of syrup have been more popular for their golden color and more delicate flavor. In recent years, the darker grades have been gaining in popularity. "I don't think it's a decision based on cost," says Putnam. "Darker grades used to be slightly cheaper, but customers are willing to pay the same price for them now. I think they just like a stronger flavor today."
Alan Dustin, owner and operator of Dustin's Sugarhouse in Alstead agrees. "We used to have some of the darker syrup left over at the end of the season," he says. "For the past few years, we've been selling out of all our syrup in every grade. That's good news for us as sugar makers. The darker grades generally come at the end of the season and take more work to make, so it's good to get a higher price for them than we used to." For his personal use, Dustin prefers a medium-dark syrup. "It's not overwhelming in flavor," he says, "but it's not too blah either."
Most sugarers recommend eating maple syrup on pancakes or waffles, but the following recipes provide some delicious alternatives:
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Recipes:
Spiced Maple Pears
Serves 6
Ingredients
6 ripe pears, peeled with stalks in place
6 cloves
8 cracked cardamom seeds
2 cinnamon sticks
15 g (1 tbs.) sugar
90 ml (6 tbs.) Maple Syrup
300 ml (1 cup) medium/sweet white wine.
Method
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C or gas mark 6). Push a clove inside each pear and lay on their sides with cinnamon sticks in an oven-proof dish. Scatter cardamom seeds on top of pears. Gently heat white wine, Maple Syrup and sugar until dissolved and pour over pears, ensuring they are half covered. Cover pears with foil and poach for approximately 1 hour or until tender, basting occasionally. Remove cloves, cardamom seeds and cinnamon before serving.
From Camp 100% Pure Maple Syrup Website -
http://www.ivic.qc.ca/abriweb/erable/camp.html
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Creamy Maple Fondue
Serves 4 - 6
Ingredients
100 ml (1/2 cup) Maple Syrup
600 ml (2 1/2 cups) light (single) cream
10 g (2 tsp.) cornstarch
Firm fruits and berries, cut into small pieces.
Method
Gently heat Maple Syrup in a pan for 5 minutes. In a bowl, mix the cornstarch with 10 ml (2 tsp.) of the cream. Bring the remaining cream to the boil and add the Pure Maple Syrup. Blend the cornstarch into the syrup mixture. Heat gently, stirring continuously until thickened. Serve the fondue in a small pan over a spirit lamp. As a delicious alternative, use crème fraîche in place of the cream.
From Camp 100% Pure Maple Syrup Website - http://www.ivic.qc.ca/abriweb/erable/camp.html
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From Hood's Practical Cook's Book, Lowell Massachusets, 1897: Eggs With Maple Syrup
"The French people have a way of cooking eggs with maple syrup: Pour your syrup into the frying pan and heat it hot; then drop an egg into into and cook it exactly the same as you would if dropping it in water. A dish of eggs cooked in this way for desert not only tastes good but looks tempting."
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Crispy Maple Spareribs
Serves 4
Ingredients:
1.4 kg (3 lb.) lean pork spareribs
175 ml (6 fl.oz.) maple syrup
15 ml (1 tbs.) chili sauce
15 ml (1 tbs.) Worcestershire sauce
15 ml (1 tbs.) red wine vinegar
1 small onion, finely chopped
1.25 g (1/4 tsp.) dry mustard
Salt
Freshly ground pepper.
Method
Roast ribs on a rack in pre-heated oven 400°F (200°C or gas mark 7) for 30 minutes. Combine the remaining ingredients in a pan and bring to boil for 5 minutes. Remove ribs from rack and reduce heat to 350°F (180°C or gas mark 4). Place ribs in a baking tin and cover with the sauce. Bake uncovered for a further 45 minutes, basting frequently. Serve with a green salad.
From Camp 100% Pure Maple Syrup Website - http://www.ivic.qc.ca/abriweb/erable/camp.html
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Mixed Greens with Onion-Maple-Basil Vinaigrette
1 1/2 c. vegetable oil
1/2 c. maple syrup, preferably dark amber or grade B
1/2 c. white vinegar
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
1 tbsp. dried sweet basil or 11/2 tbsps. fresh opal basil
1/2 to 3/4 lb. mesclun, washed and dried
To make the vinaigrette:
In a blender or food processor, combine the vegetable oil, maple syrup, vinegar, chopped onion, and basil, and blend for 5 to 8 seconds. Refrigerate the vinaigrette, covered, at least 1 hour, or until needed.
To make the salad: In a large bowl, gently toss the mesclun and 1/2 to 1 c. vinaigrette. Evenly distribute the mesclun on 8 serving plates. Serves 8.
Note:
Mesclun is a term used to describe a mixture of young greens and lettuces, fresh herbs, and flowers. The mixture often consists of ingredients like mustard greens, garden cress, arugula, pea tendrils, beet greens, baby kale, mache, mint, apple blossoms, nasturtiums, New Zealand spinach, curly endive, chive blossoms, dill weed, dandelion greens, oak leaf lettuce, red romaine, Lolla Rossa, and so on. Mesclun is available in many produce sections of local supermarkets and at specialty stores. If premixed mesclun is unavailable, pick the freshest items from your local farmstand and create your own special mix.
From - The Shaker Kitchen: Over 100 Recipes From Canterbury Shaker Village (Clarkson N. Potter, copyright 1994 by Jeffrey Paige).
