Quebec’s taste arc is supposedly saccharine; Quebec produces more than two-thirds of the maple supply in the world. I still remember, years ago, between attending a Habsburg game and eating Putin late at night at La Banquise, when I came across my first taste of tire d’érable during the Montreal Ann Lumiere Festival. The candy is made by pouring hot maple syrup boiling over fresh snow, a la carte tapas that are then rolled on a wooden tongue depressor like a lollipop. It’s a stick that’s hard to escape when you’re surrounded by a maple.
It was Derek Damen, the chef and owner of the Maison Publique of Montreal and McKiernan Luncheonette, who took me a decade ago to my first cabane à sucre (sugar hut). These institutions used to be fronts selling plastic jugs of maple syrup straight from the taps (wood), but most of them have become tourist corridors serving boneless bone buckets of baked maple pork.
Maple, for so long, has been replaced by thick varnish and sweet bowel bombs. The model was updated in 2009 by chef Martin Picard of Au Pied de Cochon when he opened his own cabana restaurant in Mirabel, just west of Montreal. His idea was to update the hut’s classics using better sources (he raises his pigs behind the hut) and cooking techniques. He recreated the Fèves au Lard (Maple Baked Beans), a puffed cast iron omelet soaked in maple, and hot dogs swimming in a sweet juicy juice. A combination of real syrup has become a polished approach and has made the classic maple dishes the least obligatory – although, for dessert, there is still the obligatory tarte au syrup d’érable (maple syrup pie).
For Damen, it was a trip to Mexico that really changed the way he thinks about cooking with maple syrup. “In the cuisine of Mexico City, honey is so common,” he says, pointing to the way honey moderates the heat of the chili. “I realized I had something similar in Montreal that I could use to create balance in sauces, but with a different and darker nuance,” says Damen. He serves maple and lime “minionta” on fresh oysters, which is just lime juice that is “sweet like lemonade.”
He looked at the southern states and saw how they used sorghum and vinegar wipers to establish roast meat, applying a similar method when cooking whole sheep, with a mixture of fifty and fifty maple syrup and apple cider vinegar. According to him, maple syrup is also a perfect foil for foie gras; It further reduces the maple syrup to dark caramel, puts it in gelatin, then over goose liver tart with this gel.
An unrecognized hero of the maple syrup production process, says Daman, is réduit, a by-product derived from the second rinsing of maple containers. Essentially, the syrup makers blur all the crystallizing pieces and residual sugar in the water, resulting in what is affectionately called “maple steam” which is also collected and bottled. Damen likes to use réduit as a glaze for pork and as a base for soup, just as you would use remoilage (a second wash of bones that have already been used once to make a spindle).
“Sometimes I avoid maple, being in Vermont, because it’s too obvious, but at the same time, I love maple, and I actually eat maple most of my life.”
While many Quebecers actually expect the syrup to be served in incredible quantities, “I do not use maple as a forward flavor, I use it as a seasoning or as an accent,” says Daman. It also refuses to use it outside the harsh season of maple, that is, from late winter to early spring. “You would not drink an egg all year, would you?” He’s joking.
Vermont is second to Quebec in the production of global maple syrup, as highlighted in the country’s maple creamy obsession. Kara Chigzula-Tobin, a chef at Honey Road in Burlington, Vermont, uses maple syrup in her Middle Eastern dishes as part of a sweet-and-salty approach. Last year she served a roasted delicacy pumpkin with maple tahini and crispy vine leaves. This year, she brings elements of acid and heat to moderate the maple sugar with a sour-sweet acorn pumpkin, where she mixes maple syrup with pineapple juice, pomegranate molasses and hot pepper paste.
She will also use maple syrup in parallel in dishes in which fenugreek, a unique Mediterranean herb with sweet notes similar to those of maple, plays a role, as in the air-dried beef.
“You do not want to use too much, it can be overwhelming,” says Chigzola-Tobin, though when she puts her hands on a syrup that still has this smoke from cooking outside over an open fire (as she does quite often. Sister-in-law) , She uses it in abandonment and likes to combine it with urfa chile, dried smoked pepper from Turkey. This combination highlights beautifully caramelized pieces of gami meat.
“Sometimes I avoid maple, being in Vermont, because it’s too obvious, but at the same time, I love maple, and I actually eat maple most of my life,” says Chigzula-Tobin.
In New York City, Neil Kleinberg has made a name for himself with his award-winning pancakes. As the owner of the Clinton Street Baking Company brunch pack, this is his maple butter spice served alongside it, for which he has found many applications beyond flapjacks.
“I hated a wooden hut and all that corn syrup with colors and such, and I wanted to avoid compliment and maple syrup on the table,” Kleinberg says. Instead, he builds this sauce like a classic French Bora Blanc, whipping cold cubes of butter into hot maple syrup to create an emulsification – “kills two birds with one stone,” he laughs. As expected from a rich butter sauce, it boosts almost any starch or toasted protein (try it with white fish!). His kitchen easily passes more than a thousand gallons of maple syrup a year, a large portion of which finds its way into this sauce, at a ratio of 20 pounds of butter to 2 gallons of maple.
Kleinberg uses New York State maple syrup – and only grade B amber, because of its fuller flavor. At dinner he finds his way to a vinaigrette, or to glazed pork ribs. Double cut, really thick and juicy, Kleinberg uses maple to balance the pure protein of the pork, adding a sour-sweet element. Bourbon, apple cider vinegar and chicken stock are reduced with Mirpoix, then add maple towards the end to a nice shine, to brush on the pork ribs while it is roasting. The effect is subtle, but you still know the maple is there, without sitting in a sugar hut.
