Posted in Around the Lakes Region, eat local, Food Adventures, For Fun, Local Food, maple sugar, seasonal eating on March 25, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Tapping at home!
Last year around this time, I did a post about how pothole season means maple syrup season around these parts. You can check that out if you’d like more information about the nuts-and-bolts of maple sugaring (in NH, sugar is a verb!).
Meanwhile, though, if you live in or around NH, I’d encourage you to check out your local sugar house this weekend during NH’s Maple Producer open houses.
Mmmmmmm…
Posted in Cooking, maple sugar, New Hampshire on April 15, 2008 | 3 Comments »
For Christmas, my boss got me this great cookbook:
Shelburne Farms is a working farm/national historic landmark and educational center in Shelburne, VT. Their mission, quite simply, is to “cultivate a conservation ethic.” This cookbook is great because it’s organized by ingredients one would find on a working farm in upstate Vermont, things like early spring and summer greens, wild mushrooms, sweet milk, game and fish, root-cellar vegetables(!), and a whole section on apples. Rick Gencarelli is the head chef at the Inn at Shelburne Farms.
Since New Hampshire and Vermont share their place in the maple syrup nation, I was thrilled to find two chapters of maple recipes, one savory and one sweet. For my first recipe using up some of our 2008 vintage syrup, I chose Maple Gingersnaps.
They are traditional, rolled cookies.
That sure do look a lot like gingersnaps!
But they stayed softer, and while they didn’t have an in-your-face maple flavor, they were a nice, subtle use of the stuff. I added the finely chopped crystallized ginger that was suggested in the variation, and I think it overwhelmed the maple a little bit. I also used 1 cup of whole-wheat flour.
If you have an abundance of syrup, here’s a way to use some up that’s a change from pancakes and waffles!
Maple Gingersnaps (from Cooking with Shelburne Farms)
1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, baking soda, salt and white pepper.
2. In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine 1/2 cup of the white sugar, the brown sugar, and the butter. Cream on medium speed for two minutes or until the mixture is light and fluffy. Stop to scrape down the sides of the bowl at least once. With the mixer running on medium, add the egg and then the maple syrup.
3. With the mixer on slow speed, add the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Refrigerate the dough for at least 30 minutes and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
4. Roll the dough into 3/4-inch balls and roll them in the remaining 1/4 cup white sugar. Bake the cookies on a lightly greased or parchment-lined cookie sheet, 3-4 inches apart, for about 15 minutes, until golden brown and set at the edges but still soft in the middle. Cool the cookies for 5 minutes before removing them to a cooling rack.
Enjoy!
Posted in eat local, Food Adventures, Just Plain Good Ideas, maple sugar on March 29, 2008 | 3 Comments »
When Bill, at Rock Farm asked us if we were ready for another quarter cow, we quickly took stock of the roasts and steaks in the freezer, and decided to wait for the next round. However, we panicked slightly after we realized that there were only 7 packages of hamburger left, and a whole summer ahead of us (at least, we believe summer will be here sometime!).
Thankfully, Bill had some burger hanging around, and my husband stopped by to pick some up the other night. Bill’s wife, having read of our lard-making exploits asked about the project. The truth is, I think we burned it. I haven’t been brave enough to test it in an entire baked good, fearing that it would ruin all the other yummy stuff in a pie!
Bless her heart, she sent my husband home with some of her own. She, quite cleverly, reduces her lard in the oven. Next time, that’s definitely the way we’ll go.
Meanwhile, we felt like we should drop something off in return. So, some 2008 vintage maple syrup is heading her way!
And as soon as I bake up a pie with that beautiful white stuff, you’ll be the first to know!
Posted in Cooking, Dark Days Eat Local Challenge, eat local, Local Food, maple sugar, seasonal eating on March 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Happy Easter!
We’ve had plenty of non-springtime weather around here (aren’t you tired of hearing that from me, yet? I’m tired of seeing it!), and lots of roofs have been shoveled.
Meanwhile, we’ve had plenty of local ingredients in each of our meals, and we’ve been keeping busy maple sugaring.
Our most local meal this fortnight has been a Rock Farm steak that we grilled and served with green beans from the freezer (roasted) and the last of the NH potatoes.
I still have some beans and summer squash left in the freezer, and I came across some peppers, too, which I used in these chicken tacos/tostadas.
I used store-bought corn tortillas and fried them myself (we only had a couple of taco shells, the rest became tostadas because I got tired of making them into shells!).
These included chicken leftover from a roasted Rock Farm bird, frozen peppers, homemade taco seasoning and Cabot cheese. We’ve got four birds left in the freezer.
Grocery stores have started featuring asparagus, and I’ve caved a few times. It’s like the oranges…at least it’s kind of in season, yes?! We enjoyed asparagus with a grilled Rock Farm ham steak and homemade biscuits.
Finally, last night, we grilled hamburgers. This is a totally local burger (market-made buns, Rock Farm beef, homemade, summer pickles):
This is a local burger with decidedly unlocal accoutrement:
But grilling burgers, eating barbeque chips and enjoying asparagus made us feel like spring might just be close at hand.
Best wishes for peace and sun to all!
Posted in Around the Lakes Region, eat local, Food Adventures, For Fun, Local Food, maple sugar, New Hampshire, Preserving, seasonal eating on March 21, 2008 | 5 Comments »
If you were to drive around the still snowy, gray roads around New Hampshire this month, you’d see these:
(I couldn’t find a “Frost Heaves” sign to photograph because they’ve all been plowed under at this point in the season. This does not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean that there are no longer any frost heaves. Most people spend about one third of the travel time from point A to point B in the air, rather than on the road.)
You would also see these:
It’s maple-sugaring season around here! This is NOT your grocery aisle’s fake stuff, either. This is the real thing, folks, the real McCoy. This syrup does not cause your pancake to become a foamy, muffin-type thing like that fake stuff does. This is liquid gold, and it makes me, a non-breakfast lover, into someone craving all forms of pancake and waffle, at all times of the day.
We’ve got our own little operation, not nearly as big as this one down the street from us:
But whether the production is big or small, the principles behind maple sugaring are the same: sap from the sugar maple (and occasionally other types of maple tree) is collected and then reduced to syrup. The sap flows during the late winter/early spring when night temperatures are still below freezing, but the days are warm enough to begin the spring melt. The pressure that results from the freezing and thawing cycle causes the sap to flow.
It takes A LOT of sap to make a little bit of syrup. No two batches of sap are exactly the same, but it’s safe to estimate that it’ll take 30-40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup.
Most larger sugaring operations around here are family-run productions that make their syrup in a sugar house or sugar shack. The sap is evaporated over wood fires that have to be stoked for lots of hours a day to keep the liquid boiling. Ideally, sap should be boiled the same day it is collected. In our smaller home-based operation, we sometimes refrigerate smaller batches for a day or two until we have enough to make one good batch.
The syrup is usually boiled to 7.1 degrees above the boiling temperature (which varies slightly depending on your height above sea level). For us, it’s about 219F/220F. The syrup is strained through cheese cloth into boiling-water sanitized jars, and the hot caps and bands attached. Syrup does not need to be processed in a canner.
Maple producers are more than a cottage-industry here in New England. They typically produce 90,000 gallons a year. They’ve also been sounding the alarm about global-warming for some time now. At Clark Sugar House in Acworth, New Hampshire, they have a chart on their wall where generations have been recording the beginning and end of maple season for over 100 years. Clear shifts in the start and length of the season are obvious. In the last 20 years, the season has shifted so much that it begins almost one full month earlier than previous generations. This rather alarming article from 2004 gives some more detail.
There are also different grades of syrup. Generally, the earlier in the season, the lighter the syrup. Here, you can see the dark amber from the end of last year, and this year’s first batch of light amber.
For me, one of the very best things about the family tradition of maple sugaring is the “sugaring off party.” Typically, this is a time when the production is slowing down, and a maple farm with a large sugar house invites all their friends to come around for a party. Hopefully the weather is warm enough for kids to play outside and adults to hang out by the fire. My favorite memory of sugaring off parties, which I attended here:
was “Frogs on Snow.” Syrup is boiled until it reaches about 230F or 240F, and poured over cups or bowls of packed, clean snow. It makes a sweet, maple taffy. I don’t know if “Frogs on Snow” is a unique name to my region of the state, but I was able to find this candy called “jax wax” as well. Here’s a whole article about what you can do with hot maple syrup and snow (two things we’ve got plenty of around here right now).
These days, many northeastern states hold “maple weekends” when maple producers open their sugar houses to the public. Information about New Hampshire’s maple weekend, as well as much more detailed information about maple production can be found here.
We call our syrup “Free From Trees” and gift it to friends with pretty tags I make for the jars.
Many of my blogging friends are starting to post pictures of bulbs courageously popping up through melting snow and trees beginning to bloom. Here in my neck of the woods, we won’t be seeing our bulbs until at least two or three feet snow have melted. Neverthless, I know spring must be coming, because the buckets are out, and the shacks are steaming!
P.S. If you plan to try your hand at maple sugaring yourself, please note that you should do as much of the boiling outside as possible. The sticky steam generated in your kitchen will peel wallpaper and paint! You can finish off the syrup on the stovetop for a little more control during the last phase.
