Oh My My Maple! Maple Deliciousness!

My visit to Sugar Moon Farm and the beautiful maple products I got there inspired me to explore some maple recipes and get creative in the kitchen. Having a boyfriend who doesn’t particularly ‘love’ maple syrup was going to make it tricky to cook with maple, or so I thought. I wanted to try savory and sweet applications for things like maple butter, maple mustard, and maple syrup. This is what I came up with!

Maple Mustard Pork Chops

I know I’m not the first person to make maple mustard pork or maple mustard ham. It’s a take on honey mustard and a ton of recipes exist. The original recipe I found came from the food network Canada blackberry app and it was this recipe for a Rack of Pork with Maple Glaze. I didn’t want the long process of baking the pork and glazing it over and over again so I looked at the glaze ingredients to see what I could do with it. What it all boils down to (literally and figuratively) is a super simple ratio: 2 parts maple syrup to 1 part each Dijon mustard and vinegar.  So here is what I did: 

Ingredients: 

1 Tbs Olive Oil/ Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 boneless pork loin chops
A pinch each of: salt, pepper, onion powder, garlic powder (or roasted garlic paste), thyme (optional, or you can also use rosemary)

1 Tbs butter
2 Tbs ‘Boates’ Apple Balsamic Vinegar
2 Tbs Embers Maple Mustard with Peppercorns
4 Tbs Sugar Moon Maple Syrup 

In a mortar and pestle (or herb grinder), combine all dry seasoning ingredients and grind until fine. If you are using garlic paste, leave it out until after everything else is mashed up. You want your rosemary to be pretty broken up and for all of the seasonings to be well combined. If using garlic paste, add this last and mix well with dry seasonings. Rub seasoning mix over both sides of pork chops and set aside. 

Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Sear both sides of pork chops. Then reduce heat to medium and continue cooking until pork is just cooked through. Sometimes, especially if the pork chops are thick, I like to add a splash of water and put a lid on the pot to create a steam environment that helps keep the pork juicy and still cooks it through. Remove pork chops to a plate and let rest.

Combine maple syrup, mustard, and vinegar. Add to hot skillet and deglaze pan. Reduce to about half, or whatever sauce consistency you like. This shouldn’t take too long. Add the knob of butter and let melt in- this makes the sauce even silkier and shinier, but it can be a step you leave out if you don’t want to add the extra fat/calories.  Add the pork chops and any juices that escaped onto the plate back to the sauce. Coat the pork chops in the sauce and make sure they are cooked through before serving.   

**Notes** I served this to my boyfriend with mashed potatoes and sautéed veggies and we both loved it. It would also be good with rice, or egg noodles, couscous, quinoa or even creamy or grilled polenta.  You can also play around with the specifics of the sauce ingredients. I used all local maritime ingredients, but you could switch it up to use whatever vinegars, syrups, or mustards you love, and make something truly special and unique out of a standard recipe. 

Cranberry Maple Oatmeal

Again, it’s probably not hard to figure out that dried cranberries and maple flavor would make anything taste better. The simplicity and how good this tastes has made me like oats again, so I feel the need to share. 

Ingredients:

¼ cup rolled oats
¼ cup dried cranberries
½ cup water
2 tsp maple butter
2 Tbs milk

In a microwave safe bowl, combine oats, cranberries and water. Microwave on high for 2 minutes, stir, and if the oats are not cooked to  your liking, add more water and pop back in the microwave for another minute or two, or until you like them! Top with a knob of maple butter and a splash of milk. Enjoy! 

This recipe is super versatile. For a bit of crunch you can add some slivered almonds or toasted coconut. If you don’t fancy cranberries you could use blueberries instead, or a combination of different fruits. You can also cook it on the stove top if you want/ have the time, just boil the water and then add the oats and stuff, and boil gently and stir until it’s done!

Last but not least, a strange and delicious experiment…. 

I was frantically searching for something delicious have at lunch. Hunger pain was setting in but I wanted something out of the ordinary and utterly satisfying. I thought about settling for a simple PB and J, but then a crazy idea struck me. PB and MB, and maybe some extra B.  Call it a P-B-M-B(B), a P-B-M, a P-M-B, or just delicious and weird. 

Peanut Butter and Maple Butter Sandwich P-B-M-B(B) 

Ingredients

Two slices of the bread of your choice
2 Tbs Peanut Butter
2 Tbs Maple Butter
¼ to ½ Banana, thinly sliced (optional)

Okay, you all should know how this goes down. You’ve got your two slices of bread out, on a plate or paper towel. Smear the PB on one slice, and the MB on the other slice. If you decide to add the Banana, it doesn’t really matter which slice you put it on, but I suggest laying the banana on the PB side and then topping it with the MB side of the second slice. I think it tastes better with the PB on the ‘bottom’ of the sandwich and MB on the ‘top’. Weird, I know. This sandwich will be awesome either way. Try it. It will blow your mind. 

If I teach anyone anything with this blog, I want to teach you this: Play With Your Food! Be weird. Try stuff that hasn’t been (knowingly) tried before. Explore ingredients that scare you or combinations that you think wouldn’t normally go together.

Sugar Moon Maple Farm

So it has actually been a few weeks since I have posted anything and I sincerely apologize! Bad Selina! While I have been super busy I have still been jotting down blog posts and ideas in margins of pages and on scrap pieces of loose leaf. I find that I am a super descriptive writer and I am working on trying to create short and sweet posts rather than long and sweet posts. We’ll see how that goes and if anyone out there has an opinion of what you would like to experience in my posts, please let me know!

Anyway, I have been meaning to type this and post it for a while now. A group of friends and I recently went to Sugar Moon Farm.  Sugar Moon is located in the Cobequid Hills in Earltown Nova Scotia. It takes about an hour and a half to get there from Halifax. When we first arrived we knew we were there before we saw the farm because there were cars lined up on both sides of the road- the surplus that could not fit into the parking lot. We turned up the driveway anyway and did manage to find parking. The main building is one story tall and quite long. It houses a small maple museum, the boiler room, and the pancake house.

Sugar Moon is the trailhead for the Rogart Mountain Trail- a 6.2 km loop that begins and ends in the parking lot. They also have a shorter hike into the sugar bush to see the old sugar shack and to see the tapping lines strung through the forest. The farm offers sugar tours on site to show how they make maple syrup. When we were there the weather was just too cold and so there was no sap flowing and the boiler was not in operation.  But it was still impressive to see the boiler and learn how the process works.  Sugar Moons maple sap runs into the large metal sap pans and then gets boiled in a wood fired evaporator until it reaches 66% concentration before being ready to bottle and serve.

While our group of six waited for the tour we heard rumours of a two hour wait time for a table in the pancake house. We hadn’t fully decided if we were going to eat there or not, but this made us wonder how good it must be and how willing we were to wait for a seat in the restaurant. After the tour we decided to check the wait time and put our name in for a table. How could we possibly pass up the opportunity to eat somewhere new and have super fresh maple products at our beck and call? We put our name in and had only a 30 minute wait. We had just enough time to take the short hike up to the old sugar shack and come back down before lunch.

When we got to the bottom of the hill we had just enough time to warm our hands over the enormous wood stove, browse the brochures and books, and drool over the shelves of maple products for sale before our table was ready.  The Sugar Moon pancake house menu seems small but it actually gives a lot of choice. No matter how you order them, the pancakes are all you can eat. The menu also boasts three different types of sausage, baked beans, hot cereal and granola as well as a plethora of beverage options. Most chose straight up pancakes or the Sugar Moon Special- all you can eat pancakes, your choice of sausage (Smoked Westphalian, German Bratwurst, or Breakfast Links) and a pile of house made maple baked beans. This was my choice. I also got the Sugar Moon Coffee- a cup of delicious hot fair trade organic java topped with maple whipped cream and maple sugar. They were even kind enough to make egg and dairy free pancakes for my meat-fasting friend.

While we waited for our meals we were served fresh made biscuits and maple butter. The biscuits were fluffy and tender and the maple sugar is like smooth maple frosting- minus any added white processed sugar or other ingredients. Just maple. Just fantastically decadent and delicious.

The pancakes are made with red fife wheat and buttermilk. They have a texture unlike any I have experienced in a pancake before and I attribute that to the wheat and the buttermilk working together I guess. I normally like a dense and spongy pancake when I make them at home, but these red fife buttermilk pancakes were fluffy, but not too fluffy, and not too dry, and they didn’t absorb all of the maple syrup. It’s a pet peeve of mine to have pancakes that suck up all the syrup and still be bland and dry and crumbly.

Next to the divine pancakes was the smoked westphalian sausage that I chose. It was juicy and flavourful and cooked to perfection. It tasted wonderful on its own but then I tried it smeared with Embers Maple Mustard. I instantly knew that a jar or two of the maple mustard would be coming home with me.  The baked beans were creamy and sweet and tangy at the same time (a texture/flavour combination I have never achieved in multiple failed attempts to make good baked beans).

It didn’t matter if your mustard and sausage slipped into your baked beans or if the beans dribbled onto the pancakes because every flavour was complimentary to the next and mixed together they became a mysteriously succulent-sweet mish-mash. An adventure on my tongue!

After we finished our lunch, I resisted the urge to clean out the store of the maple products and settled instead on a litre of maple syrup, a small tub of maple butter, a jar of maple mustard with peppercorns, and six maple filled chocolates.

We then went outside and mulled around while we waited for dessert. I was stuffed but I absolutely could not resist a traditional maple farm treat- maple on snow.  The staff at Sugar Moon has troughs of pure white perfect snow, and they boil a small batch of syrup at a time until it reaches just the right consistency before ladling careful lines of hot sticky maple onto the snow. Everyone who pays a toonie gets to grab a popsicle stick and gather round the snow to roll up their cooling treat. And after the feast of maple you just had, and the smells and aromas inside and outside at Sugar Moon, you expect it to be good. But if you are like me and have never had maple sugar on snow… it will blow you AWAY. It’s like a sucker that hasn’t completely hardened yet. It’s not quite bubble gum and it’s not quite caramel or toffee. As you are rolling up your maple treat the top layer of snowflakes sticks to the bottom layer of your maple and gets stuck in little pockets between the layers of sugar. These little pockets become melt-y maple caves filled with cold water that tastes like maple-y wonderfulness. Possibly the best drink of water you ever had.

My visit to Sugar Moon prompted me to research and play with various recipes using maple products. I will share them in my next post to make them easier to access. If I haven’t inspired you yet to visit Sugar Moon or at the very least play with maple in your own kitchen, and even if I have, I strongly STRONGLY recommend you take the trip to Sugar Moon Farm. If you need more convincing, check out their website at Sugar Moon or their menu at Sugar Moon Menu . Happy Eating!