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!

Chicken Three Ways! -or- What to do with a whole chicken

 Chicken has become a staple food in many omnivorous diets. At my house we have chicken at least once a week. Usually it is one of our favorite ‘go-to’ meals when we need something quick and versatile.  We have a number of incredibly yummy dishes that we rotate through depending on our mood. The problem: we mostly use the chicken breast.  We buy pre-butchered boneless skinless chicken breasts in large value packs and then portion them out and vacuum seal them before freezing them.  This works for us most of the time because we tend to be busy and need quick cooking meals after work.

There are a few reasons why this has been eating away at my conscience lately. First- what about the rest of the chicken? I know it goes someplace- the legs and thighs and wings do, and the bones. I am hoping that someone somewhere uses the extra bits and that they don’t find their way into our landfills, but there still seems to be the potential for a lot of waste for those boneless skinless chicken breasts.  Secondly- buying boneless skinless chicken breasts is expensive. At the grocery store you can pay anywhere between 5.99 per pound and 8.99 per pound for ‘value packs’ of five or six pieces. These can end up costing over 20.00 each and they eat a giant hole in our grocery wallet.  A whole cut up chicken gives you 8 pieces with bones and usually skin (but you can take that off yourself) for 3.49 per pound. If you buy a whole chicken on sale you can pay under 3.00 per pound. That is a significant saving. Thirdly- there are things you can do with a whole chicken that you can’t do with boneless skinless chicken breasts. They either wouldn’t turn out or they wouldn’t be nearly as tasty if you tried.

This past week I bought a whole chicken- about three pounds, and paid less than 8.00 for it. I used it three different ways and ended up with some tasty applications that I am going to share with you.

There are many applications for roasted chicken and chicken stock, so even if you get a pre-roasted whole chicken from your local grocery store, know that you are saving money and have lots of options for what to do with leftover meat and bones. The leftover meat can be used for chicken salad or club sandwiches, wraps, in pasta sauces, soups/stews, chili, casseroles or any other recipe you can think of! The carcass turned into stock can be used for sauces and gravies, soups and stews, rice pilaf, risotto, stir fry, marinades, and much more. Use these recipes to get you started and then explore your options and experiment with whole chicken! You and your wallet are guaranteed to end up happy.

Monday: Whole Roasted Chicken

Ingredients:

1 lemon,
2 small onions,
2 Tbs butter,
2 Tbs olive oil,
1 tsp roasted garlic paste,
½ tsp poultry seasoning,
½ tsp onion powder,
½ tsp cracked black pepper,
¼ tsp paprika
1 whole chicken

1. Preheat oven to 350  ̊F. Cut the lemon in half and then quarter each half. Do the same with the onions. Peel the garlic and cut roughly into 3-4 pieces per clove. Set aside.

 2. In small dish mix butter, oil, garlic paste, poultry seasoning, onion powder, pepper and paprika. Mix well and set aside. 

3. Give the chicken a good rinse under cold running water and pat dry with paper towels. If the chicken hasn’t already been trussed for you, use kitchen twine to tie the legs and tail area together tightly, close to the body of the chicken. Fold the wing tips up, back and under the back of the chicken (make it look like it is resting its hands behind its head/shoulders).  I like to truss chickens this way because then there is no twine digging into the leg meat or holding the wings against the breast and not letting that skin get nice and crispy.  If you want a better lesson on trussing there are many you tube videos or photo step by step instructions available online. 

4. Stuff the body and neck cavities loosely with half the lemon, onions and garlic. You may also stuff some of the garlic and smaller pieces of citrus or aromatic veggies underneath the skin of the chicken. Place the remaining citrus and onions in the bottom of a roasting pan. Pile them close together and then place the stuffed chicken on top. Brush with about half of the butter/oil/herb mixture. 

5. Roast whole chicken uncovered in oven for 45 minutes. Remove from oven, baste with remaining butter/oil mixture and return to oven uncovered for an additional 45 minutes or until juices run clear when a knife is inserted into fleshiest bit of drumstick and meat moves easily away from leg bone when twisted **.  Remove from oven and baste with pan juices.  Let rest in pan 10-15 minutes or until ready to carve. 

**Chicken Notes: This baking time is based on a 3 pound loosely stuffed chicken and that depending on the size of your chicken, roasting times may vary. If you are unfamiliar with carving a whole chicken, it is actually not as scary as it seems and it is easy. The two following you tube links show great demonstrations that are similar to how I carve chickens. Please take a look and keep in mind that my chickens and carcasses usually don’t look as pretty as theirs do when I’m done carving, but practice does make perfect and I am getting better!**

Video Link: How to carve a chicken , Video Link: Carving a Chicken 

Now that you have roasted and rested your chicken you can carve it and serve it however you want. This week I served it with seasoned baked mashed potatoes and salad. I also removed the lemon from the roaster and reduced the pan juices into a nice sauce, thickened with a little bit of flour mixed with cold water. After we ate there was still half a breast and both legs/thighs left over. I picked the meat off these and saved it for another application (See ‘Thursday’).

After I carved my chicken I removed all the stuffing bits from the inside and placed the whole thing in a big stock pot. I put the pot in the fridge until Tuesday when I was ready to make chicken stock. Make your stock on a day when you have the time to let it simmer and develop its full flavor.

Tuesday: Chicken Stock

Ingredients:

1 Tbs vegetable or olive oil

1 lb mixed aromatic veggies (I get a precut package of soup veggies from the grocery store that includes onion, carrot, celery, turnip and potato- I know the last two aren’t aromatics but they do give nice flavor to the stock)

3 garlic cloves- peeled and roughly diced

2-3 whole bay leaves

10 whole black peppercorns, roughly cracked

1 chicken carcass, leg and wing bones included if you still have them

water

1. In a large pot with a good lid, heat oil over medium-high heat. Add veggies and sauté about 5 minutes. Add garlic cloves, bay leaves and peppercorns. Sauté another 5 or so minutes, until you can smell the lovely garlic and bay leaf and there’s a little bit of brown caramelized bits on the bottom of your pot. 

2. Add chicken carcass/parts. Stir them around and make sure they get nestled in with the veggies.

3. Pour in enough cold water to completely cover the chicken. Cover and bring just to a boil.

4. Reduce heat and simmer with the water barely bubbling for 2-3 hours, stirring slowly on occasion and checking to make sure too much water hasn’t evaporated. I usually do this step with the lid partially on but tilted up a bit so that some steam can escape. I also occasionally skim off some of the fat and scum (foam or a skin that forms on the surface of your stock as it cooks) if there seems to be a lot.

5. Strain stock through a fine mesh sieve to remove carcass, veggies and spices. Re-skim at this stage if you want. Cool stock and refrigerate until ready to use. 

**Stock Notes: Some people also like to add rosemary or thyme or other herbs to their stock, but I just like bay, pepper, and the veggies.  Experiment and see what you like.  After cooling and refrigerating your stock, some of the remaining fat and scum will solidify and float at the top of the liquid. It is easy to skim this off when the liquid is cold. Stock can also be frozen in plastic containers or zip lock freezer bags. Some of you will note that I haven’t added salt to this stock.  I choose not to add salt to my stock so that I can control the sodium levels in the stuff I will make with the stock. I can then season it as I need it for individual recipes or usages.  This is purely personal preference and if you would like to season your stock, feel free to do so. **

Thursday: Chicken Noodle Soup

Ingredients

1 Tbs vegetable oil or butter
1lb mixed aromatic and root vegetables (I get a precut package of finely diced soup veggies from the grocery store that includes onion, carrot, celery, turnip and potato)
1 onion- peeled and finely diced
3 garlic cloves- peeled and roughly chopped
1 large bay leaf
½ tsp cracked black pepper
½ tsp salt
2 cups cooked chicken meat- skin and bones removed, diced or roughly chopped
8 cups chicken stock
½ lb (½ of a bag) of broad egg noodles (you can use whichever noodles you like, but these are my fave)

1. Heat oil in large pot over medium high heat. Add onion and sauté for 5-10 minutes until translucent and starting to brown/caramelize. Add remaining veggies, garlic, bay, pepper and salt. Sauté for another 5 minutes or so until everything smells fantastic.

2. Add chicken and stock. Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes to an hour or until the vegetable pieces are just under cooked to your liking. (this all depends on the texture of veggies you like and how large the pieces are)

3. Add egg noodles and simmer 5-10 minutes more until noodles and veggies are perfectly tender. Enjoy!

**Soup Notes: This soup isn’t very salty. ½ tsp salt has approximately 1000 mg of sodium in it. This soup will make 8 large bowls of soup, so about 125 mg of sodium per serving, and people can add more to their liking, or you can add more to the pot as you cook it.  This soup is also great with other veggies if you like them. Try adding frozen peas or corn during the last 10 minutes of cooking, or bite sized broccoli and/or cauliflower florets. **