Maple Syrup Cookbook, 3rd Edition: Over 100 Recipes for Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner - Softcover

Haedrich, Ken

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1612126642 ISBN 13: 9781612126647

Verlag: Storey Publishing, LLC, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

The updated third edition of this classic maple cookbook, with 113,000 copies in print, now features full-color photography.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ken Haedrich is the author of more than a dozen cookbooks, including Pie Academy, The Harvest Baker, Maple Syrup Cookbook, and Home for the Holidays, a winner of the Julia Child Cookbook Award. Founder and “dean” of The Pie Academy, Haedrich is one of America’s most respected food writers and a recognized authority on baking — pies, in particular. His articles have appeared in many publications, including Better Homes and Gardens, Cooking Light, and Bon Appétit. He can be found online at thepieacademy.com.

 

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Taste What Maple Can Do!

Pure maple syrup possesses a subtle bouquet and complex flavors that set it apart from all other sweeteners. Essential on pancakes and perfect in all sorts of cookies, pies, and other baked goods, maple syrup also brings an intriguing note of sweetness to savory dishes.

From fondue to salad dressing, baked beans to grilled salmon, and sweet- and-sour chicken salad to pumpkin soup, Ken Haedrich’s recipes add just the right sweet touch to your daily cooking.

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Maple Syrup Cookbook

Over 100 Recipes for Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner

By Ken Haedrich, Michael Piazza, Margaret Sutherland, Sarah Guare

Storey Publishing

Copyright © 2015 Ken Haedrich
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-61212-664-7

Contents

Foreword to the 1st Edition, 
Preface, 
Chapter 1: Maple from Tree to Table, 
Chapter 2: Maple Mornings, 
Chapter 3: Beyond Breakfast, 
Chapter 4: Maple Sweets, 
Converting Recipe Measurements to Metric, 
Maple Producers & Organizations, 
Mail-Order Sources, 
Acknowledgments, 
Recipe Credits, 
Other Storey Books You Will Enjoy, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

Maple from Tree to Table

Though it is widely believed that the Native Americans were experienced sugarmakers long before European settlers arrived in North America, when and how they learned to make maple syrup is a mystery. A Native American legend has it that there was once a time when sap issued from the maple tree in a nearly pure syrup form, something that a formidable god by the name of Ne-naw-Bozhoo decided to bring to a halt. Anticipating, no doubt correctly, that syrup thus had would be too easily taken for granted, he diluted it with water. Sugarmakers have been boiling the water out of sap ever since, in the pursuit of pure maple syrup.

The Native Americans are likely to have converted most of their maple syrup to maple sugar. Liquid storage vessels were few, and maple sugar was far easier to store and transport. They put their "Indian sugar" into specially made birch bark boxes known as mokuks and carried containers of it to market. Along with these larger blocks of maple sugar, which they sold or traded, the Native Americans made molded sugar candies. The molds were, as one observer noted, "cut from soft wood and greased before the sirup was put into them so that it could easily be taken out. These molds were in [the] shapes of various animals, also of men, and of the moon and stars, originality being sought."

Colonial Innovations

Early settlers in the Americas brought their innovations to the sugar-making art. Foremost among these innovations were iron and copper kettles, which proved to be far less perishable than the wooden and clay troughs the Native Americans used for boiling sap. Early settlers realized that the Native American way of tapping maples — by cutting deep gashes into the bark — not only wasted sap but also injured the trees. So they took to drilling tapholes with an auger.

The settlers further improved sap collection methods when they replaced the Native Americans' birch bark containers with more reliable ones fashioned from ash or basswood trees. The large trunk sections of these trees were cut to length, halved, and then hollowed out into crude troughs. Over time, these clumsy troughs were replaced by buckets and, finally, by hanging buckets hung by metal spikes. The spikes were superseded by modern taps made to support the weight of the bucket or tubing.

The Native Americans boiled sap by dropping red-hot stones into wooden dugout troughs where the sap was held. And weather permitting, they would also remove water from sap by freezing instead of boiling. The water would rise to the top of the troughs and freeze, leaving unfrozen, concentrated sap below. The large cauldrons brought by the settlers were more efficient for boiling than the wooden troughs. In the kettle method of boiling, a large cauldron was suspended over a blazing fire, supported by a pole frame. Sometimes a series of kettles was used and the sugarmakers ladled the partially evaporated sap from one kettle to the next. In this way, syrup could be made on a continuous basis.

When you stop to consider the laborious nature of sugar making against the rigorous backdrop of pioneer life, you might wonder why the early settlers even made the effort. Were there no alternatives?

Maple Alternatives

There were alternative sweeteners, actually — honey being one. In fact, honeybees had been imported from Italy as early as 1630. But beekeepers were few in the colonies, and honey was relatively rare and would remain so for years to come.

Molasses, on the other hand, was abundant and soon began arriving from West Indian sugar plantations. (Sugar itself, of which molasses is a by-product, was still prohibitively expensive.) But molasses was a thorn in the side of the settlers, not just because of the high cost of transporting it from the coast by packhorse, but also because the molasses trade supported slavery in the most direct way. "Make your own sugar," advised the Farmer's Almanac in 1803, "and send not to the Indies for it. Feast not on the toil, pain and misery of the wretched."

Today, of course, maple products account for but a small fraction of the sweeteners used in the United States. However, just a hundred years ago or so — at least in the Northeastern part of the country — maple ranked first among the sweeteners. Whereas a century ago, 90 percent of the maple crop was converted to maple sugar, today only a small amount is, since most consumers buy maple primarily in syrup form for pancakes and waffles. Nonetheless, maple syrup, as more cooks are discovering every year, can indeed play a leading role in the modern kitchen.

Modern Maple Production

In some respects, very little about the process of making maple syrup has changed over time. Today, of course, sugarmakers have at their disposal a number of time-saving and laborsaving innovations, from plastic tubing to reverse-osmosis machines. But these inroads only hasten the transition from sap to syrup; in no way do they diminish maple's magic. The flavor, quality, and wholesome goodness of maple syrup have, if anything, improved over the years. And in an age when so many of our comestibles are nothing more than machine-made synthetics, maple syrup remains an oasis of purity, still made on the farm by men and women whose connection with the earth is part of their daily lives.

Maple syrup is produced in the Northeastern and upper Midwestern parts of the United States and in adjacent sections of Canada, covering a select area from Maine as far south as West Virginia and west to Minnesota. Though the range of Acer saccarum and Acer nigrum, the two principal sugar maples, extends beyond this area, the unique combination of altitude, soil conditions, and weather patterns necessary for maple syrup production — freezing nights followed by warm, above-freezing days — does not. The Europeans, who have the trees but not the weather patterns, have tried without success to manufacture maple syrup on their own turf.

"Frog Run"

Folk wisdom has it that when the frogs begin to sing, or spring peepers can be heard at night, spring is imminent. So, many sugarmakers call the last batch of sap that flows a "frog run."

Maple sap is a clear liquid containing nutrients from the soil and organic substances manufactured by the leaves. It tastes somewhat sweet, with a sugar content averaging 2 to 3 percent, though the percentage can run as high as 6 percent, varying from tree to tree, from sugar bush to sugar bush, from one week to the next and from one year to the next. The sugar in the maple sap is synthesized by the leaves and stored in the tree as starch. This starch is the food of the plant, and in fall and spring, with the further action of sunlight, it is converted into sucrose and, in turn, to invert sugar in which the sucrose is broken down into...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Storey Publishing, LLC
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2015
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1612126642
• ISBN 13: 9781612126647
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 3
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: WordUnited GmbH; distribution@wordunited.com; ; Theodorstrasse 105; DUSSELDORF; 40472; Deutschland