Cuisine Canada Scene

Collecting red maple sap

Being one of the most abundant and widespread hardwoods in Quebec, the red maple (acer rubrum) is familiar to most of us, populating our forests and ornamenting our sidewalks; yet when it comes to maple syrup, it remains the underdog.  It is the sugar maple (acer saccarum) that is king, scooping up all the glory.

Before maple syrup became big business, most farmers made maple syrup to occupy themselves off-season. If red maples grew on their land, well then, that’s the syrup they made. Often it was a mix of varieties, including black and silver maple.  Of course, the expected only to put up their own reserves for the year, perhaps supply their neighbours and sell a bit on the side to put some money in their pockets. In the past, many Quebeckers poured sirop de plaine (as it is commonly called in rural Québec) onto their crepes and into their coffee. But today, few know what it tastes like.

Claude and his red maples

Happily, our favourite neighbour, Claude, a retired medical technician and farmer, carries on the tradition with his 220 red maples on a 25-acre plot in L’Épiphanie, northeast of Montreal. Claude does things the old-fashioned way.  His syrup is a hot commodity around here. We help collect the buckets of sap and barter dinner, duck fat and mushrooms to secure our share.  It is hands down our favourite sweetener at Les Jardins Sauvages, with its complex yet subtle flavour profile: so delicate, with a pronounced nuttiness, balanced acidity and some mineral notes.

Requiring sunny days above 4C and frosty nights, the season could last days or weeks. On a good year, one is lucky to get 30 to 40 L of sap from a tree, which boils down to about 500mL of syrup with the plaine — if everything is done right.

That’s the thing about the red maple. It’s tricky. Although it is the first of the maples to run, it is generally a smaller tree with fewer taps, so its season is typically shorter. Its sap also has a low sugar content (almost half that of the sugar maple’s 2%).  It needs to be processed immediately and requires a longer evaporation, which means a slightly darker product and more of a window for things to go wrong.  Plus, the red maple sap has a tendency to produce more ‘sand’ or precipitates, which could produce cloudiness if not properly filtered out.

Despite its unique taste, it’s not on store shelves because it’s labour intensive, less productive and more complicated. It takes almost twice as much sap, making it twice as expensive to produce, and it doesn’t stay pretty long enough by industry standards.  Claude’s syrup will hold the year before crystallizing, but he says that this crystallization occurs because he pushes the boiling a degree higher to get a more concentrated syrup. This is possible with the plaine because it is so mellow, with none of the potential bitter notes of the sugar maple. His methods wouldn’t fly with the maple board’s strict production policies. But their management revolves around consistency and stockpiling in order to control prices.  They support big over small; productivity and profit are favoured over flavour.

Red maple trees

Pure sirop de plaine is not commercially viable on a large scale, so it remains in the hands of the hobbyists and artisans, or anyone with red maple in their backyard crazy (or smart) enough to invest time and energy tapping into the resource.  For all his blood, sweat, tears, and good times, Claude’s average score for a season is 20 gallons, or 80L of liquid gold.

Sirop de plaine is truly “slowfood”.  And like with corn, tomato or wheat, while agribusiness has selected one breed for the masses, we should not lose sight of the others.  Besides, the impurities in that ‘evil’ sand might just be more tasty and vital, delivering extra minerals, vitamins, organic acids and the like. Maple syrup is already a good source of calcium, iron and thiamine.

The taste inspires me most though, and with spring in the air, I am looking forward to all this mapling off. In the kitchen, I will be making ham with the réduit, poaching quail eggs in the sap, making maple desserts, as well as sauces and glazes for trout smoked over maple wood, venison ribs and guinea fowl.  François will be making tire on the snowbank for our childlike customers.  At this rate, my sirop de plaine won’t last long enough to worry about crystallization.

Claude asked me if I wanted him to try making a less reduced batch for me. “Of course not,” I replied. “Keep doing what you are doing.”  In any case, I’m sure we could find some good use for those crystals!  All I need is a good year so that come next spring, I have leftovers to start my tests.  Fingers crossed.

Nancy Hinton is the chef at La Table des Jardins Sauvages, a woodland table specializing in wild plants and mushrooms, outside of Montreal.  You can read about her food adventures on her blog Soup Nancy.