Had an amusing breakfast with my wife

[thewayne]

I made an egg scramble with grilled chicken/apple sausages for us. The egg scramble is essentially an omelette, just scrambled: three different herb blends plus a new Trader Joe's umami/mushroom mix. Quite tasty.

Anyway, as we are wont to do, I break out the maple syrup for such breakfasts. I recently finished off our supply of Grade A and bought a jug of Grade B. For those not in the know, Grade A is Light Amber, B is Dark Amber. And it is definitely dark!

I asked Russet what she thought of the B, and she liked it though she wasn't certain. Having licked my plate, as one does when one is at home, I said I thought I might like the A a little better. She thought maybe we could do a comparison, and I brought up maybe we could blend the two.

'Artisanal New Mexico Maple Syrup: it has a certain terroir reminiscant to that of Hatch chilis.'

Comments

[acelightning]

I spent a lot of time in New Hampshire when I was a kid, and I got to know a lot about maple products. I always go for the Grade B maple syrup, which has more maple flavor - even if it's just to put on my pancakes/waffles/french toast. For cooking, the Grade B is even better, because if you're cooking with maple syrup you want something to taste MAPLE, and the grade B adds more of the flavor. I use maple syrup in the brine for my November turkey. It works well as an ingredient in barbecue sauces. And have you ever tried maple syrup over plain vanilla ice cream?

[thewayne]

I've never considered maple syrup in brine - I'll have to give that a shot the next time I do that!  In fact, I think I'll pick up some chicken breasts just for that!  It's been a while since I bought vanilla ice cream, I tend to get mint chocolate chip and a double dark chocolate gelato, I don't buy as much ice cream as I used to since I was smote with a kidney stone last year and there's apparently an increased chance if you eat a lot of ice cream and drink a lot of iced tea, and it was easier to cut back on ice cream and substitute some gelato: higher quality, less quantity.

[acelightning]

For a 2 to 3 pound rolled turkey breast: 1/2 cup grade B maple syrup, 1/2 cup kosher salt, 1/2 cup Harvey's Bristol Cream Sherry, 2 tb dark soy sauce, maybe a tablespoon each of black peppercorns (and a few Sichuan peppercorns if you have 'em) and whole allspice berries, and a bunch of dried rosemary leaves crushed between your fingers. Add a cup or so of water and boil it all up to get everything combined. Let it cool, then add enough cold water to submerge your turkey breast (or whatever), and let it marinate overnight. Mix together a little sherry and a little more dark soy, then paint the whole surface of the meat with this before cooking. If you have time to let this dry, then smear the whole piece with softened butter. Roast at 325° F until the internal temperature reaches about 170. Cool before slicing.

And you can put syrup on vanilla gelato. Or even on chocolate gelato or ice cream. There used to be a maple-syrup vanilla yogurt, but I haven't seen it in years.

[thewayne]

I've certainly seen maple syrup ice cream in the past, but not recently.  I have low expectations of what to find in the local grocers and allow myself to be surprised.  Thanks for the recipe, I'll check it out - don't see why I couldn't do it with chicken, though it's been a couple of years since I've done a turkey so maybe I'll have a look at turkey breasts!  Have you ever tried a sweet tea brine with chicken?  It's a very interesting thing.

[acelightning]

Instead of a rolled turkey breast, you could brine a 3-pound "roaster" chicken. If you try to brine chicken parts (breasts, drumsticks, wings, etc.), they get over-brined and have a sort of squishy texture when they're fully cooked. Just get some kind of bird of a convenient size.

I utterly loathe sweet tea. When I drink tea, it tastes only of tea, not of sugar nor lemon juice nor herbs that aren't tea. I do occasionally use leftover brewed tea instead of broth in stir-fries, because I don't always have broth around. My ancestors all came through New England, hence the summers in New Hampshire. We put sugar in our cornbread, not in our tea! ;-)

[thewayne]

I agree about tea: I never sweeten it anymore, but we've done some interesting things with tea brines to use up some teas that otherwise I was going to throw away.

[acelightning]

Brewed tea can be useful when you need a liquid for something savory. Or you could freeze the tea into ice cubes, which you can use to add an extra flavor note to a sauce, beverage, or whatever.