Beaver Tails in Ottawa

Beavers Tail is a fried dough pastry that resembles beaver's tail. It comes with large variety of toppings, one on the left is with apple and one on the right is with maple syrup and maple butter. Very delicious!

Butter tarts

Butter tart is a true Canadian dessert. There are many different variations of it, runny, gooey, firm, with raisins, without raisins, with pecan, without pecans, chocolate...just name it. And there are probably as many recipes as there are Canadian grandmothers. Butter tarts are very sweet and when made with pecans they remind of baklava. Like the recipe that follows. These are also gooey, which is my favorite butter tart consistency.

Butter tarts

recipe adapted from here

makes 6

70 g flour

15 g ground toasted pecans

58 g butter

pinch of salt

about 1 tbsp cold water 

Cut the butter into small cubes, add flour, pecans, salt and with a pastry blender or food processor blend until you have grainy texture with some pea-size pieces of butter. Slowly add water and blend until everything comes together. Wrap and put in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
When the dough has chilled roll it out, cut out, line 6 muffin cups (or similar) and put in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. I use silicone molds (oval, each holding 100 gr water) as it is very easy to take out the tarts in case the filling leaks, which it almost always does.

Heat over to 200 C and blind bake the tart shells for about 15 min. Remove the beans and bake for another 10 min or until golden. 

In the meantime  make the filling.

40 g brown sugar
40 g maple syrup
40 g golden syrup
30 g melted butter
30 g egg
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vinegar
about 10 toasted pecan halves


Whisk all above ingredients except for pecans. Remove the shells from the oven and rise oven temperature to 230 C. Divide pecans over the shells and pour the filling into each shell. Bake tarts for about 10-15 minutes.

Maple butter

Despite the name the maple butter does not contain any dairy butter. It is made of pure maple syrup that has been boiled to a certain temperature and then stirred. It is very very sweet and used as spread on toast, scones or glaze on cakes. I use it sometimes instead of honey. Tastes wonderful with sourdough bread.

Maple syrup tart

The maple syrup tart should be as famous as the chocolate tart. This Québécois recipe proves it, c'est magnifique.

The crust is flaky, very buttery and not sweet at all. Do not be tempted to use your favourite crust recipe. Use this one. It is perfect pair for the sweet, sweet maple filling. Thin slices of this tart will go long way and it tastes even better the next day. If you have dark maple syrup this a perfect occasion to use it.

Maple syrup tart
Recipe from here
112 gr cold butter
137 gr flour
about 35 gr cold water
pinch of salt
Cut the butter into small cubes, add flour and with a pastry blender or food processor blend until you have grainy texture with tiny (about 3 mm) pieces of butter. Slowly add water and blend until everything comes together. Wrap and put in the fridge for 2 hours or more.

200 gr maple syrup
60 gr cream 
50 gr butter
1/2 tbsp flour
80 gr eggs (about 2 small)

In a saucepan bring maple syrup and cream to boil. Remove from heat, add butter and flour and stir everything together. Set aside to cool. 

Preheat the oven to 190C. Roll the dough and line a 20 cm tart tin, the dough should come up the side by about 3 cm. Keep the left over dough as you might need it to fill any cracks in the baked shell. But keep it outside the fridge as it needs to be soft. Blind bake for about 20 min, then remove the beans and parchment paper and bake for another 15-20 min until golden. 
Because of the high amount of butter, this crust is going to shrink by 1/2 cm, which is totally ok.

Add eggs to the cooled maple syrup, mix well. If the shell has any big visible cracks cover them with the left over dough, pressing very lightly. Pour the maple filling into the hot tart shell as soon as you can. If you pour it into a cool crust the filling will find all tiny cracks to escape through. Hot tart shell makes sure that the filling cooks as soon as you pour it in. Decrease oven temperature to 150C and bake the tart for another 25 - 30 min.Voilà!

Dark maple syrup

In Canada maple syrup is sold from light in colour to very dark in colour. The darker the maple syrup is the more intense the maple flavour will be. The colour depends on the time in the season the maple sap was collected, the later in the season the darker the maple syrup.

In a souvenir shop...

How is Maple Syrup made?

We had an amazing opportunity to visit a sugarbush farm in Ontario, Canada and saw the whole process of making maple syrup.

Buckets are hanging on the trees and collecting the sap that is literally dripping from small spouts that have been bored in the trees. Big maple bush farms have hoses that are connecting all the trees.

On a good day one tree can give about 12 litres of maple sap. The season runs usually between mid March until end of April, depending on the outside temperature.

The temperature must be minus during the night and plus during the day for the sap to flow. At some point starch in the trunk converts into sugar and when the temperature is plus degrees during the day the sugary sap goes all the way up in the trunk, and when the temperature drops during the night the sap goes all the way down and is caught by the spouts.

The sugar level is measured with an aerometer and the sap contains about 2 % sugar, no more. Basically most of it is water and that is why it does not have the nice colour the maple syrup has. We tasted it and it has absolutely no taste. 

After many many hours of boiling in special machines the most of the water evaporates and the end product is left with 67 % of sugar and it looks and tastes like the maple syrup we know.

Before visiting the maple bush I always thought that the maple syrup comes out of the tree looking as in the supermarket :-). But there is so much patience and labour behind the whole process. Thank you Canadian First Nation people for figuring out how to do this.

Obatzda - Bavarian cheese-spread

Obatzda is Bavarian cheese-spread that can be found on the menu in every beer-garden. Every beer-garden has its own spice mixture that is added to the cheese. Some of the spices often used are sweet paprika, caraway, onions and beer. There are probably as many variations as there are beer-gardens.

Obatzda
original recipe in German
250 gr Camembert (at room temperature)
1 tbsp soft butter
1 small finely chopped onion
salt & pepper
some sweet paprika
some ground caraway seeds
4 tbsp wheat beer (Weißbier)

rye bread

Mix well Camembert and butter. Add all the spices and as much beer as you need to get a creamy spread. Let it sit for at least an hour so that all flavours develop. Obatzda should be eaten on the same day it is made. If you plan to serve it the next day cook the onion in some oil until soft, cool and add to the mixture.  Obatzda is best eaten on a slice of rye bread.

New chocolate from Yogi Tea!

Yogi Tea has started making chocolate! I have tried their Cinnamon Spice and Mexican Spice chocolates and they are so good. Although Cinnamon Spice was tasting more like the traditional Mexican drinking chocolate than the Mexican Spice chocolate it self. But I did enjoy both very much so!

Mole

Mole is a traditional Mexican sauce, usually made with different chili peppers and many other spices which all give mole its amazing flavour. I love it.

I have been intimidated to make mole for a very long time.  Mostly because it was a completely new subject to me, I was not familiar with preparing anything like mole. Even a Mexican person will tell you how complicated it is to make it.

Then one day I met someone who actually had made mole from scratch.  And I was told that as long as you can find all different chili peppers (quite difficult when not living in Mexico) it is not hard at all. But that it does take time to make it.
So I gave it a shot. And I am glad I did.

So I am reconfirming, it is not hard at all. It just takes time, you will need about good 3 hours. I usually roast and fry all the ingredients the night before and the next day I puree and cook. 

I use this recipe. The things I have changed from the original recipe are:

• I roast chili peppers and tortilla in a dry cast iron skillet, no oil.

• For frying the rest of the ingredients I use grape-seed oil and a bit less than a half a cup.

• I do not use the extra sugar as Mexican chocolate gives enough sweetness.

• I cook mole until is quite thick (see picture) because most of it goes to the freezer. The recipe really gives a lot and it works excellent to freeze it. When you are ready to have it just put it in the fridge the night before and then add to some hot chicken stock.

Now back to the chili peppers. In Mexico there is a huge variety of dried chili peppers and when they are dried they get a completely new name. For example chili chipotle is a dried version of a fresh jalapeño chili.

Here you can see all four chili peppers used in the recipe, from the left: mulato, ancho, pasilla and chipotle meco.