Birch syrup comes from the sap of Canadian white birch trees. For maple syrup it takes about 40 litres of sap to create one litre. To make birch syrup the amount of sap required is doubled or even tripled. Needless to say, birch syrup is expensive, but a small amount goes far. The taste is really nothing like maple syrup. I find it slightly sweet, bitter, and sour all at once. Sort of like a tangy molasses.

Birch syrup goes well with salmon as a glaze, and also with pork. I picked up a nice piece of wild salmon and decided to make a birch syrup glaze.

Birch Syrup Glaze

1 T butter
2 T white wine
2 T onion, finely minced
1 small bay leaf
some ground black pepper
4 T birch syrup
1 T grainy mustard
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
sea salt, to taste

Melt the butter in a small pan. When the butter has stopped foaming add the onion. Cook gently until it softens then add the wine, bay leaf, and pepper. Cook until the wine is mostly evaporated. Add the birch syrup, mustard and balsamic vinegar. Stir well. Cook on medium-low heat until a syrupy consistency is attained. Season to taste with the salt and perhaps some more balsamic vinegar.

I brushed this glaze on the salmon after I had crisped-up the salmon skin and flipped the fillet. I didn’t want to over-caramalize the glaze by brushing it on the fish at the beginning and searing on high heat. The birch syrup already has a very strong taste of caramel to begin with.

Just returned home from a vacation in Nova Scotia. It’s a very beautiful part of the world.

Aside from seafood, blueberries are in abundance. We were staying at a friend’s house in Fall River which is near Halifax. The day we arrived I went outside next to the small woods, where some wild blueberry bushes were growing on the rocks. Picking the berries on the low-bush plants is back-breaking work. There are also high-bush berries that are bigger and easier to pick, which tend to be the ones we get in the supermarket. The wild berries are generally smaller and more intense in flavour.

The red squirrel was chattering away above me, perhaps expressing some concern that I was in his patch. The final tally was 2 ½ cups — enough for a classic Nova Scotian dessert.

Wild Blueberry Buckle

6 T butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 T yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 1/2 cups wild blueberries

Topping:
3 T butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line an 8 by 8 baking pan with parchment paper. Cream the butter and sugar, then add the eggs, yogurt and vanilla extract. Mix well.

In another bowl mix the flour, salt and baking powder. Stir into the wet ingredients. Put the batter into the lined cake pan. Put the berries on top of the cake batter, pressing the berries in.

For the topping, cut the cold butter into the flour and sugar to form a coarse mixture that looks like small pebbles. Sprinkle on top of the berries.

Bake for about 40 minutes. Test the centre of the cake to make sure it has cooked through.

Serve with ice cream or vanilla yogurt.

Looking back I’m thinking this dessert would be best served British-style, which to me is the tart with lashings of crème anglaise poured over the top, not around the perimeter.  Red currants, mint and icing sugar are completely optional. A good cup of milky tea is in order.

There are many variations on bolognese sauce. Probably as many as those who cook it. Traditionally though the sauce is packed with meat and not much tomato. This is unlike a lot of spag bol sauces which go heavy on the tomato sauce.

Here is my attempt which uses fresh tomatoes and long-simmering. No canned tomatoes or tomato paste.

some sliced garlic
olive oil
2 carrots, fine dice
2 celery stalks, fine dice
1 onion, fine dice
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup red wine
10 oz steak, minced
16 oz pork, minced
10 plum tomatoes, peeled, diced
2 T balsamic vinegar
fresh basil
sprig fresh rosemary
wild oregano (dried)
salt
black pepper

Some of these ingredients are non-standard, but it turned out nicely. Necessity is the mother of invention.

First make your soffritto which I take as finely diced onion, carrot and celery. Known as a mirepoix in France. One thing you might want to add is some diced pancetta, which is a classic ingredient in a bolognese sauce.

Heat the oil in a large pot and add the sliced garlic cloves. Remove them when they start to turn golden brown. Then add the soffritto. Turn the heat down a bit so that the vegetables soften gently.

When the soffritto has softened up add the bay leaf and the meat. I diced a couple of pork chops and a piece of sirloin steak. Feel free to use minced pork and beef. Personally I like the meat to have more texture in a rustic sauce such as this. Cook the meat until it is no longer pink. At this point add the wine. I used a half cup of chianti classico, in keeping with the adage that one should only cook with wine that one would enjoy drinking. This happened to be a mighty fine wine. Stir the pot and reduce the wine down a bit.

Now add the tomatoes. I blanched the plum tomatoes in boiling water for a few seconds, immediately removing them to a bowl of cold running water. They were then peeled and chopped.

I found the tomatoes added enough liquid to the sauce, but you could add a bit of water or stock at this point. If you use canned tomatoes they tend to have quite a lot of liquid so this won’t be an issue. Turn down the heat to a bare simmer. Season lightly with some sea salt and black pepper. Not too much because the sauce will reduce and concentrate flavours. Cover the pot and walk away.

After about an hour add the herbs — a bunch of fresh basil, one sprig of rosemary and some dried wild oregano (from Greece –  I remember my Italian cooking prof telling me to go light on the oregano “Because it’s too Greek.” — Sorry.)

Stir in the herbs and put the lid back on. Simmer on low for at least another hour. Check the pot sometimes to make sure there is enough liquid.

When it looks like you have a nice thick sauce, stir in some balsamic vinegar (totally optional — I liked it, and Modena is just down the road from Bologna) and adjust the seasoning.

The pasta here is kamut penne. Kamut is an ancient wheat believed to have originated in Egypt. The pasta has almost a buttery richness while being coarse-textured. It stands up well to the robustness of the sauce.