Food Junta

Good morning sports fans, and merry belated Winter Olympics. Weren’t they great, these past few weeks? Rushing home after work to catch some sweet biathlon footage only to find… really? More ice dancing? Okay, seriously, how many rounds of this are there? But in spite of tape delays, ice dancers and Apolo Ono’s soul patch, there was as always a lot to love about the Winter Olympics. I know that the image of a crowded late-night sports bar with half a dozen massive flat screens turned to a curling match is one I will cherish for years to come.

The host of these past games, Canada, is a surprisingly large country located somewhere north of Seattle, and as the photo above clearly shows, its chief exports include hockey players, beer, and maple syrup. Okay, so there’s no maple syrup in the photo (and honestly one of those silver bullets looks suspiciously like a Coors Lite), but I have it on good authority that the amber stuff is a treasured national resource. Brown gold. Canada-C. You know, like Texas Tea? Oh forget it. Tonight, as a tribute to our hockey overlords north of the border, and as part of Food Junta’s ongoing wall-to-wall Olympics coverage, I present to you: bourbon maple syrup. Swifter, higher, stronger! Sweeter, tipsier, earlier!

Times have changed since Nick Charles woke up and asked for “a drop of something to cut the phlegm” in Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, and nowadays whiskey in the morning may not seem like the breakfast of champions, but bourbon and maple syrup are a natural combination of flavors. I had never mixed the two over breakfast before, but the pairing is by no means original: big-name distillers Evan Williams and Jim Beam have their own brands of pancake syrup, while on the bartending side maple syrup has become a popular ingredient at whiskey joints. And in Michigan one chef’s brand of maple syrup, aged in bourbon casks, has earned the closest thing America has to a royal warrant: “it’s one of Oprah’s favorites.”

Yet despite the great taste, the marketing, and all the Oprah-atic fervor, finding a recipe to make bourbon maple syrup at home proved to be a challenge, an emotional voyage, a journey of redemption; indeed, it would take heart, passion, spirit and determination, along with grit and an almost superhuman will to succeed, in order to endure all of the Google searches necessary to reach that one proud, golden, magic moment where –

What? Sorry, I’ve watched too much Bob Costas lately. Anyway I ultimately triumphed over adversity and found two recipes, one with a little liquor, one with a lot. The first proposed flaming vanilla beams (sliced open, seeds scraped out) in 2 tablespoons of whiskey, with the remnants being poured into 1 cup of syrup. Problem was, most of the liquid evaporated in the flames, leaving only a very (very) subtle vanilla flavor. Maple syrup is pretty damn good by itself, and this recipe just doesn’t add enough to be worthwhile. As long as I’m quoting literary booze-hounds in this post, Henry Chinaski famously said, “If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don’t even start.” I assume he was talking about spiking maple syrup, and so today’s recipe, as if you even had to ask, is the one with a lot of booze. It is delicious.

This recipe is very simple, with two pretty obvious main ingredients. First, the booze: I know that bourbon is from Kentucky, not Canada, and I know that there’s even a brand of whiskey called Canadian Club, which really would’ve fit better into the whole narrative of this year’s Olympics. But Canadian whiskey is rye whiskey. Bourbon is sweeter and has a stronger taste, and for our maple-flavoring purposes it seemed like the best choice. So now it’s a NAFTA recipe, sue me.

On to ingredient #2: maple syrup, like ice dancing, has been plagued by scoring controversies. In your average supermarket’s maple syrup aisle (hey, a guy can dream right?), Grade A maple seems like the obvious choice. But be warned, syrup grades are based on purity, not quality. Grade A wins its high marks for being sweeter and lighter colored because it’s been filtered more – because there’s less maple in it. If I just wanted sweetness from my syrup I’d save money and boil sugar cubes. Don’t take the maple out of our syrup! Buy the darker, more flavorful Grade B!

But uh… angry mobs aside, all maple syrup is pretty delicious. And here, arguably, is how to make it better:

Bourbon Maple Syrup

Adapted, oddly enough, from this kosher butternut squash bisque recipe.

1 cup bourbon

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup maple syrup

Optional: 2 vanilla beans (de-seeded) or a drop of vanilla extract

Stir brown sugar into bourbon over low heat until the mixture is thickened, reduced by half. Add maple syrup, simmer for 3 to 5 minutes and let cool to room temperature. I might also suggest adding a couple of vanilla beans (surprisingly expensive) or a drop of vanilla extract during the simmering – adding the one highlight of the first recipe to the strong caramel, maple and bourbon flavors of the second.

Naturally you’ll need some sort of syrup delivery device at this point. Kevin’s Johnny cakes recipe from a couple weeks ago would be an obvious choice. Vanilla ice cream, it turns out, is another perfect match. But I, as usual, fell back on my Dad’s pancakes. This recipe, one of the first things I ever learned to cook, makes pancakes that are a little smaller, denser, and more flavorful than your average fat, fluffy diner flapjacks.

Dad’s Pancakes

Serves 2

Dry:

1 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

1 Tbsp sugar

Wet:

1 cup liquid

1 egg

1 Tbsp oil

• Flour: I use 1/3 all purpose flour, 1/3 cornmeal, 1/3 white whole wheat flower. Collecting all those different flours may sound like a pain, but the flavor is well worth the effort and certainly got me hooked – I remember one morning years ago I woke up and discovered my parents were out of cornmeal flour, and I was so fixated on these pancakes that I decided it was worth my while spending 30 minutes using a mortar and pestle to grind polenta (which we did have)  into flour.

• Liquid: I use buttermilk for pancakes, regular milk for waffles. Double the oil for waffles. And if you really get wrapped up in the spirit (ugh, unintentional pun) of your boozy breakfast, go ahead and add a tablespoon of whiskey to the batter too. It’ll add a slight flavor and aroma to the finished product.

When the syrup was mixed, the pancakes fried, and the waffles… ironed?… I invited a handful of hungry friends over, and with Pat, a real, honest-to-Gretzky citizen of Canada, presiding over the festivities, we sat down to ponder whether maple syrup could really be improved. Now I love the stuff at least as much as the next guy, and I still don’t know if today’s recipe is really an improvement. But it is delicious, and it is different: slightly more liquidy, and with a rich caramel flavor. As Kevin mentioned in his Johnny cakes post, even old favorites can use a new twist some times, and it’s always worth experimenting with booze in your food.

Remember the Olympic motto, folks: The most important thing is not to win but to take part. I’m Bob Costas. Good night, America.

Tags: booze, maple syrup, pancakes, waffles, whiskey, Winter Olympics