Last week received an invitation from someone named Dan Perreault to come down and take a look at his maple-candy producing outfit in Mirabel (somewhat in our own backyard.)
As I'm a bit of a maple candy fan, I decided to take him up on the offer. His place, Maison Sucré Tremblant, is just outside St-Eustache on highway 148—a fair drive from Montreal, but not if you're not driving, which I wasn't.
Dan Perreault is a strapping fellow at 6-feet 2-odd, kind of lumberjack-like, and exactly what I expected a Maple farmer to look like!
He showed us around the place, a sprawling 2-acre maple grove, and explained the various workings of the maple industry. Quebec easily leads the world in production, outputting at least 20,000 litres of the stuff yearly—four times that of the United States, and maybe ten times that of the rest of Canada.
All very well, thought I, but when do we get to taste? Patience, patience was the watchword, for in due course we reached the Holy Grail—the maple candy shop. For those of you who don't know, maple candy is that delicious, crumbly, solid-honey-in-a-maple-leaf delicacy that fairly yells "Winter, Canada, French-Canadian, rustic, tooth decay."
Munching a heavenly petal from one of these divine creations, I professed my ignorance at how they were made. Some sort of solidifying syrup process, perhaps?
"That's the common misperception," Dan sighed, "but it's actually a lot simpler than that."
He brought us around to a vast concourse in the middle of a clearing in the maple groves, where an astonishing sight greeted us. There were rows upon rows of tables, all covered with aluminum trays, and seemingly millions of perfect, green maple leaves laid out upon them in hundreds of neat rows. "Rangées, we call them," said Dan. But what was going on here? I asked.
He led us to one corner of the group of tables, where there seemed to be fewer maple leaves, and I saw upon coming closer that it wasn't that there were fewer maple leaves—it was that they had become tidy rows of perfect little maple candies! "Try one," Dan said, and I did. Wow! Talk about fresh! One could still taste a hint of chlorophyll, a grassy, autumn taste that suffused the taste buds and threatened to send me into a dreamlike state.
"Tastes a bit like leaf, eh?" Dan chuckled, and I nodded vigourously, because it did! What was this? I asked. I'd never tasted a maple candy quite like that.
"It's because it's still a bit raw," he explained. "Come on, I'll show you."
He led us over a few tables, and I was able to get a closeup look at the leaves. A couple of workers were spraying the leaves out of what looked like watering cans.
"The fresh leaves are harvested while still in the maximum state of verdancy," he explained, "and are then carefully sorted according to size and grade." I still didn't understand. What on earth for? Where were the pails of syrup and the distilling machines etc. etc. that I thought went into the processing of maple candy?
Dan laughed. "That's just a misconception," he said. "Everyone, but everyone thinks we do it that way. It's actually much simpler. If we had to do it that way we'd all soon be out of business, I can assure you!"
It seems that after they are graded and sorted, the fresh green leaves are then arranged in order of potency—that is, the ability to produce goodly amounts of candy base—and sprayed with a light solution of clear glycogen compound. "Then they're angled to get the maximum benefit of the late harvesting season sun's rays. Nature takes it from there."
The phytochemicals in the leaf structure begin to break down, Dan explained, and the glycogen compound helps convert them first into an amber, sticky toffeelike resin as the inner chlorophyll-bearing cells of the maple leaf dissolve around it.
"Then we add the R2, which pushes them into the final candy-conversion stage." And what was R2? "Hush-hush!" he said conspiratorially, and then laughed. "Actually, it's just a mixture of water, a small amount of alcohol and flavourings. It stimulates the individual maple sugar seeds to expand at the cellular level."
I went over to one of the tables and lifted up a perfect candy in the shape of a maple leaf. Although it seemed like a crude approximation of a real leaf, if you looked closely enough, you could see the fine tracery of leaf veins. Did he mean that this was a direct product of a green maple leaf? "Well, that one's not quite finished yet, but when it is, in about a week, yes, it'll look just like the candy you buy at the store."
Wow! talk about an eye-opener. I found out that if one is in the good graces of the maple candy farm owner, he'll sometimes let you have a box of the leaves when they're not quite converted to candy. "You put it in the sun in your kitchen window," said Dan, "and in a couple of days you'll have the freshest stuff this side of paradise!"
Needless to say, I persuaded him to give up a couple of boxes! Now excuse me while I go rotate them in the sun!
