Maple Orange Chipotle Chicken

Wow! That’s a mouthful! Maple Orange Chipotle Chicken. It actually kind of rolls off the tongue. That’s because this is an amazing dish, it’s easy to make and it is divine. This is one of my go-to dishes when I have people over for dinner that are “not eating” a million and one foods for whatever reason. This recipe is even paleo – whatever that is, ANYONE can eat it and it is amazing. Wait, actually, this is not a vegetarian dish so I guess there is a large group of people who can’t eat it.

Maple, orange and chipotle go so beautifull together but the kicker here is the herbes de provence; they don’t sound like they would be that good together but trust me they are GLORIOUS!

Here is my admission. This is one of my favourite chicken recipes but it is one that I found on the internet and the only thing I change is that I use maple syrup instead of honey. Here is the original recipe by Elana Amsterdam.

Maple Orange Chipotle Chicken

Ingredients
Enough pieces of chicken breast, leg, thigh, or drumstick for your guests
Or
1 whole chicken
3 garlic cloves, pressed
1 and a half tablespoons of Herbes de Provence
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 cup of dark maple syrup
1 and a half tablespoons of chipotle powder (I use mango chipotle because Robert is a spice baby)
1 and a half cups of fresh squeezed orange juice (The fresh squeezed is important. I tried this recipe with store bought orange juice and it was not very good at all)

Method
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Put your chicken into a 9×13 glass or no stick baking dish
In a bowl combine garlic, herbes de provence, maple syrup, salt, and chipotle powder
Pour the orange juice over your chicken
Rub the maple mixture onto the chicken make sure that every piece of the chicken is covered
Marinate the chicken for a few hours. You can also cook it right away but it is better if it gets a few hours in the maple bath
Sprinkle just a little more chipotle powder onto each piece of chicken or the top of the chicken
Bake for 25-30 minutes for breasts, thighs, drums or 1.5-2 hours for the whole chicken

Serve it with with rice or baby potatoes or on a salad. You won’t be disappointed by this and neither will your guests.

 

Maple Rosemary Chicken

This is one of my most asked for recipes at the Farmer’s Markets. Usually it is my daughter, Kim, extolling the virtues of this recipe.

When Kim was younger she swore she hated maple syrup (all syrups, jams, and jellies to be exact.)  About 10 years ago I made this chicken recipe and Kim DEVOURED it, I don’t even think she chewed. “Oh my god Mom! What did you do to this chicken?! It’s AMAZING,” she exclaimed. I must have done the super-villain cackle, why I smothered it with maple syrup. That is the moment she stopped “hating” maple syrup.

She tells people at the market about her Maple-Come-To-Jesus-Moment and then proceeds to tell them this recipe. I would be willing to bet that no one has actually remembered it enough to make it, it really should have been one of the first things to go on this blog. Oh well, it’s going on now.

Maple Rosemary Chicken

Ingredients 
Chicken breast or drumsticks or thighs or whole roast chicken
1 Cup of maple syrup
1/4 cup of lemon juice (fresh or bottled)
3 garlic cloves (or two if you’t not big into garlic)
3 sprigs of fresh rosemary. Or 3 teaspoons of chopped rosemary
1/4 cup of grapeseed oil (or any cooking oil you like)

For this recipe you can use dried rosemary but I really wouldn’t recommend it, it is just not quite the same.

Method
Take out a medium sized mixing bowl
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees  or turn on the BBQ, however you are planning to do it.
Add maple syrup, lemon juice and oil into the mixing bowl
Chop the garlic or run it through a garlic press put it in the mixing bowl
Finely chop the rosemary, chop it as fine as you can get it and add it to the mixing bowl
Take out a 9×12 casserole dish (or really whatever size dish will fit your chicken, but make sure it is decently deep for the marinade)
Put your chicken in the dish and pour your mixture on top
Work it in with your hands and make sure every piece of the chicken is covered in marinade with enough left for the bottom on the dish. I KNOW, some of you can’t handle touching chicken, in this case just work it in well with a spoon or a spatula or something – ya weirdo.
Bake or BBQ the chicken breasts or thighs or drums in the oven at 375 degrees for about 25-30 minutes or until the chicken is no longer pink.
BBQing is up to you. I love this dish BBQ’d
YUM! I LOVE this dish!!

 

Maple Banana Bread Smoothie

I’ll let you in a little secret. We at Good Stuff Maple enjoy drinking… welllll three quarters of us do.

Ok, that sounds like we enjoy getting fall-down-can’t-feel-my-face drunk. Not true. But we really enjoy wine, beer, and the occasional cocktail. That’s why we decided we were going to come up with a few signature maple cocktails.

While we were scouring the internet for inspiration we came across a TON of maple smoothie recipes and we started trying them all.

While you wait for the signature maple cocktail recipes I thought I would gift you with a the best maple smoothie we came across and modified it to our tastes.

Fr this recipe you are going to need some sort of blender. We subscribe to the magic bullet (yeah, we were enthralled by those crazy infomercials) but if you have a Vitamix or a Blendtech all the power to you! Also, I am insanely jealous, I want a vitamix sooooo bad!!!

Banana Maple Smoothie

We found a ton of banana maple smoothie recipes. This is kind of a blend of all of them. The version I preferred my daughter hasn’t tried with the pecans because she has a nut allergy. Poor thing will never know the beauty of pecans, oh well! I like to call this one banana bread smoothie.

Ingredients
1 over ripe banana
3/4 cup of vanilla greek yogurt
3/4 cup of milk or soy milk or almond milk
2 tblspoons of chopped pecans (also optional)
2 tablespoons of dark (no. 3) Maple Syrup
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
1 cup of ice
1/4 cup of oats (very optional. Depends on your love of oats. If you do add the oats up the milk to 1 full cup)

Method
Do you really need to me to tell you about the method? Put all this shit in a blender and blend it until it is the consistency you like. If you add the oats or the pecans you are going to have to blend it longer. Unless you have a vitamix.
MAN, do I ever covet the vitamix.

 

 

 

 

 

Maple Poached Eggs (Quebec Style)

Robert grew up in rural Quebec surrounded by sugar maple trees, in what is known as a cabane a sucre. You should see him at the market, he plays the spoons and has a marionette type doll that dances by bouncing on a board. This years market season I am going to take a video of it and post it to our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages.

What I am trying to say is that he is one of the most Quebecois people you will find – at least in western Canada. The Quebec sugar culture is proudly represented in Alberta by him and my family has grown richer because of it, we regularly eat tourtiere, tarte a sucre and creton because of him (apparently that has not extended to my computer keyboard where I will never have the proper french accents.)  One thing we won’t be eating because of Robert’s influence is maple poached eggs, he can’t stand them. I only know about them because on a rare occasion Robert would mention them while turning up his nose but he did say that people LOVE them.

I have scoured the internet looking for recipes and I have found that many of them say to poach the eggs in straight maple syrup; however Robert swears up and down it is supposed to be done in boiling sap just before it has turned into maple syrup, so maple syrup with added water is the way to go.

Maple Poached Eggs

Ingredients 
3-4 eggs. Really this is dependant on how hungry you are or how many people are eating.
1/4 cup of water
1 Cup of dark Maple Syrup

Method
Combine Maple Syrup and water in a small sauce pan and mix it together so that they have conjoined
Bring the water/syrup mix to a boil and then reduce heat to medium
Gently crack the eggs into the water . You can do more than one at a time, but it really depends on the size of your pot. You want your eggs to have the ability to be completely submerged.
Cook for 3-5 minutes, depending on how you like your eggs. 3 minutes for a soft-poach and 5 for a harder yolk.
Ladle out your eggs with a spoon and you would usually add some of the maple syrup on top, but it’s up to you. Depends on what you are wanting to put them on, in my house poached eggs go right onto a nice piece of dense, dark, seedy, toast.  Or over Christmas it goes right on my home made crumpets.
Eat them right up

Thanks anokarina from Flickr for putting this great poached egg pic out on a Creative Commons License

Maple Taffy / Tire Sur La Neige

Maple taffy or tire sur la neige (tire) is one of the most Canadian things in existence. Like: beavers, mounties, hockey and the maple leaf, eating maple taffy screams I AM CANADIAN.

Actually, it screams I AM IN QUEBEC. Or in the case of Calgarians I GO TO A FRENCH IMMERSION SCHOOL.

At the market the western Canadians that ask us about taffy/tire usually are children (or have children) in french immersion school, french immersion schools are some of the few places that can do a proper maple taffy in Alberta. Why? Because french immersion schools are about the only place in Alberta you are allowed to pour taffy on the snow. Fun fact, the health inspector HATES it when you pour edible food on snow. And not just because of the risk of dog pee, go figure.

While we cannot pour the syrup on snow we will occasionally make it for winter markets and Robert will slap some taffy onto chopsticks and hand them out. Want to see delighted people? Hand them a stick full of maple taffy.

Because Robert has developed arthritis in his hands that tradition is coming to an end, so I figured we will put the recipe up on the blog and then the myriads of taffy seeking disappointed people can learn to make it themselves.

Ingredients
2 cups of pure maple syrup. You can use medium or dark depending on your taste preference, a lot of people really like this done with dark syrup.
I say two cups depending on how much you want. When you make taffy it will lose 2/3 of it’s volume.
Popsicle sticks or wooden chopsticks
Candy thermometer – You don’t HAVE to use a candy thermometer but I HIGHLY recommend it. Like really really really recommend it. Especially for rookies.

Method
Butter the rim of a tall pot. It doesn’t have to be butter it can be any kind of fat. Bacon Grease or lard etc. Robert swears that this will prevent the taffy foam from boiling over
Fill your pot no high than two-thirds of the way full to help prevent it from boiling over. (There’s a reason the Quebecois tend to do this over an open fire)
Stick in your candy thermometer.
Bring the syrup to a slow boil. So put it on a medium low heat. This whole process should take an hour to an hour and a half. SLOW BOIL
You are going to have the urge to stir it. Stop that urge. DO NOT STIR the taffy, it will make it sugary.
The syrup It will boil at 104 degrees for half an hour to an hour
DO NOT STIR If you stir you end up with sugar.
When the thermometer reads  112-115 it is perfect. If you boil it over 115 it will turn to sugar.
As Soon as it reaches that temperature, you pour it onto the snow in strips.
Use your popsicle sticks to roll up the taffy and then lick it up.
OR
If you don’t have snow at your disposal, are adverse to pouring it onto snow or are wanting to save it from the occasional taffy snack.
Once the syrup reaches 112 to 115 cool it quickly.
Put the pot in an ice bath to cool it as quickly as you can.
If you want to freeze pour a little bit of water on top and freeze it the water will stop it from crystalizing.

Maple Oatmeal Cookies

I woke up on New Years Day sick as a dog. I don’t mean the: daintily-sneeze-and-look-somewhat-ill… I mean the: My-face-is-trying-to-fall -off-of-my-face-dear-god-how-many-times-can-a-person-sneeze kind of head cold sick.

Last night I realized that all I wanted was for someone to make me some maple oatmeal cookies. I sure as hell am not going to be the one making them, I can’t be away from kleenex long enough to make them – I just really wanted someone to make them for me.

Unfortunately for me, no one is going to do that. I don’t want Robert to do it because god knows what kind of cookies we would end up with and no one else is around.

I decided I should post the recipe and maybe one of you will make them and send them to me. Or at very least maybe you’ll make them and tell me how awesome they were.

Ingredients
½ C shortening
1 ½ C all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt ( I do not use)
1 C maple syrup Darker the better
½ C Milk
1 egg beaten

**the last three ingredients
1 ½ C oatmeal
½ C raisins
½ C chopped nuts.  ( I use Cranberries as I have a child with nut allergy in my home)

Method
Preheat oven to 375
Grease Cookie Sheet
Combine the first seven ingredients together in a large bowl and mix well.
Add in the last three ingredients and mix well again. To be honest I am not really sure why you don’t just put all of the ingredients together to begin with, but this is what the recipe I have says to do.
With a tablespoon (or your hands, unless your precious and don’t like getting your hands covered in cookie dough) to drop balls of cookie dough onto the greased cookie sheet should be about 2 dozen cookies
Bake at 375 for 1oish minutes or until they are golden brown on top
Let them cool and then remove from sheet and eat