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
good stuff maple 