I have talked about Steve Stallard of Blis Caviar before, he cures sea and brook trout roe with fleur de sel--sometimes smoked, sometimes with mezcal. Well, he does a few other crazy things with food and the like. Currently, he has sourced out whiskey barrels which had previously been used to age single barrel whiskey for eighteen years. He takes these gems, the wood saturated with aged whiskey and fills them with a rich decadent maple syrup. He then ages the syrup in the barrels for a period of months so the maple pulls in the whiskey and wood flavors. The syrup arrived yesterday; it is amazing. We plan to use it in several preparations; I had it for breakfast on these fromage blanc and blueberry pancakes.
Steve has captured and transformed one flavor in order to impact another. His crazy thoughts inspire ours. In fact, I have asked him to age some tamari soy sauce in the used maple syrup barrels. Oh, he is also infusing some of the maple syrup with Tahitian vanilla...another story and more inspirations.
