How to make sugar from sugarcane

Ever wonder how sugar was made? I was at my local fruit and vegetable store when we spotted some sugarcane, three stalks for 3$. We figured, we must be able to make sugar from that right? After a little research, I did the following:

1. Smash the canes with a rolling pin or a hammer, enough to open them up
2. Take out the bad bits. The interior of the cane should be fairly white and not smell fermented. Any red or brown bits you want to take out.
3. Take the fibrous flesh off of the outside “bark” using a knife.
4. Boil that flesh for a good 30 minutes, using just enough water to barely cover the pulp.
5. Remove the cane leaving only the liquid.
6. Keep boiling until the sugar crystalizes at the bottom of the pot. Near the end, you need to keep a close eye on things and reduce the heat in order not to burn you sugar.

The result is a brown sugar with a taste of molasses. Unfortunately, you need a good amount of sugarcane to make even a single cup of sugar. Now I can see why this is not something that’s feasibly makable at home.

The long-lost art of butter making

This is the first article of a series on making basic food ingredients that we seem to have collectively forgotten how to make. Only two generations ago, butter making was a common task, and I argue it is something we should try to reclaim from the past.

You will need a 500 mL  (two cups) carton of whipping cream (35%), and either arm power and a whip, a blender, or a hand blender. Pour the cream in a large bowl (or in the blender), and whip it until it turns into butter. Seriously. Using a hand held blender, this takes about five minutes. The cream will first turn into whipped cream, then start looking more chunky and yellow, then, all of a sudden, will expel the buttermilk, leaving behind the butter.

I find that what works best is to get the cream right up to the “almost butter” stage, and then finish by hand. This way, when the buttermilk is expelled, the butter bunches together inside the whip and is easy to separate.

The last step is to rinse and salt the fresh butter. Take the butter and squeeze it into a ball using your clean hands. Then, keep manipulating it under cold tap water until no more buttermilk comes out. If you put a bowl under where the water is falling, you can stop rinsing when that water becomes clear. Then, add a little bit of salt (to your taste) and kneed it into the butter. Store either in a butter crock (known as a “beurrier breton” in french) or in the refrigerator. It also freezes well.

Is it worth the effort? Nothing beats a slice of home-made bread with fresh butter. The added bonus is that along with your 1 cup of butter, you get 1 cup of delicious fresh buttermilk that you can use for pancakes, cookies, cakes, scones… However, in terms of price, it is still more economical to buy a pound of butter, though I can’t figure out why.

“Think ingredients…”

There finally seems to be a rise in the “think local” movement in Canada, with corporations realizing that they can turn this to their advantage (as in this ad), and as much as I agree with the idea, I think there is something even more pressing and more basic that we need to change in the way we think about food: ingredients. The “think ingredients” approach can also include local ingredients, but puts the focus not solely on the provenance of food but also on the ingredients that make up the food we consume.

When is the last time that you cooked something at home that had more than 15 ingredients? How about 30? Personally, I don’t think I have ever made something with that many ingredients. And yet we consume large amounts of processed and prepared foods that contain such high numbers of “ingredients”.

Point in case: I found an envelope of onion soup in my cupboard with the following ingredients: dried onions, corn syrup solids, corn starch, salt, monosodium glutamate, beef fat, hydrolized soy/corn/wheat protein, yeast extract, colour, dextrose, sugar, spice, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, hydrogenated soybean/cottonsead oil and sulphites. Wow! When you make it yourself, you take some unsalted butter and caramelize onions slowly until they turn a rich brown. This makes them naturally sweet. Then you add beef broth, maybe a little bit of pepper; and that’s it.

So, the idea is also to make things from basic ingredients as much as possible and feasible. Not only is this fun (if you are a do-it-yourselfer), it is also healthy and fresh, home-made food always tastes fantastic. In my opinion, the path to healthy living is to have a good relationship with food, that food be a pleasure to find, make and eat.

To elaborate on these ideas, I will prepare a series of posts on making things that we have forgotten how to make. Things as basic as butter and mustard and other simple recipes for making things that we consume regularly like granola bars and bread. Stay tuned.