- [Lucas] Hello! - [Pierre] Hello!
- [Lucas] Pierre. - [Pierre] How are you?
- [Lucas] Lucas.
- Lucas, pleased to meet you.
- Nice to meet you.
- Welcome to my maple forest, Lucas.
- Thank you very much. - Where all those beautiful
maple trees are.
- These are maple trees?
- Yes, every one of them is a maple tree.
Some of them are 125, 150 years old.
It is a beautiful maple forest in very healthy shape.
- So we are at a sugar shack, Sucre--
- Sucrerie de la Montagne. - Sucrerie de la Montagne.
- I built it all up,
taking apart old barns,
bringing the materials and rebuild
to keep the tradition of the early 1900s.
- And how long have you been here?
- I've been here 40 years.
- Wow.
- That's why I look like that.
- That's why you look like what?
(laughter)
- You look great!
I was just gonna say, you look incredible.
- Well, thank you.
- And maybe I can get some fashion tips from you too.
I would like to adopt this look.
- Well, the fashion tips is what I saw in pictures
of the way my grandfather used to dress
and I thought, "Wow, this is really
a sharp way to dress."
So I--
- It looks so good.
- It's how I got my shorts made,
and, I got knickers.
So, this is the sugar shack
where we make the maple syrup.
Why don't we go
and I'll show you how we make the maple syrup?
- That sounds great!
- Follow me.
- Let's go!
- Allez!
Allons-y!
[Pierre] Allons-y!
(upbeat banjo music)
- [Lucas] So, this is the actual sugar shack.
- This is the actual sugar shack
that we need to make the syrup
from all those thousands of maple trees.
- [Lucas] Wow.
- So, we make the syrup in the month
of March and April,
the springtime,
when it starts to freeze at night
and thaw in the daytime,
the sap comes up the tree.
- And that is the time when you tap the trees?
- C'est so.
- Is that right?
- C'est so.
- We use a brace and bit
and we tap the tree,
but this is so hard,
I'm using a drill now.
(hearty laughter)
- I wanna be honest.
- You use technology!
You don't do it all.
- I did it like this, but--
- But, in the old times--
- We did like that.
And that's really hard work
because the maple tree is like the oak tree,
hard, hard wood,
and it's frozen.
- [Lucas] Okay.
- So, we really gotta,
we really gotta push hard.
It takes 40 liters of maple sap
to boil down to one liter of maple syrup.
- [Lucas] Wow!
- So, that's a lot of wood to burn,
a lot of energy to make.
219 degrees Fahrenheit.
We filter through these felt filters,
that natural products.
- Wow.
- And, the filter retains the grit,
and gives us a pure syrup
that we have on the table.
- It seems like you're really maintaining these old
Quebecois traditions. - Yeah, yeah.
The ways of modern days,
it's a lot easier,
and they produce three times more syrup.
It pays better.
But, I keep it the old-fashioned way.
I want to respect all those traditions.
That's really important for me,
really important for the kids,
and also all the people to come here
and enjoy walking through the forest,
cause if I had pipelines,
they couldn't walk through the forest.
- Of course.
- And then, they can go take a glass
and taste the maple water.
The smell of wood fire,
the whole place is full of maple vapor.
It smells good.
That's the real thing.
- So it's about the experience,
it's about preserving the culture,
it's about--
- C'est so.
Exactly.
- So, I'm very excited
to try some of this classic Quebecois sugar shack food.
- We have a meal where people
can taste at the end of the day.
We start with lentil soup
Soft-back bacon.
It's grilled and smoked.
And then, country sausage,
maple-glazed ham,
souffle omelet,
beef pie.
These very, very traditional farmer foods.
(lively banjo music)
- [Lucas] Thank you.
(banjo music)
- Bon appetit.
(laughter)
I'll be back with the--
- Merc, merci.
As I rip into a fluffy slice
of this wood-fired bread,
a real nice crumb on this, too.
It is very pliant and stretchy.
It is quite a hearty
and rich-tasting white bread.
- Yeah, this sort of wood-fired bread will often have
extra fat, extra sugar added
descending from a,
I suppose, a lumberjack tradition of
they would need extra sustenance
to keep going for work.
So, inject some extra calories, yeah.
- Speak of the devil,
more calories!
- When you think of Quebec cuisine,
you think like heavier things like poutine.
It has, you know, the meat gravy,
all of this,
a lot of brown.
- I'm having some ham
and it's very delicious,
especially when I pour maple syrup on it,
which is--
- Good, can I have some of that
maple syrup? - Yes, absolutely!
Very good,
you get that nice, sweet-salty combination.
- [Tim] Also those beans, with the--
- [Lucas] And, the beans.
- [Tim] Touch of maple as well.
- We've also got the tourtière here,
which is like a classic Quebec meat pie.
Often, tourtière is perhaps more of a rural dish.
It's origins are sort of more in the Quebec countryside.
- I really like the crust on it.
Really beautiful--
- A little greasier than your average,
yeah. - Flaky crust.
I don't know what's happening.
- [Woman] That is the syrup that we boil to reduce
some of the water
to make it thicker.
So, when you pour it on crushed ice or snow,
you will be able to roll it
with a stick like a lollipop.
- I think we should start on opposite ends,
and then meet in the center like Lady and the Tramp.
- We can try! - Tim!
Let's do it!
- Okay.
Okay, okay.
- Okay.
- Okay!
- Great!
- [Tim] So, you gotta--
- [Lucas] Gotta, gotta
kinda start it there.
- This might absorb some of-- - Oh look!
- [Tim] To pick up some of the ice.
This is ice and not snow.
- [Lucas] Shh!
No, don't tell! - Traditionally
it would be on snow.
- No, it's snow.
There happens to be-- - It's very large,
very large snow. - No snow on the ground
right now. - Okay, I got it, I got it.
(gentle mandolin music)
- [Tim] I'm actually not picking up a whole lot.
- [Lucas] That's okay.
We're doing it on very thick snow.
Then we're gonna meet in the center
just like Lady and the Tramp!
- [Tim] Voila!
- Yep, it worked, I'd say!
With our sticks.
Okay, here we go.
- And--
- I think mine, mine-- - I didn't wind that well.
- does look better than yours, I think.
It is pretty chunky.
- Mine is, mine is bold.
- [Lucas] And, then we eat it?
- [Tim] Yeah, you see,
I mean-- - You can just eat it?
- It's a bit like a lollipop.
Yeah.
Like it's sort of, you can chew it,
you can just lick at it.
- This is good!
- [Tim] It's good!
It's fundamentally just maple syrup.
- Yeah, but it's like buttery!
- It's delicious.
Yeah!
- It's like caramel.
- Rustic lollipop.
Yeah, kids love it,
and you can find it at the markets in Montreal,
you can get it at sugar shacks.
So yeah, maple syrup is,
it's not a stereotype, it is genuinely, like, popular.
- [Lucas] Right.
- People like maple things.
- I really hope you enjoyed this episode
of Dining on a Dime from Sucrerie de la Montagne
in Rigaud, Quebec Province.
- (speaking in foreign language)
- Merci.
(speaking in foreign language)
(sputtering)
(gun shot)