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Brad Leone, a chef and online video star known for his Shorty Award-nominated web series with Bon Appetit, "It's Alive," shares his recipe for maple syrup fermented with crushed garlic cloves. It appears in his first cookbook, Field Notes for Food Adventure.
"This is a riff on one of my favorite things to ferment, garlic honey. The same technique works well with maple syrup. If you've made my garlic honey before, you know that it starts out thick but gets thinner over time. Starting with syrup, the result becomes thinner still. I use it as a garlicky, sweet, umami enhancer in salad dressings, marinades, braises, and soups. Don't be alarmed if the garlic cloves turn blue in the first week or two. This is a very common occurrence. Over time, this blueness will fade and the garlic cloves will become translucent amber nuggets—and yes, you can eat them, too." —Brad
Excerpted from Field Notes for Food Adventure by Brad Leone. Copyright © 2021 by Brad Leone. Used with permission by Voracious. All rights reserved.
Combine the maple syrup and garlic in a quart jar and stir to combine, making sure all the garlic is coated in syrup.
Use a rubber band to secure cheesecloth over the jar's mouth, or seal it with a lid. Let the jar sit at room temperature for at least one week. Every day or so, remove the cloth or unscrew the lid and stir. A sealed jar will need to be "burped" every day or so to release gas even if you do not stir it. Store the sealed jar in the fridge and use the syrup in any cooking application that could benefit from a savory-sweet garlic-maple flavor.