Marmalades, Jams & Jellies

Never know where my next inspiration will come from, but when opportunity knocks, I open the door! These local Wisconsin peaches from a friend's in-laws have made me forget all about the Georgia peach truck - they're perfect! Just enough acidity to hold up in a jam, the first time I have ever attempted it. Just a hint of lemon juice and zest, a faint echo of almond adds polish to the forward flavor and scent of ripe peaches. It's peachy - it's perfect!

Ingredients: sugar, peaches, pectin, lemon juice and zest, almond extract
8 oz.

The berry-like tang of deeply colored blood oranges from the DeSantis family is here blended with their Seville oranges and some fine pear vinegar to balance the sweetness of this fruit. For those who lean towards a sweeter marmalade, as well as those who love blood oranges.

Ingredients: Blood oranges, cane sugar, Seville oranges, water, vinegar
8 oz.

Though this uncommon varietal originates in the Philippines (where it's also known as calamansi), it it grown privately in Northern California and I am fortunate to have access to this remarkable citrus known to make the very best marmalade. Tiny, delicate, and full of seeds, I used manicure scissors to harvest them, then took several days to cut them. The result was well worth the effort - deep, brilliant, jewel-like color, fine strips of delicate peel and a bright, piquant flavor that dances between mandarin, orange and lime, with a long finish all its own. It rarely gets any better than this! Get yours now, the limited supply never lasts for very long!

Ingredients: Sugar, Calamondin, water, Rangpur lime juice, orange juice, Meyer lemon juice
8 oz.

One of my sharper marmalades and one of my most loved, a lime love-fest of Bearss lime, Rangpur lime, Tavares limequat, finger limes and Persian lime. Sharp and zesty, great with cheese or as a meat glaze, try it in a marinade with mustard and soy sauce for pork tenderloin.

Ingredients: Cane sugar, Persian limes, Rangpur limes, limequats, Bearss limes, finger limes, water
8 oz.

Pure unrestrained lemon flavor in this fine hand cut marmalade. I tried for years to make a Meyer lemon marmalade but never succeeded to my satisfaction. Not tart enough, thin skins that turned milky when cooked - they just didn't work for me. My Rangpur lime grower in Carmel had some Lisbon lemon trees, and I began experimenting with them, first as a member of my syrup line.

These are the work horses of the lemon world, all available lemons are either these or Eureka's, but when they are allowed to ripen and grow to full size - what a difference! Thick heavily scented skin and sharp tart juice make for a perfect marmalade, and leaves me wondering what took me so long to come to that conclusion. No blends here to cloud the primacy of lemon, personified!

Ingredients: cane sugar, Lisbon lemons, Lisbon lemon juice, water
8 oz.

For the first time I have contacts for enough Rangpur limes to add a single fruit marmalade to my line. The qualities of this fruit that you may have enjoyed in the Rangpur Lime Syrup, Salt-Preserved Rangpur Limes, or the flavor boosts in several of my marmalade blends, embrace their essence here. With thin skin and brilliant color, this bright, smoky sour mandarin orange makes a perfect marmalade. Enjoy on toast, cheese, in marinades, or, as Erik Adkins at The Slanted Door in San Francisco does, in cocktails!

Ingredients: cane sugar, Rangpur limes, Rangpur lime juice, water
8 oz.

My version of this classic sour orange marmalade blends in a small amount of bergamot orange for its perfume, and Meyer lemon, which has some orange parentage, for complexity. An English friend has dreams of this.

Ingredients: cane sugar, Seville oranges, Bergamot oranges, water, orange juice, Meyer lemon juice
8 oz.

Blueberries and blackberries I tend to lump together, but fans of one will often tell me they have no time for the other. There are differences, and appropriate enhancements bring each into its own. Here Blackberry Orange Jam wants orange peel, Thai ginger, and haunting floral notes of cassia - the blossoms of the cinnamon tree. This rare herb I first encountered as part of an elaborate Chinese feast in San Francisco. The recipe called for pears poached with cassia blossom; I found the ingredient in Chinatown, then spent the next 20 years trying to find it again. Now, thanks to online shopping, I have! I call this jam semi-seedless; I've strained out two-thirds of them but left some whole fruit for texture. A fantastic new product and well worth trying...

Ingredients: Blackberries, cane sugar, orange juice and zest, pectin, galangal root syrup, cassia blossom
8 oz.

Every spring into her last years, our Mom insisted we go to the pick your own strawberries place so she could make her next year's worth of jam. Too busy with fruitcake preparations to do it myself, it's been some time since I made it, but a kindly neighbor and her kids went to pick them for me this year - from field to jar in one day! A vivid matrix of pale rose jelly with translucent chunks of the finest fruit and a touch of lime juice - Strawberry Jam supreme! The few jars I can part with won't last long, but I do need to share them!

Ingredients: strawberries, cane sugar, lemon juice, pectin.
8 oz.

I've loved blueberries from the times we picked them wild, years ago, in the bogs of Northern Wisconsin. Here I use half wild Michigan blueberries and half cultivated. The flavor of blueberries, while complex, is not strong, and gets lost easily in jam. My goal was to heighten the acid level with fruits that combine to mirror its flavor--first Meyer lemon juice and zest, then pineapple juice, a bit of my own Raspberry Champagne Jelly, my Thai Ginger Syrup (galangal root) and a splash of fine cognac. The result is a jam whose supporting cast helps to intensify and celebrate the superb flavor profile of a blueberry.

Ingredients: blueberries, sugar, pineapple juice, Meyer lemon juice and zest, raspberries, galangal root syrup, cognac, pure citrus pectin.
8 oz.

Cooking this takes me back to picking wild raspberries at our family farm with my grandmother and helping to make the jam we would eat all winter. To prepare my raspberries I spend hours pressing them through a fine mesh screen by hand, leaving only dry seeds behind. This results in a velvety texture, more a seedless jam than a jelly. I use more fruit than sugar and infuse this with my favorite champagne-scented geranium, rose geranium - a trick learned from writer MFK Fisher - and a bit of fresh lime juice. Vibrant, bright, perfumed, one of my personal favorites.

Ingredients: raspberries, cane sugar, pure citrus pectin, lime juice.
8 oz.

Raspberry Champagne Jelly: See it being made!

Raspberry Champagne Corn Muffin

Currants were once a common garden fruit, but when the bushes were suspected of being an alternate host for a disease killing White Pine, the timber industry reacted with force. Though the charges were later debunked, currants were all but eradicated, even in memory. (Dried currants in your scones are Zante grapes.) For my English Grandmother piquant red currant jelly on toast or spiraled into a jellyroll was a staple. Brother Jim is growing red currants again in Grandma's old garden, and I drove over to harvest. High in pectin, all I did was add sugar for a perfect set. A clear and tart glowing ruby jelly - nothing else like it. They're tiny and mostly seeds so the yield is low, but I share what I have.

Ingredients: red currants, cane sugar.
8 oz.