Now that all of our recipes are finalized, we are starting to do production for real. Lots of chopping, mixing and boiling means lots of tasty jars of preserves for you!
I, Matt, do most of the knife work because I’ve got a lot of experience cooking professionally and can make quick work of it. I julienned 15 pounds of shallots on this day to make 60 jars of our Shallot Confit with Red Wine.
-
- Clare and Matt measure
-
- Matt hand-cuts shallots
-
- Clare’s skeptical of Matt’s ideas
I went to the store later and the person ringing me out said, “Do you smell like onions?”
“Yes, I do,” I said.
We cook all our preserves by hand, allowing us to really focus in on the details. We tease out the complexities in each of our ingredients and that can only be done with the care and attention that small batches afford.
As you can see, we also combine age-old European preserving traditions with modern technology. I use my iPhone in the kitchen for everything from timing how long we steep tea to calculating ratios to posting on Twitter as I cook!
Once everything is mixed, we bring it all to a good simmer and keep a close eye on each pot. Every piece of fruit is different and we have to be prepared to make adjustments on the fly. The interesting moments come when Clare and I disagree on what changes to make.
Clare has almost no sweet tooth and is generally suspicious when I think we need to add more sugar to a batch. I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going on in this photo.
That, and a healthy dose of hamming it up for the camera.
Before long, we’re ready to jar them up.
And that’s how we make our preserves!
All that’s left is for you to eat them.
8 Comments
Nice work dudes!! You look fantastic!
Thanks! I’ll introduce you to our photographer some time!
Nice work Matt! I look forward to hearing the adventures of Quince and Apple! We will look to using your wonderful preserves in lab. Paul
Congratulations on the website. It looks fantastic an tasty! The last picture of Clare adds a nice “reality” preserves feel.
Love it!
Having tasted your jams at Christmas, I can attest to how special they are.
Cecile
Do you buy your ingredients from local farmers? Looks fantastic
For the three flavors we have right now, we are getting the fruit through a local distributor and direct from a fig farmer’s co-op in California, as you can’t very well grow oranges or figs in Wisconsin. But, we’re hard at work on a strawberry preserve right now to showcase local berries and will be featuring lots of local fruits all through the summer, fall and next winter. As soon as we get recipes finalized and preserves jarred, we’ll post it here!
i love that last picture of clare– i can totally hear her saying, “more sugar? i don’t knowwww………..”