Ke Ya (柯亞) still keeps her first jar of jam she made 10 years ago. It’s no longer edible, but Ke says it wasn’t any good to begin with. With little culinary background or prior interest, she had just taken up the hobby to pass time while recuperating from an illness.
“It was the end of spring and strawberries were cheap,” she says. “But I soon realized that you can’t treat this as child’s play. My failure ignited a competitive fire — there’s no way I couldn’t make something that wasn’t at least edible. It also piqued my curiosity about fruits, about sugar, about sourness…”
Last month, Keya Jam’s (好食光) latest concoction — a yet to be released Taiwanese kumquat-based marmalade with lemon, calamondin and orange blossom — earned full marks at the UK’s World’s Original Marmalade Awards, beating out about 3,500 contestants in the artisan category while bagging a double gold in addition to gold medals for “interesting additions” and pairing well with fish. Ke’s mandarin orange and Kavalan whisky signature as well as a kumquat, white wine and Earl Grey tea creation earned her two silvers and two bronzes.
Photo courtesy of Keya Jams
On Tuesday, the media got a peek of the double-gold jam, which is a collaboration with Pekoe, a local food boutique run by food and travel writer Yilan Yeh (葉怡蘭), and will be available through Pekoe starting April 24.
“European marmalades use citruses from temperate zones, but I’ve felt that the king of citruses belong to the tropics or subtropics,” Yeh says. “Whether it be kumquats or calamondins, tropical fruits give off a stronger, more expressive flavor that’s not found in cold-weather fruits. I really wanted to see what such a marmalade would taste like.”
The jams were served with tea, scones and meat. Ke says that through her interactions with customers in Taiwan, she found that jam is used almost exclusively for spreading on bread — so the team worked with chef Jimmy Su (蘇彥彰) to pair the three award winning concoctions with fish, chicken and duck.
Photo courtesy of Keya Jams
INTO THE WORLD OF FRUITS
In 2009, Ke found herself back home in Changhua after stress from overwork in the publishing industry caused a slew of health problems. While convalescing, she took advantage of an over-abundance of strawberries to try her hand at making jam. In Taiwan’s hot and humid climate, people traditionally dry or make wine with their surplus fruit in order to preserve them instead of making jams or marmalade. She soon realized, however, that the whole notion of using cheap, leftover or over-ripe fruit for preserves was not going to yield the flavors she wanted.
She spent the next few years traveling all over Taiwan, visiting farmers and learning the intricacies of fruit growing.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
“I wanted to know how a good fruit is cultivated, who grew it and how to identify it,” she says. “You take the same species, but use different growing methods in a different environment with a different farmer — and the taste can come out completely different.”
Ke was so mesmerized with this world of fruit that she never returned to her office life in Taipei, setting up a small workshop in Changhua’s rural Shengang Township (伸港). The learning curve was steep, with many duds fed to her family’s pigs. Much of her expertise came through making mistakes. For example, she experienced a burning sensation in her eyes whenever she cooked strawberries. She switched to organic fruit after she learned that the cause was pesticide residue.
She found a man in Taitung who didn’t start growing organically until he was 76. He not only became a source for her navel oranges but his story assuaged her anxiety of starting a later-life career change from scratch.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
Soon, Ke started experimenting with spirits, trying a number of Western bourbon and Islay varieties until the rise of Kavalan whisky brought her focus back to Taiwan. The formula worked, and her whisky and mandarin orange creation is one of her more popular items.
Each jam takes a while to perfect, with the double-gold winner requiring a personal record of three months of discussion and experimentation. Ke chose kumquats because she saw them as the most representative of Taiwanese citruses. Traditionally, they were candied, stuffed in pastries or boiled in water to ward off colds and alleviate throat aches.
“It’s a shame that the kumquat has been neglected in the modern diet,” Ke says. Since kumquats have a short growing season from January to March, Ke says that making them into jam allows consumers to enjoy them all year round.
As kumquats have a heavier flavor and texture, Pekoe’s team suggested that Ke increase the lemon ratio for sourness and aroma and also kick up the bitter orange blossom to round things out. Each ingredient is also treated differently — the kumquats are cut into whole slices, the calamondin is beaten to a pulp, the lemon is shredded and the bitter orange blossom comes in liquid form.
PAIRING WITH MEATS
At the tasting, guests first tried the three jams standard UK-style with scones and tea. While the varieties are immediately distinguishable by color — with the white wine and tea creation the darkest — the undertones are quite subtle aside from the apparent differences in sweetness. The consistency and texture are just about right, not too opaque and easily spreadable with the soft chunks of fruit rinds providing texture.
The whisky jam was too sweet for my tastes for spreading on scones, but the whisky provided a tiny but appealing kick that matched well with the faint bitterness of the orange. When paired with Su’s duck breast, however, it shone as the citrusy overtones melded well with the meat’s smoky aroma. The salt used to cook the duck seemed to balance out the overpowering sweetness I experienced with the scone.
The kumquat, white wine and Earl Grey tea jam was less sweeter than the whisky jam, much tartier with a distinct bitter tea aftertaste that’s not initially noticeable. This was paired with boiled chicken breast, which was minimally seasoned. Unlike the duck, the chicken did not need a strong character to counter the milder jam, and the jam not only stood well on its own but enhanced the meat’s taste.
It’s not hard to see why the kumquat-lemon-bitter orange blossom jam was such a favorite at the awards, as I felt it was the best of the bunch. It’s less sweeter than the white wine and tea jam, really emphasizing the tartness of the four types of citrus. It’s hard for a layperson to tell which sensation is provided by which, but as a whole the medley of bitter and sour aftertastes were pleasing and much more noticeable than the other two jams. Being able to see and taste the sliced whole kumquats was also a plus.
Since this jam won a gold for “pairing well with fish,” Su delivered a banded grouper from Penghu served with a sauce he created using the jam, fish stock and white wine. Again, the grouper didn’t need much seasoning as the sauce was able to fully bring out the umami taste of the fish. The jam flavor becomes milder after being turned into sauce, instead sneaking its tones in with each bite.
Expanding local use of jams is one of Ke’s goals, as she’s looking at pairing her products with Taiwanese cuisine and snacks. She also hopes to move beyond just jams and explore different new and traditional ways to preserve Taiwan’s prized fruits.
“You’d be surprised how good marmalade goes well with braised pork rice (滷肉飯),” she says.
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