By Sourish Bhattacharyya
 |
| A promo poster from The Gourmet Jar's Facebook page. |
APEKSHA JAIN
calls herself a ‘confiturer’, who in Queen’s English is a person producing jams,
marmalades and conserves, but what makes her special is that she uses only
fresh seasonal fruit (not sugary fruit pulp) and organic sugar, and she doesn’t
pump up her products with corn syrup, a food industry favourite that enables moisture
retention. And now, she’s also the owner of the first shop in the country, The Gourmet Jar, which sells only home-made
jams, marmalades and conserves.
The Shahpur Jat store, which opens tomorrow (October 6) with a jam and
cheese tasting, will be significant also because it marks the revival of a
previously sleepy ‘village’, which has a sprinkling of designer stores and the
city’s first Bihari restaurant, Potbelly,
in the shadow of the ruins of the walls of Siri, the third city of Delhi that Alauddin Khilji founded in 1303.
Local historians say the village was
settled some 900 years ago by the Panwar Jats, who came from a village named
Indri in Haryana. They were attracted by the fertile soil of the area. As Delhi’s
chronicler, Mayank Austen Soofi, writes
in www.thedelhiwalla.com, the government
acquired the extensive farmlands of the villagers in 1978 to create the upscale
Asiad Village, Panchsheel Park and Hauz Khas neighbourhoods of gentrified South
Delhi. The compensation amounts were massive, so the old landed gentry of the
village are sitting on piles of money and property.
With Hauz Khas Village ready to implode (watch out for my blog post on
the subject), thanks to its humongous popularity and the boundless greed of both
landlords and restaurant promoters, Shahpur Jat may just experience a dramatic
change in its fortunes. With rentals still a third of those in Hauz Khas Village,
it has seen a steady movement of stores, the next big launch (on October 12) being
that of Anamika Singh’s Anandini Tea. Shoe Garage and installation artist Puneet Kaushik’s Alter Ego
are the two well-known stores of the neighbourhood.
 |
| Apeksha Jain. Image: Courtesy of Veggie Wiz |
Returning to Apeksha Jain, whom many
of you may know as the blogger behind Veggie
Wiz, her affair with jam-making began in France, where she spent a year and
fell in love with a banana jam she tasted at an orchard in Burgundy. On her
return to Delhi, the LSR alumna started making exotic jams, an art she mastered
in France, first for her husband and then for her extended family, and before
she knew it, The Gourmet Jar was born.
Jain’s spread includes exotica such
as mango jalapeno or cape gooseberry cinnamon preserve; apple, green tea and
rose jam; banana rum or fig Cointreau jam; marmalades with orange and apricot
brandy or bitter orange and whisky; mulled wine jam for the Christmas season;
and mint chocolate and strawberry spread. The confiturer even has a sugar-free jam
with dates and prunes. The prices are between Rs 300 and Rs 350, and a gift
pack of three small jars (125gm each) comes for Rs 600.
The sugar content of her products,
Jain insists, is less than half of that of the commercial brands. And she only
uses one spoonful of alcohol for 300gm of certain jams, which she believes
require that infusion for flavour enhancement. So, relax, there’s no likelihood
of your children getting inebriated after consuming Jain’s jams!
A delicious proposition, isn’t it?
Being a lover of specialty jams and fruit conserves, my heart beats for The
Gourmet Jar.
No comments:
Post a Comment