Jessica Koslow - The Sqirl Jam Book (Jelly, Fruit Butter, and Others)

Gravenstein apple butter.

Why jam? The idea came as a light-bulb momenta moment that was nearly two decades in the making.

In 2005, I worked as a pastry cook at Bacchanalia in Atlanta and watched the farmers coming through the kitchens back door hauling in all of their produce. This was a restaurant in the South, so it was our job to preserve everything, because the quantities were small and the seasons were fleeting. Putting up was just the southern way.

When I eventually returned to Los Angeles and its farmers markets, it was more apparent than ever that Id been taking so much year-round abundance for granted. I saw these things that we had so much of, for so much of the year, and it was such great product. I thought, We should be canning all this.

I had to leave L.A., live in Boston and D.C. and New York, cook in the South, and finally return to California to realize exactly what I wanted to do. I gave my life over to jam.

Sqirl started soon after I met Scott Barry, now a partner and the companys creative director. Im the inside of the jar; hes the outside of the jar. We wanted to figure out how to combine our perspectives. How do you put that in a jar and make it something everyone wants to eat? I wanted to call it Squirrel, for squirreling away. Scott hated the word, especially design-wise, and landed on Sqirl.

Whats inside a jar of Sqirl jam is not the jam you get at the grocery store. That stuff has added pectin, which means you need more sugar, which means the flavor of the fruit is muted. The fruit itself is frozen or out of season or from somewhere else in the country or world. The texture is a monotonous gel. It has tainted our palates. Weve accepted subpar jam for too long.

What I know as jam is made with in-season, of-the-moment fruit and its own natural pectin in small batches in copper pots. In 2012, Sqirl made five thousand jars of jam. Now that number is more than thirty-five thousand jars a year, still made by hand in copper pots. On top of that we make buckets of it for serviceten thousand gallons a year for the ricotta toast alone. Jam is the heart and soul of everything we do.

It connects us to the seasons, to the farmersexperiencing what they have to offer every week. You cant do that making a huge industrial-vat-size portion of jam all at once. The seasonality of what we do means we have to work within ourselves, to follow the market, to stay honest. Theres integrity to the product that were using and the product were making.

(clockwise from bottom left): Loquat jam, tomato jam with caraway, apple pectin, and the jam of a friend.

Santa Rosa plum jam () on toast

What works for us here at Sqirl works at home, too. We built an entire business around the best-quality jams we could produce. And the great thing is that it makes sense for several reasons: Jam isnt that hard to make, a little goes a long way, and it has an extended shelf life. Long live jam.

What Im talking about when I talk about jam is fruit, sugar, and acid (like the citric acid in lemon juice), brought to a certain temperature so that it gels to become some sort of fruit spread. Are we at a point in 2020 where we can use the blanket word jam to mean jellies, marmalades, butters, fruit spreads, and other preserves? Im going to say yes. A lot of the technical terminology tends to overlap anyway.

Sqirls jams are technically fruit spreads, lower in sugar, and with a specific texture thats both lush and easy to spread. Its something that we developed over time so that it went with our foodnot just according to how it spreads, but also how it interacts with ricotta, how it pairs with nut butters, how it stands on its own.

Sqirl jam is a philosophy. Im looking for the right balance between sweetness and acidity and the flavor of the fruit. Its important to pick fruit that can show its quality in the jam. (Thats why I love Mara des Bois strawberries, which taste like the essence of the fruit. Its also why I struggle with some varieties of stone fruit, because theres so much sweetness in them.) The flavor needs to withstand the temperatureup to around 221Fnecessary to take it to jam. My job is to keep the nuance of the fruit alive.

I used to be a competitive figure skater, when school figuresintricate patterns that skaters traced on the ice to demonstrate their skill in making clean turnswere part of the sport. It was quiet, sensitive, exacting, and really challenging. It was not exciting. There were no sparkles, no music. Competitions could take up to six hours. Jam is like school figures. Theres something sensual about it. Its almost like I traded my feet for my hands.

Being a jam maker doesnt hold a candle to being a Michelin-starred chef. It doesnt have the same glitz and glamour. There are few people who pronounce, Im going to be the worlds greatest jam maker.

But to me, it became something I really love to do because of the dance of it, the same gratification of executing something correctly over and over, and the discovery of luster in that. Hundreds of thousands of jars of jam later, I still feel the same way.

I Dont Eat Fruit an Interview with Mom

Surprise! I used to only like fruit in jam form. Just ask my mom.