Summer Ephemerals
Driven by our relationships with Omar Fugaro, The Farm Between, Champlain Orchards and the farms of Columbia County, 3 hours south of us, these flavors flash in on the whims of weather.
While chipmunks always sit poised to destroy a just-ripe gooseberry crop overnight, the annual fruit cycle is way less predictable. It’s not just the fruit that morphs. It’s the people too. This year Omar closed the u-pick on his Black Raspberries. For the first time ever, we have all the black raspberries we want.
DRIPPY DARK BERRIES
The essence of summer, this is a romantic category. July fruit, sweetness, stains, tart.
Honey candied bergamot oranges and yuzu with a variety of gooseberry, called Tixia, grown by Omar Fugaro just a couple miles away. He tends a property of beautiful fruit all by himself high above the New Haven River Valley, just off Munger Street in Middlebury.
This preserve is delicate enough for soft cheeses but sturdy enough for aged cheeses with nutty and caramel notes. This would also be a natural fit for fish cookery or game as gooseberries with fish or game are a British cookery staple.
This honey sweetened jam contains: gooseberries, honey, candy citrus (honey, water, citrus peel), lemon juice.
The evolution of the elderflower into elderberries is the most simultaneously sensible and magical of transformations.
A jam that leans savory with the peppy grapefruit and piquant white peppercorn, this flavor is perfect for morning toast especially if it involves a fried egg and some avocado.
This jam would also be perfect for lamb, beef and game roasts.
For Cheese, start with blue cheese but try it with hard raw milk cheeses and even cheddar is delightful too!
Ingredients: elderberries, gooseberry, honey, lemon juice, grapefruit rind, white peppercorn
STONE FRUIT LUXURY
Stately apricots, peaches, plums and nectarines start in June but rush August with soft body, a mellowness, dare I even say, a languor to them. Paradoxical, I think of stone fruit, peaches, and apricots especially, as total diva fruit. We love them, we need them, they (and their sultriness) never stay long enough.
A collection of European and Japanese plums from the towns of Cornwall and Shoreham in Addison County, Vermont.
Plum jams are a personal favorite and customers universally love them. Plums are the most versatile of preserves, seamlessly fitting into sweet and savory situations.
For cheese, I recommend starting with a blue, but it’s also wonderful with yogurt and porridges.
This honey sweetened jam contains: plums, honey, lemon juice.
A jammy nod to BBQ sauces, this savory & HOT preserve tastes like August summer. A jar of this Peach Tomato Lime and Chili Jam slides gracefully from your cheeseboard to pulled pork sandwiches and into your arsenal of BBQ mops you pull out alongside your grill and favorite style of ribs.
The tomatoes and chilies come from our very own Lil To Do Farm. Bulgarian Carrot Chilies live up to their name in looks (slender and orange) and pack a fruity flavor but without the heat of a habanero though the piquancy on this preserves falls into the HOT category.
This honey sweetened jam contains: peaches (Hudson Valley, NY / Pennsylvania / VT / certified organic), tomatoes, honey, lime juice, bulgarian carrot peppers, lemon juice, lime zest.
An apricot forward preserve with the yarrow nosing up the tangy qualities of fruit. The elderflower is a background flavor giving roundness to the peppery yarrow flavor.
This is my favorite flavor to come out of the 2018 season of flavor experiments. It’s elegant, light, and approachable in flavor; beautiful with fresh bloomy rind cheeses and makes a wonderful cocktail mixer.
I have been wanting to make a flavor with yarrow for years. As a child enthralled by herbal medicine, I quickly learned that yarrow helps with so many ailments. I didn’t realize for another decade, that yarrow grew in so many colors.
In our herb gardens, yarrow is almost an invasive as it readily spreads in our sandy soil.
This honey sweetened jam is made with: apricot, plum, honey, lemon juice, yarrow, elderflowers.
Sometimes, more really is better.
Unctuous, this preserves is nectarine pieces (either certified organic from CA or from New York's Hudson Valley) macerated with honey and Meyer lemon zest, then cooked with organic figs, lemon juice, and star anise until just before the preserve sets. Then the star anise blades come out and the rum goes in.
This conserve has huge flavor. The last thing you taste is the zing of the aromatic Meyer lemon zest, which ties it all together.
This honey sweetened conserve contains: certified organic/IPM grown nectarines, honey, dried organic figs, lemon juice, rum, organic star anise, meyer lemon zest.
This conserve celebrates all the luxurious qualities of stone fruit.
You will want to eat this straight from the jar!
This honey sweetened conserve contains: Nectarines, plums, honey, lemon juice, dried sour cherries, sultanas, orange ginger liqueur (vodka, honey, ginger, orange peel, vanilla bean).
A celebration of seasonal florals! I developed both flavors after moving to Vermont where I’ve both had ample space for planting out aromatics AND spent my first 5 years here working with plants at a local nursery (with an enticing employee discount, hehe).
Apricot Yarrow Plum Elderflower Jam is apricot forward. The yarrow amps the acidity of the stone fruit while the elderflower hangs in the background providing a round, grassy flavor. This flavor is elegant, light, and approachable; beautiful with fresh bloomy rind cheeses, lil washed rind stinkers and makes a wonderful cocktail mixer.
Nectarine Lemon Marmalade with Bee Balm + Lemongrass is an amalgam. Where with some V Smiley Preserves you can taste all the ingredients in layers, this is a set piece. The grassiness of the lemongrass and the herbal sweetness of the bee balm flowers combine with sweet nectarine and tangy lemon to produce a flavor that screams CANDY. The working elements are lemon shred and nectarine chunks in a nectarine lemon jelly, flecked with bee balm flowers and infused with lemongrass.
Bundles (2oz or 6oz) include one jar of each:
Nectarine Lemon Marmalade with Bee Balm + Lemongrass
Apricot Yarrow Plum Elderflower Jam
This flavor was developed in 2018 and went into production in 2019 once NY nectarines appeared and our lemongrass and bee balm were ready for harvest. Year by year, I’ve worked through the garden, creating flavors around my favorite flowers and ingredients growing at Lil To Do Farm.
This preserve is an amalgam. Where with some V Smiley Preserves you can taste all the ingredients in layers, this, like the Bosc Pear Bearss Lime Vanila Marmalade is a set piece, the grassiness of the lemongrass and the herbal sweetness of the bee balm flowers combine with sweet nectarine and tangy lemon to produce a flavor that screams CANDY.
The working elements are lemon shred and nectarine chunks in a nectarine lemon jelly, flecked with bee balm flowers and infused with lemongrass.
This preserve is a flavor bomb and would be wonderful with toast and a creamy cheese like Mt Alice from Von Trapp Farmstead.
The honey sweetened marmalade is made with: nectarine, honey, lemon, lemongrass, bee balm.
Apricots cooked with a small amount of honey (allowing the tart character of the apricot to show through) and urfa biber chili pepper. Urfa Biber peppers are grown in Turkey and slowly dried under the sun to bring out a smoky and fruity flavor that is great with fruit. This has a mild heat.
In the spring, V Smiley Preserves uses organic west coast apricots and later in the summer, NY grown apricots.
This honey sweetened jam contains: apricots, honey, lemon juice, urfa biber pepper.
Apricot preserves are one of the most versatile fruit preserves ever. I substitute this apricot jam for the honey in my Bees Knees cocktails. But apricots go with fish, meat, cheese, baking projects, toast AND should always be balanced enough in flavor to eat straight from the jar for instant sweet fixes.
Apricot Jam is a traditional pairing for washed rind cheeses.
Ingredients: organic apricots or Hudson Valley (NY) apricots, honey, lemon juice.
A version of this preserve was made my first summer back in Vermont, which was a bumper year for plums. A farmer had a half bushel of less than flavorful plums that they gave to me gratis. I used them for an experimental plum jelly recipe steeped with anise hyssop and lemon verbena from our garden.
The background texture is a plum jelly, long cooked whole plums with all their tartness and intensity brought out. Then fresh plums halves and quarters are added in the final cooking process. At the end, several stalks of lemon verbena and anise hyssop steep in the finished jam. Both of those aromatics are traditional accompaniments for stone fruit and they chat and interplay in a heady, perfumed way. This is an unusual flavor and it's an especially elegant pairing for blue cheese or shaken into whiskey cocktails.
This honey sweetened jam contains: plums, honey, lemon juice, anise hyssop, lemon verbena.
Somehow the Aronia berry helped create the most plummy plum jam—lots of body, warmth, textural heft and a kiss of tartness.
Greengages are still relatively unusual to find in Vermont. If you know, you know that they are one of the sweetest plums, defying their green color, which might have you thinking of “sour” or “tough”, but in fact Greengages are ambrosial. The Aronia berry plays a supporting role of color and pectin and a counterbalance of acidity to the Greengage’s sweetness.
This flavor is very limited. Plum harvests differ year to year with varieties variably flagging and/or succeeding season to season depending on summer storms and spring rains. The yellow jackets in particular love Greengages so we feel really lucky to have gotten a harvest.
Ingredients: honey, aronia berry, greengage plum, lemon juice