15th July 2010 – The Jammery

The following day brought with it my first experience of the Jammery. Extensive surveys of the tasting pots at the front of the market stall had introduced me to the myriad flavours of Xavier’s jam-making exploits: raspberry, strawberry, blackcurrant, blackberry, red fruits, apricot, rhubarb and ginger, vine peach, redcurrant, pear, chestnut, as well as jellies made out of sage flowers, mint, fleurs de châtaigner and, yes, the ubiquitous rose. My favourite had been the vine peach, which was a startlingly deep wine red and had such contrasting notes of sweetness and sharpness that I had kept on returning for more until long after my desire to do so surreptitiously had been quashed.

It being the soft fruit season, it came as no surprise that for me and Goedele our first jam experience was raspberry-based. We climbed into the two passenger seats of the big white van. Looking over our shoulders and behind us into the back, it was strangely empty without the market stall paraphernalia; instead of the tatty cardboard boxes were grey plastic crates full of plump crimson raspberries. They made me salivate, which wasn’t the best start to a day of staring at them, although it presaged what was to follow! Xavier drove us a kilometre or so down the dusty road to a squat white building which lay just off it. Apparently it had once been a goat-shed, but now it was shared between Xavier and a wood-turner and they were searching for another to make up the rent. Inside wasn’t exactly plush, decorated with stained white-wash and furnished with rickety wooden shelving, and toilets were conspicuous by their absence, but then luxury was hardly to be expected from an ex-goat-shed; goats had never been famed for their ability to use a flush.

We donned fetching, shower-cap-like hats to stop our hair from falling into the jam – Xavier assured us that they suited us well – and we were off. There were around 50 kilograms of raspberries to convert into jam, so we had our work cut out for us, lying in plastic crates stacked on the floor. There were three gas burners in a row along a work surface, the butane canisters hiding underneath, and hanging from nails along the wall were various vats of either copper or stainless steel, some of which Xavier unhooked with expert swiftness and laid on the table. We portioned the berries out into the vats, and three-quarters of their weight was added again in cane sugar, which was sourced, of course, from an organic provider, plus a splash of water to start the sugar dissolving. 

One at a time, the vats were set over a flame. Once one vat had come to the boil, a timer was set for four minutes and the mixture was stirred with a long-handled wooden spoon over a slightly lower heat. The sugar level had to be tested to decide whether more sugar was needed. To do this we were given a little black plastic cylinder the size of my palm. At one end it was tapered and the plastic was clear, and here a little of the jam was to be smeared. The other end resembled a telescope, and if held to the eye and up to the light, an internal display showed the percentage of sugar content on a thermometer-like scale. It was a fascinating piece of equipment, and although I could not fathom how it worked, I knew that 57% was the optimum percentage. 

At the alarm of the timer, the grinding began. I loved using the moulinette, which looked like a massive, hand-powered coffee grinder. We poured the liquid jam in the top and twisted the wooden handle around and around until all the jam had been squeezed through the metal gauze and all the seeds – as well as any extraneous stalks, leaves or bits of twig – were trapped above. To begin with the weight of the jam created resistance, necessitating full arm force, body leaning slightly over the contraption, hips forming involuntary circles as the handle span around and around, but as the liquid seeped away the task became ever easier. Personally I preferred my jam to have seeds in, and I said so, but Xavier assured me that the general public disagreed with me. So, seedless, the jam was set to boil for a few minutes more. 

When the timer went off for the second time, Xavier decanted the mixture from the vat into a large plastic jug, and, while one of us set the next vat up over the flame, he went up and down the table in the middle of the room where we had placed empty jars around the edges, filling them up with jam. The other of us followed behind him, rubber glove on one hand to protect us from the heat, and lid in the other, closing the jars behind him and checking each one for splashes. An innocent splotch on the rim of the jar at that point would have meant potential mould growth at some point in the future. Customers didn’t tend to react kindly to mould. They certainly didn’t come back clamouring for more. And so we wielded a pathetic-looking rag of gauze soaked in turpentine to ensure customer loyalty. Three hours later, we had just fewer than 300 pots ready for the labelling, and slight headaches from the heat, the sugar, and the solvent fumes. 

Being in the Jammery was a magical experience, and it didn’t once cease to be magical over the three weeks that I stayed at Fontsoleil. Everything was just too big, so it was as if I was a child again, elbows at awkward angles as I stirred the jam with a spoon made for a being larger than me, in a cauldron which took all my strength to lift and whose contents I could only just see fully as I stood at the gas ring, although I was standing as straight and tall as I could. I was sorely tempted to stand on tiptoes, but it wouldn’t have been sensible; a wobbly base plus litres of hot liquid jam would have been a recipe for disaster. And, of course, I was as eminently sensible as any curious child.

All that was needed were a few childish habits to complete the picture. As if in compliance with this unspoken need, splashes of jam were soon polka-dotting delightfully messily over my clothes in infantile abandon. And I couldn’t help it. I knew it would be hot. But I had to dip my finger in and yelp in shock and let the jam burn and then set on my tongue in a tingle of numbing sweetness. I had to do it several times. Several times per batch and per flavour. I tested the jams to make sure they were perfect so that my teeth, long stripped of enamel from a childhood of acidic fruit juice, were usually stained red or purple or blue by the end of a session. By the end of my time there I had developed a doigt de dégustation, or a tasting finger, which took a good week of jamlessness to return to a healthy colour.  

The magic was offset by an incongruous soundtrack, chosen mostly by Xavier, of obscure female British singer-songwriters, latino jazz, Hari Krishna chants and – once – a frankly surreal trilingual Disney sing along in Dutch, English and French. Xavier would always sing along sotto voce to Hari Krishnas and Katie Melua’s Closest Thing to Crazy, although he didn’t understand the words of either, mimicking the sounds from the artists’ mouths.

Walking back that afternoon – Xavier went on ahead in the van, but Goedele and I took to our feet – we passed through a neighbouring hamlet called Le Fraysse, which was the same dusty stone colour as the road and whose buildings had little wooden doors with matching wooden lintels and faded terracotta-tiled roofs. One of the buildings looked to be a former school, and another seemed to be a storehouse for all manner of farming equipment, new and old. A rusty yet still functioning tractor sat at the side of the road, and outside one of the buildings there was a large group of people sitting around a large wooden table. From inside emanated the unlikely music of an organ. Some of the people around the table were singing absent-mindedly. We smiled and waved and walked on by. Later we asked about the strange gathering that we had seen. We were told that Le Fraysse hosted music summer schools. It seemed fitting; I couldn’t think of a more idyllic place to go to spend time immersed in music than that remote, sun-drenched spot.