There’s a particular craft fair I like to go to at a nature preserve in Wells, Maine, every year. They make up for their overstock of earthy stoneware and lobster imagery by offering excellent bake sale cupcakes, dollar hot dogs cooked by the fire department, local draft beer and a tent full of food vendors.
It’s not Las Vegas, in the sense that you can’t walk around with a beer in your hand as you poke pretzel sticks into various mustards and dips, but once you leave the designated drinking area they do have some jackpots. There are two sweet guys that run a catering business in Portland, selling sackfuls of their signature button-sized lavender shortbread cookies. There’s a big Greek family that sells olives and oils from their ancestral grove. And this past year there was the Hot Jelly Lady.
Because I’m a fantasist and cynic and have watched too many episodes of Murder, She Wrote, I like to imagine coastal Maine as one big murder mystery waiting to happen. Grey Goose Gourmet Pepper Jellies is the exact kind of business that Angela Lansbury’s sleuthing would have pulled out from under a cloud of criminal suspicion. The real perps, I’m sorry to say, would have been the two guys from Portland, but I don’t want to spoil the ending. It’s enough to know that the jelly was distinctive enough to inspire strong impulses.
What got me, initially, was the weird dip. It was made from the Hot Jelly Lady’s Pineapple Orange Rosemary Pepper Jelly, mixed with gorgonzola, pecans, and diced dried mango. Eaters, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, you’re wrong. It was delicious. It was also fourteen bucks for a ten ounce jar, but instead of backing away in horror I had to give her props for charging what it probably really cost to make and sell at a modest profit. You can’t go to Maine and expect cheap pineapples.
The normal exurban boomer thing you do with a hot pepper jelly is pour it over a block of cream cheese and serve it with Wheat Thins. I don’t know anyone anymore that would eat that, except at a 70’s theme party, but I usually keep a jar around to melt in the microwave, add soy sauce or nuoc mam, and use it to glaze grilled pork or chicken. If I’m out of pepper jelly I’ll use orange marmalade.
I did buy a jar and meant to make the dip but too much of it had vanished by the time I got motivated. I thought I would use hot mango chutney instead. I relocated the 3 x 5 laser-printed card with the four ingredients and their proportions and created a batch verbatim. It was mediocre. Honestly, the Hot Jelly Lady’s confections were so fine that the Hot O.P.R. Pepper Jelly with Gorgonzola – its formal name – just wasn’t the same without the O.P.R.
Eaters, I did eventually come up with something quite good, but I had to pull up my big boy pants. The pineapple and rosemary parts of the Hot O.P.R. had gotten married, as it were, in a ceremony intense enough to melt sugar. A civil merger consummated in a countertop bowl no longer cut it. Also, for some reason I don’t understand, adding sweet dried pineapple to a mango jelly was just very different from adding sweet dried mango to a pineapple jelly. I tried apricots; they had no flair.
Finely chopped medjool dates, bourbon, honey and rosemary all melted together in a microwave are what finally gave me something I could serve, with respect and blue cheese instead of gorgonzola, to the Hot Jelly Lady. It was not the same thing, but it had the same jumbled, fortuitous spirit. I could see it on Wheat Thins, astonishing the jaded world at a rural craft fare, with or without cream cheese. You never know what clues will solve the mystery.
Recipe: Hot Mango Pecan Spread
A hot jelly spread hijacked from a craft fair in Maine.
-Full Post-
Toast pecans lightly in a toaster oven for a minute or two or until fragrant, then chop fine. Combine the chopped dates, bourbon, honey and rosemary in a small microwaveable bowl or ramekin and microwave for 30 seconds. Stir up and microwave again for 30 more seconds. Combine the mango chutney, pecans and blue cheese with the date mixture and stir up well. Serve at room temperature by gooping over a block of cream cheese, or arrange on crackers.
This is a take on pepper jelly spreads, which I think of as a mid-century modern thing, like Danish furniture. In this case you don't need a pepper jelly, but if you want some you can't do better than to grab a jar from the Hot Jelly Lady at Grey Goose Gourmet, available by mail order or happenstance at various craft fairs in Maine.
Ingredients
Directions
Toast pecans lightly in a toaster oven for a minute or two or until fragrant, then chop fine. Combine the chopped dates, bourbon, honey and rosemary in a small microwaveable bowl or ramekin and microwave for 30 seconds. Stir up and microwave again for 30 more seconds. Combine the mango chutney, pecans and blue cheese with the date mixture and stir up well. Serve at room temperature by gooping over a block of cream cheese, or arrange on crackers.
This is a take on pepper jelly spreads, which I think of as a mid-century modern thing, like Danish furniture. In this case you don't need a pepper jelly, but if you want some you can't do better than to grab a jar from the Hot Jelly Lady at Grey Goose Gourmet, available by mail order or happenstance at various craft fairs in Maine.
Sandra Dwight-Barris
Hi Larry!
I love your story about our pepper jellies and the inspiration it has given you to get creative in the kitchen. Mangoes, my favorite pepper jelly variety of all, I can never get enough mangoes in any way, shape or form! Thank you for sharing this wonderful story and all your culinary stories and I hope to see you again perhaps at the Laudholm Nature Craft Show in September. Please stop by and say hello. Cheers, Sandra