Emma munches on Misty Valley Sausages and opens a bottle of Great House Gourmet Pepper Jelly…

Every year people in Jamaica produce new food and beverage items, but we have been particularly impressed with the variety that has come into fruition since the Jamaica Observer Food Awards 2012/13.

We have to date featured the following: Seafood Rainforest’s Rainforest Ready burgers; Craig Powell’s Backyard BBQ’s smoked barbecued meats and his Jamaica Rabbit Ranch’s whole frozen rabbit carcasses; Neil Yap Sam’s Mommy’s Choice Sweet Cassava Bammies; and King’s Jamaican goat meat. Most of these are familiar, while some, like the rabbit, not so much. However, all have a unique aspect, and this week’s sausages and pepper jellies are equally interesting.

Fourteen years ago, Father Marek Bzinkowski, from Poland, came to Maggotty, St Elizabeth as a missionary priest in the Catholic Church. In a recent interview Father Marek boasted that, “Poland is almost the capital of sausage making, as every village in Poland has their own particular sausage.” He went on to tell us at Thursday Life that upon making his first sausage in Jamaica, “The Bishop of Mandeville, after tasting these sausages, suggested that I could make sausages to help give people jobs, and that we could then use the profits to help children’s homes and so on.” Father Marek believes strongly that “pastoral work is directly connected to the social work of the people” so the bishop’s idea was far from frivolous.

After years of testing out recipes, and training the five people who currently work in the processing plant in Maggotty, Father Marek’s Misty Valley sausages was born. Distributed by Outrigger in Kingston, Misty Valley has four types of sausages which have recently been introduced into mainstream supermarkets: Country-style; Jerky; Bratwurst; and Crakow (named after a town in Poland).

Father Marek has taken a step back from production now, and he really acts more like a consultant. He is very proud of these real Polish sausages. “The Kielbasa, which is the Polish word for sausage,” he informed us, “is made from pure meat, pork and beef, with spices added to it, and then it is preserved by smoking. However, the Bratwurst is not smoked, but it is cooked. This means they are all ready to eat, so you can take it out from the bag and eat it straight away,” he went on. “Otherwise, you can reheat by baking, frying, boiling or grilling it; have it with your macaroni, or in sweet and sour spices. Ackee and sausage is particularly lovely, and yesterday I ate it fried with onions,” Father Marek said. Sold in one-pound vacuum-packed parcels, Father Marek insisted that “there is nothing like our sausages on the island yet, but people should try them and see for themselves what I am talking about. Sausage-making has been a tradition for centuries in Poland, so these really are the best,” he concluded.

Our next product at first had us thinking: not another pepper jelly on the market. However, Danielle Lee Ziadie and Tanya Pattinson Roberts, managing director and culinary director of Greathouse Gourmet respectively, have looked on their venture through gourmet goggles, and have put a lot of thought into its purpose being way beyond a spread to serve with cheese and crackers.

The two ladies have been friends for a long time, and both have a passion for cooking. “Tanya is a gourmet chef,” Danielle told Thursday Life a couple weeks ago in an interview, “and I am a budding chef. In fact, for some time I was trying to think about ways one could season foods in order to achieve a gourmet taste, so I approached Tanya about it. She told me that we should look for one product, and we came up with pepper jelly as it has a combination of having a sweet soothing flavour with a spicy kick,” Ziadie revealed. The pair started testing out different recipes in Roberts’ kitchen, having started off with an old pepper jelly recipe of her father’s. “Our decision to do fruit fusions came from wanting a lighter balance to the palate, as pepper can overpower flavours,” Ziadie added.

The pair of friends are social butterflies, and are constantly entertaining at their houses. They would serve their guests variations of their pepper jellies, using them to make meals like pineapple pepper jelly pork sliders and grilled mango pepper jelly salmon, and even coming up with a guava balsamic vinaigrette and key lime mustard pepper jelly sauce. “Our friends were blown away and told us to get on with selling them,” Ziadie said, “and so came the birth of Greathouse Gourmet, which screamed of a traditional island life. What better way to describe Jamaica than to include Great Houses, and frankly, we thought it was fitting for preserves also,” she continued.

Greathouse Gourmet pepper jellies tries to balance the sweet with the spicy. So far the flavours they have come up with are guava, mango, pineapple and original pepper jelly. “The fruity flavour is prominent on first taste, and then the pepper comes in on the back end, and it remains as a slight hum on your palate while you are having it,” Ziadie related as I tasted, “and for some reason you can’t resist going back for more.” Admittedly Greathouse Gourmet is right on point. Each of the four flavours deserve single attention, and indeed these women have devised a delicious plan and turned it into something completely user-friendly. These pepper jellies are marinades for meats and seafood, ingredients for salad dressings, spices to add to dips, and simply sumptuous scooped out of their jars with a spoon and spread on toast.

Greathouse Gourmet Pepper Jellies are stocked at Bin 26, My Jamaica, CPJ Market, Uncorked!, Fromage Gourmet Market, Sandals Grande, and the Ritz Carlton. There are plans for the jellies to be in supermarkets in the very near future. Each 8.5 oz jar retails for about $450-$500, and you can get ideas for recipes at https://www.facebook.com/greathousegourmet

Please continue to support Jamaican products, and look out for next week’s edition, when Thursday Life will reveal more new items on the market.