New Food Items – Week 4
Thursday Life has already showcased several new Jamaican food items on the local market since the start of the month, and we take great pleasure in introducing another three that may just fit into appropriate niches on our island.
While there are many vinaigrettes on the supermarket shelves, none of them are made in Jamaica. Sure, there are smaller local ‘cottage industry’ ones, but no one has been able to break into supermarket chains except for Sandra McLeish, who is the managing director and owner of Springvale Enterprise, responsible for producing Springvale Vinaigrettes. These gluten-free and MSG-free dressings are manufactured in Clarendon and St Thomas and sold in MegaMart and HiLo stores nationwide, as well as a few independent supermarkets. With three flavours in production — sorrel, june plum and guava — McLeish says that each of the vinaigrettes “is an everything dressing, which can be used in salads, as a marinade, poured on vegetables such as callaloo, or it can even be reduced down to a barbecue glaze”.
About a decade ago, McLeish purchased a farm in Portland. “I saw a waste of fruits going on, which was devastating and heart-breaking to me,” she lamented to Thursday Life in a recent interview, “and I decided that I really wanted to do something to change that. Take sorrel, for example. Why is this amazing dynamic fruit just used at Christmas time? So with the help of my husband Richard, who is a chemical engineer and who tinkered with ideas and recipes for me, we came up with this plan to make vinaigrettes and dressings. In fact, later this year we’ll be launching our dressings,” McLeish revealed. See https://www.springvaleproducts.com for more information.
The various fruits that McLeish uses in her Springvale Vinaigrettes, which have been on the market for about ten months, but which were rebranded in January this year, are exclusively sourced in Jamaica, as are the vinegar, sugar and herbs. “Our motto is ‘live fruitfully’,” bubbled McLeish, “and we pride ourselves on the labels we have come up with. We had to choose something that would be able to stand up on its own in any top location in the world, and we decided on the glass bottle so that it becomes an elegant condiment you could place on your dining table.”
Those who have tried the vinaigrettes have expressed surprise at their classy presentation and excellent flavour. But why shouldn’t we expect items produced in Jamaica to be of star quality?
What better example to back this up than DeJaFrut All Natural Sorbets, which come in Black Cherry, Sorrel, Mango, Pineapple, Coconut and Key Lime? Conceptualised and owned by the Wilson twins, Marie and Maria, and their younger brother Chris, DeJaFrut was born out of a love for Italian Ice. “We grew up in the Bronx eating granita,” Chris Wilson revealed a few weeks ago to Thursday Life, “but it was about three years ago, while my sisters were enjoying some, when they began thinking about Jamaica and bag juice.” Of Jamaican parentage, the three siblings have been coming to Jamaica every year since the seventies, and treat the island as their second home. “My sisters thought it would be a great idea to have something like these Italian Ices in Jamaica,” Wilson went on, “so they approached me with the idea. I thought it was brilliant, so they looked into it.”
Wilson and his sisters did a tremendous amount of research and development. Determined to avoid using any artificial ingredients, preservatives, additives, or high fructose corn syrup, but to rely solely on natural fruit sourced in Jamaica — sweetened with cane juice if needed — they decided they would have to make it themselves. And so, under the name of Island Icee, the Wilsons, who stagger their time in Jamaica to ensure that one of them is always here, started making these sorbets in Montego Bay last year July, but then rebranded them to DeJaFrut in December, and haven’t looked back since.
Available in single-serving paper tubes, with an aluminium foil lid heat-sealed onto each, the product has a six-month freezer life. Wilson explained to Thursday Life that at the moment they are only distributing to beach bars in Montego Bay, like Doctor’s Cave and Cornwall Beach. “That being said,” he continued, “if an individual makes an order via e-mail (chris@dejafrut.com) of a dozen or more of the sorbets, we will endeavour to have them delivered anywhere on the island. We also hope to expand into Kingston within three to six months, and we shall be expanding to the grocery stores and we are coming out with a pint-size pot.”
What sets this ice-lolly-looking treat apart from the rest of its kind? “We use only fresh Jamaican fruit, no concentrates, we brew the sorrel ‘tea’ ourselves, and we make the sorbets in small batches to ensure quality,” Chris Wilson boasted. Indeed, these sorbets are far from being ice lollies. They have the exact consistency and flavour of a sorbet you’d make in your own home.
Mark McConnell, co-owner and co-director of Orijin (along with his wife Jaime), also prides himself on making fresh juices (not from concentrate) in their juicing plant in Montego Bay. Having successfully launched their orange and grapefruit juices in January 2012, they decided to bring out a pineapple juice in November of the same year, and it can now be found in mainstream supermarkets, gas stations and pharmacies. “Jamaicans love pineapple juice, but there was a void in the market for a fresh pineapple juice. Ours is the only one on the Jamaican market that has no preservatives, no added sugar, and of course it is made from fresh pineapples, and not from concentrate,” McConnell enlightened Thursday Life.
But since Jamaica is the land of ‘box juice’, is there really a need for Orijin? “The standard and packaging of juice in Jamaica had been the same for at least fifteen years,” McConnell informed us, “and my wife and I knew we could make a better juice, in better packaging, one that would bring some excitement to the market.” At the moment Orijin pineapple juice is available in the larger 1.5-litre bottle, and in three weeks the 240-ml size will be on the shelves, as well as in gyms, cafés and restaurants. “We also wanted to be able to export to other Caricom countries and to North America, so the packaging had to be more appealing,” he continued. “The truth is, the packaging serves a functional purpose as it helps to keep the product fresher due to it being airtight. The cap has a rubber seal that makes it airtight. As a result, our pasteurising process is a lot more gentle on the product. In other words, we don’t have to heat the juice to such a high temperature, which inevitably degrades the flavour. So we end up with a better flavour.”
We certainly hope that our readers have enjoyed Thursday Life’s presentation over the last four weeks of all the new Jamaican food and beverage items available, and we urge you to go out and buy these new products: Seafood Rainforest’s Rainforest Ready burgers; Craig Powell’s Backyard BBQ smoked barbecued meats and his Jamaica Rabbit Ranch’s whole frozen rabbit carcasses; Mommy’s Choice Sweet Cassava Bammies; King’s Jamaican goat meat; Misty Valley sausages; Greathouse Gourmet pepper jellies; Springvale Vinaigrettes; DeJaFruit All Natural Sorbets; and Orijin’s Fresh Pineapple Juice.
Satisfy your taste buds!