Robert Lambert
Robert Lambert Newsletter
Fall 2011
In This Edition
LIMITED-RUNS
NEW SYRUP
FRUITCAKES RETURN
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EDITION: Fall/2011
Hello!                          

GREETINGS FROM ROBERT LAMBERT! 

My apologies if you visited my website this summer and foundPeony it closed. I took the opportunity of my annual visit to the family farm in Wisconsin to shut down for a complete retooling of the site, and that is now complete.  Send a Gift Certificate or a Gift Card, Tell a Friend about a product, or follow me across a dozen photo galleries as I harvest fruit in the wilds of Watsonville or Wisconsin, slice mountains of glistening rare citrus fruit or watch a pot of jam come to its final boil. Share my farm visits and learn of its 100-year history. 

Wild Plum JamLIMITED-RUN PRODUCTS
Wild Plum Jam

I will also begin listing limited run products here that I have only sold at Farmer's Markets until now, like Wild Plum Jam. Randomly cross-pollinated plums that birds have seeded behind my Marin County home provide a rainbow of fruit for jamming. It was a rare good year, and I blended them all. A small batch last year sold in a weekend. Don't be left out! And check the galleries on my new site and see it being made!

 

My visit to the farm this summer was tempered by a broken arm my Mother suffered a few weeks before. I made the pies this year, cherry, apple, and blueberry, but my sister has had to step in when it comes to the yeast doughs. I'm hopeless! I harvested my brother's farm rhubarb for my Strawberry Rhubarb Jam this year, a superior brilliant red and thin-stemmed variety. The scent of a handful of the tiny fully-ripe organic strawberries I use can fill a room. Combined, and with far less sugar than fruit, the color  and flavor are both superb. See it being made!

 

Since my last newsletter my fruitcakes and White Ginger Syrup have both been featured in the Wall Street Journal, and my Salt-Preserved Meyer Lemons in New York Magazine. The challenge of growth for me is not being able to increase production by much more than I now make, so I need to control its distribution. I am not taking on more wholesale customers at this time. My products will be available through my Farmer's Markets, established retailers or online only.

 

NEW SYRUP
Thai Ginger Syrup

There seems to be a growing appreciation of how a teaspoon of one of my exotic flavored Syrups can transform a beverage,and now there's a new flavor. Thai Ginger Syrup is made from galangal root, best identified as the inedible chunk of wood in the bottom of a bowl of hot and sour soup in a Thai restaurant. To make this syrup I long cook the root until it exudes a unique flavor of butterscotch, roses and spice.

 

I stopped making it several years ago despite my affection for it, just too tired of explaining what it was. But it's an ingredient in my Dark Cherries in Merlot Syrup, and I was all out and needed to make more, so I thought I'd try to offer it here. Use in hot or iced tea, coffee, in whipped cream, on fruit, ice cream, in a stir fry or dipping sauce, with Thai food. Especially good with blackberries and blueberries. 

fruitcakeRETURN OF THE FRUITCAKES
Winter Fruit Cake

A sure sign of the Fall season is the return of the Fruitcakes . I made most of them in early summer so they are now sufficiently aged to sell. See it being made! In my never-ending search for improvement I'm now infusing the soaking liquors-the Jack Daniels with orange peel for the Dark Fruitcakes, scented geranium and orange for the White Fruitcake, geranium alone for the new Winter Fruitcake.

 

This last I came up with several years ago when I gave a large company an exclusive on my White Fruitcake and needed something to replace it. I haven't made it in a long time but think it's well worth bringing back-I've missed it, and so have the customers who remember it! The idea here is the finest fruits of summer preserved for winter use, dried apricots, cherries, pears and nectarines plumped with guava juice, Kirsch and Pear William eau de vies.

 

The nuts are pecans, Brazil nuts, whole blanched toasted almonds and hazelnuts, the peels my own white grapefruit, picked in Napa, blood orange and Rangpur lime I picked in Morgan Hill, and Meyer lemon from Gene Lester. The batter is similar to the White Fruitcake, but with peach and guava nectar instead of orange juice, and scented with cardamom, cinnamon and vanilla. The soaking cognac here is infused with the rare champagne geranium leaves I grow, and a favorite of mine. Garnished with a Seville orange peel flower and California bay leaf. 

 

 

I hope you enjoy tooling around the new site as much as I enjoyed putting it together!

 

 

My Best to You,

 

Robert Lambert

October 2011