Jam on It

Catherine Gilbert-Ansill has a passion for jam.

by J.F. Pirro

If Pif owner-chef David Ansill's passion is organ meats — say, lamb's tongue or venison tartare — his French-born wife and pastry chef Catherine Gilbert-Ansill's love is jam. And slowly, her reputation is starting to rival his.

At Pif, the couple's intimate BYOB in South Philly, her fruit jams, which she sells in clear Mason jars for $7 to $10 each, are a hot commodity. At Ansill, their second restaurant in Queen Village, her jams are on the menu, but not available for takeout.

While Catherine isn't sure how many different jams she makes — "as many fruits as there are," she says — which and how many depend, in part, on what David's serving. The week we spoke, it was blackberry and strawberry-lavender. The week before, she made honey-pear jam, which tastes divine paired with David's crepes.

Jam reminds Catherine of her mother Lucette's garden in St-Ouen-Les-Parey, Vosges. "[It's] extraordinarily rich with fruits like black, red and white currants, raspberries, strawberries, apples, mirabelles, blackberries and gooseberries," she says. "I always helped her pick the fruits, and she made wonderful jam with it." That garden is the reason Catherine still tries to find organic fruits for her jams; she's a regular at the Food Distribution Center on Packer Avenue.

The process: To a simple syrup, she adds strawberries and a little sachet of lavender she bought in Provence, and cooks it for 20 minutes. For honey-pear, she de-seeds but doesn't peel the pears, which she infuses overnight with vanilla beans, lemon juice and sugar. Then, she purees the pears and cooks the batch.

David's preference is spiced apple, which requires a one-to-one ratio of fruit to sugar. She peels the apples and cooks them in a copper pot with cinnamon, vanilla bean, cardamom and star anise. "He loves it," says Catherine. "He's having it at breakfast often. He likes serving it with the foie gras — and the customers like it [too]."

Among the more unusual offerings, Catherine makes a milk jam from one liter of milk, one kilogram of sugar and vanilla bean. There's also a rose jam; after infusing roses overnight in water and lemon juice, she makes syrup with the rose water and adds rose buds.

As for marketing the jams, Catherine is content using simple white labels with the fruit's name handwritten in French. "I was thinking of giving [the label] to a graphic designer," she says, "but I like it like this — simple yet elegant."

(j_pirro@citypaper.net)

Pif, 1009 S. Eighth St., 215-625-2923; Ansill, 627 S. Third St., 215-627-2485.