Chocolate Valencia and other reasons to eat bread

Konkan Kitchen just launched their first chocolate-flavoured fruit spread made with 68 percent dark chocolate and oranges

Whether you’re among those who’ve suddenly taken a fancy to a proper tea service (just like the lot who are into colouring books now) or a parent struggling to get your kid to eat, you can’t do without your jar of jam. And one of the best places to get your supply would be the year-old Konkan Kitchen that makes some of the freshest fruit jams in Mumbai, which are free of colouring and added ingredients such as fruit pulp. “We use only fresh fruit to make our spreads and the only preservative we use is sugar,” says Soumi Dey of Konkan Kitchen, which delivers across the country.

The idea of Konkan Kitchen was born when Dey went on a trip to Mahabaleshwar with her husband, Gopal and three-year-old daughter, Suhasini. The couple noticed that while their daughter loved to eat fresh strawberries, she didn’t really take to the strawberry jams that were being sold at every corner shop. When they read up on jams, they found out that the factory-produced variety contained less than 15 per cent of the fruit. “Strawberry is one of our most popular fruit spread because kids love it,” says Dey. The fruit for this spread is sourced from the very place where it all began – Mahabaleshwar. Their kala jamun spread for which fruits were sourced from Tamil Nadu and Badlapur in Thane is another popular flavour and is all sold out.

Except for two fruits – oranges and kiwis – that are imported from South Africa and New Zealand, the rest of the spreads are made from locally sourced produce at Konkan Kitchen’s small manufacturing unit in Navi Mumbai. “We’ve got Alphono mangoes from Devgarh, mulberries from Trikaya farms in Lonavala, figs and pomegranate from Pune, peaches from Kashmir, plums from Himachal and pineapples from Kerala for our fruit spreads,” says Dey.

This week, Konkan Kitchen launched their first-ever chocolate-flavoured fruit spread, Chocolate Valencia, made of oranges and 68 per cent dark chocolate. “The oranges have been imported from South Africa because the zest of our Nagpur oranges was too bitter for the Indian palate, so we stopped using them last summer,” says Dey.

To order from Konkan Kitchen, mail konkan.kitchen@gmail.com or call 9820137099