In a pickle Mother-daughter team producing spicy Indian-style preserves featuring local ingredients By: David Sanderson Posted: 3:00 AM CST Saturday, Nov. 27, 2021

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This article was published 27/11/2021 (1691 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

How spicy is spicy?

That’s the question fielded most often by Jayashri Shetty and Sapna Shetty-Hees, the mother-daughter team behind Jaya’s Preserves, a West St. Paul-based venture that turns out a variety of Indian-style preserves, including spicy carrot pickles, spicy beetroot pickles and — pass the milk, please and thanks — spicy tomato jam.

Pre-COVID the pair were able to offer interested parties free samples on a soda cracker or piece of naan, to let them determine the heat quotient for themselves. With that option currently unavailable owing to pandemic-related restrictions, it’s a bit tougher to answer accurately, they contend, simply because what’s mouth-on-fire hot to one person might be a walk in the capsaicin park to someone else.

“I’m probably the wrong person to ask, as I’m not much for spicy food myself, so what I do is use my husband’s comparison, which is that our regular pickles are about the same spice level as a bottle of Frank’s RedHot (sauce), while our spicy pickles are equivalent to Frank’s extra-hot sauce,” says Sapna, standing next to her mother behind their booth at the winter version of the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market, where, barring major holidays, the two peddle their line of goods every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

“Generally, you’re using something like our lemon pickle as a condiment, so you’re able to control how much to add to a salad dressing or salmon glaze. For sure, though, a little definitely goes a long way.”

 

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Jayashri was a 19-year-old newlywed when she and her husband moved to Winnipeg in 1970 from Kundapura, a tiny, coastal village in southwest India.

“It was October — Oct. 25 to be precise — and the reason I remember that is it snowed the very next day, and I had never seen snow before,” Jayashri says chuckling, noting her husband’s brother, who lived here already, sponsored the couple to come to Canada. She laughs again, mentioning that before leaving India, her husband promised her parents they’d be back in 24 months, a vow that’s gone unfulfilled for 51 years and counting.

Pickling was a part of life back home, everybody did it, she says. Not long after she and her husband bought a home in the Maples, she began pickling, too, utilizing whatever she pulled out of a small, backyard plot, be it carrots, cauliflower or green beans, always making sure to add a mix of spices and chili peppers to match the taste of what she’d grown up enjoying.

That routine went on for years. Sure, she happily handed out jars of pickles to friends and co-workers — around raising a son and a daughter, she worked in the cosmetics department at Eaton’s and, later, Sears — but as for selling what she was turning out; no, the thought never crossed her mind, she says with a wave of her palm.

Fast-forward to July 2015. Sapna’s husband Darrell was participating in a cycling competition in Virginia when, during a perilous, downhill stretch of the course, another racer experienced a blowout, causing him to collide with multiple riders, Darrell among them. When the dust settled, not only had Darrell fractured 14 ribs, he’d also suffered a broken neck. (He considered himself fortunate; a Brazilian rider died in the mishap, while another participant was critically injured.)

Sapna, a federal government employee at the time, took an extended leave of absence to help care for her husband, who remained homebound for months.

“When the accident occurred our son Mayan was 12 and our daughter Amara, who has Down Syndrome, was 10,” Sapna says, pointing out by then her family, together with her parents, had moved to their present abode, a spacious property in West St. Paul. “For me, it turned out to be a life-changing moment because while Darrell was recuperating, I began asking myself what was most important in life. The answer was always the same: family.”

In 2017 she resigned from her position to spend more time with their children. Of course, there were multiple hours of the day when Mayan and Amara were attending school. To help pass the time, Sapna enlisted her mom, whom she brands as an amazing cook (“She had a few Ukrainian friends at work who taught her to make perogies, and before long, she wasn’t only making potato-and-cheddar ones, but curry-salmon perogies, too.”), to teach her the ins and outs of pickling.

“Honest to goodness it was the best therapy,” she says, smiling under her mask. “I felt productive, like I was doing something while still being around for the kids, and it really helped me get through that difficult stretch.”

Prior to his injury, Sapna’s husband had always shared Jayashri’s pickles in the office lunch room. Over and over he told his wife and mother-in-law that his co-workers would happily buy a jar or two for themselves. Hmm, they began to think, maybe having a small, hobby business might not be such a bad idea, after all.

Jaya’s Preserves made its official debut in the summer of 2018, at a weekly outdoor market held at the Wellness Institute on Leila Avenue. Just as they do presently at the St. Norbert market, there they happily explained what sets their pickles apart from ones shoppers might spot in the ethnic food aisle at the grocery store; how theirs incorporate fruits and vegetables native to Manitoba, almost exclusively.

For example, pickled crab apples would be unheard of “back home,” Sapna would say, but it was either find a way to use ones falling from a tree in a corner of their backyard, or leave them for the birds and bees.

“Most of what we pickle comes from our own garden and just like everybody else who has a rhubarb patch, at first we wondered what we were going to do with it all,” Jayashri says.

“Except our rhubarb jam has turned out to be so popular that we now have to get rhubarb from outside sources, which is a bit funny because you always hear stories of people who can’t give theirs away.”

Sapna and Jayashri were just beginning to entertain offers from local retailers interested in carrying their products when COVID struck. Filling such orders would have meant moving their operation out of their home into a shared, commercial kitchen, but because Jayashri is older, and because Sapna’s daughter has special needs, they agreed to play it safe, even though that would mean there would be zero revenue coming in for the foreseeable future with the market season on hold.

“What ultimately saved us was that the people behind St. Norbert (Farmers’ Market) pivoted so quickly in the spring of 2020, by setting up an online market for their regular vendors,” Sapna explains, noting not only were their regular customers able to track them down, lots of people who’d previously never heard of Jaya’s Preserves began reaching out, as well. (Although everybody assumes their business tag is short for Jayashri, it’s actually a nod to her mother, Sapna’s grandmother, who granted three of her children names that begin with Jaya.)

“I remember an email from one lady in particular who said the spicy pickles she normally bought at the store were all gone so she gave ours a try, and that she had no intentions of returning to her old brand, ever again,” Sapna says.

For the time being, mother and daughter are content selling at markets exclusively. Not only do they enjoy dealing with customers face-to-face, they have developed strong relationships with other vendors, some of whose goods — gin produced by Patent 5 Distillery, for example — they currently use in some of their preserves.

Also, if you visit them at their usual spot one Saturday, don’t be surprised to meet a third-generation pickler, one who’ll do her utmost to steer you toward her personal fave, a zesty, pineapple-mango marmalade.

“My daughter is so into being an entrepreneur, and helps us with bottles, labelling, prepping… everything, pretty much,” Sapna says. “Also, when my mom was being careful by not coming to markets last summer, my son was the one doing the loading and unloading, and helping set up our table every week.

“So if you’re asking whether my plan to spend more time with family worked out or not, the answer is a big yes.”

For more information, go to www.jayaspreserves.com.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca