LA's Canning Coalition—Valerie Confections

Friday I went over to Valerie Confections, where Valerie and husband Stan have turned their boutique kitchen into one of liveliest food labs in the city. Last week they were holding a pre-Halloween open house with a different tasting every day, and Friday was dedicated to Valerie's new WHITE FIG AND FUJI APPLE JAM.

The backstory is that Valerie is a master baker. Her first love is confectionery—chocolates, caramels, cakes, petit fours—but a year ago or more, she was shown how to make sweet preserves by a former employee, a woman who herself had learned from a jam master. Valerie fell under the spell and is now selling her delicious seasonal jams at the shop, through her new Farmers' Market program and online. In September I spent a Sunday in her kitchen helping to process a special order for 500 jars of FIG JAM WITH PINOT NOIR, and she was flushed with enthusiasm—with pleasure. "I feel like I'm cheating on confections with jam," she said. I know what she means: jamming is like a love affair you can't stop revisiting.

What's interesting is how passion stands at the stove with professionalism in Valerie's kitchen. Her distinctive "jam voice," as she aptly calls it, is high-style—refined, precise, intense. Her manner in the kitchen is of a piece with her wares: she's all about technique, research and mastery. Valerie is, to coin a phrase, a jam geek, but an elegant one, and her preserves often put me in mind of the sophisticated desserts I ate in Paris' fanciest restaurants and would be intimidated to try at home. Her signature STRAWBERRY-VANILLA BEAN JAM is so gussied up that you can't believe it has nothing more than the standard ingredients—fruit, sugar, lemon juice—plus a vanilla bean. Nature is transformed into fancy culture as it passes through her hands.

When I stopped by Friday, I was surprised to see someone else stirring her pot. It turns out Valerie found an unexpected apprentice in Ernesto and is training him. While he tended to the strawberry jam—"it's always strawberry season in Oxnard," said Valerie when I remarked that it's late in the year to be using strawberries—she dove into the fridge for things to taste. Like most good cooks, she's always handing you something to put in your mouth.

First up was her fig-apple combo. It's inspired, hands-down the best commercial sweet preserve I've tasted outside of June Taylor's products. (Taylor, who is the Alice Waters of sweet preserves, has a "still room" or jammery up in Berkeley.) Valerie has mastered the low-sugar preserve, and her fig-apple mixture is a perfect example of how she resists rusticating noble fruits. No "kountry kitchen" apple butter for her. Her figs and apples, tied together with vanilla bean and a drop of fine cognac, are fit for a gilded salon.

After the apple-fig tasting, Valerie shared a real treat—and I wouldn't have believed it had I not tasted it myself. A friend of hers returned from Italy with the gift of a tiny jar of mixed fruit preserves flavored with white truffle. They are mind-blowing in that particularly Italian way: refined but also wildly sensual. It was like tasting the breakfast ambrosia of a Tuscan prince. "I'm going to steal this idea," said Valerie.

Me too. Time to call my favorite truffle importerr, Ian Purkayastha of Tartufi Unlimited. Check back soon.