The Jam Stand comes to brunch

Lately I’ve been brunching at home, a lot. One of the highlights of this brunching spree included pairing crepes with Drunken Monkey jam from The Jam Stand, an artisanal jam business founded by two girlfriends Sabrina Valle and Jessica Quon. These adorable ladies are experimenting with wild flavor combinations in their Brooklyn kitchen, creating jams like the Razzy Gabby (raspberries and jalapeños), You’re Bacon me Crazy (bacon!), and Drunken Monkey (bananas and rum). The result is these crazy spreadable concoctions unlike any jam I have ever tasted before. They’re super fresh, have no preservatives, and many of them are made from seasonal ingredients.

When I interviewed them for a story last week, they were on their way to pick up 20 lbs. of apricots from The Fridge, Red Jacket Orchard’s fruit warehouse in Long Island City, Queens. I walked out of the interview and photo shoot with jam on my mind, excited to use their jams (as they had suggested) in my own kitchen. Then came the weekend, and with it, crepes.

Crepes are one of my favorite things in the world. They’re beautiful, lovely and delicate, filling the kitchen with a buttery aroma. All of a sudden, I feel like I’m in Paris! They are the pancake’s French cousin. Pancakes can be met with syrups and butters, and are perfect as long as their texture is right (I like mine fluffy, G likes his dense). But in working with crepes, I feel like I have to treat them with extra special TLC. So we began to fill them up with the array of jams, first Razzy Gabby then Blueberry Bourbon (inspired by a Blueberry bourbon crumble), but the true winner was Drunken Monkey. The chunks of fruit and tangy rum sauce were the perfect foil to the crisp, buttery texture of the crepe. It was sort of like a Caribbean crepe suzette. G spooned the preserves on one side of the crepe, rolled it up and topped it with some maple syrup. I painted mine with a thick stripe of fruit along the middle, then proceeded to roll and eat.