Kylee Newton, Preserver
NEWTON & POTT
Hackney, east london
With an ethos of “waste not, want not” and savouring the seasons, it’s no surprise New Zealand-born Kylee turned to preserving. After stints as a DJ and working with Turner-Prize-winning photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, she started Newton & Pott in 2012 from her Hackney kitchen, making innovative jams, chutneys and pickles to sell on Broadway Market and in local delis and cafes. It is these seasonal, small-batch jars of baked peach and vermouth jam and za’atar pickled cauliflower (to name a few), coupled with her emphasis on the importance of handmade and using good-quality, local ingredients, that has won Kylee followers. Now, she’s focussing on teaching masterclasses and writing (her second cookbook will be released in 2021), while pickling beetroot stalks and incorporating sweet fruit pickles into baking. This is the art of preserving.
”I grew up in New Zealand in the 1970s and 80s, so we ate out of the seasons. My father had this amazing garden and he would make tomato sauces, chutneys, relishes and compotes. It wasn’t until I started Newton & Pott that I began dabbling in jams; I was making a chocolate brownie for a catering job and I did a strawberry coulis for the top. I thought about adding alcohol and all they had was Pimms, so I threw some in… I think the first jam I made was strawberry and Pimms.
When I was working for Wolfgang [Tillmans, the Turner-Prize-winning artist], I always made chutney for Christmas – my adaptation of the tomato and apple chutney from the Edmonds Cookery Book, a book everyone from New Zealand has. I posted a picture on Facebook saying, ‘here’s my annual chutney’, and this guy who I’d worked with at an events company wrote back saying he’d been making chutney too, and we should make some together. So we started a little company and got into the Broadway Market schoolyard, selling this tomato and apple chutney and a caramelised red onion one. For Christmas we made a beetroot and orange chutney, and a quince jelly… We then parted ways and I took Newton & Pott from there.
I didn’t have a car so I had to catch two buses to the fruit and vegetable market in New Spitalfields Market, Leyton. I’d take a little granny trolley and a big IKEA bag with me, and I’d go at about 5am because I had to miss the school kids getting on the bus on the way back, as I had so much stuff with me. I’d go twice a week and it really got me excited about the seasons. I never get bored of coming up with new ideas and writing recipes – pickled beetroot stalks are a new favourite.
Newton & Pott was always handmade in Hackney, it was local. Yes, it proved to be really expensive that way, the rents went up again and I just couldn’t keep it going financially. It is a very expensive product to make because you’re using lots of different fruit and vegetables, and, of course, I wanted to use good-quality produce. Plus, with Brexit, the produce was getting more expensive. Newton & Pott was a really lovely thing, but you have to support these small businesses. It’s fundamentally how Mark [Kylee’s husband] and I live.
“Experimenting is always a good way to learn. I’ve done everything from trial and error”
Kylee Newton
There’s been a change in how we eat and see food. It’s about going back to what is really important: what we’re putting into our food, making things from scratch and being more in tune with the seasons. I think we’re sick of living a life where everything needs to be delivered yesterday – people are gagging to slow down and do things with their hands; maybe that’s the hippy in me. Pickling and jam making is something you can do with your hands and then there’s the ‘waste not, want not’ idea of preserving, giving fruit and vegetables a longer lease of life. We rarely had any waste [at Newton & Pott], all the peelings would go to the compost every night.
People think jam is really easy because your grandma used to make it, but grandma would match sugar to fruit weight – anything is going to set with that much sugar because the crystals will cool down and want to gel. Jam is sugar-based and you can’t run away from that, but these days we’re a lot more aware of our intake, so jams have a lot less sugar in them. You’re therefore reliant on a chemical reaction happening between heat, pectin and acidity (your lemon juice). If those perfect conditions don’t happen, it’s harder to get your set.
Fruits have different levels of acidity and pectin in them, so one with high levels is going to set really quickly, whereas one with low pectin and low acidity will need more lemon juice, to be mixed with another fruit that has a higher pectin level, or cooked down for longer for the fruit sugars to be released. Some jams are firmer than others; supermarket jams tend to have a setting agent, which is artificial, but pectin is a natural setting agent that’s in the fruit. You can add extra pectin, from ground-down lemon pips, and you can buy liquid pectin from apples.
Jam is the hardest of all the preserves and it does take a little more time and practice. Like baking, there are rules and you need to concentrate on the heat. You want a pan with a smaller surface area on the bottom and a wider opening on top because of the concentrated heat source coming from the bottom. You don’t want to boil your jam too much because fruits have natural sugars in them – the longer you boil, the more the fruit turns into sugar. I use white granulated sugar, not quite as much as grandma did, but I still work on a 60% fruit to 40% sugar kind of ratio. You can’t be afraid of those high heats; you want to get it to the heat as quickly as you can, then you aren’t making more sugars out of the fruit and it will come to its set quicker.
I love adding sweet fruit pickles into baking. I’m not a fan of overly sweet desserts so it creates a weird sharpness – try pickled pears or cherries in matcha friands, so you have that balance of sharp and soft, buttery flavours. Mark loves plum pickle brine on top of custard – it sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it’s fabulous. Jams go really well in baking, so mixing into cake batters or ice-cream. Experimenting is always a good way to learn. I’ve done everything from trial and error, I’ve not been told by an expert. I’m creative so, for me, it’s always about the ideas and the inspiration which provokes, challenges and excites me.”
For more, visit newtonandpott.co.uk
Photography: Philippa Langley (portrait), @newtonandpott (preserves)
@newtonandpott
