Spreading the Love on a Marmalade Road Trip
Czech native Blanka Milfaitova is on a mission to share her award-winning marmalade making skills with hungry customers from Africa to Norway.
Milfaitova had been running a popular café, Slunecna Kavarna or the Sunny Café, for two years when she cooked up her first batch of marmalade: peaches and mint.
“From the counter of my café it disappeared that day,” Milfaitova says.
Her marmalade continued to fly off the shelf. Milfaitova soon established her own “mini-manufactory” as she calls it. She named it Nase Dobroty, or “My Goodies,” and ran it out of her home located in a remote area in the mountains in the southern part of the country. She named her product, forthrightly, “My Great Marmalade” or Moje Dobra Marmelada. It’s one hundred percent handmade, down to the handwritten labels pasted onto the Weck glass jars. The spread is made from the highest quality fruits, picked at the peak of freshness, from neighboring farms.
‘My marmalade didn’t look forward to going in the supermarket, my marmalades are picky. I want to produce everything slowly, always with my hands and to enjoy it.’
The fruit is handpicked from commercial farms as well as friends’ trees. This year Milfaitova has plans to start her own small plantation.
Just one year into her marmalade making adventure, Milfaitova was honored with a number of international awards, including the title of World’s Best Artisan Marmalade Maker (2013) by the Dalemain Marmalade Awards out of the UK. Soon after, she started receiving offers from international supermarket chains and gourmet stores to sell her prized product in their aisles. Initially, Milfaitova accepted the offers, agreeing to stock My Great Marmalade in stores in London, Rome, Qatar and Norway, among other locations. But not long after, she made the decision to cancel all deliveries.
Milfaitova decided to turn down the offers “because I don’t like to feed bad shops. My marmalade didn’t look forward to going in the supermarket, my marmalades are picky. And I want to produce everything slowly, always with my hands and to enjoy it.”
On Milfaitova’s website she describes one of her priorities as the “never ending fight against multinational industrial food corporations that are currently destroying small producers, farmers and manufacturers, and against global brands and poor quality industrial food in chain stores.”
The joy Milfaitova gets from seeing first-hand her customer’s appreciation for her marmalade fueled her decision to hit the road. She was inspired to embark on the journey after meeting a local farmer in a lavender field in Provence where she and Pavel traveled in the summer of 2013 in a rented motorhome. After learning about Milfaitova’s work, the farmer offered her some of his just harvested white peaches to add to her lavender marmalade.
As she has been on the road, Milfaitova gave a marmalade making demonstration back in the Czech Republic before setting out on her journey.
In the Western Sahara, Milfaitova made a marmalade from bananas, cactus honey and golden raisins.
“Driving home with the amazing peaches we thought how it would be nice if we could just put the peaches and lavender in a pot on the spot and make marmalade right there,” she says.
Back home, Pavel suggested the idea of a trip and it wasn’t long before they bought their own motorhome.
“Together we planned the journey to drive and make marmalade in all the European countries where there would be something ripe, some beautiful herbs, honey and other ingredients to make marmalade,” says Milfaitova. “In two months we left.”
Milfaitova received cookware from several companies, but has otherwise self-funded the trip.
Today, more than six months into what they call their European Marmalade Expedition, Milfaitova has made strawberry marmalade in Sardenia, persimmon marmalade in San Marino and traveled to Portugal, Corsica, Switzerland and Luxembourg, among other places. They plan to hit 39 countries, with stops at markets, workshops, fairs and tastings along the way, but are also making things up as they go.
“It’s according to good weather, good mood and the fruit,” says Milfaitova. “It’s completely flexible and reflecting each country’s gastronomy.”
The ripeness of the fruit and geographical location also determines the ingredients she uses.
“In Sicily for example, I came to do a blood orange marmalade, but in the end I found a plantation of Indian fig cactus and prickly pear and made a marmalade from that,” she says.
Milfaitova sends marmalade back to her shop, which sells for about $7 a jar.
The most notable experiences so far occurred when Milfaitova veered from her European route.
Milfaitova has made strawberry marmalade in Sardenia, persimmon marmalade in San Marino and traveled to Portugal, Corsica, Switzerland and Luxembourg.
“I’m sure the best is still yet to come, but cooking with the Berbers in Western Sahara, from their bananas, cactus honey and golden raisins, it had its charms,” says Milfaitova.
And then there was the time her route crossed paths with that of a famous off-road race.
“In Morocco I got on the route of the original Dakar Rally. Out of nowhere, some trucks rushed toward me and the stones flying from them broke the windshield of our caravan,” she says, “It was quite a scary moment, away from civilization with a kid in the car.”
Smashed windows, aside, Milfaitova says that the journey is “running perfectly” and “going according to plan.”
While away, her four employees are holding down the fort back home where it all began. Upon her return in November (after ending the trip in Norway’s Nordkapp), her plans include publishing her book ”“ a recipe travelogue that she’s been writing along the way ”“ and “to lie down with little Eliska in the mountains in the garden and watch the sky and listen to the wind in the bushes around our pond.”
When asked about her business philosophy, her answer doesn’t come as a surprise.
“To go my own way. Absolutely.”
Photography courtesy of Blanka Milfaitova.
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