6 | Food & Drink
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From an Iowa farm to a Dunwoody kitchen, an award-winning preserves business rises BY DYANA BAGBY dyanabagby@reporternewspapers.net
Regina Nekola Hild’s upbringing on an Iowa farm instilled in her a love and appreciation of food. After a career in real estate, Hild went back to her roots in 2016. She founded Regina’s Farm Kitchen, a jam and preserves business, in her Dunwoody home when a farmer friend didn’t know what to do with a batch of accidentally-grown jalapeño peppers. Her strawberry blueberry jalapeño jam went on to win in the “Preserves” category at this year’s Good Food Awards in San Francisco in January. Hild says she is planning to expand her product line and hopes to sell her preserves in retail stores and restaurants.
Q: What was it it like growing up on a farm in Iowa?
A:
I was born and raised on a 200-acre, centuries-old farm in the heart of Iowa. My upbringing was in a typical, rural Iowa fam-
ily that grew their own vegetables, fruit orchards and gardens. My mom cared for us kids while my dad tended to the fields. We grew soybeans, corn and had a large herd of beef cattle and pigs. My dad farmed the acreage with his dad when he was young. It was not easy life growing up in the middle of the country in a four-bedroom, one-bath house. As one of the five kids, you were expected to help and roll up your sleeves. There always seemed to be more than enough chores to go around. I am forever grateful for my parents, who sacrificed to teach all about growing up in simple times. We always had more than enough food and love to go around. I feel very lucky that my work ethic is strong because my dad and mom instilled the same in us. At an early age I was independent, driven and always a natural in the kitchen. My parents were all about the gardens, strawberry patches, the apple grove and the animals. My mom loved growing strawberries. Hence, summers were spent picking fresh strawberries, selling the berries on the fam-
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ily’s roadside pop-up shop, and making jam. Being in the kitchen cooking, baking and creating has always been an influence along with my rural, Iowa upbringing. It seemed natural that I would always be involved with having my own product line. I felt comfortable Chef Regina Nekola Hild in the kitchen and the oversees the fruit selected rules I could break could to use in her preserves, be my own. Perhaps that made from locally grown is why the corporate job food from Georgia farmers. did not please me. ERIC VALENTIN
Q: Do you remember the first meal your mother taught you to cook?
A: My mom taught me how to fry
chicken in a cast-iron skillet. Each spring, my mom would load us kids in the car and go to the Toledo Feed Store where we picked up baby chicks. These cute, little fuzzy creatures once fattened up would become our lunch and sometimes supper. If only I had Ina Garten’s creativity when I began. I would have made chicken 14 ways in a week, not just Friday! It was simple for Mom. All you needed was farm fresh lard, a cast-iron skillet, flour, salt and pepper, apron and tongs. From a young age, Mom started with her same recipe. She started with her mise en place which means “put in place.” Mise en place is deceptively simple but being organized and prepared in the kitchen saves time and frustration. I learned by doing it the old-fashioned way.
Q:
and more of the good stuff. We do not produce jelly. Jelly by definition does not have any pieces of fruit in it. Jelly is gelled fruit juice with added sugar, lemon juice and pectin. Marmalades are a combination of one or up to three different kinds of citrus. They are made with chopped, pureed or sliced citrus cooked with sugar, lemon juice and pectin. Our marmalades have lots of citrus peel in the jar and you will be delighted when you open a jar of Regina’s Farm Kitchen Orange Meyer Lemon Marmalade.
Q: Why did you choose to focus on making preserves?
A: I am really a baker by heart. My younger sister is a master pastry chef. I had always
What are the differences between jams, preserves, jelly and marmalades?
A:
Everyone has their description of what make a jam and a jelly the other. The [Food and Drug Administration] really puts strict guidelines on sugar because it is the preserve in making a jam have a “governing” shelf life. That’s why our preserves are differSPECIAL Regina’s Farm Kitchen’s strawberry blueberry ent. Because we only put the jalapeño jam won in the “Preserves” category at good stuff in -- a bushel of this year’s Good Food Awards in San Francisco. fruit, and an apron full of love. Preserves are whole piecwanted to own my own business. es of fruit suspended in the mixture. Fruits The crafting and bottling of preserves that lend themselves best to be preserved happened by accident in my Dunwoody are those with little natural pectin and are kitchen. A friend who owns a farm in North best preserved whole due to time consumCarolina accidently planted jalapeño peping processing. When I first began makpers. Being around Depression-era parents, ing jam, I tasted everything commercially I learned from my mom she would never made. I liked our product the best because throw anything out. we people-tested our formulas and flavors. I The chef and the farmer in me couldn’t believe low sugar and more fruit is the right find a reason to throw these perfect, green, combination. I think the products you find spicy morsels out, so I decided to make a saon the store shelf are ridiculously sweet. vory-sweet preserve that could be served Our product is made free of the bad stuff with cheese, or turn into a lovely glaze for