Michèle Kim’s station wagon trunk is crammed, crate on crate, with macoun apples. Macouns, she tells me, are her crisp go-to for caramel apples, which she is in the thick of producing for her company, La Petite Occasion—also a purveyor of caramel candies, toffees, and other confections. We meet in the parking lot of Arethusa al Mano, a café in Bantam, CT whose flagship dairy is across the street. Michèle has just picked up her haul of apples from the orchard and intends to sample Arethusa’s dairy products as potential ingredients for her candies. In between errands, we sit down for coffee and talk grilled cheese, bodybuilding, CBD, and of course candy-making.
Hey Michèle, what’s in season now?
Right now, apples are in season, so we make a wonderful apple cider caramel that uses reduced cider from an orchard called Harvest Moon Farm and Orchard in North Salem, New York. We also, for the farmers’ markets and the orchard, make caramel apples…300-400 caramel apples a week for this particular orchard.
What is your earliest food memory?
Probably the open-faced grilled cheese sandwiches that my mother used to make with gruyère cheese. Sounds totally mainstream now, but I grew up outside of Detroit, so gruyère cheese was not mainstream at the time. However, I’m half Swiss, so my mother remembered the wonderful nutty flavors of gruyère. I was probably one of the most popular kids in the area because it was something new and different. Kids in the mid-70’s didn’t usually have (that).
How do your early food memories and experiences inform your company and what you make now?
I have a very European sensibility. The whole small batch, small producer, small product is just kind of ingrained in me. Even though we went to grocery stores and did the mainstream stuff, our small batch products are definitely created from my memories as a kid.
Where did you learn the art of confection?
The very first step was definitely in culinary school. I went to the Institute of Culinary Education—which started as Peter Kump’s. I remember making truffles, and the pastry chef was incensed because I was always covered in chocolate, and as we know the art of confection is supposed to be very neat and exact. I was diving in! Chocolate, all the way.
And then professionally?
I continued to expand my knowledge of confections when I worked at Eleven Madison Park for chef Nicole Kaplan in 2000 until the beginning of 2001, and I worked in pastry, so I made toffee, and I helped her with ganache, and we made caramels and just everything. I personally found at the time that I just was more interested—and I have to say better—at doing candy than dealing with gluten. Gluten and I don’t get along, we are just not friends, we don’t work together well. But me and sugar, well that’s a completely different thing. I always had a sweet tooth.
You spoke earlier about seeking out local ingredients. How has your relationship with your suppliers evolved over the life of your business?
In culinary school (in 2000) we were introduced to the Slow Food movement. Back to my childhood, it reminded me of when I would go to Switzerland to visit my father, how he would have a little shop for everything. He would get dairy one place, he would get beef another place, he had a relationship with all these small shops, he knew the owners. My great-aunt actually owned her own restaurant in a little town called Colombier, in Switzerland. So all of that adds together to form this desire to become more locally connected with small-batch producers in Westchester, Dutchess County, Putnam County. When we moved up (from New York City to Mahopac) it was great, and immediately it just kind of clicked together. Probably my closest relationship with a dairy producer is with Hudson Valley Fresh, a co-op of 10 farms in the Poughkeepsie/Hudson Valley area. Literally the cows are milked, it’s pasteurized and homogenized, put on the truck, the truck delivers it to the main facility, it’s bottled, then put on the delivery trucks and then we get it, so it’s a really fast process, and it’s just extremely fresh. I love that. I love the fact that every single batch we make is a little different based on what the cow’s been eating that day. I call myself a candy farmer because I believe that we literally use so many local farm ingredients that we kind of farm our candy!
What has it been like selling at farmers’ markets?
In the fall and the winter especially, we sell our caramels at a different farmers’ market each weekend. And because we’re not at the same spot more than once a month, our sales do really well. Because we’ve developed a following, they’re waiting for us. And we have a wonderful relationship with the other vendors at the market. We trade caramels for cheese, and greens, and produce, and amazing bread like Wave Hill Bread in Connecticut. It works really nicely.
Part of your identity is small batch. Do you ever think of scaling up?
I would like to continue being small batch but scale up, which sounds crazy, but I think that one issue that a lot of people like myself have is that when they start getting bigger they lose a little bit of that personality in their product. That’s one of the reasons that we’ve stayed small, because I refuse to do that. One thing is that our caramels have no stabilizers in them at all. I’ve always wanted to have a caramel that is literally a five-ingredient base, and we’ve been able to do that. However, once you get into distribution and you’re starting to ship West Coast, or even mid-country, it gets tricky, so my goal right now is just permeate New York State. Right now, I just want to make sure that whatever we do, we can maintain the integrity of our product.
Just for example, today, I am shipping a care package to a body builder! A female body builder in Gilbert, Arizona. People who are really into fitness, they want clean ingredients, they want something that’s simple, they want something that’s five ingredients. So it’ll be interesting to see how that package holds up shipping to a state where it’s 90 degrees right now.
How did you link up to a bodybuilder in Arizona?
Harvest Moon Orchard, who provides us with the apples (and) apple cider…the sister of the manager is a fitness nut, and she started to get into bodybuilding. After her first competition I sent her a little care package. Well, she took this great photo in her bikini, onstage, eating a caramel and it was awesome, so all these people started to follow us that were in that fitness world, so that’s how that started. It’s really strange how all these things are interconnected.
On another wellness note, can you describe a bit about the new product that you’re developing?
Well, right now, we’re testing only; we’re working with a local hemp oil manufacturer that is based upstate. I’m not putting out their name because they haven’t launched yet. We’re testing an organic, vegan caramel. We’ve had a couple people test it, and so far it’s going well. Right now, New York State is very strict; you are not allowed to sell CBD (cannabidiol) food products and that’s actually an FDA thing, so once the FDA gets everything all set up, then we’ll be ready to go. Right now, we’re just preparing, we have no idea when this is going to be—it could be in a year, or it could be five. But a lot of states, especially Kentucky, are really pushing to get FDA approval for edibles—and that is hemp edibles, not cannabis. It’s different! Hemp does not have THC, or it has extremely small quantities.
Food production tends to be repetitive, and at times monotonous. Do you have any tricks to get through a big order?
I actually prefer the bigger batches, because it’s easier to focus when you have a large order. Normally each batch that we produce is about seven pounds. A couple years ago, we had a tasting box company use our caramels. This is the largest we’ve ever done: approximately 8000 pieces. That takes about a week to do. So we hire extra people to help cut and wrap. The production itself I don’t mind, but to actually pack it up, that’s the monotonous, horrible part. I hate packaging! I am very lucky because I have a woman who works with me who is very into that, and she literally produces the same amount as like two people, and she’s English and so she’s always got some funny, salty comment, so it’s great, it keeps everything interesting.
Any playlists or podcasts you use during production?
There are very few people who can talk and work at the same time. When (I) get music involved it’s basically my way of saying “shut up and focus,” but in a nice way. Keeps the energy going and most people like that.
How do you get new ideas and inspiration for your products?
I’m married to a copywriter who runs a small ad agency, so he’s throwing stuff out there all the time, so it’s not very difficult to get new ideas. It’s more of me picking from his giant list of ideas what I think is going to be appropriate.
How do you maintain the same enthusiasm you had when you first started La Petite Occasion?
I just really enjoy what I do, and I think one thing that I realized about myself, I am a perpetual tweaker, so I’m constantly trying to perfect the recipe, I’m always trying to change it. We now have a small distributor, so we have our products out there, which is a great thing for me, because it’s like oh good, now I get to tweak it, again, so it has the appropriate shelf life, because now we’ve got it going on trucks and stuff. I love to constantly update the product and try and make it better and more sustainable all the time. It can be exhausting, but that’s what I enjoy doing. So as long as I can do that I’m great, I’m happy.
Find Michèle online and order her products at lapetiteoccasion.com
Instagram: @lapetiteoccasion; Facebook: La Petite Occasion; Twitter: @Chefmlkim
