Gourmet food in a can anyone?

Thursday 26 Nov 09

The food industry is the second largest economy for the region of Navarra, a northern region in Spain. You won't guess the 1st - it's car manufacturing - and VW at that. The Spanish thinks of it as a german brand now. Their 3rd is wind power to produce energy. Interesting.

Since agriculture contributes to 17% of the economy in Spain and Navarra is one of the important regions, we had to visit a gourmet factory. The first one was El Navarrico, a company since 1960, and we were being shown around by the son of the owner, Patxi Pastor Salcedo.

They produce 160 different types of gourmet food in bottles and cans mainly for the gourmet restaurant market. Normal consumers can't get these products cause of the pricey quality. Nothing much was in production cause the asparagus season is over but we did manage to see how the lentils and dry beans were cooked, bottled and sterilized though. Their export markets are Thailand, HK & Japan in Asia, Europe & North America. Again, Malaysia don't get their products. They are entering Singapore though.

Lentil bottling process

They prepared some vegetables for us to taste like white asparagus, piquillo peppers and cristal peppers. Liked the cristal peppers cause of the smokey 'crispy' texture. Good to eat veges after all that meat.

The owner's son and the various vegetables we tasted

The next factory we visited was Rosara, a similar company producing more varieties of gourmet food (190 different types) but more towards ready-to-eat poducts. They do sauces, pastes,etc. The company is younger, only 24 years old but the quality is similar to the first factory. They supply to gourmet shops as well but more for the local market. Export market is only 10% to US, Japan, Europe & Mexico.

The owner's son, Saul Gimenez Torero, showed us around and prepared a lovely tapas lunch for us. He even gave us a tapas set to bring back. So nice of him.

Saul at the Rosara factory. Bottling chick peas

Rosara products and our tapas lunch