In 1911, Alberto Soares Ribeiro founded two canned fish factories, one in Setúbal and one in Olhão. Both closed during the upheavals after 1974. Four generations later, the family started again.
How three cousins from France want to turn a country into a land of hot sauces: fully ripe chilies, one year of fermentation, and their own heat scale from 1 to 12.
In Têche in the Isère Valley, the Cony family has been growing walnuts since 1930, now in its fourth generation. Everything is washed, sorted, dried, and graded on the farm, the kernels are cracked there, and walnut oil and a vinegar made from green walnuts are produced from selected nuts. We introduce you to our new supplier.
Pink onions from Roscoff: Anaïs Causse on the Ferme de Kergus, siblings Tiphaine and Eric Quemener, and why the AOC/AOP onion lasts up to nine months. Published in the Berlin magazine Garçon, issue no. 56, December 2020.
Sown in winter, planted by hand in May, harvested by hand in August: the Oignon doux des Cévennes AOP. We introduce you to the family that grows it for us.
In 1930, a small grocery store opened on Rua dos Bacalhoeiros. Twelve years later, it was called Conserveira de Lisboa and sold almost exclusively canned fish. Since then, surprisingly little has changed about the shop.
The white coating on an air-dried saucisson is not a mold defect, but the bloom that forms during maturation and protects the sausage. What it is, why it is a sign of quality, how to eat around it or wipe it off, and how to tell when something really is wrong.
At an altitude of 800 meters in the Monts de Lacaune, where Roquefort cheese is also aged, the Zerouali family has been making sausages, hams, and pâtés since 1995. It all started with a sales cart and a barn in the hamlet of Millas. Today, the charcuterie works with six farms whose pigs live on straw and grow up without antibiotics, and ages its salaisons in the mountain air of the Tarn. We introduce you to our new supplier.
When the onions are harvested in Roscoff, they go to the Quéméner family's old shed. There they are braided into plaits, as they have been since 1850, twelve to fifteen per plait, and the biggest one goes first: the "penn kapitenn", the captain, who is the first to go on board and the last to leave the ship.
Why the Ail Rose de Lautrec cannot be braided, how long it has carried the Label Rouge, and how it becomes black garlic. A visit to Sébastien Marty.
Some suppliers you just have to like. Gonidec is one of them. The Breton cannery makes sardines exactly as you would want them: from the sea right off their doorstep, caught gently and processed by hand. With us, you can find them under Les Mouettes d'Arvor – Gonidec's premium line. Behind the cans is no anonymous fishing fleet, but eight local boats that Gonidec has been working with for years. Some names are even printed directly on the can – War Raog IV, War Raog III or Étoile Polaire. It hardly gets any more transparent than that.
Sardinillas are not a fish species of their own—and yet they are a world unto themselves. Once you understand what lies behind these small, handcrafted sardines from the Galician Rías, you will never look at canned fish the same way again. An article about origin, craftsmanship, and the quiet art of aging in the can.
