In one hand, the ensaimada; in the other, the sobrasada. Few images are more iconic in the culinary of this scale with which the Balearic Islands open up to the world, navigating in a subtle balance between sweet and salty that, according to Xesc Reina, butcher and dynamizer of the panorama sobrasaderil patrio, “they are going great,” but let’s not anticipate.
Spain is stuffed and insists on being stuffed, being the homeland of sausages, sausages, loins, blood sausages and a very extensive string of regional sausages and cold meats with which we elevate the pig to the altar of gastronomy.
However, ‘Baleares is different’. One lands in Ses Illes and sees how the pig totem rises in an intense mixture of paprika, fat and lean pork, carefully stuffed into the gut and left to cure, making sobrasada its great gastronomic offering.
What happens in the Balearic Islands so that ham, chorizo, salchichón or even other Mediterranean neighbors such as fuet or longaniza do not have roots? “Everything is explained in the climate”, assures Xesc Reina, who after more than 20 years in Catalonia, decided to make the duffel and vindicate the Mallorcan sobrasada.
“There is no way to cure anything here. We are at 90% humidity, so the only way to have the pork pantry is to make the sobrasada. Neither chorizo, nor salchichón, nor fuet … Maybe a little ham in Menorca, but nothing else, “he illustrates.
Leaving like this from his pork profile, which made him famous in Sant Hilari Sacalm (his hometown, where he was born in May 1962) to the rhythm of signature sausages with La Botifarreria, Xesc Reina landed in Mallorca in the mid-90s.
From iconoclast of the sausage …
“When I put rovellós [níscalos] in the sausage they said he was crazy. Now everybody does it and in thirty years it will be a typical dish“He says.” Delicatessen is a very immobile business that makes it difficult for it to be fashionable, “he laments.
“It was more than 10 different types of sausage a week, many of them were later posted on The llibre de les butifarres cruas in 1999 [un compendio con más de 70 recetas], but I also wanted to change the scene, “he illustrates.
Among some of the most popular, salmon, cinnamon liqueur, seafood cocktail, anchovies and capers, kid with orange juice and orange blossom… A display as unreal as it is true of what was to come.
He moved the mat and decided to continue training, signing up as a student at the Barcelona Charcuterie School. “I entered in 1983 as a student and in 1985 I was already a teacher”, he illustrates about a period that opened his eyes and that on a professional level served him to understand certain processes that I already handled, but not their reasons.
“Students came from all over Spain and we did courses to understand the flavors, smells, spices … He was very didactic and was, above all, creative “, he specifies. There, consecrated to the world of the sausage, came some siren songs that tempted him to approach the Balearic Islands.
“A Mallorcan student convinced me to go with him to Sa Pobla because he wanted to start a delicatessen company. What was going to be a month has turned into 26 years, “he laughs.
To Mallorcan redemption
We could be tempted to think that Xesc Reina is a Midas of the delicatessen, where everything he touches turns into gold or, at least, into success. It is not like that, but that has also helped to forge his character and the restlessness of who is nonconformist by nature.
The adventure with that student was baptized as The Mallorcan Slaughter, which would end up closing in 2002, and then Reina rode on her own Espai Xesc Reina, a restaurant where its colored patés or its sausages of the week they were still present, but that also closed after a couple of years.
Without giving up and still rooted in Mallorca, ten years would pass until the great opportunity appeared at his door, although the knocker called the chef Andreu Genestra, one of the priests of Balearic cuisine. “Can Company was looking for someone to give their sobrasadas even more power and Andreu told them about me,” he explains.
The only condition that Reina put: 1,000 percent black, the Mallorcan cousin of the Iberian pig with which they gave new life to their sobrasadas. Pig up, pig down, Can Company currently owns about 1,500 black pigs, closing an agricultural and livestock circle of km.0 where the feeding of the pigs and the dressing that will go in the sobrasadas is also grown on its farms.
The Galileo of sobrasadas
“It is about R&D, but always with tradition ahead,” he explains. Therefore, it ignores the critical voices that consider heresies that there is chocolate, curry, blue cheese or Mahón cheese in your preparations. Visible head of things to come.
“We have done try figs, apricots, cod, with fennel … “, he enumerates, and on the horizon some extra madness that will have to do with whiskey, but always with the logic of a true painter of flavors.
“We have to baptize as leftover or as ‘pork meat preparation’ because according to the specifications of the Sobrasada de Mallorca PDO they cannot be called that, “he says.” We don’t care, because we also have sobrasadas within the DO. Just not entering means simply not being able to tag, “he explains.
“The funny thing is that they are traditional flavors, but in the same bite. When a sobrasada was stale, the grandmothers grated chocolate on top, and what to say about the couple of sobrasada and cheese “, he synthesizes.
A creative reality in which the trees allow you to see the forest. “It all makes sense and they are flavors that fit, and behind it there is an intention of recovery. Of course there are normal sobrasadas, but we also try to re-fish the figatella or the nora, which are Mallorcan sausages that you hardly see anymore, “he adds.
The sobrasada ‘king size’
Along with his successful marriage to Can Company, this restless butcher maintains a Extramarital relationship outside of Can Company: his own brand, Les Sobrassades de Xesc Reina, where the volume of some pieces can even be scary.
“Those of ventre, which are the largest, they can weigh up to 30 kilos and need a three-year cure, but there are also other smaller ones like those of law firm wave of poltru [de hasta cuatro kilos de peso]”, Explain.
“There is no trap or cardboard in it, no preservatives. Just pork, salt and paprika tap de cortí“He indicates. It thus values the local paprika, already native to Mallorca.” It is fruity, gives a more orange color and is a good antioxidant, but it is also expensive, “he clarifies.
“Our tap de cortí can worth between 22 and 25 euros per kilo, while a good Murcian paprika can be around seven euros per kilo “, he calculates. Fortunately for Reina, Can Company, in this circular achievement, provides him with the tao de cortí that he needs, always using” paprika of the year “so as not to sour .
“A pig is a sobrasada that walks”
What people do not know, or not so many, is that in this house sobrasada is not a fat festival, “if not a balance between lean and fat. Sometimes they go to 50% and sometimes they go 60% -40%”, explains Xesc.
“For a Mallorcan, a pig is a pantry, a walking sobrasada. For that reason, all cuts go to her: legs, back, loins, shoulders … and then the fat influences, because the fat of the black pork is of a high quality “, he explains.
“That is the difference with sobrasadas in the peninsula. If you sell the Iberian cuts on the one hand, then you use the lean ones and the hams on the other, in the end, what do you have left?”, He laments. “In other parts of Spain it is a product that can be made from pork, but it is not pork, and that is why some sobrasadas look like colored butter, “he exemplifies.
The live sausage
To do this, he illustrates in his way of understanding sobrasada. “It is a live sausage and it has to have small pieces, which is the proof that it has meat, and it has to settle and mature in the drying rooms. It has to catch the smell of a dryer that smells good, clean, and that the gut is always well washed, “he adds.
“There must be space between them, ventilation and humidity control and the air that comes in. We are not talking about just a curing, we are also talking about a fermentation process that turns the meat mixture into another product. No two sobrasadas are the same, “he catalogs.
In any case, for your palate, sobrasada needs that refining period like that of cheeses. “I don’t like young women five or six weeks, because they seem very acidic to me. Bet on more cured sobrasadas where “in the center is young, but the skin is old, like a sobrasada vella December, which is eaten in summer, and they are great. “
Unless they are two or three months old, the meat settles and let it be noted that it is not loose“, he insists. At home, if we want to keep it,” in the fridge, covered with a clean linen cloth to breathe.
“To me, give it to me cured and a little tempered, It is not hot or cooked, and there you can use it in whatever you want. In cheeses, in desserts, in ensaimadas … Take an ensaimada, open it, put sobrasada on top, sugar and toast it. That dish has no name, “he rejoices.
While that delight continues, the circle of Reina, Can Company and Mallorca does not stop. “I’m thinking about what the carnage of the 21st century will be like, and meanwhile, we try to make varietal sobrasadas with goat’s horn paprika, “he leaves as a comment in the air.
Images | Can Company / Xesc Reina / Les Sobrassades de Xesc Reina
Directly to the Palate | The 19 best recipes of Balearic cuisine to celebrate Balearic Islands Day
Directly to the Palate | Seven delicious appetizers with Mallorcan sobrasada