Galician chiles to tame the fire in your guts
Kingsley Amis, one of England's great literary figures of the second half of the last century, he was also possessed of a galvanized, bomb-proof palate. Enrique Gonzalez account, in his London stories , which the writer ate, as an appetizer, two shots of Wild Turkey -a high-alcohol bourbon- and at the Ivy restaurant or the Gay Hussar, dishes that had to be strictly spicy.
With the crisis of 2008, a young Joaquin Perez Sabin watch the car business come crashing down. The possibility of adapting and putting your head in a guild that had been making you tick for a long time appears: the hospitality.
Local produce with local labor to make an unlocal hot sauce
decides to go to England and Scotland. Work in companies catering, in typically London pubs and joints. Find a world within the cobblestones of the city. One of those places -now closed- was the the idle hour, at Barns. Small place, close to the train track, where Joaquín says that "I learned to do everything."
In London there are so many palates as colors it has the visible spectrum of light. There are those that are hard and inert like a piece of cork and those that are soft and delicate like the petals of a flower. Taking into account its Galician roots and that purist weakness in gastronomy that forces us to fix any dish with a splash of olive oil and a little paprika, Joaquín thinks that the hot spices sector is underdeveloped in his country. And he decides to come back. Before that, he spends a year in South America tasting chiles.
With that formation he rides a small spicy factory in a small town in the north of the province of A Coruña. In Narón, in the neighborhood of Santa Cecilia, there is a family cooperative called To Lume Factory. And it's familiar because the most visible heads of this factory of powerful dressings they are mother and son. Elena Sabin She is, in addition to being a dietitian nutritionist, according to her son's words, passionate about cooking and processes. And she “an incredible curranta and a patient administrator”, explains Joaquín.
From English lands they not only brought the taste for spicy food. In the cooperative they try to obtain better results by joining forces with other companies, both suppliers and processors.
Galician's fire!
When Joaquín knocked on the first door and asked about the possibilities of co-packing -that another company does the packaging and labeling of your product-, the faces he got were anything but flattering. Even so, Elena and Joaquín maintained their efforts in working together with other companies.
Local produce with local labor to make an unlocal hot sauce. “We are aware that the Galician market is different and time is needed. We are so purists that the spicy only with the octopus, with the Padrón peppers and some chorizo " he adds. And he is right. So much so, that Galicians and Galicians do not touch the spicy except when we go to a Mexican restaurant, and there we go blind. It's like that half-filled bottle of Tabasco that is in every hamburger restaurant, that nobody seems to use, but everyone knows what it's about.
That is why these things have to be changed little by little and open up to other gastronomic horizons. We like spicy because it is that pain that falls within acceptable limits. Pleasure and pain use the same nerves in the brain stem, they activate systems such as the one that generates dopamine in the brain and the cortex itself. Like going to a haunted house at an amusement park. At first you're scared, but seeing that it's just a scare and not death, the relief it generates turns into pleasure. In addition, it is a flavor enhancer. In small doses, any dish will offer new nuances.
The hot sauces they offer are made from fermented peppers. And the process of new products is underway. What the idea of fermenting chipotle, who are in it. On their website they offer sauces, hot spices and chillies, as well as merchandising items and a coffee liqueur with a spicy touch that will surprise more than one.
Joaquin Perez Sabin and Elena Sabin
In the chili section, it is surprising to see products from other latitudes. True feats for the palate can be bought as they are Trinidad Moruga Scorpion peppers, which was the hottest chili until 2012; and the Caroline Reaper, which entered the Guinness Book of Records in 2013. Between one million and two million units on the Scoville scale (a measure of the hotness in the peppers) and both should be handled with gloves and protective glasses during its preparation. “Here we are with protective glasses and a mask when we cook, and we do not stop crying. Of course, not a constipation, "says Elena.
For non-believers on this scale, they can entrust themselves to high performance liquid chromatography. Capsaicin levels skyrocket off the chart. Fiance. I have Khaleesi summoning dragons on the tongue.