An exquisite part of the artisan industry stems from infinite and personal products such as canned vegetables, sweet, savoury, in vinegar or natural: pickled broccoli and chilli, mushrooms in brine, tomato sauces and whole tomato preserves, sweet conserves made from a single fruit or from various fruits or vegetables mixed together.
Some industries are looking beyond vegetable crops and fruit trees, researching new flavours and reducing sugar and salt to make preserves even healthier. Some have even moved into convenience foods. The sofregit, containing slowly sautéed onions, is the basis of Girona’s cuisine. The onion ceases to be onion, it loses its memory and only the sugars remain. A sofregit is by no means a preserve designed to be rushed. Indeed, one could say that a jar of sofregit is time itself, a gift of countless hours. You must decide on the recipe, meat or fish, mar i muntanya (sea and mountain), or simply vegetables, and then add the sofregit.
The cuisine of Girona begins in the vegetable garden, with the onion and, if necessary, garlic for the sofregit: a sofregit made with patience, stirring for an eternity so that it darkens, but does not burn, caramelising and becoming a confit. The vegetable garden is the sofregit of the landscape.
Preserves with the 2020-2021 Girona Excel·lent seal
Bitter orange marmalade
The second generation of this family business, founded in 1981 in the Fontanilles restaurant, makes the most universal of marmalades. With the tiniest addition of sugar, this bitter orange marmalade preserves the intense flavour of this fruit’s acidity, which is inedible when fresh. Beyond the classic combinations with butter and fresh cheeses, it goes well with smoked and pickled salmon and is used as an ingredient for vinaigrettes.
Company: GB Artesanos Gastronómicos SLU
Tomato jam
Tomato jam is one of the classics of the Girona region’s market gardens. It originated when everyone had a garden and the surplus tomatoes were used to make sweet and savoury preserves for the whole year. Prepared with sieved fruit, it is cooked with sugar until it becomes firm. It goes beautifully with curd and matured sheep cheese, as well as with roast pork.
Company: GB Artesanos Gastronómicos SLU
Plums in Empordà grenache syrup
Made with lemon, orange, sugar, cinnamon and red grenache, you will want to gobble down these extraordinary plums. Chef Antonio Izquierdo recommends combining them with the freshest dairy products, ricotta and curd-style cheeses or whipped cream, but he also suggests duck liver or lamb gigot. One of the charms of these plums is the syrup, a hippocras made with Empordà grenache, the region’s most characteristic sweet wine.
Company: Antoni Izquierdo Cruellas
Anela Hop
Safrunat presents these desserts made exclusively with fresh apples from its own orchards. Their idea is to provide a 100% natural product that allows you to eat fruit in a convenient way, as it is drinkable. With a history of apple and pear orchards L’Empordà, Gironès and La Selva spanning half a century, this family-run company is now in its second generation.
Company: Safrunat, SL
Can Carlina – V de Gust garden snails
Can Carlina is a company from Cornellà del Terri that specialises in the garden snail (Helix aspersa), the most popular snail for cargolades. They began their operations in the summer of 2017, with the marketing of cooked and refrigerated snails. In 2020, they came up with canned snails, cooked with sunflower oil, spices, aromatic plants and salted water. They are available in glass jars of different sizes and you just have to heat them and eat them with gusto and the seasoning of your choice.
Company: Mas Can Carlina, SL
Onion sofregit by Quim Matas
Slowly sautéed onion in oil, the sofregit, is the ancestral foundation of Girona’s cuisine. It is the product of a long and patient confit making process, that dehydrates and concentrates the sugars in the onions. Quim Matas, a butcher and charcuterie-maker in La Bisbal since 1977, performs this delicate process over a twelve-hour period, using Figueres onions and olive oil. From that point, further ingredients can be added and it can be used in an infinite number of recipes.
Company: Carnisseria i Xarcuteria Quim Matas
Sofregit of Palamós prawns
Antoni Izquierdo, owner and chef of Mas de los Arcos, in Palamós, has devised a sofregit for seafood cuisine, which he is familiar with from his many years in the trade. Made with Figueres onion, Palamós prawns and crab, natural tomato, olive oil, sugar and salt, he recommends it for the vast recipe list of Empordà cuisine: fish and seafood rice dishes, fideu (noodle) dishes, fideus rossejats, casserole-type dishes like suquets, sarsueles, soups and mar i muntanya stews.
Company: Antoni Izquierdo Cruellas
Allioli jelly
This 10 cm square and 3 mm thick piece of allioli (garlic mayonaisse) jelly was created to transmit a light garlic flavour to the hamburger-like filets russos prepared by the butchers’ and charcutiers’ guild as part of a joint initiative with the Fira de l’Allioli in Creixell. This lamina was conceived as a new way of presenting allioli. With infinite uses for meat, vegetables and fish, among which cod is particularly interesting. But the Pelai butcher’s shop, established in 1933 in Sant Climent Sescebes, has never stopped innovating.
Company: Enric Torrent Navarra
El jurat del
tast de conserves.
Fina Puigdevall
Cuinera del restaurant Les Cols, d’Olot
Jaume Fàbrega
Escriptor i historiador gastronòmic
Salvador Jordà
Cuiner i propietari del restaurant Empòrium, de Castelló d’Empúries
Manel Romero
Professor de l’Escola d’Hostaleria i Turisme de Girona
Tati Quera
Propietària de la botiga Petit Paradís, de Girona
