Spanish food culture:

Iberico Ham （上）

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Hi everyone and welcome back to our special segment, Global Village, 小酒馆·大世界.

Today we have a very special guest in our studio, Francisco Carrasco, the 4th generation of a renowned brand for Iberico ham.

对西班牙菜有点了解的小伙伴, 肯定都听说过世界闻名的伊比利亚火腿, 而这其中一个著名的品牌Carrasco又被人称为火腿中的爱马仕。 这个19世纪末创立的家族企业传到今天已经是第4代了, 而我们今天特别请到Carrasco的第4代传人, Francisco Carrasco来和我们聊聊西班牙的饮食文化.。

Welcome to the studio, welcome to the show, Francisco.

Hola mi nombre es Francisco Carrasco, estoy encantado de poder participar en vuestro podcast y tener una tarde divertida con vosotros (西语)

Hello, my name is Francisco Carrasco, and I’m part of the family business Carrasco. I’m very happy to tell you about our story and our culture of Iberico ham.

Bienvenido (西语，欢迎). Welcome.

Thank you.

First of all, a little bit of background. Where in Spain are you from and how would you describe that region you're from?

I’m from Salamanca. Salamanca is very, very nice city. It is a historical city, it's close to Madrid, it's just 2 hours, in the Middle West of Spain, close to Portugal. It's a small area. It's a nice place. I don't live in Salamanca, that's… all my family, my parents, my friends, they live there. I used to go very often to visit my company and family friends. It's a very nice city, it's a very old city and very multi-cultural. We have different assimilation like the romance; we have historical monuments, very very nice. I think it's one of the nicest cities in Spain. For me, my very favorite city in Spain, there is one in the North is San Sebastian; it’s mainly for the city, and it obviously also for the food. Because there are really crazy people always thinking about what you eat and what to drink.

Yeah, honestly, I’ve been to Spain a few times and what really impresses me is not just how beautiful the country is, but also how amazing the food is. It's difficult to go wrong with Spanish food. One of the things though is that in China, most people don't really know that much about Spanish food, maybe in some of the major cities like Beijing or Shanghai. Yes, you do have Spanish restaurants, but they are not as well-known as say Italian food. So is food a big part of Spanish culture, in general, would you say?

Yes, I think it's…it's part of our lives. It's very different, the food in the whole Spain, it's not the same in the North, the West, the Middle, even one city close to the other is different. And it's part of our life, we always think about the place we are going for lunch or for dinner or you have a meeting with friends at home, and always thinking about the food that you want to cook at home on Saturday. It's part of our…

It's part of the lifestyle.

Yeah, today, for example, after the broadcast I have a lunch with some friends, we are going to have a tasting of a pork loin, Iberico pork loin, 45 days dry curing, very special. Now we're doing the first tasting and what I do is to make sure this tasting with friends and with some chef, thinking about how you can develop your business that always thinking about food.

Always how to make the food better.

Yeah.

You mentioned about cooking, so nowadays in most of the Spanish families, who does the cooking?

I think it's changing. Obviously, it's not the same like our mothers, grandma used to do. I think right now, we don't have enough time to cook every day. Because life has changed, for example, at home, even my wife and myself, we cook, I have my own special...

Dishes

Yeah. And she has all the dishes, we used to share the cooking moments. I really love with Friday night or Saturday morning, you start cooking with a glass of wine, it's not the same when you have to cook just for eat, it's so boring,

Yes.

But when you have to cook to enjoy…

When you can enjoy it.

Yeah.

I always cook with a glass of wine.

Yeah, that's good, that's good.

And then you mentioned Iberico ham just now, and this is your family business. Sometimes in China, if I go to Spanish restaurants or not even Spanish restaurants but some nicer wine bars, you do see Iberico ham. So when we hear Iberico ham, immediately we think “Oh, that is the typical or the quintessential Spanish ham”. But are there other types of ham produced in Spain? If so, what is the difference?

Yeah, Iberico ham, it's black pig, and Iberico race, but obviously the biggest sector of the biggest business for ham is not the Iberico. It's the white skin pig. Also, you have in China or USA or Germany or France or wherever, that's the most common pig in the whole world. And Iberico is just a small part. That's… I think every single Spanish, they feel Iberico like part of the country. That's very important, but not in terms of quantity.

OK. Iberico is actually… you call it Iberico ham because that is the special type of pig. 所以最正宗的伊比利亚火腿就来自伊比利亚黑猪。

You know, I think most people, if they don't know anything about ham, they are often surprised when they order Iberico ham and they find, for example, in wine bars or restaurants, they are just thin slices, but they're quite expensive, because you see other types of hams as well. So what makes Iberico ham such premium ham in the world?

There are different things. First of all, the life is longer than a regular pork. If we compare Iberico pork, we sacrifice 24 months. 所以就是说伊比利亚黑猪要养到24个月才出栏。

24 months.

And a regular pork, like 6 months. White pork is 6 months. And also it's so special Iberico for the feeding, the feeding is so special during the last part of the life of this animal. They are always fed by acorn.

I’ve seen it on your website. It says acorn fed. 也就是说用来做火腿的伊比利亚黑猪在后期是纯橡果饲养。小伙伴们如果买伊比利亚火腿的时候，就可以注意一下包装，等级比较高的一般都会写橡果饲养。

That's the most important point for this kind of pork. The last part of the feeding, the acorn. The acorn is just from November to March. This lovely animal is able to eat every single day, ten kilos of acorn.

Ten kilos of acorn. Wow!

Yeah. After ten kilos of acorns, it's still fit, it’s not fat.

That is amazing.

I don't know we have to ask them. How… how…

How do you keep fit?

Yeah, how do they keep fit? That… also they need a lot of space, 100 animals need at least 2.5 hectares.

Wow.

So they need to eat a lot.

Maybe that's how they keep fit. Because they move around.

That's it. Because they move around. They're not in a small space, that’s very important, they move around.

That sounds amazing, by the way. But you said Iberico ham is for every Spanish person. It's part of their culture, but does that mean Spanish people actually get to eat a lot of Iberico ham or is it also still a special thing, not something people eat every day?

No. I think Iberico is for special moments, it depends how wealthy is this person if you're interested in eating Iberico ham, but obviously it's not a daily cuisine. It's just for special moment.

Special moment. So even for Spanish people, Iberico ham is premium, it’s like really premium food.

Yes, but when I mean special moments, the problem is that the Spanish people has many special moments.

Sounds like lots of celebrations, yeah?

Yeah. That's it.

Speaking of the premium side of it, because like in China, if you go to higher end events, you usually do also see premium Iberico ham as well. So that is a sign of premium cuisine and premium food material. I think that is something very special.

But obviously this is your family business. So I'm really curious and I think our listeners, gonna be very curious too, wanna hear a little bit about the history of Iberico ham making, and maybe a little bit of a history about the family business. How did it start or when did it start?

We started a hundred and twenty-five years ago. Where we are from, that's the West of Spain, all the west from Salamanca to the South, or the west of Valencia you can have this special animal. So what you would do is they start curing just for themselves, some sells but that not really…you know a century ago, it wasn't an idea of business, it was an idea of family produce and local produce. No more than that. The area where we are living, that's the west. We have the forest; we have the acorn tree; we have the animal. That's why we developed this business. That's the most important …

So, everything sort of just came together.

Yeah, it does,  because any other areas in Spain that they don't have Iberico because they don't have acorn.

So it's really in Chinese we would say天时地利人和，it's basically the right place, the right time with the right elements. And that all sort of come together to contribute to the starting point of the family business. Sounds really nice, but family business especially keeping it like your family did for 4 generations, you must have gone through some major changes.

Obviously we know we have, during this hundred and twenty five years, we've had many changes because my grandparents started with their brothers; after that they separate. We have different moments doing our life, talking with my dad, he's 86. He has lived the life of Iberico. The most important change actually, I think, we're in the moment… It's very hard to understand that during 1 year, everything had changed. Right now the actually moment we are living, we say really premium produce, I think the most important thing or change is change to a digital…

To digital age.

Yeah, and it's not only the digital for e-commerce, it’s the digital in our company. We have to take control of every single process, but digital process. The future is if we are able to develop in terms of the digitalization.

Digitalization. I think that's probably a lot of the family businesses with long history they sort of have to face similar issues with digitalization. So in today's episode，Francisco shared with us a bit about Spanish food culture and the story of Iberico ham. In the next part of our chat, we'll continue with that topic.