2021-10-30 23:32:16
There was a time, “after the war, when almonds were cheaper than flour”, that panellets were a cheap sweet, recalls Antoni Bellart, owner of the Triomf patisserie, open in the Poblenou district of Barcelona since of the year 1956. Now he sells the panels covered with pine nuts for 65 euros per kilo and 57 for the assortment, still far from others that reach up to 73 euros per kilo and well above the 40 euros per kilo of some supermarkets . This is the story of how a mafia organized to steal pineapples from the forests can make you eat only chestnuts and sweet potatoes this year for All Saints; on the other hand, healthier foods, because they do not contain sugar.
But let’s start at the end. The ingredients needed to make a kilo of panels are very few. One kilo of marzipan is made from 400 grams of sugar, 600 grams of almonds and 80 grams of egg. There are those who add lemon, cinnamon or some other aroma, always natural in the case of traditional pastry chefs like Antoni. But nothing more. Supermarkets, on the other hand, add water, potato starch and in some cases even palm oil or syrup to lower the price and sweetly disguise the differences in quality. The potato trick is also used in many homes and schools to cook them cheaper, which is why some people believe that it is an essential ingredient.
The sugar and raw Marcona almonds go through a refiner that grinds everything up and turns it into a powder. In the mixer, Antoni puts the 50 kilos of almonds with the 50 kilos of sugar and 7 liters of egg white, and will put them through the refiner one more time to turn it into marzipan. Then add a little lemon (or cinnamon, or orange, or jam in the assortment) and make the balls or cylinders manually. With more egg, he will glue the cover of pine nuts, before putting the panels in the oven, where they are fired at 250-280 degrees in several turns; in the case of Antoni’s oven, 12 kilos per turn.
“This will be very expensive this year”, he says. It refers to the increase in electricity, for which, during the month of September alone, it has gone from paying 1,400 euros in 2020 to around 2,500 euros this year. The power of the panellet oven exacerbates this problem that affects everyone. Light and raw materials are the main factors responsible for a price increase this year of 5% compared to 2019, according to the calculation of the Barcelona Pastry Chefs Guild. Across Catalonia, sales of around 250,000 kilos of panellets are expected for this All Saints day, which could mean a turnover of around 13 million euros during the weeks before and after the chestnut harvest.
The president of the Guild, Elies Miró, from Castellterçol, remembers that with days like this “days of negative billing are compensated”, but warns that “no one gets rich” selling panels because the raw material is very expensive, and the preparation, expensive Although he assures that the profit margin is almost non-existent in the pinyon panel, “it is compensated with the assorted ones, which cost less to make”. When doing the calculation, it does end up resulting in a profit of 7 euros per kilogram: of the 57 euros it costs him to make it (including 30% overheads and labor, but not taxes or depreciation) at 65 euros of sale price. The margin widens when we calculate the price of the almond slivers: a kilo costs 27 euros to make, and comes to exceed 100% profit thanks to the sale price of 65 euros per kilo. The assortments, the confectioner’s master move.
In 2008 the kilo of panellet was over 32 euros, in 2017 at 33; and this year they reach 73 euros
There are three ways to sell the panels: set a price for the pine nuts and another for the rest; put the same price on all the panels and thus compensate, and, to finish, put a price on the panels of pine nuts and a lower one on the assorted ones. Marcona almonds, which are the sweetest and of the best quality, are the choice of most pastry shops and reach 7 euros per kilo for organic ones. It could seem like an expensive product if it weren’t for the fact that the pinyon makes her laugh, humiliated, with its 70 euros per kilo on average, ten times more than its colleague from the panellet. The pine nut is the Messi of nuts, a Mediterranean product that cannot be replaced by Asian substitutes, which are more affordable but of a much worse quality. The pastry chefs, who until 2018 received a European certificate of quality product for their panels (ETG, guaranteed traditional specialty), are now complaining that a badge for the local product has stopped being awarded.
And where does this golden diva come from that is worth more than lobsters? From the pine cones of the pine trees. Who makes money from these unicorn tusks? “Of producers, very few”. The answer is Carles Vaello, a sort of visionary of pine trees who, with the help of the Forestry Consortium and the Forest Technology Center of Catalonia (CTFC), has planted around 100 hectares of pine trees, bought at 2.3 euros per square meter and with a potential productivity of around 3,000 kilos of pineapple per hectare.
Pineapples are sold at 1.5 euros per kilo in industrial plants, where the stone is extracted. Of each pineapple, 3% is stone. This means that it takes about 33 kilos of pineapple to reach one kilo of pine nuts. Thus, the pineapple producer is selling the pinyon at around 45-50 euros per kilo. And the nut producer, who is in charge of the process of extracting the pine nut, brings it to the market for around 70 euros per kilo, although it can be more. “Today I saw some in a store for 90 euros a kilo!”, exclaims Vaello himself.
His project is unique in a business in which most owners have pine trees in forest estates and it costs them a lot to get productivity out of them. Many, in recent years, have been sold or abandoned, because it is a process full of obstacles. The first, that “for a pineapple to be born, the pine must be about twenty years old”. On his farms, this unsustainable wait has been compensated for by grafting the trees, that is, by transferring the genetics of adult pines to advance, and by improving pineapple production. Thus he reduces the first twenty years of waiting and turns them into five, but he cannot do anything with the three years that the pineapple still takes to ripen.
Obstacles continue when the pine is already productive, because if it grows in a dense forest of trees and other species it will be less productive. In addition, there are pests that attack the pineapple and dry it, such as Leptoglossus, a species of bed bug that comes from the United States. And one more. “By law, producers can only take pineapple from November 1. But there are organized groups dedicated to stealing pinecones from the pines and they do not respect time or property. There are very poorly paid and undocumented people who are dedicated to stealing, I have caught some, but behind the scenes there are illegal groups who make money from the piles of pineapples that they sell to industrial plants. I have 24-hour surveillance on my farm, but it is very difficult to maintain this in a wild forest”, explains Carles.
Pineapple growers suffer from pests and theft by organized groups
The head of the CTFC’s multifunctional forest management program, Míriam Piqué, explains that “Catalonia has around 30,000 hectares of forest” but that “water stress and abandonment have caused the productivity of pineapples to drop in recent years and, therefore, raise the price”. That’s why the consortium is looking to technicalize the process, spreading the grafting technique among producers and trying to promote the creation of a trade union grouping of pine nuts, which currently does not exist in Catalonia. The idea is that the pinyon can give work and money to more people than Carlos and his operators and, if possible, end the black market, or at least reduce it.
The increase in demand – “a significant amount goes to Italy to make pesto”, says Carles, and another part goes to pastry shops and cooks – has added to the natural and criminal obstacles of this wild dried fruit to make it more expensive and, by the way, turn the panellet into one of the most precious goods of All Saints’ Day.
But a part of the increase in price to improve margins seems inevitable, both at the time of selling the pinyon and at the pastry shops when making panels: in 2008 the Pastry Chefs Guild reported that the average price of the panellet was between 32 and 40 euros per kilo, 40% cheaper than this year. At the time, pine nuts were paid at 25.58 euros per kilo at the Barcelona Market, according to the Catalan Forestry Observatory, and fell to 17.97 euros the following year, the lowest cost since then. In 2017 it was 33 euros per kilo. The price of pine nuts in La Llotja has almost quadrupled in the last four years: it has become the golden diamond that bathes these jewels of Catalan pastry
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