On the Links
Los Angeles Magazine - August 2000

Dona JuanaAfter she moved to the United States in 1967, Valencia-born (Spain, that is) Juana Gimeno de Faraone missed her country's regional sausages.  In 1982, she mortgaged her home in Torrance and bought a small sausage-making deli.  "I wanted a business, and I loved cooking," she explains.  "Sausages didn't seem intimidating because in Spain they're made in farm homes."  She enlisted a family friend, a priest, to help her hone her recipes and traveled around Spain garnering advice from village sausage makers and larger industrial producers.  Today La Espanola Meats, her modest-size Harbor City factory, turns out perfect duplicates of the finest Spanish hams and sausages:  garlicky Segovian cantimpalo, Majorcan sobrasada spiked with Spanish paprika, Catalonian butifarra, semicured chorizo Bilbao and prosciutto-like Serrano ham.  The meats are hand-chopped and dry cured or marinated in small batches to control the character of each style.