MASTROTOTARO FOOD

Quality beating cold figures. Love for nature, working the soil, and vegetable farming following ancient
traditions beating the industrial mentality, which focuses above all on increasing the production. Maybe
it is a romantic view in our modern world, but in this case it is true. F.lli Mastrototaro Food srl, a company
specializing in foods preserved in oil, pâtés and ready-to-eat sauces.
Very up-to-date and technologically advanced machinery would enable the Mastrototaro brothers’
company to produce one hundred thousand jars a day , but it is our company's policy to never exceed
five thousand jars. What is the reason? Work, energy and care mainly focus on the preliminary seeding,
cultivation and the harvesting of our delicacies. Tomatoes, artichokes, eggplants, peppers and zucchini
are planted in the family fields for several kilometers and they are carefully and masterly cultivated
until they are harvested, a process strictly operated by hand.
The transformation of products and the preparation of the jars are operated only “from fresh food”,
which means within a few hours from being harvested and without using steel barrels for storage, in
order to preserve all the organoleptic qualities of the vegetables.
Would it take less time with mechanical harvesting thus saving resources that could be invested in a
different way? Would buying from a third party increase production? Of course, but the Mastrototaro
family does not care about this. Full control on the chain of production, which is intentionally very short,
showing that the food produced really is local, is fundamental to guarantee production excellence.
“From the farm to the fork”, increasingly uncommon in the current market, is not a mere slogan in this
case but is the cornerstone of the company philosophy.
The explosion of the colours of nature after working in the fields blended with the passion for good
food and is the raw material of Mastrototaro Food's production, which is divided into two main areas.
On one side, there is a wide range of delicious products preserved in oil; on the other, there are tasty
pâtés and succulent ready-to-eat sauces.
The popular dried tomatoes, prepared following ancient Apulian traditional recipes, and the many
varieties of the artichokes are the highlights of our production. Preserving food in oil genuinely exalts
the taste of the eggplants, the peppers and the zucchini, thus celebrating the typical flavours of sun-kissed
Apulia.
The same vegetables are the ingredients of the wonderfully fragrant pâtés, which are ideal both to
enrich the meals with tasty and colourful appetizers and to eat frugal and refined meals. Tradition and
the appreciation of typical local products also stand out from the ready-to-eat sauces, which range
from classic tomato sauce with basil to the more uncommon and sought-after products, such as the
slightly spicy “Pric o Prac” sauce, a recipe with tomatoes and peppers, from the town of Molfetta, which
was used in old times to get warm in the morning.