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Guillermo Elejabeitia
Miércoles, 30 de octubre 2024, 14:31
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Iris Jordan and her grandmother Pilarín Ferrer are quite similar, although one has arms covered in tattoos and the other has gray hair. Both share a way of understanding cooking from a love for their land, respect for ingredients, and common sense, although one favored traditional recipes and the other turns them around with contemporary techniques. The grandmother is a legend of traditional Aragonese cuisine, the granddaughter represents the present and future of the Spanish gastronomic scene, where the most interesting things are happening in rural areas. Jordán closed the fourth edition of FeminAS, the Congress of Gastronomy, Women, and Demographic Challenge held in Asturias, and although her grandmother could not accompany her, she was very present throughout her presentation.
In a remote enclave of the Benasque Valley where in recent decades young people left never to return, she decided to make the journey back to take up her grandmother's legacy, a self-taught cook who had turned Ansils into a temple of popular recipes over nearly four decades. For a time they shared a kitchen and still do occasionally, because Iris, whose eyes light up when she talks about her grandmother, is determined to be faithful to her legacy, although she does not hesitate to adapt it to modern times. Her style is based on ideas they both share, such as resourcefulness, survival, seasonality, or the much-touted sustainability, which she finds a "redundant word, in the end, it's about doing things the way they have always been done."
In the small village of Anciles, only 20 people live throughout the year, but the region occasionally receives hordes of hikers. "It would have been easy to make money from tourism without complicating life, but I see it as an opportunity to tell our story, our territory, and not lose our cultural heritage," says Jordán. Instead of serving chops with potatoes, she builds a menu from ingredients like rosehip—a wild berry loaded with vitamin C that locals used in autumn to boost their immune system—tortetas—a kind of blood sausage with breadcrumbs and flour where she replaces pig's blood with sturgeon blood—or rancio, a paste made from bacon that her grandmother ate out of hunger and she turns into haute cuisine.
Flavors that she preserves out of personal conviction and family commitment, but which are at risk of extinction, as they have already done in many rural environments. So that "we don't hear again that my grandmother took the recipe to the grave," the Asturian Elio Ferpel is gathering testimonies from popular cooks like Susa, Arito, Chelo, or his mother, Feli, and compiling them in a documentary work aimed at ensuring the future of their recipes, because "putting a spoon in someone's mouth and transporting them to their childhood is a luxury." Some of these women joined him on the FéminAS stage to advocate for a way of life that can offer many opportunities to new generations: "Returning to the village is the future."
They were not the only Asturians to participate in the congress's closure, which featured a joint presentation by two of the most beloved chefs from Western Asturias. Mary Fernández, from El Centro inn, and Mirta Rodríguez, from El Torneiro, gave an emotional and equally entertaining presentation where they showcased the richness of the two great pantries of their land, the Cantabrian and the mountains. Mirta was moved to recall that she and her parents were the last inhabitants of Llanteiro, the village where she now raises her oxen, while Mary, pure energy, sang the praises of a rugged coast, where fish and seafood "have to fight to feed themselves and that makes them stronger."
Another intervention that brought some tears to the audience was that of the Scottish gastronomic writer Ghillie Basan. Raised in West Africa, where her mother worked with indigenous tribes, she studied anthropology and has traveled the world collecting recipes. Her life would make for an adventure novel, but the greatest of them has been raising her two children alone in a cabin in the Highlands, the land where she was born. "I had to ski with a baby on my back and dragging a sled to get supplies, everyone told me I was crazy, that I was selfish for doing that to the children, but I knew I could only be a good mother if I did it in a place where I felt at home, showing them the things I valued."
While the children slept, she prepared Middle Eastern, Turkish, or Moroccan recipes collected in her books. Caring for her mother with dementia almost led her to financial ruin in 2017, but she has managed to reinvent herself by offering gastronomic experiences to those visiting Scottish whisky distilleries, helped by her two children, now young adults, who also run their own businesses related to nature, sports, and adventure. She insists that tourists arriving in Scotland talk to locals, eat local specialties instead of queuing at the supermarket, and soak up the local culture, with the same spirit as Iris Jordan in Ansils resisting serving chops.
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