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Iris Jordán:"Nowadays people talk about sustainability, but we grew up with the need to make the most of every product"
Unlike most young people in their area, Iris Jordán and her brother Bruno decided to return to Anciles, a village in the Huesca Pyrenees, to take over the restaurant Ansils, opened in 1984 by their grandmother Pilarín. A unique area, isolated and historically forced to survive by making the most of a few products. This is the philosophy that Ansils is transmitting in its new phase, and the one that led Iris Jordán to choose the Cocinera Revelación award at Madrid Fusión 2024. She explained her philosophy in her presentation 'How to bring the territory and tradition to a small mouthful'.
I feel very happy and fortunate with my decision to return to Anciles. I work in the house where I grew up, watching my grandmother cook and making everyone feel at home,' she said. It is a village where only 20 people live all year round. We are surrounded by wild and beautiful nature, but we are two hours from the nearest town and an hour and a half from a medical centre,' he explains.
That means we have very little produce. We have a vegetable garden, but it only produces for two months in the summer,' she says. This has meant that for them, making the most of every product has become a maxim. Today people talk about sustainability, but we grew up with the need to make the most of every product," she says.
Preservation techniques, both ancient salting and Japanese fermentation with mushrooms such as koji, are very important in Jordán's cuisine. We are now in the season for rosehip, a berry that is very popular here because of its vitamin C content. We are very proud because we have managed to ferment rosehip with koji and use it to macerate sturgeon meat, which is the most accessible fish for us,' he says.
Around the time Iris and Bruno returned to Ancils, the village began to receive tourism. We thought that we should tell people from abroad about this area and how to enjoy it.
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