Originally from Zurich, Iris has lived at Vnà for 40 years and has a very close bond with the land. She keeps a large organic garden and attributes her success in the competition to the relationship she has with all the ingredients she uses in her recipes.
“It’s very important for me to know where the food and flavours come from — I grow all the vegetables and herbs I use in my recipes here in my own garden,” she says standing amid huge cabbages, potatoes, leeks, peas, brussel sprouts, carrots, spinach, artichokes and herbs.
The meat and dairy products she uses come from Fadri’s farm and the venison from her husband Domenic’s hunting expeditions.
Iris loves to cook but keeping the Engadine recipes alive is the main motivation for entering the competition. Many are traditional recipes she learned from her mother-in-law.
Her winning entry was a venison schnitzel dish with juniper berry sauce followed by a nut tart which has become quite famous.
Switzerland’s second biggest supermarket chain is promoting Iris’s recipes and her nut tart is marketed under her own name as ‘Iris Engadinerli’.
Michelin-star chefs are now lining up to learn from her.
Mother of four and grandmother of nine, Iris leads a busy life.
She runs cooking classes for children and teenagers so that she can pass on the Engadine recipes to the next generation.
Like most Swiss, Iris likes hiking so she combines two of her loves in one, cooking for hikers in one of the local alpine huts.
She rents out a small holiday flat under her house, a former cheese factory, to travellers who want to get back to nature and experience a week helping out on an organic farm.
And she’s an accomplished artist with a studio at her house. She sees food as an art form — ‘creating art on a plate’.
Engadinerli ingredients:
150g butter
150g sugar
1 egg
1 pinch of salt
300g flour
Filling Ingredients:
300g sugar
1 tbsp water
20mls cream
250g of walnuts
2 tbspns grated almonds
1 tbsp honey
Berry compote Ingredients:
2 tbspns liquid honey
2 tbspns orange juice
1 vanilla pod
400g fresh berries
Engadinerli Method
Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Cover a flat baking tray with baking paper.
Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the egg and mix with the flour and a pinch of salt. Put the dough in a cool place for at least one hour. Form into a thin rectangular shape on the baking sheet, no more than 1cm thick.
For the filling, melt the sugar over a gentle heat, stir in a tablespoon of water. Remove the pan from the heat. Carefully add cream, nuts and honey and stir until smooth. Let cool down.
Spread the filling on the pastry and bake in a preheated oven for 30 minutes at 180 degrees. The tart should be baked nice and light brown. Cut into rectangles when it is still warm.
Berry compote method:
For the berries, mix honey, orange juice and vanilla in a bowl. Carefully mix together with the berries. Cover and allow to rest for 30 minutes. Then warm gently in a pan carefully. Do not boil. You want the berries to retain their beautiful shape.
* Serve engadinerli with warm berry compote.
Recipe courtesy of Iris Riatsch
