Golden yellow

This may already be said. Tyrol as a whole and also the region around Schwaz were not hotspots of culinary diversity in earlier times. As beautiful as it has always been, nature between the mountains has been quite ruthless in begging for its fruits. Light years away from full shelves with products from all over the world, in times when "papaya" - thought backwards across - still had to be understood as approval for the father, ingredients were found in quite manageable numbers in the farmers' pantries.

Bacon was there, potatoes almost always, flour was always available, a barrel with sauerkraut also and the eggs were taken care of daily by the chickens. Particularly however - and this may not only, but must be said - was the resourcefulness of the cooks, who knew how to conjure up a variety of dishes from the meager number of ingredients. "The Blattln are such an ancient dish, a peasant dish, probably because they always had these ingredients," knows Florian Knapp. Together with his wife Selina, Florian took over the old Schwaz traditional inn Einhorn Schaller in 2010. In a way, it was a continuation of this old tradition, of honest, regional kitchen magic without tropical frills and Caribbean gimmicks that they were up to.

Back to the roots
"Who travels, finds the place for which his heart beats," it says on the Schaller's homepage. The phrase arouses curiosity, and asked about it, Florian invites you on a jaunty trip around the world: "I did the Villa Blanka and then spent a year and a half in England, then kept hopping - to Portugal, Baden Baden, Augsburg and three years on the ship." The ship he's talking about was the "Queen Elizabeth 2." This famous royal luxury liner was to bring Florian good luck. "That's where I met Selina," he says. Met and fell in love, to be precise.

At some point, the crests of the waves of the world's oceans must have awakened a longing for real mountains, but the two said goodbye to the ship and began working at the Travelcharme Fürstenhaus on Lake Achen. And when Florian, the original Swazi, got the opportunity to take over the old traditional Einhorn Schaller inn in his hometown, he grabbed it by the scruff of the neck. Selina became a "Schwazer by choice" and the two became a host duo who succeeded in breathing new life into the old house. With deliberately traditional culinary delights made from regional products. And with that in mind, they began to tinker. "We wanted to invent something of our own for the Silver Region," says Florian. Offering Blattln, this traditional dish made from potato dough, rolled out and cut to size, baked in fat until golden brown and enjoyed with sauerkraut, was the first prank. Monday became a leaf day. "Surprisingly, we had never seen Blattln on menus before. Then suddenly they were offered again in several inns," Florian recalls. Whether this trend started from the Schaller, he does not know. It doesn't matter, though, the idea of taking a culinary bow to the region led to the Blattln being developed further. "We filled the Blattl'n with gray cheese from Lieb on the Weerberg," Florian reveals. It is the gray cheese that provides "the silver" for the Blattln, whose full name is "Silberblattlkrapfen."

The potato dough is the clou
The basis for this is potato dough. He is the highlight and its many possibilities are it yes also, the passionate Pommes-Esser and chips-Knabberer, potato mashed potato fetishists, croquette lovers and Puffer fans in such a way to please that every otherwise won dough fun must pale. For the potato dough, Florian peels cold potatoes, preferably cooked the day before, and presses them through the potato ricer. This potato press result has nothing at all to do with its bulbous original form. A pit is formed in the small potato mountain, in which eggs, flour and spices - nutmeg is of course included - briefly create a funny picture. Very briefly only, the whole is now nevertheless processed to a dough, which may rest then 20 minutes. Florian spends these 20 minutes not only chatting, but also preparing the filling. Mixing curd cheese, gray cheese and spices is quite quick. And it's down to business, rolling out the dough thinly. "I cut lozenges and put the gray cheese and curd filling on one side, fold the dough over and seal the whole thing well at the edges," Florian comments on the steps. At the latest now, when he heats the fat in the pan and waits for the right temperature, Pavlovian reflexes start to work. The Silberblattlkrapfen then float along in the fat to become more and more golden, the culinary imagination is already imagining what consistency the gray cheese is probably just getting, and it is these thoughts that make it possible at all to get through the time until the first bite.

Outside crispy, the filling spicy, the sauerkraut as a congenial partner. Yes, it is a golden silver pleasure, which is served there in the unicorn Schaller. An ancient dish in a refined form. A beautiful gift.