This morning I was reading Nigel Slater’s latest book The Kitchen Diaries - once more.
Nigel Slater is an English cook who writes and he writes well. I found the first book by him - it was the Real Food - in one of my trips to London some seven years ago. Every time I visit London now, checking the bookshop to find a new book by him is a must. And yes, I am aware that this is oldfashioned, I should check the internet instead, but there is a definite charm in visiting bookshops, especially in London and the charm simply does not fade.
But back to Nigel Slater. Already back some years, reading the Real Food or the Appetite I was thrilled with his attitude towards food. Unpretentious is probably the best way to describe it. What he wrote made sense even to someone like me, a lover of good food and someone eager to learn more about cooking but by no means a person who would follow much too complicated recipes with fancy ingredients or recipes demanding exact measuring.
Why do I think good food has to do with good design. The Kitchen Diaries put this in my head this morning. Right food, right place, right time. Slater describes meals like a crab sandwich by the sea on a June afternoon or hot sausages and a chunk of roast pumpkin on a frost-sparkling night in November. He writes that the success of these meals do not rely on the brilliance of the cook but on a more basic thing that this is the food of the moment - something eaten when the time is correct, when the ingredients are at their best, when the food, the cook and the time of year are at one with each other.
This is exactly what good design has to do with good food. There is no more reason to underrate the role of the designer than there is a reason to underestimate the role of the cook, but there is no reason to believe that it is all on the designer either. Right design, right place, right time.
And this is exactly what we have in our hands in the first Rovaniemi Design Week kicking off on 28 September. The theme of the week is the Arctic Circle, the home base of Santa Claus as all children and childrenminded know. The place is right - but the time is a definite problem. How do you keep the Christmas story alive the year round when the right time simply is - Christmas? Difficult but not impossible. You need the right design, and you need the rest of the people - entrepreneurs at the Arctic Circle in the forefront - to learn what it means to apply the design. Only I believe it can succeed better if the style is like Nigel Slater’s. Unpretentious, honest, with respect to the ingredients.
P.S. Little Kaisu, 2 and a half years, in the picture, was on her way to meet Santa Claus yesterday at the Arctic Circle. And yesterday was 22 August. I must have been wrong all along. Christmas can be every day. At least for those who believe in the Santa Claus.
Päivi Tahkokallio, Content Production for the Rovaniemi Design Week
Ei kommentteja:
Lähetä kommentti