Larissa Bertonasco Illustrator + Cook {Hamburg}
I'm obsessed with cooking lately. Perhaps it's because we've been staying in a hotel suite for weeks and the only thing I can make in our room is coffee or tea. I miss having my own kitchen! So lately, anything even remotely related to dirtying up the kitchen interests me like never before. From spices to machines (the silver limited edition Tord Boontje Senseo coffee machine is fun), cookbooks, to Pino funnels. Adding to my list of must-haves is the Larissa Bertonasco cookbook, La Nonna La Cucina La Vita - Die wunderbaren Rezepte meiner Gro?mutter, which I've ordered along with her wall calendar. Her illustrative style is fun and colorful, reminding us of the importance to enjoy the whole cooking experience. I applaud her for wearing two hats, she's both a professional cook and an illustrator. Let's hear it for doing what you love, right?!
If you don't already know Larissa, she lives in Hamburg and is quite the popular girl here in Germany lately, I see her products in bookstores all over. She even has a new line of paper napkins, cloth tea towels, and other small misc. products for the kitchen. But her cookbook is gorgeous. I mean, worth buying even if you can't read German because it's just page after page of large colorful illustrations.
The recipes are centered around Italian cooking, just like her grandma would make, and the book is 100% illustration so there are no real life settings photographed which in itself is quite unique right? Most modern cookbooks show photographs of actual food.
This hand drawn cookbook is hot here and who would have guessed that it would be so popular being that it's mostly filled with illustrations and only brief recipe summaries? It's highly visual in a very unconventional sense without a single food photo. I think people are starving for new formats, clever new ways to deliver information, breaking the mold.
I would love to own this cow as a print for my kitchen.Have a peek at her portfolio here. And if you want to purchase her calendar or book, just go to the German Amazon site. That's where I ordered mine and it's all set to be delivered to my U.S. address. Easy.
(images from larissa bertonasco)