Bite: Grandma’s Design

Fortunately, the people behind a project called Grandma’s Design had the same thought, and have spent the past two years inviting people to connect with heritage through food culture. With the support of the European Commission’s Culture Programme, the project has succeeded in drawing the public’s attention to the wide variety of baking traditions across Europe, and more specifically in Belgium, Italy, Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands.

Last year, Grandma’s Design filmed and interviewed 84 grandmothers who happily agreed to share their baking secrets and prepare a recipe that typified their country, region or family. Discover all the recipes and stories on the website, which is chock-full of great recipes, their history and even step-by-step videos with subtitles in English.

The project’s aim was not only to preserve a number of cooking traditions, but also to keep them alive by putting a twist on the original concept. It may sound like an odd combination, but tradition and innovation make great bedfellows, as do grandmothers and design. That’s why this project combined the two for a unique food and design competition, inviting professional designers, chefs and artists to let one of these recipes inspire them to create a concept or product. The winners were then featured in the book Food Inspires Design, published by Design Vlaanderen this month, a compilation of the most original collaborations between grandmothers and designers.

Participants include Flemish designer Caroline Dobbs, who came up with a trendy new waffle iron, inspired by Grandma Goedele’s recipe for Flemish waffles. It bakes waffles in two flower shapes. Then there’s Grandma Rosa’s apple pie with apricots, which inspired French designer Amelia Desnoyers to create Homemade/Handmade, a rolling pin made out of a log of wood and other naturally beautiful raw materials found around a farm. Desnoyers was selected as one of the winners of the international design competition. So, too, was Léa Bougeault from France for her miniature interpretation of Grandma Gaby’s Jan in a bag (a traditional Meetjesland recipe for bread dough wrapped in kitchen cloth and boiled until soft and chewy).

Whether you’re interested in design or food, or both, the book and website are great sources of inspiration and a worthy effort to immortalise traditional recipes. I know I’ll be consulting them when I try my hand at chocolate pound cake from Antwerp or Limburgse vlaai with plums.