What's cooking?

These days, we have the opportunity to experience a multitude of different cuisines, here in Melbourne. Indian, Greek, Japanese and Italian restaurants are just some of the many choices we have readily available to us.

Last month, Daniella Germain, an illustrator and designer, launched a Mexican cookbook titled, 'My Abuela's Table', based around her grandmother's traditional recipes. Daniella wrote and illustrated this beautifully presented cookbook.

I recently interviewed Daniella, regarding the success of her cookbook, what inspired her to write and illustrate it and what her hopes are for the near future.

Photo copyright of  Eddie Jim

• Firstly, what inspired you to produce a Mexican cuisine cookbook? Have you always been passionate about home cooking and eating well?

Well what inspired me was my mum’s cooking as she is Mexican. Basically I was doing a Communication Design degree [which changed my life] and I did a publication unit as an elective. The brief of the elective was to put a book together and around that time, my mum had handed down to me my grandmother’s recipes.

I always wanted to one day put together a cookbook of my grandmother’s recipes, so when this project came up, I thought it would be a great opportunity to put the book together. So that is what inspired me to do it and the fact that I completely illustrated it was an added bonus.

I don’t always cook Mexican all the time, but when I have friends over, I would throw a big Mexican dinner party together for the dishes are really ones you can share instead of just one main meal per person.

• You mention your grandmother as being one your greatest inspirations behind your book. So with this said, could you give us some background about her character and what she means to you and what this book means to her?

Well she is a very vibrant and energetic woman for her age. My sister and I have been several times to Mexico to visit her and my family over there. My grandmother, or abuela only speaks Spanish, so we don’t really have a verbal relationship with her. All my extended family speak English and so our relationship was through food. She has a wicked sense of humour. I have memories of her crying instead of laughing, which is what I do. She is very loving and has lots of grandchildren. There are about 13 of us altogether.

In terms of the book itself, she hasn’t seen a hard copy of it yet, however, I have sent her a PDF copy of it. I’m hoping to head over to Mexico in October in time for her 83^rd birthday, so I can hand deliver a hard copy version of the book.

• How did the actual publication of your cookbook, ‘My Abuela’s Table’ come into fruition?

Well at the end of the university year we had a Hardie Grant to judge our folios which were made up by 12 separate projects. There were around 100 of us, so we were a pretty big class. So Julie Pinkham, the MD of Hardie Grant Books, came in and judged mine the best. She noticed my book and loved it, so she organised a meeting for me and one of the editors through my teacher at uni. Post having an interview with them, I didn’t really think much of it as I thought they might just give me some freelance work, but the food editor really liked the book and he held onto the book. In the meantime, they gave me some illustration work, and after six weeks I was going to ask to have my book back as it was my only copy. Anyway, the food editor emailed me one day saying that he wished to publish my cookbook. I screamed and rang everybody in my family.

What was great was that they were happy to publish the book just as it originally was created. The only thing they asked me to do was to draw a couple of pictures of food on the cover as there was none initially there. Despite them loving the way the book was, I honestly didn’t feel it was finished, so they let me add an extra 24 pages. For example, I added a ‘chilli’ page.

I was initially on a three-month deadline with the book to get it finished for uni.

There are around 70 recipes in the book but there are heaps of my grandmother’s recipes that I just couldn’t fit in. At home, I have a manila folder full of them; I probably have hundreds.

My grandmother’s food is very French inspired as her region were once invaded by the France, so my grandmother learnt from the other women in her village different ways of cooking and then she adapted the recipes to suit her own style.

Most of the recipes in the cookbook I have cooked on numerous occasions so I know that they work really well and I knew what they looked like, so I could draw them more easily.

• What does your cookbook entail? What kinds of recipes will we expect to find, and even more so, what are your all-time favourites?

My book has a wide variety of recipes, from your salsas and how to cook beans and your basic staples. There are really simple recipes to really complicated ones as there are a lot of ingredients.

The recipes that I really love the best are the really simple ones like the ‘Picadas’, which are the tortillas with salsa, beans and egg. I have a lot of great memories eating Picadas for breakfast. I also really like the ‘Caramel Flan - Flan de Yemas’ as it’s really rich and beautiful.

Most of the ingredients needed to make these dishes are easy to find, as you can obviously buy fresh chillies, garlic and onion from your supermarket. I have to say though, some of the more traditional Mexican ingredients such as the ‘Jamaica Flower’, 'Masa' and certain types of chillies are harder to find than others. So in Melbourne, I recommend you to go to ‘Casa Iberica’, which is on Johnston Street, Fitzroy, as they stock a lot of Mexican ingredients including fresh tortillas

• You have drawn all the images in the cookbook. How did you go about this process? Did you have to do any research? Was it time consuming and so forth?

Yes, it was very time consuming. I firstly started to draw the simpler images that I knew how to draw, such as the utensils. I researched various photos and images of different kinds of pottery online, to get my material for my illustrations. I didn’t really draw many images of the dishes. Some of the images I used were derived from photographs I had taken when I last went to Mexico in 2005. Other images were simply drawn based on my memories too.

What is great is that the only photos that are displayed in the book are of my family in Mexico. Every other image is drawn, which helps the book become more set apart from other cookbooks that are filled with photos.

• What is your intention behind the style of the book?

I wanted my book to have a kind of ‘hand-made’ feel to it. A lot of my work created throughout my uni course was hand made and illustrated and so I guess I wanted this book to also have a rustic and homely feel to it.

• You studied a Bachelor of Communication Design at RMIT, so with this said, is graphic design something that you have always dreamed about doing? If so, what would be your dream position in the field of graphic design?

My ultimate dream is doing what I am doing now. Originally, I wanted to be a graphic designer but now I am heading into illustration, but having design skills has really helped me a lot. Being able to do all the layouts in the cookbook was due to my studies and so having skills in graphic design has helped me become a better illustrator.

After completing high school, I studied a Bachelor of Psychology and then I went onto work for the Cancer Council in their research department for seven years.

But drawing is something I have always wanted to do. It has always been my passion.  I don’t regret doing a Psychology degree for I it is an industry I can always fall back on.

I am really enjoying working on various publications. I have just recently illustrated and designed a couple of other cookbooks for Hardie Grant, which is great. I know this sounds really nerdy, but I really love sitting down and drawing images and type setting text for hours.

I just finished designing a Vietnamese cookbook, called ‘Vietnamese Street Food’, and also a little companion journal for ‘Meet Me at Mike’s’, which is a series of craft books written by craft goddess Pip Lincolne.

• You launched your book on Thursday the 9 June, 2011 at Readings in Hawthorn. Describe what this experience was like for you.

The launch was a little nerve wrecking for I was running really late. And as soon as I arrived and walked through the doors, I was called to immediately go up and say a speech. I really didn’t know what to say and so I just winged it.

Prior to the book launch, Readings set up a Facebook page and people had to R.S.V.P to the event on the page and right up to the day of the launch, only 10 people said they were attending. But I also had another 50 or so people R.S.V.P through me. In the end, Readings didn’t believe that I would have had many people attend, so they sectioned off a really small area for the launch and so on the night, it was extremely crowded. But all my family, friends were all there, so that was good.

I ended up signing books for over an hour, which was really bizarre, as I had friends lining up for an autograph.

• ‘My Abuela’s Table’ has only been available for purchase for a short number of weeks. What has life been like post your launch?

Not really. However, it’s a bit weird knowing that the book is out there, it’s kind of like letting go of a child I guess. You don’t really know what’s happening with it. What’s pretty cool is that I have been receiving fan email from complete strangers, telling me that they love my book, which is really nice. Since the launch, I have been approached by a couple of children’s book publishers as they’re keen to see my folio; one lady is pretty keen for me to work on a children’s book. So, these new opportunities have all come down to my book being out there.

The interviews have died down now, but it has been pretty bizarre. I had a live radio interview on an independent radio station in Adelaide, which was pretty cool. It’s been a fun experience so far.

• I noticed that you have your own website which is soon to go live. What will be featured on this website and the website entirely your won creation?

I recently illustrated some wedding invitations for a lecturer from RMIT University and so in exchange, he is now developing my website. So I’m hoping my website will be released soon in the next couple of months. But I’m not really sure what it is going to look like. I have my blog where I put my work up on, so I’m guessing that my website will be a bit like a folio.

• What are hoping for your future, both as a graphic designer and author, but also the future of ‘My Abuela’s Table’? Would you like to create a series of cookbooks?

I really admire certain illustrators and I would like to have one day a same sort of profile as them. I’m working freelance at the moment and I have to say it’s really great as I don’t need to change my style or do projects that I would rather not do. I have been working now as a full-time freelance illustrator for about a month now and so I’ll see how that goes. I work at home which is really good. Sometimes I feel guilty, for I really am enjoying what I’m doing; I feel like I’m not working.

• Where can we buy your book from, if we wish to buy it directly from a store?

You should be able to find it in most bookshops, but try Readings and Dymocks. It’s an SBS book, so Dymocks should definitely stock it. You can also buy it online from bookshops. I recently went into this tiny little bookstore in the city and they had three copies of it, so most bookshops should have it. I am happy to say I am thinking of starting a second book. But we will have to see what the future holds. 

For more info on Daniella Germain, visit her blog, I bought a pair of Camper boots and now I am broke! 

Let me know what you think. Feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email to promenadewithme@hotmail.com

Thanks!

Gianna :)