The Scandi cookbook trend isn’t going anywhere. The latest is from a young Helsinki woman who conjured a book about cooked oats into almost 200 pages of pure, vivid beauty.
Pørridge, by Anni Kravi, turns a humdrum breakfast—and quite often an instant, microwavable meal—into an art form. The bowls, usually a combination of rolled oats, rye and spelt flakes, are decorated in hypnotic patterns with a range of colors and textures with the use of sea buckthorn berries, chia seeds, cacao nibs and violets. Yes, flowers in oatmeal. Recipes rely on plants and pulses and avoid, for the most part, sugar, dairy and gluten.
There’s a serene feel, a clean, minimal backdrop to brightly garnished bowls and gorgeous, funky spoons, some commissioned for the book. Begin with foundations, dissecting bowls and their many parts, like how to pulverize nuts and oats into milks and how to combine nuts, dates and flax seeds into a yogurt-like substance, dubbed rawgurt.
With almost no headnotes, recipes and pictures alone are left to guide readers in the kitchen. Though stories on each sweet and savory bowl would probably feel excessive, a tip or two on styling these beige bases could inspire the average oat eater to turn breakfast into a meditation on the rainbow.
