Gotta Cook? Mother Curates the Ultimate Foolproof Lockdown Recipes

The team at Mother Shanghai are just emerging from two months in their apartments, so you could consider them a select group* of world experts on lockdowns. Their biggest lesson from the frontline is that we’ve all ‘Gotta Cook’… even those who are less than skilled in the kitchen department. Everyone has to fend for themselves. So now is the time to open up your minds and taste buds, and dust off the unused kitchen utensils.

With lockdown becoming the status quo now around the rest of the world, Mother Shanghai wanted ‘Gotta Cook’ to inspire us by showing the possibility of delicious meals made from random ingredients left in the average kitchen. As they know first-hand that to survive, you’ve got to get really creative.

Behold this new recipe collection, served from the heart and with a big dose of reality. It was created using a cunning form of ethnographic research: asking members of the team to divulge their eating habits and getting them to share proud images of their creations. This fountain of knowledge was then consolidated into ‘Gotta Cook’, all without the creators realising they were taking part in the project. The result is a glorious collection of fourteen culinary treats for the fourteen days of quarantine. Gotta Cook is available free to download now and will be printed in glorious colour... once printers in Shanghai return to work.

The book takes its inspiration from ration books of old, mixed with some propaganda and topped off with a good dose of modern colour, featuring a distinctly Chinese twist. The team even went to the trouble of designing a specific brush that is reminiscent of saliva, just to whet the appetite that little bit more.  

Commenting on Gotta Cook, Mother said: “Once the novelty of lockdown subsides, and your apartment is the cleanest place on the planet, the focus quickly turns to food - specifically, how you can make something slightly more exciting than porridge… it proved to be our collective salvation during isolation and something that occupied an increasing proportion of virtual meeting chatter. Our hope is that Gotta Cook will help people know that getting to the end of lockdown is possible, and you can even enjoy some of the food involved. Or at least the fun of getting creative. Bon appetit.”

⃰ OK, well a select group of about 1,439,323,776 people