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Mary McCartney (London, 1969) is, as you might imagine from her surname, the eldest daughter of Beatle Paul McCartney and his first wife, photographer Linda Eastman, who died in 1998. It was from her that he inherited his passion for photography and the ethical decision to become a vegetarian, the two sides of his professional career, as a photographer and cook.
Mary McCartney combina en este libro dos de sus pasiones: la fotografía y la gastronomía.
And now, for the first time, he combines both tasks in Feeding Creativity. A Cookbook for Friends and Family, a book published by Taschen, in which McCartney organized meetings with sixty of her celebrity friends to photograph them and invite them to eat some of her vegetarian, not vegan, recipes – “I’m a vegetarian, I’m getting more and more into plant-based cooking, like eggs and things like that; but they have to be from free-range, organically raised chickens” – the way she does it on Mary McCartney Serves It Up, the cooking show that has been airing on the Discovery+/Food Network platform since 2021 and which began its fourth season this past November.
Cameron Diaz con unos pancakes a la sartén en su casa de Los Angeles.
“I grew up watching my mother in the kitchen. It was the best place to hang out. Everything gravitated around the kitchen. You’d be there and something would come up as you went along. I had no training as a cook; mine is more instinctive. We would make things up but we wouldn’t write down the recipe and we’d forget what we’d made; that’s why I write them down now, because I feel it’s something I’ll be able to leave to my children.”
“I also loved photography and I thought, maybe because I come from a creative family where everyone has a good eye, that everyone knew how to take pictures,” he adds, talking about his second passion. I started working in a publishing house, editing other people’s photographs, and I realized that not everyone took good photos, so one day I told my mother that I wanted to become a professional photographer and she gave me my first camera, a Leica. But this is the first time I have found a way to merge my two passions”.
Woody Harrelson termina unos Smokey Dogs en su casa de Los Angeles.
The book is made up of photographs of his famous friends and the dishes he decided to prepare for them. There are Cameron Diaz, George Lucas, Elvis Costello, Jeff Koons, Stanley Tucci, Woody Harrelson, Gilbert & George, Cate Blanchett or his own father, along with Ringo Starr, of whom he says he is “allergic to garlic and onions, so I love cooking for him because it’s a kind of challenge”. Since there are no Spanish friends of hers among those photographed in the book, I ask her about Spanish cuisine. She declares herself a great lover of our peppers. “It would be quite a challenge to do a book for Spain, because there are incredible tapas. Apart from peppers, I like olives and tortilla”. He asks me to recommend a Spanish chef and I tell him about Dabiz Muñoz, who that same week had just been named, for the third year in a row, best chef in the world at The Best Chef Awards 2023. “Unbelievable! I’ll have to ask him if he can make me a vegetarian menu…”.
Elvis Costello con un sándwich de atún en los Electric Lady Studios (Nueva York).
George Lucas con un pastel Skywalker en su rancho homónimo, en California.
Gilbert and George con un sándwich de beicon, tomate y lechuga en el Artists’ Studio (Londres).
Jeff Koons con un pastel Arco Iris en su estudio de Nueva York.
Nilo Rodgers con una ensalada de tostada asada en los estudios Abbey Road, en Londres.
Cindy Sherman con una sopa de puerros y boniato en su casa de los Hamptons.
