Mottainai

Mottainai is a concept from Buddhism and encompasses a respect for all things and the desire to treat them accordingly, wasting nothing. Tainá Guedes first encountered mottainai when she travelled to Japan. With a diploma in gastronomy and several years’ experience cooking in a Japanese restaurant, she wanted to study and learn traditional Buddhist shojin ryori, ‘devotion cuisine’.
Tainá Guedes now shows what mottainai means to her and how she combines the concept with her own ideas about happy, healthy contemporary cooking. In ten chapters and 50 recipes she takes us on an inspiring and very personal journey through her cooking universe, where a greater awareness of healthy living and eating does not stand in the way of creativity and pleasure but complements them beautifully.
Tainá Guedes was born in São Paulo in 1978; her mother is Japanese and her father a Brazilian artist. She qualified as a chef at the prestigious Centro Universitário Senec, opening her first Japanese restaurant while still a student. Later Guedes travelled to Japan to study traditional vegetarian shojin ryori. Guedes has run Entretempo Kitchen Gallery in Berlin since 2014, an art gallery with integrated kitchen, devoted to food art and exploring the social significance of food. Tainá Guedes lives with her son in Berlin.