For the Love of British Food

All the major British supermarket chains now have their own ‘house magazines’, which broadly speaking, combine news about the store chain, offer coupons and competitions, with recipes, restaurant reviews and travel

In this post, I am going to review my favourite which is called Waitrose Food Illustrated. Waitrose is part of the John Lewis group, who also run great department stores, have an excellent website and now customer servicces such as insurance and can even bring you broadband internet.

The magazine is free for those who have a store credit card with John Lewis, but that isn’t me, I pay up my £2.50 willingly and this month I can get 85p of it back if I take up the coupons I can use in-store. Sainsburys, whose magazine also buy is more generous with store offers. The rest of the coupons this month (January) are for money off hotel stays (very expensive hotels to start with) and 50% entry to a holiday exhibition. I might have gone to that if it was nearer and I was actually in the market for a holiday, but whatever money I make blogging is going straight into the basic business of staying alive and eating.

Let’s start with eating - eating in, that is. The cover shows an exotic cousin of the good old sausage sandwich. The interesting variation features sausages wrapped in parma ham and seasoned with sage leaves, tucked into crunchy ciabatta rolls. My sage bush was a casualty of the cold wet summer last year. I didn’t notice that the pot was swamped and not draining and it rotted. Never mind, it will be spring soon and I can have another go.

A regular feature I like is a double page spread of what is seasonal in fruit and veg with some suggestions on cooking them. I find a lovely and cheap-to-make Basque soup called purrusalda featuring leeks, and ideas for using rhubarb. I feel a crumble pud coming on or I might try the cake recipe on page 78 unusually made with spelt flour.

The name of the soup’s a bit weird, sounds like I should be feeding it to my ‘personal assistant’ and enthusuastic food taster - see pic, but he’d rather have some tasty tuna and maybe a bit of cheese. It’s probably very bad for cats, but I only have to get the Parmesan grater out of the fridge and he’s at my feet yelling and I have to find him a few tiny scraps. It isn’t every day.

I have seen some unusual potato varieties in the shop recently, and wondered what they were like inside. We see a selection. laid out like an artist’s palette, deep purple Arran victory, purple and yellow veined shetland black, almost indigo salad blue and one with a curious blood red centre, called Highland burgundy. Not sure if I am brave enough to try. I have my suspicions about what chemicals in them might be responsible for the strange interiors. (more…)