olive on a Sunday

The latest olive magazine plopped onto my doormat and I always have the same quandary. Do I dive straight it picking out tasty titbits as I go or slowly savour each morsel? I know D always wants to be the first to crack the cover on every new magazine and I know what she means the moments before you start reading a new food magazine you don’t know if it will have some great inspirations and run immediately into the kitchen or it will be tomato soaked fest or all abstinence and Asian broth. It might sound rather dramatic for a mere magazine, but I feel the same before opening any book for the first time (and I don’t just mean cookbooks but all books, not even good ones make we want to run and sharpen my Global knives).

It looks extremely hopeful as the cover is shows a fabulous Sunday roast instead of last month’s abundance of healthy eating ideas. And the very first recipe is yummy looking French onion soup. So I started off slowly to ensure I don’t miss any of the little snippets of news as that’s how I found about my food photography course in France last year. This month they send a lucky food editor to the River Cottage HQ “Pig in a Day” course which sounds a real treat and news of soon to be available ready made spam fritters which doesn’t! Next there’s a great profile of Olive top 50 decadent foodies including some of my favourites, Uncle Monty from Withnail and I, Richard Corrigan, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Giles Coren, the Two Fat Ladies, Stephen Fry, Jeffrey Steingarten and the slightly scandalous Elizabeth David. It’s a rather eclectic bunch is rather thought provoking. I love the fact that they’ve included the Swedish Chef and his chocolate mousse recipe that includes the ingredients – chocolate and a moose! Though I think that Simon Hopkinson and Nigel Slater should be there for the incredible mark they’ve already made on the world of food literature and everyone knows what a seminal book Roast Chicken and Other Stories is.

But what about the seasonal recipes? Well for the ‘barren lull’ between the end of the winter vegetables and the spring vegetables there are some great recipes. Firstly, there is a recipe for mussels with garlic and herb breadcrumbs and ever since I fell in the love with the “Popeye” dish at Belgo’s I been trying to find the tray for grilling mussels to recreate it. Maybe I’ve been just looking too hard and I could just use a baking tray like in this recipe. And then it’s purple sprouting broccoli with proscuitto and duck egg which looks seriously tasty also. Jo Pratt’s new book “In the mood for food” is coming out next month and my eye was particularly caught by the berry and ginger crumble. That would seem a perfect way to utilise some of my frozen berries. And not surprisingly, with the fine hunk of beef on the cover, there are some fine Sunday best meaty-licious dishes to tuck into.

I think this month is going to be mighty tasty!