Paper Palate

I’m not entirely sure what a half naked French rugby player is doing on the cover of OFM either. I suppose it has something to do with the (now dissipated) rugby fever that has gripped England and the magazine’s by-line: The 50 Sexiest Places to be Fed.

A quick scamper through this list suggests that, predominantly, one needs to be rather wealthy to eat sexily. Even the very down to earth picnic suggestion involves a ‘proper’ hamper from Fortnum and Mason. The rest of the list runs the gamut from Le Louis XV in Monaco (one of Alain Ducasse’s restaurants), through several big name London and New York restaurants, before settling on a kebab. While I’m not sure how sexy kebab eating can be, hooray for Alex James in suggesting it!

Nigel Slater whips through his top ten other people’s recipes, which includes Nigella Lawson’s steak with béarnaise sauce and Sam Clark’s salt cod croquettas. The magazine also comes with some pull out cards for Nigel Slater’s Easy Roasts.

There’s a substantial extract from Parisian chef, Babette de Rozières’ new book, Creole.  While the pan-fried Mediterranean prawns and chicken breast or the Creole seafood risotto both sounded delicious, we ended up opting for the Colombo pork loin curry. This was an unusual dish: a sort of spicy, saucy stir-fry, with plenty of lime juice to add a really refreshing finish. And it was quick and easy to boot!
There’s an article on foraging which, while interesting, includes recipes that might be slightly tricky to reproduce at home: cobnuts, nettles, yarrow leaves, hogwort and merlilot twigs are, by and large, going to be difficult to come by for those of us based in cities.

An ex pop star and a political writer are put through their paces in commercial kitchens, and the resident nutritionist takes a look at Julie Delpy’s diet. There’s a large feature on Marco-Pierre White, back in the public eye again after his stint at the helm of Hell’s Kitchen.

Alex Renton visits Bill Cassells’ farm in Scotland where the Highlander cows are reared at their own pace and treated the way we’d like to think all our meat is treated. While reading about cattle slaughter is not, perhaps, the ideal way to spend a Sunday afternoon, it’s the very thing all of us city-dwellers should understand, so we can make informed decisions about how we spend our meat-buying pound or dollar.

On a more cheery note, readers can vote for their favourite venus in the annual OFM awards, there’s a shop around for the best breakfast products and Matt Skinner recommends 20 great wines ranging in price from £12 to £320.

While this month’s magazine seems lighter on the recipe front, there’s still plenty of though provoking, and taste bud tantalising, reading.

Babette de Rozières’ Creole is available from Amazon UK (RRP £24.95) and Amazon US (RRP $39.95).