Paper Palate

Great British Food is one of two new magazines covering the UK’s unique culinary heritage and modern cuisine. This is the glossier of the two, more heavyweight, and more expensively produced. It is exclusively available from WH Smiths in the UK.

Local produce, British chefs, classic British brands, and farmers markets are all subjects you would expect to be covered, which they are, all wrapped up with high class foodporn photographs.

There is an interview with Nigella - did you know that the current TV series in actually filmed in a house she owns, but doesn’t actually live in? There are recipes from the featured regional chefs. From Scotland Martin Wishart gives Chocolate Soup with Cherries, Blanched Almonds and Vanilla Cappuccino while Michel Caines supplies Roasted Guinea Fowl with Braised Chicory, Roasted Winter Vegetables and a White Wine and Tarragon Sauce.

I’ve just bought the ingredients to make James Martin’s Kentish Pudding Pie (which will be my entry to The Cooksisters Waiter There’s Something event). This he serves with roasted Crab Apples and ice cream, but were does one source crab apples from??

Plenty on British cheese, a nice section on ales, including a taste test, and a review of three markets. Yep, Borough market is there, but so too are St. Georges in Belfast and the farmers markets in Haverfordwest and Edinburgh. They all put my little towns market in the shade…

Elsewhere there is coverage of seafood, a few recipes for winter and extracts from Clarissa Dickson Wright’s The Game Cookbook which is to provide this Sunday’s special - Partridges Stuffed with Chestnuts.

A criticism though, there are one too many pages of products and gifts. Fine in themselves if they are new and actually reviewed, but just listing a handful of ‘bits’ with extra large photographs just seems like filling to me.

Great British Food is exclusively available from WH Smiths in the UK. Cost £4.99.