Oh Those Wonderful, Fabulous English Cooking Magazines

I have just given myself the equivalent of a recipe nervous breakdown!  I don’t know where to begin…

The first thing I unpacked were the cooking magazines I brought home from London.  I couldn’t help myself.  I managed a week without buying any.  Then at the airport…well, I couldn’t hold back.  They were staring at me, sitting on the shelf, whispering in my ear “buy me, go on, you know you aren’t strong enough to ignore us, we’re the Christmas Issues, we only come around once a year.”  My addiction took hold and the next thing I knew?  I was on the plane sitting happily sipping a glass of chardonnay dog earring every other page.  I caught myself talking out loud oohing and ahhing as I turned each gorgeous glossy page filled with delicious pictures.

Then this morning I started to categorize everything I dog-eared and drove myself nuts.  I ended up with sticky notes plastered all over the magazine covers. It’s amazing what a change in cooking scene can do.  Just the combinations and ingredients while not drastically different were inspiring and jogged my memory with old familiar English tastes like: a moist dense Christmas cake chock full of raisins, sultanas and currants then soaked in brandy and left to mature, creamy bread and onion sauce to serve with our turkey on the side.  There was a silky chicken liver pate, a crisp potato cake, sticky clementine cheesecake, Stilton and leek in choux pastry…see!  That was only a few pages into one magazine…I could go on and on.  I guess the good news for my cooking brain was that I only had room for three in my hand luggage.

 

 These were the culprits!

So, given all the sticky notes and magazines strewn over the floor.  I better get going in the kitchen.  There's a lot of cooking to be done.  

Oh, one more thing.  The orange "biscotti" cookies were delish!