The Magazine Seven

The Magnificent Seven

I enjoy cooking. A lot. I've even considered becoming a professional chef but the harsh reality is the people who prepare food in restaurants make very little money for what's ultimately very demanding physical labour. I have spent some time in professional kitchens (as a visitor) and culinary schools (as a participant). I'm reminded every time I dine out that when food arrives at my table not only at the same time as everyone else I'm dining with but also that it is indeed what I ordered, that it's quite the achievement.

As much as I enjoy cooking though, I enjoy reading about all things gastronomical every bit as much. In addition to several shelves filled with cookery books in all three languages I can read, I recently came to the realization that I have subscriptions to no less than seven culinary periodicals! So, in order to assuage my conscience about spending so much money on magazines, here is my review of the seven I subscribe to.

The seven fall into three broad categories - general interest including food and travel and the odd serious article (Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, and Gourmet), culinary arts (Fine Cooking), and gastronomy in the academic sense of the word (Gastronomica, Slow).


BON APPETIT (12 issues a year)
Bon Appetit is a magazine I have subscribed to on and off over the years. My current subscription was prompted by an offer from the publisher of the "professional rate" of $24 a year. The writing is decent and the articles in general are a nice mix of restaurant reviews and travel articles (more on that later).

However, the very nice thing about Bon Appetit is they are geared for people who like to entertain and every issue will have several set menus for various sized groups. For instance, they might have a Sunday brunch for six, a summer babecue party for ten, and a formal dinner for eight, all in the same issue. For $2 an issue, it's worth getting.

Bon Appetit and its sister publication Gourmet are both on the web at http://www.epicurious.com.


FINE COOKING (6 issues a year)
Fine Cooking is published by Taunton Press, who have an entire line of Fine [insert here] publications.

This magazine is like subscribing to a cookbook. Every issue has tips and tricks, talks about how to prepare the various dishes presented, and at the back there's even a pull out section pre-perforated to pull out and add to your three ring personal cookbook binder.

Fine Cooking also publishes a compendium of the previous year's issues in one nice hardcover volume, but I enjoy the regular arrivals in my mailbox too much to only buy something once a year. Consider too that what's in season will be reflected in the current issue, so it wouldn't do me any good to read all about everything I can do with strawberries in the middle of winter!

Fine Cooking's web site is http://www.taunton.com/finecooking/index.asp


FOOD & WINE (12 issues a year)
I subscribe to Food & Wine mainly for two reasons - Lettie Teague's monthly wine column, and the monthly food and wine pairing. Lettie Teague writes well and from month to month you can expect anything from the current serial on educating someone in the art of wine appreciation to sampling home brew wines in California to the latest wines from Tuscany or New Zealand or Australia.

The monthly food and wine pairing is always a fun read. Couscous stuffed chicken breasts with a pinot noir, anyone? One of the challenges with wine is often what to pair it with, and vice versa. It's always nice to get some good ideas.

The recipes in Food & Wine are usually quite good too. Most recently I made a Turkish eggplant and lentil stew. Each issue also has a very nice recipe index including colour coded dots to indicate for example if the recipe is something you can make ahead.

There is also enough miscellany and interesting articles to keep me entertained each month.

If there's a quibble with Food & Wine it's that the editor, Dana Corwin, is forever having some party or attending some gala event, and uses the magazine to give her a lot of "face time" in the pages of each issue.

Every year, Food & Wine publishes a cookbook containing all the prevoius years recipes from the magazine (e.g. Food & Wine 2004 has all the recipes from the 2003 issues) and a cookbook called "The Best of the Best [year]" which has a seletion of recipes from the best cookbooks published in the previous year as selected by the editors.

On the web at http://www.foodandwine.com.


GASTRONOMICA (4 issues a year)
Published quarterly by the University of California Davis, Gastronomica is a peer reviewed journal of food and culture. The content varies from issue to issue, but I happened to buy an issue at Barbara Jo's about two years ago and have been hooked ever since. Indeed, since the issue I bought was only the fourth one ever, I bought the three back issues I was missing and now have a complete (and ongoing) set.

So what made me buy the first issue? An article about Smuckers and their patent application for frozen crustless peanut butter and jam sandwiches of all things.

In general, the magazine has all manner of interesting topics on food and culture. Articles on etymology of food words, art exhibits that are about or incorporate food, art history of food related tableauxs, general articles about food in history from both technical scientific and ethnographic perspectives. Some of the articles are about current issues, such as the consumption of "bush food" including great apes and chimps in Africa and the increased poaching of same made easy by the construction of logging roads in their traditional habitats.

One of the most fascinating articles was about eating clay, a practice that is still widespread in parts of the world, including the northern Andes where potatoes, the original kind that are very high in alkalis unlike the more bland and palatable ones we find on our grocery store shelves, are eaten with a clay slurry.

For people interested in a diverse array of food and culture related topics, highly recomended.

On the web at http://www.gastronomica.org.


GOURMET (12 issues a year)
Gourmet has long been one of my favourites. It has its ups and downs, but especially since Ruth Reichl took over the helm as editor, the writing has been excellent; about three or four times a year they have articles about food science, such as the recent one about trans fats.

Gourmet strikes the right balance between travel articles and food articles, and the recipes are generally all a lot of fun. Some of them are quite challenging, but there's also a section for fast cooking and of the "five ingredients and 30 minutes" variety.

Gourmet publishes a "best of" cookbook every year.

As with its sister publication Bon Appetit, can be found on the web at http://www.epicurious.com.


NORTHWEST PALATE (8 issues a year)
Northwest Palate is a regional magazine covering BC, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Most of each issue is devoted to listing events happening in this part of the world, but there is a fair amount of coverage for local new restaurants, wine reviews, profiles of tourist destinations, what's in season now, and of course, some recipes.

Here's a small sample of the kind of thing you'll find in Northwest Palate - for a local, seasonal, and fresh perspective on fast food, try Burgerville, which only uses ingredients sourced in the Pacific Northwest and has different milkshakes depending on the time of year and Walla Walla onion rings in the summer.

On the web at http://www.nwpalate.com


SLOW (4 issues a year)

Slow is a strange one. It comes with my membership in Slow Food International. Some issues I wonder what this strange publication that's arrived in my house is. Other issues I find I want to read cover to cover. More often it's the former.

On the web at http://www.slowfood.com and locally at http://www.slowfoodvancouver.com.

So which one's my favourite? Gastronomica. I read every issue cover to cover.