Jamie Magazine a tasty offering

Feeling rather lazy yesterday afternoon I spent a significant portion of it reading the May/June issue of Jamie Oliver’s self-titled magazine Jamie Magazine and marking all the recipes I want to try with post-it notes.

I came up with the idea of tagging recipes early on in my food magazine buying career. Once you have more than a half dozen food magazines in the house (and after eight years of working in the food media I have hundreds) flicking through them to find that fabulous risotto or one-pot chicken recipe you wanted to try is just too time-consuming. This method isn’t perfect but at least I only have to flick through the tags and not every single page. Once I’ve tried a recipe the page is either ripped out and filed in my favourite recipes folder (if it’s a winner) or the tag is removed (if it isn’t).

This particular issue of Jamie Magazine is now bristling like a hedgehog. Some of my must-tries: Lapin Madame Cots (I am rather partial to a good bunny stew); Insalata di Funghi (Wild Mushroom Salad); Veal Cooked in Milk; Turkish-style Lamb Cutlets, and Asparagus Fettucine.

Having read three issues of Jamie Magazine now, I’ve decided that it’s my new favourite food magazine. From the matt cover and paper stock (oooh, classy) to the travelogue-style features, sumptuous photos and of course, the recipes, I love everything about it.

Not surprisingly Jamie looms large in this magazine but in this issue we don’t hear from him directly, other than in his welcoming note as Editor-at-Large (a title I’ve always fancied having). Issues one and two both had several articles written by Jamie himself, which added to the magazine’s charm but didn’t help the quality of the writing. Jamie is a fantastic chef but not a great writer. Bless him.

Some highlights of this issue are the “3 Tenors” feature, a rather touching account of how Antonio Carluccio and Gennaro Contaldo (both early mentors to Jamie) reconnected after being estranged for 10 years, coming together in Jamie’s kitchen to share their mutual love of Italian food; “Where the heart is”, a delightful feature by Australian-Lebanese chef Greg Malouf about finding culinary inspiration through his travels through the Middle-East, and “Catalan Lessons” in which writer Paul Dring eats his way round 21 tapas bars in 48-hours in Barcelona (next time, can I come?).

The perforated fold out Monthly Menu with four weeks of ideas, ingredients and recipes on each side (a regular feature in every issue) is the sort of inspired idea that will have seen local editors calling for quotes on how much it would cost to do something similar.

Yes, there are is a lot of advertorial content spruiking jmecollection products (everything from crockery to tea light holders and seedboxes), Jamie at Home parties (similar to Tupperware except with jmecollection products), Jamie’s Italian restaurants and Jamie’s chain of Recipease stores (where shoppers can prepare meals under the guidance of trained chefs) but it’s his magazine, published by his publishing company. Why shouldn’t he fill it with whatever he wants? None of this detracts from the rest of the content.

It would be interesting to know what the circulation of Jamie Magazine is. At $9.95 (or $16.95, if you get an air-freighted copy from the UK) it’s not cheap but people do love Jamie. His website, http://www.jamieoliver.com/, apparently gets a million plus hits a month.

Here in Australia, Jamie’s latest TV offering, Jamie saves our bacon, in which Jamie focused his attention on pork (a follow up to last year’s Fowl Dinners, which looked at the chicken and egg industries) attracted 543,000 viewers when it screened last Wednesday. Not huge figures perhaps but a sizeable minority. If even 10% of those viewers bought Jamie Magazine it would be considered a success by local standards, albeit a niche title.

As for me, I cooked Jamie’s Spring Green Polenta last night, which I served with steak and sauteed mushies. And it was pretty damn good. In fact, it’s already in the favourites folder.