Picking up ideas from foreign magazines

On my recent travels I picked up a couple of foreign magazines, one German (Neue Post) and one French (Elle a table). I got them because I like to browse their pages and I find it is a good way of picking up bits of language and quite an encouragement in that way. The German magazine is full of articles about various big chinned European royal families and their offspring and angst ridden articles about health and a big crossword I haven't a cat in hell's chance of completing. It also has a couple of pages of recipes and creative cookery advice by the magazine's cookery Expertin, Kreske Schmidt. "Haben Sie Fragen?" she asks. "Ja Kreske, are you free for a date tonight?" She has very white teeth, as do all the people in the magazine even the cartoon Granny. Omas Rat ist der beste. That doesn't mean that granny has a very nice rat. It means that granny advice is the best. It is probably written by Ulrike who has just turned twenty.

I found I could read quite a lot about cooking Frikadellen (pork and beef meatballs) and the short sentence way that the instructions were given meant that I would be encouraged to find out what 'abgiessen, abshrecken, anrichten' and other intriguing words mean with very little effort.

So, over to the sexy French food mag. Full of lots of glossy pictures of food. Quelle Suprise!!!

Every page was full of mouth watering imagery. On the cover (above) it says 'Super simple et super bon'. That sounds great in French but anglify it (is that a word?) and you get 'Dead easy and dead good'. Mon Dieu! Super un-cool. The magazine stylist even managed to make a pretend rabbit photographing fresh green beans for an advert look stylish!

Each page looked so fab I felt almost inclined to lick it. Delicious Mediterranean tarts full of unctuous tomatoes and herbs and cheeses to die for and recettes for all summer occasions. Ooh la la!

Encouraged by this I made a Cornish sardines dish the other day. I gutted and prepared the sardines and arranged them in a large dish with coriander, fresh tomatoes, chorizo slices, leeks and three tins of chopped tomatoes. I put this in a middle heat oven for three quarters of an hour and in a seperate dish cooked some small belly pork slices marinated in piri piri for the same time. Then I added them altogther to make a spicy fish and belly pork stew. Super bon!!

to the finished dish I added two sliced boiled eggs