Website: www.fortnumandmason.comCost: £3.50
100 pages, including cover
Strapline: Let us cultivate our garden
Recipes: Ooh, lots. Let's just say they tend towards the aspirational - mushroom soup with dry white port, rose champagne and strawberry jellies - but there's some surprisingly cookable stuff, including a beautifully photographed apricot galette.
Favourite article: The chocolate maker. Choccy to die for. And I've learned that the optimum temperature for storing your chocolate is 16C.
I'm still not completely sure how and why I've ended up on the mailing list for Fortnum and Mason's quarterly magazine. Not that I'm complaining - I quite look forward to it dropping through the letterbox.
As it's based on the products that Fortnum's sells, it can be a bit of an odd mix - lots of food and wine, coupled with luxury gifts and accessories. But somehow, it manages to carry it off in style.
I just love the way the magazine's written (although I do hope that some of the language used is slightly tongue in cheek). I'll give you a flavour:
"The arrival of spring brings with it hundreds of things to be thankful for, from Easter eggs and spring lamb to the happy sound of the first gilt-edged wedding invitation landing on one's doormat. Here at Fortnum's, we can help you with those delightful seasonal chores, from the excitement of the Easter egg and spoon race to the choosing of the perfect summer hat...."
Marvellous. It's a whole other world in Piccadilly.
The photography is gorgeous - you could practically smell the chocolate on one of the pages (oh, and by the way, if anyone's listening, I'd rather like a box of the bespoke Fortnum's chocolates in Moroccan mint tea and Oriental Jasmine Green Tea flavours. Although at £85 a kilo it might just be one of each...). There's nice page layout too - lots of white space to let the words breathe.
And the features are pretty good - interesting stuff on balsamic vinegar and tea - yes, Fortnum's products are plugged pretty heavily, but not quite as blatantly as does, say, Sainsbury's in its mag. I'll have to get Waitrose Food Illustrated to compare properly, but for me, it's definitely the classiest of the supermarket or shop-based mags so far.
The only fly in the ointment was an article about the art of pampering - I'm afraid being told to "make your dressing table a place worthy of a boudoir" and "adorn the table with brushes and mirrors that are more than merely functional, such as Swarovski crystal-embellished cosmetic brushes" just made me want to hurl things (hairbrushes?) across the room.
All in all, a lovely read, especially if you would like to see how the other half deal with the traumas of gilt-edged wedding invites, picnic hampers and choosing gentlemen's accessories.
