To read the Waitrose magazine for comedy relief?

[LexL]

AIBU to get the Waitrose magazine just to have a good laugh at some of the pretentious recipes? DH and I sit down and go through the recipes/articles for 10 minutes while we have a cuppa and end up in mad chuckles every time! It never disappoints. I mentioned it to a colleague at lunch and whilst I was sharing it she looked at me very sternly and said -"you shouldn't get the magazine just to laugh at it, some people really appreciate those recipes. I love their recipes". I felt a bit bad and apologised if I offended her. I asked if she had ever made one of the recipes and she admitted she had never (ironically, I have made a couple of the easier ones). Am I the only one that finds some of the recipes pretentious and therefore, hilarious? I seriously hope not! Maybe I have a weird sense of humour?!

I will caveat this by saying that Waitrose is the only shop walking distance from my home, so I treat it as my corner shop. So I do shop there but only for a few top up items/special offers.

It’s Waitrose - and I suppose a stereotype of Waitrose clientele - that’s being laughed at. Not any particular person, yes?

Still not sure exactly what you mean. If you buy the Rose Harissa in Sainsbury's, then that's ok? No mocking, is that it?

Yeah there’s some really flawed reasoning on this thread.

• what if I, a white British person, buy rose harissa from my local Tunisian supermarket - is that pretentious?
• what if my Tunisian friend buys rose harissa from waitrose?
• Who gets to decide what is or isn’t common in a multicultural society or in a geographical area?

Yes, the reverse snobbery is both weird and hard to translate.

There are lots of ingredients I don't know, use or understand. I don't get upset that a magazine has those ingredients. Other people love them.

Having said that, I'm generally considered to be a pretty good cook. I think I am a good home cook, but I don't think I'm anything special. But I'm starting to think that maybe it's because I have a few "exotic" ingredients in my cupboard, and use them, is pretty unusual and perhaps people think I'm a pretentious wanker?

On the other hand, my food is always hoovered up by anyone who comes over so.... I guess taste wins over pretentiousness?

I think calling something pretentious just because it’s not commonplace in your experience is reverse snobbery. And as it happens rose harissa is readily available in UK supermarkets so not only is it difficult to see why it’s pretentious, it doesn’t even require extra effort to buy it. Not at all the same as affected pronunciation of words.

It's not the food that is pretentious of itself

Food isn't human
Pretentiousness is a human behaviour

Expressed as how the recipe , the blurb is written - a lack of balance between the words and the event in question

But florid prose is surely part and parcel of creating marketing material, which is what the Waitrose magazine is?

It's only purpose is to sell more Waitrose food, and to do that they have to try to make something ordinary (cooking) sound appealing to the people they think will be reading it in whatever way they can, and whilst it will fall flat some of the time, it must be working more often than not or they wouldn't do it.

I think you’re looking too hard for “reasoning”.

If people find obscure ingredients and poncey names for recipes funny, then that’s it. There is no reasoning.

Some recipes will be funny to some but not to others. There is no reasoning.

There is something revealing about people who get po-faced, upset or indignant about things like this. It’s their way of demonstrating that they’re true citizens of the world and have a wide and enviable experience of life, I suppose.

@Newgolddream70 Please tell me more about this leek and chicken pie!!

I always have a whinge when reading the Waitrose magazine, and get really irritated as every recipe has fruit in it.

I loathe savoury stuff with added fruit. Just stop!

I think me and my DP have the same sense of humour. Something similar we died laughing at was an episode where Frasier desperately “savoury lamb tenders”.

I would bet that the Tunisians and Moroccans would find mushy peas hilarious.

Exactly. So on Maghreb Mumsnet we could expect some MMNers to be pulling faces, saying “This is not funny. I quite often serve mushy peas. I discovered them on the most darling trip to England some years ago.”

@TomatoSoup69 I saw it in the magazine but printed it out. It's from 2010. I admit to using ready-made puff pastry. Hope you can read it ok ☺️

Actually the recipe says it was first published in 2004.

‘I would bet that the Tunisians and Moroccans would find mushy peas hilarious.’

Nah, it’s just green hummus.

I thought of this thread while reading this week's Guardian Feast.

Funnily enough, Peak Ottolenghi this week wasn't an ingredient, (black limes, katoori methi, barberries - tbf he did provide workaround for the barberries and we cook a lot of curries so we do have methi).

No, the thing which made DH and I say "Fuck off Yotam!" was his answer to a reader's question of how best to cook rice. First you rinse the rice. Fine. Then you soak it either overnight or for an hour. Bollocks to that on a Wednesday night when you've just got home and need some carbs to go with your meal before the kids have their baths.

You must be very easily amused.

Guardian Feast is worse than the Waitrose magazine.

And that's before you even get to the comments. The poncery there is another level.

Oh my word. Thank you for this fantastic tip for pretension and competitive cooking spotting. It’s a rich seam of comedy recipes and comment.

The kitchens of town houses in Islington and Richmond must be abuzz with this utterly pretentious shite. All gathered round kitchen islands one-upping each other on where to get the best barberries and golden sultanas.

The comments are the best. Everybody trying to outperform the other at authenticity and insouciance.

I don't think I have ever cooked with barberries. But I have seen them growing in the local park (very non posh part of UK) so they are hardly pretentious!

I don't even know what a barberry is, and I worked in food retail (including two upscale delis) for almost twenty years 🤣

It's a Persian/Iranian thing, so if you worked in more European-focussed delis I guess you wouldn't have come across them.

I'm not remotely posh or wealthy, but I've made plenty of things from the magazine and their recipe cards.

As for gnocchi, when my kids were small and we were on a really tight budget, it was brilliant. Cheap, incredibly quick to cook, filling, and my youngest thought that gnocchi with value pasta sauce stirred in was the food if the gods.