Is this wobbly French dessert a fine use of the last of the season's cherries, or do you have a better recipe? Are sweet or tart cherries best in a clafoutis – and do you remove the stones?

I've been gorging myself silly on cherries for the past couple of months, cramming them in as if they're going out of fashion, as indeed they are – come September, our precious homegrown fruit will disappear for another year, to be replaced by ruinously expensive imports. An excellent excuse to eat as many as you can while you can afford it and, should you ever tire of them fresh, this fruity French dessert is just the thing to awaken your cerise-sodden palate one final time.

A particular speciality of the Limousin region, where it's traditionally made with the local griottes, or sour morello cherries, the clafoutis is now found on menus throughout the country in season, and it's easy to see why: the combination of sharply juicy fruit and sweet, wobbly batter is a beguiling one. Interestingly, the name is said to come from the Occitan dialect word claufir, to cover or fill – which this dessert does, very satisfyingly indeed.

The fruit

Small, tart griottes are not easy to come by in this country, so luckily I don't find many recipes calling for them. Although they're still a popular choice in its home region, the sweeter charms of the dessert cherry has clearly won on the international stage. Good news for anyone hoping to use local fruit.

As I've yet to come across a cherry pitter for sale, I'm also relieved to find relatively few recipes calling for me to remove the stones: Raymond Blanc, Julia Child and Michel Roux Jr suggest it, but everyone else seems content to let the diners do the hard work themselves. This seems pretty equitable to me, but I have to concede it's more pleasant to eat a pudding without worrying about cracking a tooth.

It seems the traditional method is not totally illogical, however: as Larousse notes, the pits have a particular aroma which infuses the batter as they warm up in the oven, so removing them robs the dessert of its full cherry flavour. Although I'm sceptical, it's true that the whole fruit has a more intense flavour than the halved kind – so, if practical (ie unless you're serving it to small children, or those with dental problems), leave them in, issuing a suitable warning at the table.

Blanc macerates the fruit in kirsch (morello cherry brandy) and sugar for two hours before cooking, on the basis that "the sugar will slowly permeate the cherries and intensify their flavour". Kirsch, an ingredient also used by Roux Jr, proves quite ridiculously expensive, but fortunately a little goes a long way – and, though it's a shame he has to stone his cherries, they do indeed taste better than Roux or Child's versions.

This presents me with a problem: I'd like to use the fruit whole, but this will make it hard for the sugar and brandy to penetrate the flesh. I decide to lightly crush the cherries before macerating, so they keep their shape during cooking, while still getting the full benefit of their alcoholic bath.

The batter

The cherries are baked in a flan-like mixture, made from eggs, flour, sugar and milk. Larousse demands a "fairly thick" batter, which fits the bill for recipes from Jeanne Strang's classic volume on south-western cooking, Goose Fat and Garlic, and a wonderful book put out in 1984 by the Maîtres Cuisiniers de France, called Cuisine du Terroir: The Lost Domain of French Cooking, which I happened upon in a charity shop last spring. The latter leans particularly heavy on the flour, using 200g to Blanc's heaped tablespoon, to make a firm batter which reminds me of a very fancy Yorkshire pudding.

The Master Chefs also scald their milk before use in the batter, while Blanc uses a mixture of milk and whipping cream. I'm not sure either amendment is necessary, however – Blanc's clafoutis is delicious, but quite ridiculously rich, while I'm left none the wiser as to what hot milk brings to the party. If anyone can enlighten me, I'd be grateful.

Having tried a whole range of different textures, the lighter, wobblier, dairy-heavy versions from Blanc and Caroline Conran's award-winning Sud de France seem most attractive for a summer dessert. After complaints that Blanc's clafoutis tastes "a bit eggy", however, I'm going to err more to towards Conran's slightly heavier hand with the flour – the base is still soft and custardy enough to make this a luxurious, but surprisingly light, dish.

Most recipes also incorporate some butter: Conran uses olive oil (presumably local) instead, while Strang and Bourdain reject the idea altogether, which I think is a shame: used in moderation, it adds a pleasing silky richness to the batter. Blanc browns his butter first to make a beurre noisette, but I'm disappointed to find I can't taste this in the finished dish so I don't think it's worth the extra effort.

Only Conran and Roux Jr use any raising agent – baking powder in both cases – and I think with so little flour involved, there's not much point: a really silky custard is light enough on its own.

That said, Roux Jr's recipe, from his book A Life in the Kitchen, doesn't really involve a custard at all: it's more of a fluffy, almondy sponge with cherries on top. Absolutely delicious, certainly, but not strictly a clafoutis. It's not, I suspect, a recipe he has run past his south-western wife.

The method

Roux Jr beats together butter and sugar, before folding in eggs, flour and ground almonds much in the manner of any other cake, but everyone else stirs together wet and dry ingredients to make a thinnish, pourable batter.

Child, puzzlingly, calls for me to stick all the ingredients in a liquidiser and whiz them together. She also bakes the base of the clafoutis before arranging the cherries on top and pouring over the rest of the batter around them. This, presumably, is so they don't sink to the bottom, although I find they seem to float quite obligingly in every version. I'm not sure what difference the blender makes, apart from creating more washing-up.

The extras

I'm happy to let the cherries do the talking here, but, that said, I do think Roux Jr's almond essence works brilliantly with the fruit – much better than the boring vanilla everyone else sticks in. I also like his lemon zest, but I think ground almonds are a step too far: fine in a sponge, here they just weigh down my lovely smooth custard.

Roux greases and flours his dish, presumably to make it easier for the mixture to climb up it, but I prefer Blanc's sugary method, which gives it a nice crisp edge.

Child dusts her finished clafoutis with icing sugar, which looks pretty, but a sprinkle of demerara adds a more interesting texture, providing a crunchy counterpoint to all that wobbly custard and juicy fruit (not forgetting the dangerous stones) – and it will work just as well as caster for lining the baking dish, too.

Best served up warm, rather than hot, this also goes well with a soupçon of cold cream and, of course, a dish for the discreet disposal of all those pits.

The perfect cherry clafoutis

(Serves 6)
500g fresh cherries
75g caster sugar
3 tbsp kirsch or other brandy
20g butter, melted, plus extra to grease
2 tbsp demerara sugar
50g plain flour
Pinch of salt
2 eggs, beaten
270ml whole milk
3 drops of almond essence (optional)
Finely grated zest of ½ lemon

Wash the cherries and remove the stalks. Put in a bowl and lightly crush, so the skins pop but the fruit retains its shape. Add 2 tbsp caster sugar and the kirsch, toss together, cover and leave to macerate for two hours.

Preheat the oven to 180C/gas mark 6. Grease a baking dish just wide enough to hold the cherries in one layer, and add half the demerara sugar. Spin the dish round to coat the inside with demerara, then set aside.

Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add a pinch of salt and the remaining caster sugar. Whisk in the eggs, followed by the milk and melted butter, until you have a smooth batter. Stir in the almond essence, if using, and the lemon zest, then tip in the cherries and their juices.

Pour into the prepared baking dish and bake for about half an hour, until just set but still a bit wobbly. Sprinkle with the remaining demerara sugar and serve warm, rather than hot.

Is a clafoutis a fine use for the last of the season's cherries, or do you have another favourite cherry recipe you'd like to share? And has anyone had experience of cooking clafoutis with griottes, or morellos: are they really the superior choice?

Protein powder is being added to foods from bread to ice-cream, as it makes you feel fuller for longer. But do we really need more protein in our diets?

Can you hear that strange whirring sound – like a food processor getting to work on a pile of woodchips? That's Stanley Green (aka the Protein Man) spinning in his grave. For the uninitiated, Green spent a quarter of a century pacing up and down Oxford Street in London, extolling the evils of one particular foodstuff: protein.

Sadly for him, the "less lust – less protein" message he communicated to shoppers through his homemade sign and pamphlets never really caught on. And now, according to market analysts Mintel, foods made with extra "lust-provoking" protein may just be the next big health trend in the UK.

"The general awareness of protein among consumers has increased considerably," explains Laura-Daisy Jones, a global food science expert at Mintel. "People are looking to increase their intake for a number of reasons, from weight loss to trying to maintain a healthy weight. They're also recognising the role of protein in general nutrition, and its ability to fill you up for longer."

The demand for protein-enriched food first started among bodybuilders in the US, who were looking for a more convenient way to fill up on protein after a workout than scarfing down chicken or fish. However, Jones believes the trend is now trickling down to consumers more interested in their weight than their muscles. "Today carbohydrate-based diets have gone off the boil in favour of the South Beach diet – which is high in protein – and the Paleo diet, which focuses heavily on getting the right kind of proteins," she says.

Where trends lead, food companies tend to follow, and many are already putting a "high protein" label on their products. So you can grab your Marks & Spencer high-protein Fuller for Longer sandwich before nipping over to a health store and picking up a protein shake or even the punningly titled Wheyhey– an ice-cream that contains as much protein as a chicken breast.

M&S sarnie aside, much of the above has the same relationship to real food as the stuff astronauts eat during space flights. But there is a move toward adding protein (in the form of protein powder) to everyday food that actually tastes half-decent.

Take Dr Zak's. Last month the company launched a high-protein bread into Ocado and independent health stores, and a pasta is on its way during September. "Our target market is people that are into sports and fitness," says sales director Ray Brilus. "Our approach is making everyday foods, such as pasta and bread, that you might avoid if you were a training athlete."

It's not an easy process. Dr Zak's went through two years of research and development and a couple of bakers before hitting upon a formula that tasted, and felt, like proper bread. Now it's on the shelves, Brilus hopes that it might have broader appeal.

Stranger things have happened. After all, gluten-free food was once a niche product, and now it's worth £238m, according to retail analyst Kantar. "There is a crossover," Brilus says. "We've seen people picking up on the bread as a product that can help them diet, because proteins are harder to process than carbohydrates and so can help people feel full."

But the £3.99 price tag (protein isolates don't come cheap) means that Dr Zak's appeal could be limited to hardcore fitness fanatics at the moment.

And what about the rest of us? Should we put "upping our protein" on the personal to-do list that begins with "eating more vegetables" and ends with "drinking less"? Dietician Gaynor Bussell points out that, at the moment, there is absolutely no evidence that people are in any way lacking in protein. "Dietary surveys always reveal we get more than enough," she says. She believes there is some evidence that upping protein (usually in low-fat products) can be helpful for weight loss, but suggests simply eating a good, lean, low-saturated-fat source of the stuff, rather than reaching for a protein shake.

This sounds like common sense, though it may not do much to stem the tide of protein-enhanced foods due to hit shelves near you. We've already got Powerful Yogurt– a macho dairy brand with 20g of added protein – to look forward to this year. Where's Stanley Green when you need him?

We might think we love food from far-flung lands, but most of it is tailored to suit our tastes. If you could only ever eat one cuisine again, which would you choose?

Italian, then Indian, followed by Vietnamese? I've never been any good at picking favourites. I'm a mood-driven soul and having my diet restricted to one regional cuisine would feel as though the world were suddenly stripped of colour (although on the plus side, my spice cupboard would be nice and tidy). However, despite a national love of food from far-flung lands – Turkish to Thai, Sicilian to Sri Lankan, Polish to Punjabi – most restaurants here are tailored to suit British tastes. Humans may be omnivores, but we're damned picky omnivores. One nation's succulent horse fillet is another's scandalous counterfeit beef.

There's more to it than geography

While terrain, climate, flora, fauna and religion have influenced traditional cuisines, individual cultures also develop unique preferences and aversions within these confines. The anthropologist Jeremy MacClancy has observed that the hunter-gatherer tribes on Earth today – nomadic peoples who do not farm and can eat only what nature has to offer – are as finicky as the next person. The Mbuti pygmies in Angola understandably find the idea of feasting on leopards a bit gross, because leopards eat humans. And primates resemble people too much to be appetising. Kalahari bushmen know about 100 desert plants to be edible, but only 14 varieties are considered desirable. They hunt giraffes, warthogs and antelope, but think ostrich tastes bad, and zebra meat is dismissed as smelly.

Culinary peculiarities also exist among different ancient tribes who live side by side. In Kenya, the Masai drink plenty of cow's milk and blood, whereas the neighbouring Akikuyu people are all about spuds and cereals.

The genealogy of taste perception

Along with environmental and cultural factors affecting our food choices, there is evidence that genetic makeup influences how we experience taste. The basic tastes of sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami are detected when chemicals that produce those tastes bind with certain receptors on our tongues. We all have different amounts of these various receptors, depending on our DNA, and research has shown that sensitivity to one particular bitter compound (which is easy to measure, and is a marker of overall taste sensitivity) varies wildly between different countries. In some parts of Asia, South America and Africa, as much as 85% of native populations are highly sensitive tasters. Ethnic Europeans sit at the lower end of the scale.

The geography of recipes

Most of our food loves and hates are learned. Foetuses and breastfed babies can taste what their mothers eat, and have been shown to develop early affinities to certain flavours in their mothers' diets. And when we start eating solids, our concept of acceptable foods evolves quickly. Over time, the way we perceive certain flavours is programmed according to how we usually consume them.

I have mentioned before that in the west, because we associate vanilla with sweet foods, it has come to enhance our perception of sweetness – our brains automatically do this. In east Asia, vanilla doesn't make food taste sweeter because it is predominantly used in savoury dishes. So cultural cuisines don't only differ in dominant ingredients (such as curry spices, parmesan cheese or chillies), they also have conflicting opinions of what goes with what. Traditional European gastronomy is all about pairing foods that share flavours, but a 2011 study (PDF) found that Asian cooking does the opposite and avoids combining similar flavours. The researchers reached this conclusion after identifying the flavour compounds in 381 ingredients that are used internationally, and then studied 56,498 recipes containing them.

The globalisation effect

As the world shrinks, regional preferences will surely be subject to increasing dilution, but this is happening slower than you might think. On the one hand, says international food industry consultant Chris Lukehurst, you'll see Italian teens shunning their local vino in favour of American-style beer. And while coffee and crisps were "almost unknown" in China a decade ago, they're now rapidly growing markets there.

On the other hand, multinational companies alter their products for each market. Take fast food. In China, KFC's headline product is a chicken burger, and both McDonald's and KFC have much more visible salad content in recognition of the three food groups necessary in every meal: grains, protein and vegetables. And rice remains more common than fries.

Even Nescafé gets regional adjustments. "In the UK," says Lukehurst, "Gold Blend has a very low content of robusta and is very smooth and rich in flavour, while in the Philippines Nescafé has a much greater robusta content and a stronger, more full bodied taste. The degree of roasting and the way that the coffee is processed will be adjusted, too."

Meanwhile, what's on the menu at the high-street trattoria will differ not only from country to country but also within Italy, throwing up all sorts of debates about authenticity. Have you ever been shocked when travelling to find that you don't like the local grub nearly as much as you like the version you get back home? If you were stranded on a desert island and could only ever have one cuisine again, which would you choose?

Is tapenade the perfect nibble to serve with late summer drinks, or a waste of good olives? And does tuna have any place in the recipe?

While there is still a little light left in the evenings, it's only right and proper to embrace every last opportunity to sit out a while with a well-chilled drink – heaven knows there will be time enough to huddle round the fire with a warming cup of tea once autumn girds its loins in earnest.

And, just as tea needs biscuits, a stiff drink demands nibbles. Roasted nuts are always a winner, of course, and an offensively cheesy crisp rarely fails to please, but to really string out that holiday feeling, you can't get much more Mediterranean than tapenade.

This Provençal favourite is the perfect drinking companion, as it's a combination of the saltiest ingredients you could imagine – great with a delicate, pale pink local rosé, yes, but also an unimpeachable pairing with a gin and tonic or, of course, a pastis.

Though the principal ingredient is olives, the French word comes from the Provençal name for caper buds, tapeno. The story goes that, in ancient times, these would have been preserved in amphoras of olive oil, to re-emerge, when required, as a pungent mush – the origins of the modern tapenade.

This is why, perhaps, the authors of the book Provence Cookery School inform their readers that, though "everybody thinks of it as an olive dip, [tapenade] is in fact a caper sauce". Call it what you like, I say, as long you make it right.

The olives

Traditionally, tapenade is made from the small, black olives beloved of the region, though, as Caroline Conran notes in her Sud de France, "nowadays, they also sell green tapenade" in the local markets, as well as versions made with dried tomatoes and basil. As I prefer the fruitier, earthier flavour of the black olive (green tapenade having a tendency towards astringency in my view), I'll be keeping things strictly traditional.

I'm surprised at how many recipes simply call for "black olives" (Conran, Elizabeth David, Provence Cookery School, I'm looking at you). If you happen to live in Provence and frequent local markets, then no doubt you'll end up with some top-quality fruit. If, however, you're browsing a British supermarket (or, indeed, a French one), then the generic black olive will be a rubbery, bland thing not fit to grace this, the most punchy of sauces.

MasterChef's John Torode and Margot Henderson, proprietor of the Rochelle Canteen and author of You're All Invited, both specify kalamata olives, while Richard Olney hopes for niçoise – if available – in the French Menu Cookbook. Both yield a far superior, more complex flavour, especially if you buy them whole.

It is an inconvenient truth that pitted olives have also been neutered in the flavour department. Really, it's only a matter of five minutes work with a sharp knife to remove the stones – or considerably less if you have the appropriate gadget. (Anyone who boasted of cherry pitters underneath last week's piece on clafoutis should put them to work here, too.)

Capers

Capers are obviously a shoo-in: the sort packed in salt are preferable if you can get hold of them (specialist grocers are a better bet than supermarkets). Some recipes, including Olney's, tend towards the mean, using just one teaspoon to 115g olives, but, given they're supposed to be the star of the show, I've gone with the more generous quantities suggested by the Provence Cookery School recipe.

Anchovies and other fish

Just in case you thought there wasn't enough salt in the recipe, anchovies are also a must, though I think Conran's six fillets excessive – this shouldn't be a dip that tastes primarily of fish. On that basis, I'm also going to exclude David's tuna: a common addition, according to Larousse Gastronomique, but one which completely changes the character of the dish, muting the punchy flavours of the other ingredients to create a mellow fish paste.

Herbs and garlic

Henderson and Torode put flat-leaf parsley in their tapenades which, although often used in southern French cooking, doesn't taste as satisfyingly sun-baked as Conran and Patricia Wells' thyme, with its nostalgic whiff of garrigues roasting in the summer heat. Henderson's oregano, meanwhile, is too reminiscent of pizzas for my liking: Provence may once have stretched into modern-day Italy, but these days pasta is considered pretty exotic, in my experience.

Garlic is, according to the Provence Cookery School, an "optional extra". I think it brings a welcome heat, but don't overdo it – similarly to anchovies, it has a tendency to take over, making it the dominant flavour in Conran's tapenade.

Extras

Surprisingly, the same goes for the Cookery School's lemon zest: though juice adds a welcome acidity to the tapenade, the zest makes things too fresh and citrussy, when they ought to be dark and sophisticated.

Conran's Dijon mustard, though a common addition, isn't to my taste either: it muddies the Mediterranean flavours, while Torode and Olney's brandy just tastes bizarre. It may make it into the Larousse entry on the subject, but I prefer to keep the alcohol as an accompaniment – as an ingredient, it supplies an oddly medicinal note.

Method and texture

Though the tapenade is traditionally made in a pestle and mortar, as Olney recommends, I think you get equally good results using the pulse function on a food processor, though the process is rather less satisfying for your inner peasant.

Henderson does neither, however, preferring to roughly chop her ingredients to make something more akin to an olive salsa than a traditional tapenade, on the grounds: "it's good to have some texture and not just a paste". Her version works well spread on thick toasts, as she suggests, but is less practical as a dip for breadsticks, or for drizzling over salads of ripe, red tomatoes. I'm not sold on Olney's super-fine variety, which is pushed through a sieve after pounding, either; a certain rusticity suits tapenade.

Peasant or not, you can afford to be generous with the oil: the soft, fruity flavour rounds out all those savoury notes beautifully, as well as loosening the consistency. Serve with toasted rounds of stale baguette (though British baguettes, unlike their French counterparts, don't obligingly desiccate between lunch and dinner, so you might have to plan ahead), breadsticks or crudités pour les minceurs, and, most importantly, a large, cold drink.

How to make the perfect tapenade

Makes 1 smallish bowl (a little goes a long way)
200g whole black olives, preferably niçoise or kalamata
3 tbsp capers, well rinsed if packed in salt
2 anchovies, well rinsed if packed in salt, roughly chopped
1 fat clove of garlic, crushed
2 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
Juice of ½ lemon
5 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

Remove the stones from the olives with a pitter or a sharp knife. Put in a food processor with the capers, anchovies, garlic and thyme, and whizz to a rough puree. Squeeze in the lemon juice and, with the motor still running, add the oil.

Alternatively, pound the garlic, anchovies, capers and thyme together in a pestle and mortar until smooth, followed by the olives, leaving these slightly more chunky, then gradually add the oil and lemon juice, pounding between pours.

Taste, and add pepper and more lemon juice if necessary.

Tapenade: the perfect partner for an aperitif, or a waste of good olives? What else do you put in it (David Lebowitz has an intriguing fig version I'm dying to try), and if not, what do you prefer to serve with drinks – homemade pork scratchings? Spicy pickled eggs? Or something else entirely?

Loved for its nutty flavour and deliciously melting qualities, Jarlsberg is Norway's most famous edible export. But what's the story behind its distinctive appearance?

I'm sitting in a dusty beige room in the bowels of a Norwegian cheese factory, watching a man in rimless glasses called Stig patiently point his way around a diagram of the cheesemaking process.

He's talking about pH levels and micro filtration, which is making me strangely twitchy because such petty details seem irrelevant compared to the real issue: how on earth do they get the holes in the cheese? It's like that old primary school hymn: "Who put the colours in the rainbow/Who put the salt into the sea?", except I sense there's a better answer than "God" here, and I'm determined to get to the bottom of it.

It's partly curiosity, but mostly cynicism. Although I'm keen to conceal the fact from Stig, I'm already pretty convinced that those holes are a gimmick. Norwegian Jarlsberg, as the marketing material proudly informs me, is the No 1 cheese import in the US, and let's be honest, its cartoon appearance must have played a part.

As a cursory glance at any episode of Tom and Jerry or Man v Food will show, "Swiss", as holey cheese is generically known, is big Stateside; second only to "'American cheese", which, as we all know, isn't cheese at all. Even hipsters dig it: Jarlsberg, which melts as beautifully as an ice-cream on a hot pavement, is a firm favourite on the pegboard menus of Brooklyn's overpriced grilled cheese trucks.

Although we're less interested in holes in the UK – strings and triangles being more to our taste – Jarlsberg is still a significant player, with annual sales of £6.9m, and they can't all be to cartoon fans. (That said, a colleague confesses that she and her brother took Jarlsberg sandwiches to school every day because they liked the mild flavour, so there may well be some overlap.) And if we're spending that kind of money, I think the nation deserves to know – are the holes just there to look pretty, or do they serve some deeper purpose?

I put the question to Stig, who looks shifty, and mentions the words "secret recipe" – the marketing man's dream ticket. The holes are apparently classified information, although he will reveal that they are the product of a unique blend of cheese cultures, described as "the very soul' of Jarlsberg", and made to a recipe known only to a handful of Norwegians, who, like the royal family, are never allowed to travel together.

Lest you be as ignorant as I was before Stig's lecture, cultures are collections of microbes that break down the milk by turning the lactose into lactic acid. This creates the tanginess common to all cheese and yoghurt. Then, as the cheese matures, enzymes are released that break down the fat and protein within the curd, producing savoury amino acids and the aromatic compounds that give each cheese its distinctive flavour and character. Different cultures will produce different results, which is why the UK alone produces over 700 different cheeses.

Later, in the factory, Stig brandishes a bottle of Jarlsberg's special blend for our inspection, though we are not allowed to touch, presumably in case I slip it beneath the voluminous white plastic poncho I have had to put on for the occasion. It looks somewhat underwhelming – a caramel-coloured liquid in a chemical flask – but as the essence of Norway's most successful cheese, it has a certain mystique.

Further than this, Stig is tight-lipped, so I'm forced to do a bit more digging, discovering that the cultures for cheeses such as Jarlsberg, French Emmental and Swiss Gruyère, contain some microbes known as propionibacteria, which convert the lactic acid into a combination of propionic and acetic acids, and carbon dioxide. That gas creates bubbles in the still soft and elastic curd, which expand as the cheese ripens: Stig happily shows off his party trick of guessing, by tapping a wheel of cheese, how big the bubbles will be inside. He's pretty accurate.

The size of the bubbles are a good indication of a cheese's maturity; in fact, the ripe cheeses actually bulge with them. The US Department of Agriculture stipulates the "eyes" in "grade-A Swiss" may be no larger than 13/16 of an inch in diameter, apparently because modern cheese-slicing equipment struggles to cope with anything larger.

For all this, it turns out that these much-loved bubbles are just a picturesque byproduct. The main reason for adding propionibacteria is because, as it ferments, it gives the cheese that sweet, nutty flavour that characterises holey varieties such as Jarlsberg, Emmental and Gruyère.

I'm slightly disappointed to discover this prosaic truth and would almost rather believe that the holes were created by tiny nibbly mice, as some wit once told me in my youth. I put this idea to Stig as we hang up our coats – and you know, I think I almost see him smile.

It's not just carrot cake that sneaks veggies into the dessert course: try cauliflower panna cotta, celeriac bread-and-butter pudding or tonka bean ice-cream. It's the haute cuisine take on a wartime austerity trend

Is this the year of the vegetable? Topping the bill of the latest food trends are veggies masquerading as desserts (the foodstuff, not the people). Indeed, Olive Magazine tipped veg-as-pud as one of 2013's food trends earlier this year, all part of the fashion for weirdness, they said.

Of course, using vegetables in dessert is not exactly new – beetroot and choc has long been a classic pairing, sweet potato pie was a Southern favourite of Elvis's, apparently - according to Are You Hungry Tonight? - while over on the Amalfi Coast, the classic mulegane c'a' ciucculata (aubgerine and chocolate) is so highly regarded that it is scoffed to celebrate the assumption of the Virgin Mary. Then there's that grainy sweet stalwart, the carrot cake, beloved of school fetes and WI jumble sales. Indeed in the sugar-rationing days of the second world war, parnsips and carrots were used for all manner of pre-Haribo kiddie treats. Think carrot pudding, carrot jam, carrot fudge, carrot lollies, carrot cookies, carrot pudding, carrot flan, carrot treacle and a surprise "mock apricot tart", made – you've guessed it – from carrots.

But it's not just beetroot and carrot that are being unleashed from their knobbly shackles for a life of pudding glamour. Taking star turn at the chef's table, we have asparagus, teamed as a parfait with black olive ice-cream over at Avenue, while Hibiscus serves white asparagus with black olive jam, black olive meringue and coconut sorbet. Then there are cauliflower panna cottas and celery and fennel sorbets, which according to former Bath Priory chef Chris Horridge, are where veggies really come into their own. "Vegetables make great ice-cream too," he says. "Carrots, beetroots – anything with a residual sweetness. Just puree and freeze, then churn with a little sugar, syrup or glucose." (Horridge uses Xyltol for his diary and sugar-free range.) Jason Atherton, a self-confessed veg-in-pud fan, recommends Jersualem artichoke for ice-creams, which Horridge would perk up with a dash of lemon or lime.

Tonka beans are everywhere – part of the pea family, apparently – and being served as a vanilla alternative in brulees and ice-creams. Tom Kerridge at the Hand and Flowers Pub in Marlow does a tonka bean panna cotta with strawberries, strawberry jelly and liquorice meringues.

Sat Bains does a lemon parfait with pickled fennel and basil, and a slightly obsessional celeriac-in-seven-ways including celeriac bread and butter pudding with celeriac ice-cream and curried celeriac mivvi, celeriac on a stick, coated in white chocolate, and dusted in coriander, cumin and sugar-coated fennel seeds. Great for that allotment glut or veg box surplus (a problem if you're not a fan of celeriac). Meanwhile, over at Hibiscus there's an English pea tart with dark chocolate and a pea, mint and white chocolate filling, with coconut ice-cream, guaranteed to set even the most ardent vegaphobe's heart aflutter.

Chef and food writer Harry Eastwood is an evangelist for veggies in cakes, as they are great for texture, making them lighter and fluffier, maintaining moisture and giving an earthy sweetness more subtle than sugar's in-yer-face punch. Sweet potatoes, butternut squash and parsnips, are, she says, "full of natural sugars and starch so you can cut back on sugar or flour," hence the low calorie counts.

As a mother well-versed in the dark arts of serving vegetables by stealth, these ideas are music to my ears. I have a broccoli-shunning three-year-old who passionately hates tomatoes despite the fact that he has never actually eaten one. From tomorrow, I will be making avocado chocolate mousse, chocolate brownies with spinach and salted chocolate and courgette muffins. He may be eating chocolate by the bucketload, but at least he'll be eating up his greens.

What do you think? Have you taken to vegetables as dessert?

Boundary-pushing pizzerias are serving toppings that would make a Neapolitan swoon – and not in a good way. But some of them are delicious. Would you order a doner kebab pizza?

In Naples, there are militants who insist that there are only three truly authentic varieties of pizza: marinara, margherita and margherita extra, with buffalo mozzarella. Across wider Italy, the list of acceptable pizza toppings is tightly circumscribed. It's a decent bet, therefore, that Italians will hate the coming trend in Britain's pizzerias.

From Homeslice's oxtail and bone marrow pizzas to the Welsh lamb and mint pesto slice at Baravin in Aberystwyth, a new wave of restaurants is slipping the shackles of Italian orthodoxy and getting creative with toppings. In Manchester, at Artisan, you can even order a lamb doner kebab pizza. Yes, really.

More remarkably, unlike their Hawaiian and peking duck predecessors, some of these experimental creations actually work. Dressed with a soy glaze, Homeslice's mushroom, ricotta and pumpkin seed slice cleverly balances savoury depth, freshness and a nutty textural variety. "I'm not Italian, and I've never felt confined by the traditional toppings," says the New Zealand chef and co-owner, Ryan Jessup. "I didn't want any kind of gimmick, I just wanted to put flavours together that worked, using traditional processes and quality ingredients."

America's irreverent approach to "pie" was a key inspiration for Pizza East and Voodoo Ray's gently innovative gourmet pizzas, both in London. The latter sells a savoy cabbage and bacon slice, which anglicises the cult brussels sprouts and pancetta pizza sold at Motorino in New York. Using local ingredients is a hallmark of these new, upstart British pizzerias.

For others, getting creative just seems to be a natural progression. As a nation, we've finally got to grips with the basics of real pizza (proper 00-flour doughs; wood-fired ovens); the next stage is to put our stamp on it. At Pizzaface in Brighton, which tops its pizzas with lamb proscuitto, smoked tuna and chipotle chillies, or the Crate Brewery in London, which serves a laksa chicken pizza, the approach is pretty radical. Lardo, also in London, represents a quieter shift to more sophisticated Italian ingredients (porchetta, lardo itself), which are unheard of as pizza toppings in Italy.

"We're obsessed by food and we love playing around," says Lisa Richards, co-owner of Great British Pizza Co in Margate, whose recent specials have included a Parma ham and nectarine pizza, and a take on Turkish lahmacun, topped with minced lamb, parsley and lemon juice. "And," she adds, "our specials always sell out."

As a co-owner of Pleb, a Lewes street food operation that serves authentic Roman pizza, Joe Lutrario doesn't particularly like this trend. He and his business partner still argue over whether to use onions or not, never mind braised lamb: "It's semantics, but at that point it probably stops being Italian pizza. Capers, olives and anchovies go really well with mozzarella and tomatoes and, in my opinion, there are probably only another 10 ingredients that do. We're pretty conservative."

However, in his other life as a senior reporter at Restaurant magazine, Lutrario predicts that "British" pizza could well take off: "Possibly at the expense of established places, such as Pizza Express. Local ingredients, local beers, pizza – it just works as a business model. Pizza is high-margin, relatively easy to knock out, and it doesn't encourage people to stay for long."

At Artisan, on a wood-fired pizza menu that also includes a (pretty awful) Thai curry number and a (pretty awesome) shaved potato and chorizo pizza topped with game crisps, the doner kebab is its biggest seller. It is a novelty dish, but a surprisingly effective one. After all, what is pizza but a flatbread? This is just an open doner kebab.

Artisan's executive chef, John Branagan, actually wanted to call these pizzas flatbreads, but watched Jamie Oliver fail to communicate his topped British flatbreads concept at Union Jacks. "We were too chicken," he says. "It's been done before and people have reverted to using the word pizza." Think of these new-wave pizzas as flatbreads, however (at Artisan, generally the ingredients aren't cooked on the pizza, but added after), and it all begins to make more sense.

Branagan likes to retain a pizza look by including some sort of tomato sauce, but he plays around with it to make it suitable. For example, the pulled pork pizza uses a BBQ sauce. On certain Homeslice pizzas, Jessup has dispensed with tomato sauce altogether, using beurre blanc on his mackerel pizza and a kind of creamed corn soup on his corn and chorizo. Get over the necessity to start every pizza/flatbread with a tomato sauce, and suddenly the potential variations are endless. "The base is just a carrier," says Branagan.

Not that Italians will be persuaded. "My father-in-law is Italian, a retired chef," says Branagan, "and he would pass out [at this]."

Cacciatora, or hunter's chicken, is a classic Italian dish. How do you make it – and what other traditional Italian recipes are ripe for a revival?

Pollo alla cacciatora, or hunter's chicken, is such a stalwart of the traditional Italian restaurant menu in this country that it wasn't until I came to write this piece that I paused to wonder why anyone, Fantastic Mr Fox aside, would go out hunting and come back with a chicken.

Jamie Oliver reckons it's "obviously the type of food that a hunter's wife cooks for her fella [!] when he gets back from a hard morning spent in the countryside", but I suspect it's more likely to have been originally made with rabbit or game birds – the slow, gentle braise would be the ideal treatment for such tasty, but potentially dry and stringy, meats.

As with so many Italian classics, arguing about the animal used is only the beginning. Marcella Hazan explains in The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking: "Since there has always been a hunter in nearly every Italian household, every Italian cook prepares a dish with a claim to that description. There are uncounted permutations in the dishes that go by the cacciatora name, but what they generally consist of is a … fricassee with tomato, onion, and other vegetables." Generally, yes – but, as we shall see, not always.

The chicken

All the recipes I find call for chicken, so that's what I'm sticking with, but later in the season, it would be well worth experimenting with joints of pheasant or rabbit, or even whole partridge or other small birds. Most suggest jointing a whole bird, but I find the breasts disappointingly chewy after such a long simmer.

If you'd like a bit of variety, add them to the dish later, as Hazan suggests (about 15–20 minutes should do it), but I prefer to use just legs, as Angela Hartnett does in her book Cucina: the tastier, more succulent meat should be fairly falling off the bone after 45 minutes.

Oliver and Hazan both dust their chicken with seasoned flour before browning, which gives the meat a lovely golden crust. Oliver also marinades it in red wine, garlic and herbs overnight before use, but given all the different flavours going into the sauce, it's nice, as a contrast, to allow the meat to taste of just that.

No one mentions whether the chicken should keep its skin on during cooking, which I assume means it should – but although it provides a useful layer of fat, I'm not keen on the texture or the look of slow-cooked, shrivelled skin, so for my perfect recipe, I'm removing it. If you'd like to do the same, make sure you don't skimp on the fat during the initial saute stage, or you may end up with burnt, rather than browned, meat.

The sauce

Once it has been briefly fried to caramelise the outside, the chicken is then gently braised in liquid until not only cooked through, but as tender as can be. The Silver Spoon uses water as lubrication; Oliver red wine; Hazan and Delia Smith white wine; and Hartnett a splash of white wine and chicken stock.

All of them, with the exception of Hartnett, however, also add moisture in the form of tomatoes: tinned for Hazan and Oliver and fresh for the Silver Spoon and Smith, who also sticks in a tablespoon of tomato puree. Hartnett's tomato-free version is not what I want in a cacciatora: it may well be what hunters eat in Emilia-Romagna, where her maternal family is from, but I'm used to tomatoes, and I miss them.

Smith's version suffers from the opposite problem: it's far too tomatoey, tasting more like a fresh and fruity pasta sauce than a meaty stew – the chicken is completely lost. The Silver Spoon dish is nice enough, though a little bland and oily (Italian tomatoes may fare better), but Oliver and Hazan's cacciatoras are the best: rich and flavourful. I think the latter's white wine works better than Oliver's red, which has a tendency to take over, giving the whole thing a whiff of coq au vin.

Hazan's stew is surprisingly, deliciously creamy, but Hartnett's recipe has given me an idea to improve it further: using a mixture of chicken stock and white wine adds a savoury, meaty depth to the tomato sauce, which I'd modestly suggest makes it even better than the original.

Flavourings

Smith, Hazan and the Silver Spoon start their dish with onion, and the first two add garlic in moderate quantities later on, while Oliver and Hartnett eschew the onion altogether in favour of copious quantities of garlic. Hartnett uses two heads, cut in half horizontally, cooking to a gooey softness in the sauce, which perfumes the whole dish with a wonderfully sweet, mellow flavour.

Hartnett, Oliver and Smith also use aromatic rosemary, which I much prefer to the Silver Spoon's workaday flat-leaf parsley. I don't think Oliver's copious bay leaves add much, especially given the other ingredients he adds to his sauce. Neither anchovy nor olive are what one would call subtle flavours, and here they're far too strident, lending the dish a briney, Mediterranean character that seems out of place in a country stew.

The Silver Spoon and Hazan add celery and carrot to their stews, which I like: they make it more of a whole meal in a pot, rather than just chicken in a sauce. Hazan also includes sliced peppers, which are fairly common, but I find their sweetness at odds with the savoury flavours of the rest of the dish.

Cooking

Oliver is the only one to bake, rather than simmer, his stew, and that for a whopping hour and a half. It's very nice, but completely unnecessary, and a colossal waste of fuel, given the chicken cooks very nicely in half that time over a low flame.

Although cacciatora makes a pretty good dinner on its own, it's also nice with a salad at this time of year, or polenta or rice to make it into a more substantial meal. Hunting stories strictly optional.

The perfect chicken cacciatora

(Serves 4)
Knob of butter
2 tbsp olive oil
4 chicken legs, divided into thighs and drumsticks (skin removed if desired)
Seasoned flour, to dust
2 heads of garlic, cut horizontally
Small bunch of rosemary
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1 stick of celery, diced
Half a glass of white wine
250ml decent chicken stock
100g tinned plum tomatoes in juice, roughly chopped (or 100g really ripe fresh tomatoes, skinned and chopped)

Heat the butter and oil in a large, heavy-based casserole dish over a medium-high heat. Dust the chicken pieces in seasoned flour, then fry them in batches until golden brown on all sides. Remove the chicken from the pan and set aside.

Fry the garlic, rosemary, carrot and celery, with a little more oil if necessary, for a few minutes until slightly golden.

Pour in the wine and scrape the bottom of the pan to dislodge any crusty bits, then simmer until well reduced.

Tip in the stock and tomatoes, and replace the chicken. Bring to a simmer, cover, turn down the heat and cook gently for 45 minutes, until the meat is falling from the bone.

Season to taste and serve with a green salad, rice or polenta.

Cacciatora: best with chicken, or do you prefer a game version? Tomatoes or no tomatoes? And which other classics of the traditional Italian restaurant menu would you like to see revived? My vote, for what it's worth, goes for a properly buttery saltimbocca alla romana.

Chocolatier Paul A Young fondly remembers how Sollitt's After Eights, Matchmakers, Yorkies and Lion Bars helped mould his own career in chocolate

I was saddened to hear the news today that Brian Sollit has died. He was the inventor of some of the very best special occasion chocolates, the Matchmaker and the After Eight Mint, and delicious snacks, the Lion Bar, Drifter and the Yorkie. As such, Brian was a well-known name in the confectionary and chocolate industry, a man of innovation and creativity, a man who probably had molten chocolate running through his veins.

One of my earliest chocolate memories is of the After Eight mint. I'm six or seven years old, I can still see that small dark green box, its fancy embossing, little silky papered envelopes, that sent you giddy with excitement. And when you opened it, the overwhelming smell of dark chocolate and peppermint, to be shared between everyone, until we all fought over the last one.

They were so special, so luxurious, often coming as gifts at birthdays and Christmas. There were those rebellious – some may say cruel - family members who took the mint out, while leaving the envelopes in the box, fooling me into thinking there was still a healthy harvest of mints left. My little fingers rustled through the envelopes to find one. I don't know of any other chocolate that evokes such memories.

I have photographs of me kneeling on the sitting-room carpet very early on a Christmas morning with presents: boxes, jars and packets of sweets and 99% of them were chocolate – the majority still enjoyed today by millions. That number includes me – I still love a Lion bar, and an orange or mint Matchmaker (I could go on). These treats catapult me back 30 years or more to a time when innovation in chocolate bars was at an epic level.

I love chocolates that taste great but are also exciting to eat. Brian was eternally young at heart and it's obvious he had a lot of laughs creating his products. Matchmakers are still so much fun – you can chomp the entire thin, crispy, intensely flavoured stick of orange or mint (or coffee back in my day) in one go, but my preferred method is to nibble very fast, pushing the Matchmaker further into my mouth until it's gone. Last year I bought a box for the first time in an age. I ate them in the same way, and they still didn't last very long.

I'm so sentimental about food, particularly chocolate – everything I have eaten of every quality and style has influenced how I make my own chocolates now. Today after reading that Brian had passed away, I bought my first Lion bar for some years and wondered why I had left it so long. I loved them as a child, the crispy, chewy, satisfying textures I cherish, very sweet and caramely: really, what's not to like? It has nudged me to keep enjoying all the things I ate in my younger days, to remind myself why we loved them so much. Brian developed all of these products for pleasure and it felt fitting to remember him while happily eating my Lion bar this morning. Tomorrow is going to be a Drifter day.

When I introduced civet coffee to the UK it was a quirky novelty. Now it's overpriced, industrialised, cruel – and frequently inauthentic. That's really hard to stomach

I am today launching a campaign (pdf) aimed at ending an industry that I created. That trade is in kopi luwak, AKA civet coffee – otherwise known as "wolf", "cat", and "crap" coffee, and the most expensive coffee in the world.

Over the past 20 years Kopi Luwak has become the ultimate bling coffee, a celebrity in its own right, stocked by every aspiring speciality retailer worldwide, and appearing on CNN News, Oprah, and The Bucket List (a Hollywood film with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, no less).

To my regret, I was the one who started it all ...

I first read a description of kopi luwak buried in a short paragraph in a 1981 copy of National Geographic Magazine. Ten years later, in 1991, as coffee director of Taylors of Harrogate, I was the first person to import kopi luwak into the west – a single kilogramme. I didn't sell it through the company, but thought, perhaps naively, that its quirky, faintly off-putting origins from a wild animal roaming Indonesian coffee estates might be of interest to the local newspaper and radio in Yorkshire where the company was based. It proved to be so much bigger than that – national news, TV and radio fell over themselves to cover it. Kopi luwak put Taylors – and me – on the map.

Genuine Indonesian kopi luwak is collected from the droppings of a wild cat-like animal called the luwak (the common palm civet, Paraxorus Hermaphroditus), a shy, solitary nocturnal forest animal that freely prowls nearby coffee plantations at night in the harvest season, eating the choicest ripe coffee cherries. It can't digest the stones – or coffee beans – of the cherry, so craps them out along with the rest of its droppings. The beans are collected by farm workers. Cleaned and washed, they have acquired a unique and highly prized taste from their passage through the luwak's digestive tract and the anal scent glands they use for marking their territory. Being wild, hard to collect, variable in age and quality, and very rare, kopi luwak is not a commercially viable crop, but just an interesting coffee curiosity. That's why I bought some.

But nowadays, it is practically impossible to find genuine wild kopi luwak – the only way to guarantee that would be to actually follow a luwak around all night yourself, one experienced coffee trader told me. Today, kopi luwak mainly comes from caged wild luwaks, often kept in appalling conditions. A Japanese scientist recently claimed to have invented a way of telling whether kopi luwak is fake or genuine. He'd have been better off inventing a way of telling whether the beans come from wild or caged animals.

Coffee companies around the world still market kopi luwak along the lines of that original quirky story involving a wild animal's digestive habits, many claiming that only 500 kilogrammes are collected a year, a scarcity that justifies its huge retail pricetag (usually between $200-400 a kilo, sometimes more). In fact, although it's impossible to get precise figures, I estimate that the global production – farmers in India, Vietnam, China and the Philippines have all jumped on the bandwagon, too – is at least 50 tonnes, possibly much more. One single Indonesian farm claims to produce 7,000kg a year from 240 caged civets.

So kopi luwak is now rarely wild: it's industrialised. Sounds disgusting? It is. The naturally shy and solitary nocturnal creatures suffer greatly from the stress of being caged in proximity to other luwaks, and the unnatural emphasis on coffee cherries in their diet causes other health problems too; they fight among themselves, gnaw off their own legs, start passing blood in their scats, and frequently die.

Wild luwaks – the trapping of which is supposed to be strictly controlled in Indonesia – are caught by poachers, caged and force-fed coffee cherries in order to crap out the beans for the pleasure of the thousands who have been conned into buying this "incredibly rare" and very expensive "luxury" coffee.

The kopi luwak trade makes big bucks, and it attracts big-spending consumers. For example, if you're struggling to find a suitable present for your friendly neighbouring Russian oligarch's birthday, how about buying a 24-carat-gold foil bag of Terra Nera for £6,500 at Harrods? It won't be Indonesian kopi luwak you're buying, but one of the numerous other crap coffees that have now sprung up worldwide – Thai elephants, Brazilian jacu birds, and Bonobo monkeys have all been press-ganged into servicing consumers' insatiable desire for the weird and ostensibly wonderful.

In the case of Harrods, its latest variant is produced by the Peruvian uchunari, a long-snouted Andean animal about the same size as a luwak. Naturally, it's supposed to come from well-treated animals, be incredibly rare, and – until the next absurd luwak alternative comes along – is now the most expensive coffee in the world.

As all these bewildering developments seem to have sprung from my original humble purchase, I feel as if long ago I must have inadvertently put my finger on the pulse of some monstrous zeitgeist, a grotesque cancer that constantly mutates into yet more vile and virulent forms. I'm fully expecting celebrity-digested designer crap coffee to be next down the line. One way for former stars to revitalise a flagging film career, I suppose, or perhaps for a Turner prizewinning artist to comment on the vacuity of our consume-at-all-costs age.

Come to think of it, perhaps I could actually do the digesting myself? It would be an appropriate conclusion to my complicity in the rise and fall of this utterly preposterous, utterly hideous trade.

Tony Wild is a coffee consultant and author of Coffee: A Dark History

Why not pass on cola or tea and try something more adventurous such as basil water? Some experts offer their advice for teetotal dining out

For non-drinkers, eating out can be a depressing experience. As friends deliberate over a heavy wine menu and the sommelier makes recommendations that promise an ambrosial marriage between food and drink, deciding whether to opt for still or sparkling water feels a touch boring.

But despite the soft drinks market growing 3.3% last year, and a bewildering array of smoothies, energy drinks and, most recently, coconut waters flooding supermarket shelves, few are food friendly. "There's this implicit idea when you go for a meal that there's nothing good that goes with food," says award-winning mixologist Tony Conigliaro, designer of the drinks menu at the recently opened Grain Store, who created a bespoke nonalcoholic range that offers the same food-matching flavours as wine. "Soft drinks and fruit juices are full of sugar," he says, "but you can have savoury flavours that actually complement what's going on in the food." Take his hay and grass water, designed to match a dish flavoured with smoked hay: "It's had a great reception, and people have opted out of drinking alcohol because they've got these options."

Alcohol consumption outside the home fell by 30% between 2006 and 2011, and as many as 15% of the UK population describe themselves as teetotal. For Jameel Lalani, founder of boutique tea company Lalani & Co, it's part of a wider trend towards towards lighter dining embodied by restaurants like Gauthier, which focuses on vegetables and puts calorie counts on the menu. "People are looking at food and health as one and the same, instead of being separate," Lalani says. "They're moving from having just alcohol all the time to half bottles, lighter styles of wine, and now away from wine to nonalcoholic offerings."

But pairing nonalcoholic drinks and food brings its own challenges. "Alcoholic drinks have a length, they have a structure and a texture," says Conigliaro. "Other drinks don't have that, even the ones supposedly designed for the nonalcoholic market." His response was to bring the same molecular techniques from cocktail making – his bar, 69 Colebrooke Row, boasts an in-house laboratory – to fashion nonalcoholic drinks that approach the complexity of wine: "By adding bitter notes, tannic notes, polyphenols, you can create these natural structures that stretch the flavour out. It's like you're trying to entertain the brain for longer."

HKK, the latest offering from the Hakkasan group, has also launched a nonalcoholic range, a decision born out of what head sommelier Serdar Balkaya sees as a responsibility to its customers: "We should provide options to anybody. To Hindus, if they don't eat beef, or non-pork dishes if they're Muslim. And we should provide drinks to people who don't drink alcohol as well." Like Grain Store, HKK's nonalcoholic Orchard drinks are made from fruit and vegetable blends, but restaurants like Gauthier Soho are also experimenting with teas. Lalani, who designed Gauthier's tea flight, argues that tea's 5,000-year history, and the impact of soils, altitude and ageing methods, give it a similar complexity to wine that's only starting to be explored for food pairings.

"The fundamentals are the same," he says. "You want to match intensity, strength, you either want to complement flavours or contrast. But beyond the rules – like how you'd have a particular wine with a particular dish – it's largely a blank state." Lalani's tea sommelier training programme, which they've been running for the past two years, has seen an upsurge in interest from sommeliers looking to expand their knowledge, and who are especially intrigued by how different brewing methods and temperatures impact on an individual tea's taste. "It's an extra skill for really ambitious sommeliers to take on, and adds another level to their role. There's more than just selection and storage."

But even if you have neither a tea sommelier nor a cocktail laboratory to hand, making drinks at home to complement food isn't tricky. "Say you're having a bolognese, you can make a basil water," says Conigliaro. "Two or three basil leaves, stir them into iced water, and you'll get that beautiful perfume. All you need to do is release some of the essential oils, and herbs are great for that because they've got a quick release." As with food, it's about experimenting. If you aren't going to reach for a ready meal, why settle for a Coke? "People need to be more adventurous," agrees Balkaya. "Try things. Get some orange peel, cinammon, cloves. Just boil them up into syrups, mix them up and see what happens."

Freshly cooked, steaming dishes may smell delicious, but some researchers believe that heat impairs our ability to enjoy the flavour of food

Scrolling through the restaurant reviews on TripAdvisor is to enter a grumbly old world. Everything seems to be lukewarm: the service, the coffee and, worse of all, the food. I must admit that if I'm in an unfamiliar place that has yet to earn my trust, a tepid cooked meal does inject an undercurrent of unease into proceedings, as I wonder how long my food has sat around gestating germs, or if it has it been poorly reheated. But in terms of the actual eating, I don't find piping-hot food that tasty. Sure, it will smell exquisite as the aromatic molecules evaporate, but once a morsel hits your mouth, everything tenses up. My friend who has lost his sense of smell doesn't taste a thing until the food has cooled down. And besides, scalding your tongue will erode your taste buds.

Why high temperatures stifle taste

This is a trick heading, I'm afraid, because no one has figured precisely how this works, physiologically. But we can speculate. According to Karel Talavera Pérez, professor of molecular and cellular medicine at the University of Leuven in Belgium, studies recording the electrical activity of taste nerves demonstrate that "the perception of taste decreases when the temperature rises beyond 35C". With very hot food, he hazards, it is possible that the burning feeling "masks" taste sensations, because it works as an alarm signal to warn us about the danger hurting ourselves. "Perhaps we do taste at such temperatures," he says, "but we don't pay attention to it because we become worried about the burning feeling."

How heat alters flavour balance

A 2005 paper published in the Journal of Sensory Studies found that the serving temperature of cheddar cheese affected how its taste was perceived. The cheese was served at 5C, 12C and 21C and sourness increased as the temperature rose. The tasters also found the warmest cheese more difficult to evaluate. Talavera Pérez, meanwhile, discovered in the same year why ice-cream gets sweeter when warmer. It's true: melted ice-cream is too sickly to drink, whereas when cold, it is pleasantly sweet. Beer, on the other hand, tastes more bitter as it gets warmer. Ham tastes saltier when cold and more savoury when warm. Some of these effects, such as the over-sweet melted ice-cream, occur because the taste receptor TRPM5 (which picks up sweet, bitter and umami tastes) sends a stronger electrical signal to the brain when food is warmer. However, our full explanation, so far, as to how temperature affects the balance of tastes is infinitely more complicated and nuanced, with the concentration of taste compounds in the food another key factor, along with variations in taste sensitivity among individuals and the fact that other sensory components of the tongue are heat-sensitive, too.

Temperature's taste spectres

Heating or cooling certain parts of the tongue can create the illusion of certain tastes. A study published in the journal Nature in 1999 found that, for example, warming the front edge of the tongue (where the chorda tympani nerve is), from a cold temperature, can evoke sweetness. Cooling the same area conjures sourness and/or saltiness. Then, at the back of the tongue (where the glossopharyngeal nerve is), a different set of effects occur. The Yale researchers concluded that thermally sensitive neurons form an everyday part of our sensory code for taste.

Think before you drink

It follows that the temperature of what you drink while eating will also affect the food's taste. North American people, on the whole, like ice-cold water at mealtimes, whereas Europeans are happy with not-far-below room temperature, and Asian people often drink hot water or tea while eating. Research published in June this year found that eating immediately after drinking cold water decreased the perception of sweetness, chocolate flavour and creaminess, and the researchers are now wondering whether the preponderance for iced water among Americans contributes to their preference for highly sweetened food.

The intricate manner in which our senses mingle never ceases to amaze. A brand-new study by Charles Spence at Oxford has found that, more often than not, we can tell whether a liquid is hot or cold just from hearing it being poured into a cup. Where do you stand on tea temperature: scalding hot or cool enough to glug? Do you throw a wobbly if your dinner isn't sizzling? Does the idea of a cold soup such as gazpacho leave you lukewarm? And have you ever noticed foods changing taste as they get warmer or cooler?

A fair in Accra selling local, organic sustainably grown produce is proving a hit among the growing middle class

There are some things about public gatherings in Ghana's capital Accra that are guaranteed. A certain amount of dust and Atlantic spray on the breeze, a sound system blaring Azonto– a local music sensation – just a bit too loud, fearless children lining up to show off their moves, and an orderly row of canopies where the hot and the tired sit down on plastic chairs and take stock.

But if you looked a little closer at the fair in Ako Adjei park on Saturday, you would have found that what appeared a typical Accra event was quietly masking something quite unusual: a farmers' market. The dozen or so small-scale producers selling their wares at The Accra Green Market were busily making history as participants in Ghana's first ever fair for locally grown, sustainable, organic produce. "This is a great way to give exposure to organic, local products," says Jeffrey Mouganie, 22, founder of Moco Foods, an organic company that produces local forest honey and fiery chilli sauce, guaranteeing a traceable supply chain and hiring workers with disabilities. "The only space we usually get to market our products are at the bazaars of international schools, where we sell to a lot of expats," he says. "But we need more markets like this – the best feedback we have had for our products is from Ghanaians."

Moco's Savannah Honey, on sale here for 10 Ghana cedis – approximately £3 – is being exported to the UK where it will go on sale at Harrods and Selfridges for what the producers expect to be around five times that price. Also on sale, organic mushroom wine – said to be a treatment for practically every medical condition from sclerosis to high blood pressure, asthma and "sexual weakness" – pak choi, gloriously frothy-leaved heads of broccoli, watermelon, small, knobbly carrots, and tough-skinned, tangy nectarines full of seeds and sweet-sour juice.

The organisers of the market believe they are part of a new trend towards sustainable, organic and local food, which they say goes hand in hand with the growth of Ghana's new middle class. "Things in Ghana are changing – it is no longer a poor country but a middle-income country. And because of that, people are more interested in what they eat," says Edison Gbenga Abe, 29, founder of Agripro – a mobile application company that provides farmers with access to marketplaces and which organised the Accra Green Market. "In East Africa, farmers' markets are already really popular, but in West Africa, there is nothing like this. We plan to take it to different locations in Ghana, and we have had interest from Nigeria too."

Constance Korkoi Tengey, founder of Immaculate Gold Beads, Mushrooms and Snails, is typical of the kind of small-scale grower whose products the market is designed to showcase. An energetic 62-year-old who carefully dishes out mushroom sandwiches, mushroom salad and mushroom gari foto – a veggie version of a popular Ghanaian dish made from cassava tubers – Tengey began growing mushrooms in her back garden seven years ago and says sales are on the rise. "I eat a lot of mushrooms as a substitute for meat, and I've noticed that I don't gain as much weight, and it keeps me looking younger," Tengey says. "People in Ghana are becoming more health-conscious these days, they are really showing an interest in my products. It's a profitable business for me."

But it's not only shoppers who are fuelling Ghana's new interest in organic food. The city's ever expanding directory of hotels, restaurants and cafes has an insatiable appetite for local products and high quality produce. "There are a lot of new eateries bringing in foreign chefs, and as a result the quality is getting higher," says Sadiq Banda, an organic grower in Accra who supplies some of the city's five-star hotels. "Chefs are always looking for the best produce, and there is a great need for more local food producers to supply them. The Ghanaian middle class is growing too, and becoming more interested in quality. But Ghanaians are still mainly interested in conspicuous consumption – they do not tend to spend money on hig-quality things unless other people can see them doing it, and fresh produce is not yet a priority."

Ghana may still have some way to go in grasping the concept of organic, whole foods. Alongside the organic avocados on one stall were tins of corned beef, canned sardines and mayonnaise, where young women were zealously composing "salad" – a concoction of oily, processed products with a dash of fresh vegetable to top it off.

And Ghana being Ghana, there is a strong affection for the deep-fried. My taste award went to Tengey's "Kentucky Fried Mushrooms" – not blessed with a name that conjures up all things fresh, small-scale and local, but they tasted quite simply amazing.

The posset is a medieval drink that has made a comeback as a modern dessert. Is it Britain's best creamy pudding – and have you tried any versions other than lemon?

The wonderfully named posset has been enjoyed for centuries, though you won't find it mentioned in Mrs Beeton's chapter on creams and jellies, or alongside Hannah Glasse's everlasting syllabub. Up until relatively recently, the term referred to a warming drink rather than a cooling pudding – the medieval equivalent of a bedtime cup of cocoa. Think of Lady Macbeth poisoning Duncan's guards with "drugg'd" possets– she certainly wasn't feeding them dessert.

In its earliest form, posset was made from milk curdled with alcohol or citrus juice: sack posset, with Spanish fortified sherry-style wine, was particularly popular in the 15th and 16th centuries. By the mid-18th century, however, the mixture tended to be thickened with ground almonds, crushed biscuits or egg yolks instead.

Having gone into a decline, losing ground to relatives such as the syllabub, the eggnog and the trifle, the posset has made somewhat of a revival on menus in recent years. These days, however, it's more like a citrussy fool than a frothy drink – though, made entirely with thick, rich cream, it's perhaps equally likely to send you to sleep happy.

The dairy

The cream used for modern possets tends to be of the kind substantial enough to stand a spoon up in. I find two exceptions to this. The first comes from Dorothy Hartley's historical collection, Food in England, and is preceded by a quote from John Dryden on the medicinal qualities of posset. (As the first poet laureate, Dryden received some of his wages in sack, so perhaps he was a bit of an expert on the preparation of the posset.) Although no source is given, the recipe seems to be an old one, as it involves boiling up milk until it froths, then curdling it with "a gill of white wine". The curds are strained and seasoned to make something a little like a sweet, mild cottage cheese: not unpleasant, but bizarre to modern tastes.

The second comes from the Porters Seasonal Celebrations Cookbook, written by the owner of the Porters English restaurant, Richard, Earl of Bradford, and uses single cream and white wine, thickened with egg yolks over a bain-marie. It's light and milky, with a comforting, slightly custardy texture, but a bit sloppy for a modern posset; I prefer a more silky substance.

The lemon

Where Porters and Hartley use wine, the other recipes use lemon juice to sour the mixture – which, according to my sources, is no less traditional. Having tasted a number, I decide I prefer the milder citrus flavour of Gary Rhodes' and Marcus Wareing's possets to the intense sweet and sour character of Claire Clark's version– she uses four lemons to 500ml of cream, while Rhodes uses only three to 900ml. Lovely as it is, Clark's posset is like eating lemon curd with a spoon – the mild sweetness of the cream is completely lost. Wareing also uses lemon zest in his posset, which gives it a quite different, more rounded citrus character that I really like.

The sugar

Rhodes and Wareing boil the cream and sugar together, while Clark makes a syrup of lemon juice and sugar and adds it to the hot cream. This seems to give her posset a silkier texture – though I stir the other two diligently, they both have a slight graininess.

The flavourings

Tamasin Day-Lewis suggests using vanilla sugar, rather than caster. Given my crusade to stop the indiscriminate use of that spice, this is a clear no. Far more interesting, in my opinion, are the nutmeg and ginger suggested by Hartley, in a nod to the dish's medieval origins. I'm not going to add much, as these are spices that have a tendency to dominate, but, as with Wareing's lemon zest, when deployed with discretion they subtly enhance the entire dish. Wareing makes a spiced fruit compote to accompany his posset, which seems too much of a distraction, but I do like Clark's toasted flaked almonds and candied peel topping, which also supplies a pleasingly medieval feel.

Tips of the trade

Clark and Wareing both sieve their possets, which, though I'm sceptical, does seem to make a difference to the final texture. Clark also advises going over the top of the dish with a blowtorch to eliminate any bubbles before chilling. This does work, if you're averse to bubbles – without a Michelin star to maintain, I'm not too bothered.

The perfect lemon posset

Makes 3-4
2 lemons
125g caster sugar
425ml double cream
Pinch of nutmeg
Pinch of ginger
1 tbsp flaked almonds, toasted
1 tbsp candied peel

Finely grate the zest of one of the lemons, then juice 1½ – you should have about 100ml juice, but juice the remaining half if necessary.

Put the juice and zest in a small pan with the sugar over a low heat and bring to the boil, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has dissolved. Keep warm.

Pour the cream into a small, heavy-bottomed pan with the spices and heat gently until it comes to the boil. Pour into the syrup, whisking to combine, then pour through a sieve into a jug.

Divide between ramekins and pass a blowtorch over the top if you're pernickety about bubbles. Allow to cool, then chill for a couple of hours until set. Add the almonds and peel just before serving – good paired with shortbread.

Who rediscovered the posset, and where did the modern version come from? Has anyone experimented with versions other than lemon (an ale posset sounds ripe for revival to me) – or, indeed, with any older posset recipes?

Spain has always been the place where you would have a siesta in the afternoon, eat late and then dance the night away. But now, a once-sacred custom is being abandoned

It's dark in Alicante's Teatre club, the music is loud and the air conditioning is on at full blast. Stepping outside to join the people using the excuse of their nicotine addiction to escape the racket, though, the brightness of the sun hits you like a welcome slap. It's 5.30pm, still almost 30C in the shade and there are tourists walking past in swimming costumes.

What has happened to the Spanish social timetable? This is the country where they famously take a siesta in the afternoons, eat late, go out drinking after midnight and dance until well beyond dawn. In Alicante and certain other Spanish towns, though, things are changing. The traditional Saturday night out now often takes place on Saturday afternoon. They call it el tardeo,a portmanteau of tarde– afternoon – and tapeo to go for tapas.

I started my "night out" at just before 2pm at a terrace bar, La Rotonda, behind the modernist arch of the city´s Mercado Central. Most people aren't eating yet but the waiters are still practically running to keep up with the demand for trays of cañas, small glasses of beer, from the dozens of tables. My next stop is a nearby cafe called Damasol, for another caña and then a bowl of tangy salpicón de pulpo (octopus in a kind of vinaigrette), followed by a firm chunk of bacalao, salt cod, topped with tomato. At about 4pm the meal is finished off with a "gintonic" on Calle Castaños, a street almost entirely made up of terrace bars, with barely a table vacant. After that, the choice can only be a club such as Teatre or its unfortunately named rival, the Clap. For people who actually like the music they play in clubs, it's then time to dance, before going to bed at around 11pm.

This was all given the official seal of approval in the summer, with a promotional video produced by the town hall, complete with a video soundtrack from a local indie band. On YouTube, inevitably, you can read indignant comments from residents of Murcia and Albacete insisting that they've had their own version of el tardeo for years. In fact, it's not any kind of official, town-hall-directed phenomenon. According to Manu Garrote, one of the members of Gimnástica, the band on the promo video, it was just a realisation by older twentysomethings that they probably shouldn't be dancing till 8am. Gradually, both older and younger people started to join them until now, unlike many Spanish towns, Alicante is livelier at 4.30pm on a Saturday than it is at 4.30am.

This is a startling transformation for anyone who is used to sleepy afternoons in Spain. Changes such as this always seem like a big deal because of how closely the social timetable is linked to national identity. Just look at the furore about the liberalisation of licensing laws in the UK. Those changes, which often amounted to little more than some pubs closing at 12am instead of 11pm, have been cited either as our adoption of sophisticated, continental drinking patterns, or as contributory factors in "broken Britain".

Arguably, though, the hour at which you eat is a stronger social signifier. In the UK, insisting on having a full meal called "supper" at 8pm will still mark you out as irredeemably posh. And it's noticeable that, underneath the superficial changes to the Alicante timetable, you'll find a reassuring structure - they're still eating between two and four. Lunch is still the backbone of Spanish society and that's as true in San Sebastian and Barcelona as it is in Madrid or Alicante.

In the UK, in contrast, we try to ignore lunch and order our evening meal according to social class: first tea, then dinner, then supper. Would we be happier if we all sat down for a big meal in the middle of the day? Maybe so. In Spain, dancing at 5pm may be possible but, as Manu Garrote puts it: "Gastronomy never changes its timetable. Lunch is sacred."

Messing with the rigid menu to get more burger for your buck has a become a popular past-time in some quarters, but I've got a better idea altogether …

The first response to the news that Nick Chipman from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, ordered every item on his local McDonald's menu to create a 20,000-calorie McEverything Burger is: they sure are starved of fun things to do in Wauwatosa. After that, it's all pure rubbernecking. Who in their right mind would spend $140 (£88) in McDonald's when they could splash out on something that's, y'know, nice to eat?

Some fast-food venues such as the cult In-N-Out Burger in California, have a so-called secret menu that enables you to order ever bigger combinations of patties and buns so you can claim to be in the know. But most of what's called fast food menu "hacking" – ordering off the rigid menu to enhance the experience – is about attempting to get more for less, rather than just throwing money at the issue.

Naturally, the "skinny" – generally for people who aren't – is shared online. One site reports that you can get a poor man's Big Mac by ordering the much cheaper McDouble – two patties in one bun – and then asking them to substitute the ketchup and mustard with lettuce and Big Mac sauce. Hey presto! An almost Big Mac at a fraction of the price. At the US chain Jack in the Box you are advised to eschew the $4 double bacon cheeseburger and instead order two of the $1 Junior bacon cheeseburgers and put them together. Are you following this?

In this country we have our own options. Subway claims you can have everything any way you wish. Theoretically – it's only a thought experiment, thank God – that allows you to put together an egg and bacon Sub with cheese, olives and pickles and a honey mustard sauce. Which sounds less like lunch and more like an arrestable offence. Plus, however clever you think you're being, it's still a God awful, sugary-bunned Subway. No escaping that. At KFC you can have the pleasure of throwing their carefully regimented portion control out of whack by refusing drumsticks and insisting only on breast pieces. Of such small victories life is made. And then there's Burger King, which takes all the fun out of hacking by actually inviting you to screw with their menu.

The fact is, though, that fast food hacking is mostly an American phenomenon, which is hardly surprising given that mucking with the menu goes on at all levels of the business from high to low. There, the menu is simply an opening negotiating position, with various dishes just waiting to be shifted to "the side" or off the plate altogether. You can try this in the UK but be aware that our less flexible chefs might decide to hack your meal quietly for themselves, and in their own special way. Here's a better idea: go somewhere that's serving stuff you know you actually want to eat.

In Britain we are rather more refined about these things. Witness teenagers Cameron Ford and Adam Welland who, a few days ago, turned up at their local McDonald's in Kingston wearing collar and tie, spread the table with linen, candle-style lights, wine glasses and gold plates to eat off with real metal cutlery so they could enjoy their hamburger experience. They tweeted photographs, saying that they were indeed "lovin' it", despite some of the staff thinking that they were, as they say, mercilessly taking the piss. That, my friends, is how to hack a fast food experience.

Glasgow has been heralded as the best city in the world for vegans, but where are the best nations for travellers on a meat-free diet?

So now that we've established – or at least Peta has– that Glasgow is the most vegetarian/vegan-friendly place in the UK the next question is, which the best country for vegetarians and vegans? In many countries, eating meat is part of the national identity. Think of Australian barbecues, American cowboys and South American cattle ranchers. There was controversy earlier this year when President Obama hosted a dinner for 12 Republican senators, and one of them ordered a vegetarian meal. The identity of the culprit was protected, for fear that exposure could mean losing their seat. TV host Bill Maher commented that American voters would sooner elect a gay president than a vegetarian. Republican senators in Iowa and Texas said vegetarians were ''un-American" and made public pledges to eat more meat.

Still, once you've waved the political madness aside, you'll find that cutting-edge vegetarian and vegan cuisine thrives on America's east and west coasts. San Francisco still benefits from its hippie heritage with decent vegetarian and vegan options as standard around the Haight. San Francisco's Zen Center established Greens in 1976, and various cookbooks from its resident chefs continue to influence the menus of vegetarian eateries worldwide. Millennium, in the city centre, ranks as one of the world's top vegan restaurants with impressive high-end cuisine. Seattle and Portland are hot spots, with vegan bakeries, breweries, clothing stores, bike shops and even – in Portland – a vegan strip joint. However, Peta's choice for the top city in the US this year was, surprisingly, Austin, Texas. In the heart of ranching country, vegan entreprenuers have taken to the streets with food trucks offering tempeh burritos and chicken faux-jitas. It can still be a struggle to find vegetarian food in small-town diners, and it makes most sense to look for sustenance in areas that are highly populated and diverse: big cosmopolitan cities are the best place to look for vegetarian and vegan food.

Barcelona is fast becoming a hot spot for vegetarians, whether your preference is for punk bars or candle-lit fine dining. Elsewhere in Spain, it can be a struggle to explain that vegetarians don't eat ham. Likewise Berlin, another city where countercultures thrive, offers a good deal more for the vegetarian or vegan visitor than more rural German towns. France is notoriously hard work for vegetarians, and it can be far easier to settle for an omelette than to brave the ire of a waiter in a high-end French restaurant, but Paris has more than 30 exclusively vegetarian eateries. Even Russia, where vegetarianism was actually banned and driven underground for decades after the revolution, offers enough meat-free dining experiences in St Petersburg and Moscow to keep vegetarian visitors out of a rut for a week or so.

Any bustling city with a diverse population, cultural leanings and a university or two can generally be relied upon to offer a few exclusively vegetarian cafes, but often the food on offer is disappointingly divorced from the national cuisine. Falafels and hummus, veggie burgers, pizza, pasta and Indian-style buffets are pretty standard all over the place, but getting a vegetarian meal in, for example, a restaurant that specialises in typical Danish food can be very hard work. Vegetarian visitors to Denmark tend to rely on curry houses and Turkish kebab shops that offer falafels, tabbouleh and salad-filled pittas. There's no history of meat-free eating in Belgium – even the chips are often cooked in lard. Belgian vegetarian food makes frequent use of seitan, a surprisingly realistic meat substitute made from wheat gluten. Against all odds, the EVA (Ethisch Vegetarisch Alternatief) has persuaded many cafes and restaurants in its home town, Ghent, to adopt Paul McCartney's Meat-Free Monday idea and serve vegetarian food one day a week – in this case, Thursdays. Ghent also has more vegetarian restaurants per capita than most cities (13 for a population of 240,000).

Of course, there are many parts of the world where vegetarianism is widespread, largely because of religious principles and dietary laws. Hindus, Jains and Taoists all advocate vegetarianism to a greater or lesser extent, and this has a positive effect on the availability of vegetarian food in India and Asia. Between 20% and 40% of India's population is vegetarian – the figure is muddied by the fact that most Indian Hindus do not consider people who eat eggs to be vegetarian. Clear food labelling laws make things easy for vegetarian visitors. Most of the food served at Sikh gurdwaras is vegetarian, not because Sikhs are required to be vegetarian but because they aim to offer food that is acceptable to as many people as possible.

Countries with large Buddhist populations are generally good destinations for vegetarians, although the Buddhist approach to vegetarianism varies and is often misunderstood. The Theravada tradition, dominant in Thailand, teaches that it is all right to eat meat if it is offered to you, the Mahayana Buddhists of Taiwan, Vietnam and Japan recommend vegetarianism, and Tibetan Vajravana Buddhists consider vegetarianism optional. Being vegetarian would have been tricky in a mountainous region centuries ago, so it's hardly surprising that countries with climates that support plentiful harvests of fruit and vegetables tend to have more of a history of vegetarianism than those whose inhabitants are forced to rely on eating fish or animals that do not require lush grazing land.

Vegetarian travellers can also benefit from religious dietary observations that don't directly advocate vegetarianism. In Israel, Kashrut laws require that meat and dairy produce are not served together, making it relatively easy to find vegetarian food. In some African countries, such as Ethiopia, the Christian faith calls for frequent days of fasting, when only meat-free or vegan meals are acceptable.

British vegetarianism has Christian roots, too. Abstinence from meat was considered a form of temperance in the early 1800s, and over the years many radical thinkers embraced the idea. During the second world war, rationing conferred luxury status on meat, but interest in vegetarianism perked up again in the 1960s, thanks to trendsetters such as the Beatles, who brought the idea to a new audience. In today's multicultural society, it is easy to find meat-free specialities from all over the world. Add to that clear labelling regulations, and the UK has to be one of the easiest places in the world to be vegetarian.

Everyone deserves a little comfort food, especially these days, so how about ditching the kids' version and treating yourself to marshmallows with grown-up flavours such as salted caramel or cinnamon-spiced pumpkin?

Remember marshmallows – the pink-and-white store-cupboard staple beloved by Ging Gang Goolie-ing scouts the world over? Well, they've gone all posh. New company Copper & Cane has just launched an artisan take on the humble treat called Eat Toast Dunk Me featuring flavours such as rosewater and cardamom, dark chocolate and cinnamon-spiced pumpkin.

The company is the brainchild of Hazel Wright, a former food scientist who has made the most of her technical background to create marshmallows designed for glamping rather than jamborees. "With Copper & Cane, I wanted to do a lot of work on the texture as well as the flavour," she says. "The marshmallows have to have the right textual qualities so that they stand up to being put over a campfire but still melt in your mouth."

Wright isn't the only small-scale producer attempting to inject some foodie magic into marshmallows. Leeds-based Art of Mallow also concentrates on the adult market with a range including marshmallows that taste of everything from salted caramels to lemon meringue pie.

So why is the archetypal kiddie treat now back on the menu for adults? It's the continuation of a trend in which producers have taken comfort foods from the past and sprinkled over some artisan fairy dust (and often paprika or chilli flakes too).

Sian Meades, the brains behind leading food and lifestyle blog Domestic Sluttery, says that these kinds of foods chime with our current backwards-looking mood. "Returning to treats we had in our youth fits nicely into our current obsession with nostalgia," she says. "We really like sharing our food, so things such as marshmallows divide up easily and that's a big part of their appeal – much like with cupcakes, cake pops and brownies."

Some marshmallowy products are making this vintage link explicit. Take Marshmallow Fluff, a retro-branded sickly-sweet creme made out of liquefied marshmallows designed for classic 50s-style US bakes such as whoopee pies. But Meades says that marshmallows have a food heritage that goes much deeper than ultra-calorific cakes from the Mad Men era. In fact, the history of marshmallows reaches right back to the ancient Egyptians, who mixed the sap of the marshmallow plant with honey to make sweets.

For a foodstuff so closely associated with the UK and the US, it's surprising to learn that the modern marshmallow was actually developed by the French. In the 1800s, French cooks combined marshmallow sap with sugar and egg whites to make the contemporary confection. Flash-forward another century and the American Girl Scouts adopted campfire-roasted marshmallows as their sweet of choice courtesy of a recipe published in their official handbook.

Meanwhile, here in the present, there's a theory that making a fetish of current comfort foods may be a simple way of coming to terms with the present miserable economic climate. "It's definitely about the recession," says Wright. "When I was looking for a product to bring to market, I read through all the Mintel reports – and my distillation is that people are short on money and have found new ways to get together and indulge themselves around food."

In other words, when money's too short to eat out, a bowl of posh popcorn or plate of artisan cupcakes is a way to feel good with friends and family without pushing the boat out too far. Of course, to paraphrase Freud, sometime a posh marshmallow is just a posh marshmallow. But if they do take off, at least they'll offer a way out of our present cupcake-shaped food rut.

Is this delicious smoky dip the ultimate aubergine recipe – and which side of the great tahini divide are you on?

Everyone has their gastronomic tics – those dishes, or ingredients, or techniques, that suddenly make everything else on the menu look like ugly sisters. The word "smoky" generally does it for me, although I'm a sucker for a nice juicy aubergine as well, so if baba ganoush is available, you can keep your boring old hummus – my pitta is only going in one direction.

Like the ubiquitous hummus, this is a dish of indeterminate origins: Levantine is probably as specific as you can fairly get, because it pops up, under a variety of names, from Turkey to Egypt as a dip, a salad, or a vegetable side. It might be loose and smooth enough to scoop with bread, or so chunky you need a fork to tackle it – but never less, as Anissa Helou observes, than "exceptionally good". And, with aubergine season drawing to a close, this is the time to tackle it.

Where there's smoke …

Smokiness is what defines this dish, setting it apart from your common or garden baked aubergine. Ideally, I've found, this is best achieved over a hot barbecue, but unless the weather's picked up dramatically in the last few days, you'll be relieved to know other options are available.

Helou, writing in Modern Mezze, suggests pricking and grilling them, an option also given by Claudia Roden and Rebecca Seal in her book Istanbul. The latter two also, however, give the option of charring them directly over a gas flame, as in Yotam Ottolenghi's recipe. I find this, though much fiddlier and messier, gives a far better result: the grilled aubergines seem shrunken and almost desiccated, while the others are fairly bursting from their burnt skins.

David Lebovitz hedges his bets, charring them over a flame and then baking them in the oven until soft, but I'm not sure I see the point, as long as you bear in mind the advice given to Seal by Gençay Üçok of Istanbul's Meze by Lemon Tree restaurant: "If you think the aubergines are done, they're not done." They need to be not just charred, but collapsing in on themselves, and decidedly soft all the way through.

Draining and chopping

Once you've made a complete mess of your hob charring the skins, they need to come off – Ucok seems to think that some people rinse the aubergines in water to get rid of them, which he strenuously warns against, but none of the recipes I find dare suggest such heresy.

Scooping the flesh out of the papery skins is easy enough: Seal says that some Turkish cooks also reject any flesh that is even slightly discoloured, but, like her, I enjoy the "intense smoky flavour" these bits supply, so I won't be wasting any.

Even after all that cooking, aubergines are watery little things, and if you're not to stray into blandly soggy territory, you need to squeeze as much liquid out of them as possible. This is generally done with patience and gravity, but Seal and Roden both suggest squeezing the flesh out in a sieve, rather than letting it drain for Ottolenghi's "hour at least, preferably longer", and I must say that, if done diligently, the results seem just as good.

Ottolenghi may be averse to squeezing because he leaves his aubergine in "long thin strips" rather than mashing it gently, as Seal, Helou and Roden recommend. This makes it more of a salad than the dip I'm after – a bit of texture is welcome (Lebovitz whizzes his up in a food processor to give a smooth puree that reminds me more of hummus than anything else), but I also like baba ganoush to have a bit of creaminess about it.

Garlic

Happily, as it's another ingredient I carry a candle for, garlic is number two in the basic trinity of baba ganoush. Quantities vary, with Helou going for a modest single clove to six aubergines, while Roden uses a clove per aubergine. I like a hefty whack of the stuff, so I'm copying her, but if you're shy, by all means add it to taste.

Lemon juice

The final element of every baba ganoush, mutabal or patlican ezmesi is lemon juice – and again, quantities vary. Helou is once more parsimonious, as is Ottolenghi, while Roden merrily squeezes in as many lemons as she uses aubergines. I'm not going to go quite so far: too much citrussy sourness spoils the smoky richness of the aubergine, but the dish should have a certain zing nevertheless.

Tahini and other additions

The great rift in matters baba ganoush seems to be over adding tahini: Seal and Ottolenghi leave it out, and Lebovitz adds a very generous 130g ladleful, which may help to explain why his silky smooth baba ganoush tastes so much like hummus. The dish is pretty good without it, but I love the way the sweet nuttiness works with the creaminess of the slow-cooked aubergine, so I've added just a little – not enough to overpower the other ingredients, but certainly enough to make its very Levantine presence felt. Roden also, unusually, adds Greek yoghurt to her recipe. It is lovely, but I feel it robs the dish of its lemony, garlicky punch, so I'll be leaving it out.

Herbs and spices

Lebovitz adds chilli powder, "and sometimes a pinch of ground cumin" to his dip; both ingredients that work well with aubergine and tahini, but neither absolutely necessary for the proper enjoyment of the dish.

Ottolenghi adds 75ml olive oil to his, which makes sense as he's not using tahini, but as I am, I prefer to do as Helou suggests and ring the dish with oil instead in the traditional fashion, so each dipped pitta gets a little of both. Helou and Ottolenghi also suggest garnishing the dish with pomegranate seeds, which look pretty if you have them, but are less vital than the chopped herbs that most people suggest as a topping.

Parsley and mint are the most usual choices; Ottolenghi uses both, and Helou suggests either/or, while everyone else plumps for one or the other, except Lebovitz, who goes for parsley or coriander. I'm not sure about the latter's soapy flavour here: the peppery sharpness of parsley seems more fitting, but best of all, in my opinion, is sweet mint, which pairs very nicely with the aubergine.

Lebovitz and Seal stir some of the herbs into the dish itself, which I like – it guarantees a burst of freshness in every mouthful, and stops the greedy stealing the garnish. After all, this is a dish that's all about sharing.

The perfect baba ganoush

2 large aubergines (about 650g)
Juice of 1 lemon, plus a little extra
2 tbsp tahini
2 garlic cloves, crushed
3 tbsp chopped mint or flat-leaf parsley
1 tbsp pomegranate seeds (optional)
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Blacken the aubergines over a gas hob or barbecue, turning regularly with tongs, until completely charred and collapsed (you may wish to surround the rings with foil, as it can be messy). Allow to cool.

Slit the aubergines lengthways and scoop out the flesh in long strands, discarding the skins. Put in a sieve and leave to drain for 30 minutes, or squeeze out if you're in a hurry. Season.

In a serving bowl, stir the lemon juice into the tahini until it loosens up. Add the garlic and two-thirds of the chopped herbs, and season again to taste. Add a squeeze more lemon juice if necessary.

Mash the aubergines gently with a fork, and then stir into the tahini mixture. Top with the remaining herbs and the pomegranate seeds, if using. Pour a moat of oil around the edge and serve.

Baba ganoush, mutabal, patlican ezmesi – what other variations of smoky aubergine dip have you come across on your travels, and which other dishes benefit from a little bit of burning? (I'd particularly love a good recipe for the pepper and walnut dip muhummara, if anyone has one?)

When a small Vietnamese cafe in London announced that it had been asked to change its name because another firm had trademarked the word 'pho', there was an uproar. Can one restaurant 'own' a country's national dish?

Forget the proverbial storm in a teacup; this one has been all-out war in a big steamy soup bowl. Earlier this week a small Vietnamese restaurant punningly called Mo Pho, which has been trading quietly in south-east London for years, announced it had received a legal letter telling it to change its name. Pho Holdings Ltd, which operates the small glossy chain of Pho Vietnamese cafes– eight so far, with a ninth to open in Leeds shortly – said it had trademarked the word "pho" six years ago and only it could use it as the title of a restaurant business.

Potential NAME CHANGE - Its been a while since we made any updates to our posts, sorry about that. But it is... http://t.co/Imj5udlZXt

— Mopho Viet Cafe (@MoPho_VietCafe) September 23, 2013

Cue outrage and accusations of bullying in what passes for the foodie village square these days, or Twitter as it's better known.

@meemalee@PhoRestaurant@MoPho_VietCafe how could they trademark the name of a national dish? *off to TM "soup" before it's too late*

— foodycatAlicia (@foodycatAlicia) September 24, 2013

Pho, a deep and restorative beef broth with noodles, meat and lots of fresh green herbs, is the national dish of Vietnam. As one of many furious tweets said, it was a bit like trademarking "sandwich and not letting others use it". Or fish'n'chips. Or pizza. It didn't help that a big company were getting all legal and heavy on a bunch of Vietnamese people selling their nation's most famous dish. For its part, Pho Holdings insisted it hadn't trademarked the dish, only the company name and was merely protecting its business interests.

Whilst all we want 2 do is protect our brand/business, we fully understand the sentiment, & will not pursue action against MoPho-sorry guys

— Pho (@PhoRestaurant) September 24, 2013

By Tuesday night, Pho Holdings had admitted defeat. "We fully understand the sentiment and will not pursue the action against Mo Pho," they tweeted. "Sorry guys."

Hi all, as promised, here's an update on the ™ dispute. We're sorry it had to go as far as it did yesterday. pic.twitter.com/6up6B8hTyM

— Pho (@PhoRestaurant) September 25, 2013

In the cold light of the morning after the night before, the company's marketing director, Libby Andrews, accepted it had not been the greatest of days. "Everybody makes mistakes," she said. "The problem is that as a brand grows you get advice from all over." This, she said, had been heavy handed. Then again, she said, it was only in response to a move by a big American company into the UK pho market. "We really didn't mean to suggest we had ownership of the national dish of Vietnam."

So what about the general legalities? Some have suggested that it should have been impossible to trademark the word pho because, like fish'n'chips, it's too generic. However, trademark law is all about context and general knowledge. Six years ago, how many people really knew what pho was? The head-banging foodie types, who congregate around the fabulous Vietnamese cafes on the Kingsland Road in North London knew about it, of course. But the rest of the country? Probably not. If Mo Pho – and the many other restaurants with the word in their title around the country – had been forced to fight the legal challenge, it would have had to prove at great expense that when it was trademarked in the UK, the general population knew that it was the glorious soupy national dish of Vietnam. Which they probably didn't. That's the law, which appears remarkably unresponsive to the fickleness of food trends.

At base, this sort of trademark battle is all about brand turf wars. Whoever owns the word owns the brand. Apparently, since June there have been eight separate applications in the UK to trademark the word "cronut", the cross between a doughnut and a croissant first developed at the Ansel bakery in New York in May of this year. If anybody wins that application they will have a headstart in flogging cronuts. Likewise the mighty Soho House Group has recently applied successfully to trademark blunt, apparently banal phrases such as "duck shop", "meat shop" and "steak shop" for a bunch of restaurants, which isn't much of a surprise given the success of its Chicken Shop in Kentish Town, North London.

It also has a trademark on the phrase Dirty Burger for its outlets in Vauxhall and Kentish Town. Which presumably means that were I, in a restaurant review, ever to describe a hamburger as having the aesthetics of the unclean I would by law have to make explicit the fact that I was not referring to a genuine Soho House product. Kind of takes the fun out of writing. The only people we can be sure are really benefiting from all this deeply unpalatable mess of claim and counter claim are the bloody lawyers.