In this special Jewish food edition of the podcast, Jason is joined by the doyenne of Jewish food Claudia Roden and by leading food critic Giles Coren. Together they sample Tunisian Jewish food in the kitchen of personal chef, Fabienne Viner-Luzzato.

Jewish food is at the centre of all Jewish festivals and family gatherings: whether it’s chicken soup or lokshen pudding, falafel or bourekas, behind every Jewish dish is a story, of wandering, exile, integration – and bloating …

Claudia explains why she once filled her kitchen with testicles and argues that Sephardi food, with its origins in Spain and north Africa, is far more gourmet than the peasant food of Ashkenazi cuisine from eastern Europe – while Giles counters with memories of his grandmother’s delicious cholent.

They ask if there’s any truth to the stereotype of the overcooking Jewish mother and explain why fish and chips is actually a Jewish creation – from London’s East End. And we’ll have the age-old kneidel debate: heavy or fluffy?

• Produced by the Jewish Community Centre for London, Sounds Jewish will be taking a summer break but will be back to celebrate the Jewish New Year in the autumn.

guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle

The world’s greatest chef is closing the Spanish restaurant that was his life’s work in order to take what he has learned online

The world’s greatest chef has had enough. “I don’t care now whether I have three stars, or however many. Or whether I am No 1 or No 28,” explains Ferran Adrià, the former plate-washer who has revolutionised high cuisine over the past 20 years.

“You can’t stay at number one forever. Imagine if Barcelona won the Champions League for 15 seasons,” he adds. “The system couldn’t handle it.”

Adrià’s words may sound world-weary, but in fact they are the opposite. Having reached the top, and stayed there for so long, he is closing his world-famous El Bulli restaurant and turning its location, in a charming Mediterranean cove, into a research foundation that will reach out to the masses by publishing daily on the internet.

It is yet another bold move in the story of Spain’s rise in the world of fine food. Like half a dozen other Spanish chefs whose names are hallowed by gourmets, Adrià has transformed a small restaurant far off the beaten track into an international brand.

From Basque chefs Juan Mari Arzak and Andoni Luis Aduriz to Adrià’s fellow Catalans the Roca brothers, the Spanish kitchen rules. Last year four Spanish establishments made the top 10 in the S.Pellegrino restaurant awards.

The irony is that Spaniards’ eating habits, once based on a traditional Mediterranean diet rich in healthy vegetables, fruit and beans, have disintegrated just as its chefs have won global fame.

“Right now there is no real difference between the diet of someone in Málaga and someone in Liverpool,” says Dr Francisco Tinahones, head of the endocrinology department at Málaga’s Hospital Clínico.

Obesity and adult diabetes have rocketed to 20% and 12% of the population respectively, with the latter doubling in 20 years. Child obesity is at 30% in some areas. “Experts mostly believe that, as a result, this generation will live shorter lives than their parents,” says Tinahones.

Part of Adrià’s mission will be to correct that, much as Jamie Oliver has tried to in Britain. He already works with Valentin Fuster, an eminent Spanish cardiologist.

Adrià will start by sharing the secrets of how he feeds his own employees. “People imagine that chefs in top restaurants eat well, but often they don’t because they are too busy and only have time for a sandwich,” he said. “Three years ago we decided to eat fantastically. Now we serve a three-course lunch that costs us just €3 a head.”

His entire staff of 75, in other words, eats for the price of a single meal at El Bulli – though they do not get the 44 dishes served to each diner the day the Guardian visited, which included typically bizarre Adrià inventions such as soya matchsticks and game cappuccino.

The monthly staff menu will eventually be published in English in book form, titled The Family Meal.

Turning El Bulli into a foundation will also stop it bleeding money. Adrià takes a loss on the restaurant, making money elsewhere – mostly as a consultant. “This is like a research and development department. You shouldn’t expect it to make money,” he says. Although he insists his decision to close has nothing to do with money, it highlights the complex economics of high cuisine – where top chefs often make money away from the restaurants that made them famous.

Professor Julia Prats, an economist who carried out a case study on El Bulli for the University of Navarre’s IESE business school, says it is a fantastic marketing tool for Adrià. “Even if it breaks even, that’s an accomplishment,” she said.

In the wake of the recent death of fellow Catalan chef Santi Santamaría from a heart attack in his Singapore restaurant at the age of 53, Adrià’s decision to go global on the internet while staying local to work is even more understandable. Santamaria, head chef at the triple Michelin-starred Can Fabes restaurant, not far from El Bulli, had been running eight restaurants, with a total of seven Michelin stars, in such diverse places as Madrid, Barcelona, Qatar and Singapore.

Adrià does not mind losing El Bulli’s exclusivity. A restaurant with just 15 tables that opens for six months a year and serves only supper can feed just 8,000 people a year. Pressure from the rich and famous to get a table was intense. “I am tired of having to turn people away,” Adrià said.

Rather than retreating from the public gaze, however, Adrià says his new venture will see his El Bulli team exposed to even greater scrutiny than that exercised by the Michelin Guide’s star-givers (who routinely give him three) or the magazines that consistently name him the world’s top chef. “It will be even tougher, because there will effectively be far more people waiting to be ‘served’ on the internet,” he says.

Among the artists, architects and others he will bring into the kitchen to broaden El Bulli’s creative drive, the new team will include a journalist to serve up a daily ration of revelations from his experimental kitchen.

The challenge will also be about competing with El Bulli’s own history. Adrià is famous for the hours he spends in his workshop, pursuing new ideas for the menu. Although he has represented Spain at art shows such as Documenta in Germany, Adrià rejects the idea of cuisine as art. “The umbrella is not art, but creativity,” he says.

He will be bringing other creatives into the foundation’s kitchen. “They will be able to see how we create, and we can study how they do it,” he said.

Vicente Todolí, the outgoing Spanish director of the Tate Modern, is a friend of Adrià and will be among those advising him. Adrià will also teach creativity at Harvard for two weeks a year. His systematic approach to invention means that will include “teaching how to be an efficient creator”.

Some eating will be done at the El Bulli Foundation, but there will not be regular meals. Those wanting a taste of the Adrià magic, however, can get to two new Barcelona outlets that he has opened in recent weeks with his brother, Albert. One, Tickets, serves tapas invented at El Bulli. The other, called 41, serves snacks and cocktails. Both, inevitably, are booked out.

Either way, though, the master chef of the century so far is retiring from the frontline of serving up food. “You can’t win the Oscar every year,” he says. “Even the people who love you will start to say: ‘Oh no, not them again!’

“It is not easy to step down when you are at the top and it may go badly,” he adds. “But at least we will have tried it and have been consistent in our own approach to creativity.”

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

Spaniards, Germans and Pole express confidence to pollsters, but the British only excel at modesty

The Spanish can cook, the Germans drive well and the Polish are good looking: ask Europeans how they think their countries excel and revealing trends emerge. The Guardian’s poll of European countries carried out by ICM suggests most nations think they are good at something – apart from the ever modest British. We feel we are pretty mediocre at everything.

The poll, carried out online among 5,000 people – 1,000 from each of the five countries involved in the Guardian’s New Europe series – exposes a mix of classic national stereotypes and unexpected self-confidence. Germany may be famed abroad as a land of lederhosen and strong beer but the Polish outdo everyone else as a nation that feels it can knock its drink back and stay sober. In total, 61% of Poles think their compatriots can hold their schnapps and vodka, in contrast to just 14% of Spaniards who say the same about their compatriots’ capacity for San Miguel beer.

The British are not in denial about their own capacity for drunken behaviour. Only 15% of Britons think we can hold our drink, against 85% who rate ourselves at the middle or lower of the scale. Other nations judge themselves little different, apart from the Poles.

In an imaginary Eurovision contest of national talents, the Spanish and the French think they would be way ahead of everyone else as the best place to eat. Among the Gallic citizens of the land of haute cuisine, 80% give themselves at least eight out of 10 points for their cooking. In Spain, where Ferdinand Adrià’s modernist El Bulli restaurant reinvented modern cooking, perhaps to its detriment, 87% do the same.

By contrast, a generation reared on Delia Smith and Jamie Oliver in Britain still don’t rate themselves highly: only 23% of people in this country believe the UK is renowned for its cooking, against 77% who put it in the middle or below.

Perhaps fortunately the poll doesn’t reveal what other Europeans think of our food. Ever confident, the Poles shrug off jibes about dumplings and beetroot soup to chase France for third place as the nation with good cuisine: 70% score their nation highly against just 2% who put their country way down the scale. Germany is next, followed by Britain in last place of the five countries surveyed.

So it is official that we think we have the worst cooking in Europe. But at least we believe ourselves to be more friendly than the French and the Germans, if not quite up there with Spain and Poland. Overall, 32% of Europeans questioned thought people were very friendly in their country, against 56% who put the answer somewhere in the middle and 12% at the bottom.

In Britain, 23% score themselves highly against 77% who do not. In Poland, more cheerful perhaps, 35% score highly and 65% not.

The French appear to think they are part of a nation of grumps: 70% put themselves only in the middle for national friendliness and 17% right at the bottom, ahead of everyone else. Experience Paris on a weekend in August and you might be tempted to agree.

Unsurprisingly, Germans – from the home of the unrestricted autobahn, BMW and Porsche – believe themselves to be the best drivers in Europe. The French – from the land of Renault and Citroen – think they are the worst.

In Germany, 34% score their country well for its driving, against just 11% in France and 17% in Poland. The British and the Spanish are somewhere in the middle: 29% of people here think their country drives well against 23% in Spain.

By contrast, 20% of French people put their driving skills in the bottom categories, scoring just one to three points out of 10. In Britain, 15% say the same and in Germany it is just 13%.

About a quarter of Europeans think people in their country are good drivers: about two-thirds, sensibly, put themselves in the middle.Even vanity is trumped by modesty in Europe, according to the poll. While about a third of people surveyed rated people in their country notably good looking, two thirds put the answer in the middle and a few even lower down. Men are marginally more positive about national looks than women.

The Poles scored themselves most highly – 57% rated their nation at eight out of 10 or above for looks, against just 14% in Britain, officially the most modest country among those polled, if not the ugliest. Here, 73% ranked national appearance in the middle and 13% at the bottom.

According to the survey, 41% of Spaniards say their compatriots are good looking, against 22% in France, with Germany narrowly behind.

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

Meet April Bloomfield, the girl from the Midlands who’s head chef in New York’s hottest restaurants and counts Jay-Z and Bono among her best customers

Try April Bloomfield’s oyster pan roast and other recipes

Is it possible to know you adore someone before you even meet them? I think not, generally. If a girlfriend told me she had the hots for a man on whose face she had never clapped her eyes, let alone planted her lips, I would say: keep calm, dear, and step away from the pinot gris. On the other hand, it occurs to me, this freezing cold morning in New York, that I’m rapidly developing a powerful crush on a young chef called April Bloomfield. This woman is, I am increasingly certain, my idea of heaven. How do I know? It’s her cooking. Believe me when I tell you that her food is extraordinary. I don’t mean extraordinary in a Michelin-starred look-at-these-truffled-potatoes kind of way (though she has two Michelin stars: one for the Spotted Pig in Greenwich, the other for the Breslin, in the Ace Hotel in Midtown). Nor do I mean extraordinary in a Heston Blumenthal this-mackerel-pops-like-Space-Dust kind of way. I mean only that it is extraordinarily delicious. You eat her burgers and her scotch eggs, her sweetbreads and her chowders, and all you can think is that you will never taste their like again anywhere else. It’s a thought that is distinctly misery-inducing, given that I live in London, and she works here, in Manhattan.

I am going to meet Bloomfield tomorrow. Today, I am in the John Dory Oyster Bar, the newest of her three Manhattan restaurants (it, too, is in the Ace Hotel), where I am eating lunch with her business partner, Ken Friedman, a tall, rather haphazard man who used to manage bands including the Smiths and UB40. Friedman has a somewhat wobbly attention span. Last night, for instance, when I was eating my supper in the Breslin, alone, he sought me out, ordered a glass of wine, and told me that he would keep me company (when he arrived I was in the middle of my starter, a superlative salad of pears and candied walnuts). Five minutes later, though, he excused himself – “I just need to talk to someone for one moment” – and never returned. But on one subject his focus is never less than laser beam sharp. Friedman thinks that April Bloomfield is a genius, and he would like the whole world to know it. Which is why he is insisting that I try the entire menu.

And what a menu it is. Sam Sifton, the picky restaurant critic of the New York Times, has said that Bloomfield’s chorizo-stuffed squid is among the best things you can eat in the city and, having tasted it, I cannot think that he could possibly be wrong. Bloomfield stuffs her squid with paella rice which she has first cooked with chorizo, red pepper, onion and saffron. The squid is then seared to give it a crust, and placed on a soft bed of white beans – Bloomfield is “obsessed” with beans – dressed in creme fraiche, and topped with coriander and smoked tomatoes tossed in sherry vinegar, olive oil and palm sugar. It’s incredible – though not, perhaps, quite so punchy and addictive as her toast piled with anchovy paste, or her escarole salad, made of raw hearts and pickled outer leaves, both of which bedazzle with top notes of lemon, anchovy and parmesan. I could go on and on like this. The oysters. The razor clam ceviche. The Nantucket Bay scallops. And its crowning glory? That would have to be her oyster pan roast, a homage to the famous dish served at the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station. A pan roast is a soup, cooked in an old-fashioned metal contraption; Bloomfield’s version turns oysters, their liquor, cream and tarragon into a nectar so heavenly, you sip it and expect to hear harps, and comes with a thin, crisp slice of toast over which is spread unctuous but golden sea urchin butter in rolling waves (“the sea urchin roe butter is to make the dish more oceanic,” its creator will tell me later, “because cooked oysters don’t really keep that cucumber-y taste”).

The story of the odd couple, Ken and April, and how they rose to the very top of New York’s dog-eat-dog restaurant scene is the stuff of legend by now (or if not legend, then at least of long profiles in the New Yorker). Friedman is 52, and grew up in California, where he attended Berkeley until he dropped out to become first a concert promoter, then a manager, and finally a talent scout for Arista. It was during his years in the music business, entertaining his artists at New York’s best restaurants, that he grew passionate about food. Sometimes, observing this passion, his friends would suggest that he open a place of his own. A few of them – Michael Stipe of REM was one – even said they would invest. One day, he finally took them at their word. He had turned 40; he no longer got off on music the way he used to; hell, he had nothing to lose.

In 2003, then, Friedman began his new career. Another of his investors was Mario Batali, chef patron of Babbo and other celebrated joints, and good friend of Gwyneth Paltrow and other foodie stars. It was Batali who spotted Bloomfield’s talent. Well, sort of. It happened like this. One day, Jamie Oliver flew in. Batali, a pal of his, and Friedman, a keen anglophile, took him out for the evening. According to Batali, Oliver was their man. The plan was to put the alcoholic thumb screws on him. Alas, even after a few drinks, Oliver could not be persuaded. He did, though, suggest that they meet a young British sous chef at his old employer, the River Cafe. Her name was April Bloomfield.

Bloomfield flew out to New York, which she had never visited before, for an interview. A little to her surprise, this consisted of a 10-hour marathon during which she and Batali and Friedman ate at some of the city’s best known restaurants, among them the Union Square Cafe, the Carnegie Deli, and Batali’s own Babbo. No doubt Batali was impressed by Bloomfield’s appetite. Mostly, though, it was her war wounds that pleased him: a missing fingernail, scars on her arms. “It means she’ll sacrifice her body,” Batali is supposed to have said. “She’s a star. I can tell.” They offered her the job.

Bloomfield handed in her notice, and moved to the US, where she spent the summer working at Alice Waters’s restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, to familiarise herself with American ingredients. Then she headed to New York where, in the fullness of time, she and Friedman opened their gastropub, the Spotted Pig. The menu was meaty, and rather British. But the house speciality – cheeky, this – was a burger served one way: rare, on a brioche bun, with roquefort. Did the punters love it? Yes, they did. Pretty soon, the Spotted Pig was rammed: a favoured hang-out of hipsters and celebrities alike. To this day, bagging a table requires the patience of Job. April Bloomfield, a quiet, unassuming girl from Birmingham, had succeeded where the likes of Gordon Ramsay and countless other shouty, macho British chefs had always failed: she had taken Manhattan by storm.

April Bloomfield is small, preternaturally cheerful, and extremely single-minded. This is not to say, however, that she was determined to be a chef right from the start. She was born in Birmingham, in 1974. Her stepfather was an engineer, and her mother, who worked at home, painted china bonbonnieres for the West Midlands enamel firm Halcyon Days. Safe to say that it was not a foodie household. “I grew up with cheese sandwiches,” she says. “And my mum’s steak, which she would fry without any salt; it always came out grey. My nan’s cooking was my favourite: loin of pork with crackling and stuffing. We would eat the leftovers, the pork cold, the stuffing hot. Even today, I love that contrast between hot and cold.”

At 16, April decided to join the police force, a decision based mostly on her love of Cagney & Lacey. It was only when she realised she’d left it too late to apply to the cadet scheme that she changed her plan. Just as her mother was asking her what she planned to do with her life, in walked April’s sister, who was at catering college, in her chef’s whites. Maybe I could give cooking a go, she thought. “But when I walked into college, and saw the kitchens and smelt the spices, I knew I would give it 110%. I was just blown away.”

Her first job was at a Holiday Inn in Birmingham. By this time, her sister was working at Launceston Place in London. “I knew I didn’t want to stay in Birmingham,” April says. “I wanted something more. I asked my chef: ‘Could you give me a few double shifts? I want to know what it’s like to work really hard.’” Apparently, it was rather enjoyable, and six months later, she left, having landed a job at Kensington Place, whose kitchen was then in the hands of Rowley Leigh. She followed that with a job at Bibendum – she still talks of Simon Hopkinson, “such an elegant cook, so particular and clean and efficient”, with deep reverence – and another at Roscoff in Northern Ireland. By the time she returned to London. for another stint at KP, and then a job at the Brackenbury, she knew both that she had progressed amazingly, but also that she still had a lot to learn. Where next? “I used to lie in bed thinking about the River Cafe, because I’d watched their TV programme. I remember watching Rose [Gray, the restaurant's co-founder] cooking cavolo nero. She pureed it with the best olive oil and cheese. I went to work the next day and immediately made it.”

A friend worked at the River Cafe, so Bloomfield called her, and said she wanted to move. “They told me to come in, and I loved it from the moment I tasted the food. It was this pasta… I had to peel these walnuts. I’d never seen a wet walnut. My fingers were burning, but I was so happy. We made a sauce from the walnuts, some bread, the water I’d blanched them in, some pesto and some spicy oil. Tossed it into some tagliatelle. When I tasted it, my palate moved to a higher consciousness. I actually thought: what have I been doing for the last 10 years? I was so worried I wasn’t good enough to get a job there.”

We are talking in the back of a car, on our way back from visiting a farm in the Catskills. One of the legacies of her time at the River Cafe is a reverence for ingredients, and April is convinced that, in the long term, the only way she can get her hands on the very best produce is to grow it herself (New York’s top chefs fight ruthlessly for veg at the Green Market in Union Square). So, she is looking to buy a farm: “It’s important for my soul, and for my passion.” Driving the car is Scott Boggins, who was the “culinary farmer” at the French Laundry in California, and now works for April full-time (he will manage the farm once they find the right place). Also, Ken, who is staring hard at his Blackberry (a couple of movie stars are having a party at the Spotted Pig tonight, but they have demanded that staff sign a non-disclosure agreement, and Ken is furious).

Did she and Ken agree right from the start on what kind of food they would serve at the Pig? “Not really. He wanted to do tofu hot dogs. I was very concerned. I sent him an email telling him what I was most passionate about, and I ended it by saying: look, I might not be the right chef for you.” Ken promptly backed off, and has left her alone ever since. He deals only with front of house, leaving April, who is emphatically not a schmoozer, to get on with her work. This suits them both.

Is she as severe as people say? The mythology is that Ken has a secret store of mayonnaise, which he dispenses surreptitiously to customers who want it on their burgers. She laughs. “I did once tell a customer that they couldn’t have a burger without cheese. I’m not severe. I’m just firm. I’ve learned to be OK about it if they want their dressing on the side. But I won’t substitute or add anything; I don’t mix and match. It slows down the kitchen, and it’s not how I want to work.” From the front of the car, comes Ken’s voice. “I know now that mayo on a burger is naff, unless you’re from Montreal or Belgium,” he shouts. Then he goes back to stabbing at his Blackberry.

Last night, I spent the evening in the kitchen at the John Dory watching April during service. She made for an amazing sight: quiet and smiling, but also about as finickety as it is possible for a chef to be. I could watch her clean whelks all day. At one point, dissatisfied with their taste – she is an enthusiastic rather than a merely dutiful taster – she tipped seven plated servings of scallops back in a basin and began seasoning them all over again. Most impressive of all, though, was her relationship with her young, hipster staff. Bloomfield doesn’t bark orders; she makes suggestions. Is her relationship with her chefs as good as it seems? “I think I’m probably a control freak, but if I trust them, it’s collaborative. They’re all hugely talented. I can’t be everywhere, but I’m always in one of my kitchens, and hopefully I’m motivating and inspiring. We want to grow with our chefs. If one of them has an idea, and we can help them, well, I think that would be good.” She is an American citizen now, but she longs to do a restaurant in London; certainly, there will be more restaurants, and thus more openings for her staff, in the future.

Naturally, I put her calm, kindly manner at the pass down to her gender. But she isn’t so sure. Nor does she have a view on whether it is more difficult for women to succeed as chefs. “You just have to work hard; it doesn’t matter whether you are a man or a woman. I didn’t come in to this thinking I was a woman in a man’s world, and if I was ever on the receiving end of anything [sexist], I probably just pushed it to the back of my mind and got on with it. The only thing I would say is that when I was offered [a stint on] pastry, I said no. I didn’t want to be stereotyped.”

Our conversation begins to tail off: the gloaming and the sense of anti-climax in the car are doing their work (the farm, all clapboard and rickety outbuildings, wasn’t right for April and Ken; they want a beautiful place, so people can stay and attend cookery classes). But then April perks up. “Why don’t we go to Blue Hill Stone Barns for dinner?” she says. This is an exquisitely swanky restaurant and farm on an old Rockefeller estate just outside New York; its chef Dan Barber is a pioneer of the farm-to-table movement.

So, this is what we do. When we pitch up, it is 5.20pm. The restaurant opens at 5.30pm. We wander in. None of us is dressed for fine dining. April is in a parka, jeans and her beloved Birkenstock clogs, Scott is in his lumberjack gear, Ken is in sneakers as per usual. But April has decided: we are going to have a great treat. While we wait, we sit in the bar and drink cocktails. In her deep leather armchair she says: “I’m so happy.”

We go to our table. By now, April has been recognised; several staff tell her how happy they are to see her. Obviously, we will be having the tasting menu, and no arguments. Dan Barber appears, and shakes her hand ecstatically. It’s as if the pope is visiting the archbishop of Canterbury, or something. Then the food starts arriving: innovative and ravishing. But I can’t take my eyes off April. I’ve always found it peculiar how few chefs seem truly to like eating. April, though, treats every dish with the relish of a child opening an Easter egg. First, she examines it, pondering what tricks are involved in its composition. Then, she tastes it, very carefully. Finally, once she has its measure, she scoffs whatever is left. I wish I had a camera so I could photograph her delicately picking the cheeks from a cod’s head. “Isn’t this beautiful?” she says, over and over. After our feast, we walk to the car, ice crackling, smiling and replete. What did you think? I ask. “Amazing,” she says. I am struck by her Brummie accent. It has emerged at last, released by a good dinner, like a genie from a lamp.

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

The EU ruling that Cornish pasties must be made in Cornwall underlines the importance of the world’s many food specialities

Cornish pasties, the 19th century miner’s own kind of packed lunch, must now be made in Cornwall. The EU says so, they have even made it a rule. For nine years, the Cornish Pasty Association fought for what is called protected geographical indication (PGI) – and it has won. Alongside its geographical origin comes a whole set of rules on how one produces Cornish pasties: their shape, the nature of the filling and the baking process. And, of course, no artificial flavouring or any additives should get into them.

In other words, PGIs – and their French counterparts, appellation d’origine protégée (AOPs) and appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOCs) – are “an official mark of quality awarded to regional products with specific characteristics and taste produced with traditional methods”. Do you remember other Homeric AOC battles? There was the three-year “holey” war between Swiss and French Gruyère makers, when French producers, astonishingly arrogant, demanded a super AOC to protect their Gruyère (the one with holes in). The Swiss cheese-makers suddenly woke up from their blissful life and invoked ancient Roman history to win their case: who dared steal the limelight from their – far superior, in my view – un-holed Gruyère! The EU thought the French were pushing it a bit far and holey Gruyère makers retreated.

You may also remember the 20-year battle fought by camembert producers? They bickered about the nature of their AOC: should camembert, which “smells like the feet of God”, according to cheese addict Will Studd, be made with pasteurised or unpasteurised milk? The hand-moulding, pro-unpasteurised artisan producers finally won the argument against Lactalis (the second largest cheese producer in the world, industrially producing 80,000 camemberts a day), which simply wanted to renegotiate with the French authorities the way of making camembert while retaining their AOC. Cheeky!

All those endless battles might sound, like Gargantua’s Picrocholine wars, ridiculously trite. However, I’d say that they touch on something fundamental: one’s belonging to le terroir. In today’s time, in “our global village”, such terms may sound conservative or simply passé. In fact, they are the only tangible link we still have with reality. No matter how “globalised” we have become, we all come from somewhere. Food, too. It may, throughout the ages, have been coloured, influenced, or changed by external elements – as the gastronomic wizard Claudia Roden has written about extensively. However, terroir, or “from the land”, shouldn’t be dismissed. Terroir doesn’t mean conservatism, it means diversity. Against a globalised grub, it stresses the importance of the world’s many specialities. In the same way as it seems better to buy vegetables from local growers, it is logical to taste local specialities everywhere you travel. Terroir is a window on the world worth fighting for.

Tell me about your favourite local dish. The winner (arbitrarily chosen by me) will get a pasteurised camembert from my favourite fromager in Normandy.

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

Food minister condemns extravagant feasts as poor face increasing costs of flour, onions and other basics

The big, fat Indian wedding is about to lose weight, if the government has its way.

Aware that the soaring price of onions, flour and other basic foodstuffs is causing serious political damage, ministers have suggested restricting “wastage” at the gargantuan feasts that typify matrimonial festivities.

Food and consumer affairs minister, KV Thomas, said that close to 15% of all grains and vegetables in India are wasted through “extravagant and luxurious functions”, according to the Mail Today newspaper.

The government wants to introduce legislation to “curb profligacy” to preserve stocks for the poor, the newspaper reported.

Weddings in India have become more extravagant in recent years as the newly rich look to show off their wealth. The most spectacular ceremonies – such as those of the hotelier Vikram Chatwal or the daughter of the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal – have seen astonishing displays of opulence. Expensive gifts accompanying invitations, tonnes of imported flowers, top chefs flown in from New York or Tokyo and festivities spread across multiple cities have become almost commonplace.

India’s booming upper middle classes have been inspired to create their own displays. No wedding is now complete without at least three different cuisines offered to guests: north or south Indian, “continental” or European and a third, selected from Mexican, Japanese and Chinese, or chinjabi, as the local version of the latter is known.

“It’s true that people waste a lot because there’s a huge variety of dishes and they take a bit of everything to try it. There’s a limit to the amount anyone can eat though,” said Neeti Bhargava, who runs Mystical Moments wedding organisers in Delhi. “You can’t really control it. There are people who really don’t know how to spend all the money they’ve got.”

The ostentation goes well beyond food. One new trend is the use of helicopters instead of the traditional white horse or decorated coach for the bride and groom.

Subhash Goyal, who runs an air charter business, said: “It’s mainly people like farmers around the outskirts of Delhi or other cities who have made millions simply because their land has suddenly got to be worth so much money.

“Some people want to propose on a flight. Some people want to go in a helicopter to pick up the bride instead of going on a horse.”

Fees for the helicopters start at £2,000. There are currently no plans to restrict expenditure on aircraft.

The people hit hardest by the food inflation – the poor – are the core constituency of the current government, led by the centre-left Congress party. However, the ambitious food security bill aimed at eradicating hunger in India is proving difficult to draft. It would guarantee more than two-thirds of the population had enough to eat, its supporters claim. About half of India’s children under five are malnourished.

Opposition politicians attacked the plan to restrict wedding expenditure as a throwback to the 1960s when India’s economy was centrally planned on a Soviet socialist model. Other critics argued that tackling corruption and wastage in India’s deeply inefficient subsidised food distribution system, the biggest in the world, would do more good.

However, Rayapati Sambasiva Rao, a Congress MP who has previously tried to introduce a private bill curbing extravagant weddings, said he welcomed the government’s move. “Extravagance in weddings should be controlled,” he told the Mail Today. ” It’s a vulgar display of wealth.”

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink

Only pasties made in Cornwall to the traditional recipe can be labelled ‘Cornish pasties’ after a ruling from Brussels

The Cornish pasty has become a protected food following a long campaign to prevent it being copied by imitators.

Only pasties prepared in Cornwall and following the traditional recipe can now be described as Cornish after the European commission awarded the dish “protected geographical indication” (PGI) status. Authentic pasties can still be finally baked elsewhere in Britain.

Campaigners celebrated the decision, saying it was important for the local economy – thousands of jobs are involved in the pasty industry – as well as for consumers.

Alan Adler, chairman of the Cornish Pasty Association, said: “By guaranteeing the quality of the Cornish pasty, we are helping to protect our British food legacy. We lag far behind other European countries like France and Italy, that have hundreds of food products protected, and it’s important that we value our foods just as much.”

The announcement does not stop other producers from making other type of pasties but they won’t be able to sell them as ‘Cornish’”.

The association said a genuine Cornish pasty had a distinctive “D” shape and was crimped on one side, never on top.

“The texture of the filling is chunky, made up of uncooked minced or roughly cut chunks of beef (not less than 12.5%), swede, potato, and onion with a light seasoning. The pastry casing is golden in colour, savoury, glazed with milk or egg and robust enough to retain its shape throughout the cooking and cooling process without splitting or cracking. The pasty is slow-baked and no artificial flavourings or additives must be used.”

The PGI is one of three European designations used to protect local foods, such as Gorgonzola, Parmesan-Reggiano cheese and Champagne. There are 42 other British protected products including Cornish clotted cream, Melton Mowbray pork pies and Arbroath Smokies.

Early references to the Cornish pasty are said to date back to the 13th century and by the end of the 18th, it was a staple food of poorer families who could only afford cheap ingredients. Meat was added later.

The shape of pasties is popularly believed to have enabled tin miners to re-heat them underground as well as eat them safely. The crimped edge was used as a handle which was then discarded due to the high levels of arsenic in many mines.

guardian.co.uk food-and-drink