Miltomates

Nikki Duffy's Super Ingredients column in Weekend last Saturday featured Miltomates (Or tomatillos in Mexico, which Duffy anglicises as Tomatilloes).

These fruity little lanterns are one of the main ingredients of Guatemalan cuisine - 2 ounces are typically deployed in Pepián for example. In an effort to make them sound more versatile, Duffy recommends "for a totally different super fresh flavour serve them raw in salad", something that no self-respecting Guatemalan cook would ever do, V insists.

It's worth saying though that there's loads of coconuts and lemongrass in Guatemala too yet nothing on the menu much like a Thai curry! (In fact, lemongrass is almost exclusively used to make a kind of curative infusion over there.)

Regional chefs can get very dogmatic about their ingredients. A celebrity cook from the Caribbean recently told BBC2 viewers of Saturday Kitchen that plantains are vegetables and shouldn't ever be eaten raw. V just laughed; she likes to pokes fun at the islanders for the way they prefer to cook their plantains when they're hard and green. They are indeed difficult to eat straight out of their skins then, but once they have matured (i.e. turned a uniform dark brown) they can be quite pleasant when uncooked, though ideally they should be enjoyed fried, boiled or best of all, microwaved.

(Some confusion arises from the use of plátano in Spain to mean banana, whereas in Latin America banano is used. )