Sometimes I cheat.

Well, often. But for every time I cheat, there's a dozen times I do it by the book. By several books in fact.

Because every great recipe - no, dish - has many recipes and many versions. The best version is the one you like best, no matter what anyone says.

Personally, I think the best recipe is the one that is most suited to your own region and what it supplies, either from your garden, from your local primary industry, or at the very least from your local stores.

If there's something that annoys me as much as seeing people cart home truckloads of pre-packaged 'complete' meals from the supermarket, it's those who must so meticulously re-create an exotic dish or a cuisine in their own home that they go to ridiculously complicated and expensive lengths to procure ingredients.

This is particularly so for some peasant-type dishes which are a basic or a commonplace in their original home, where the ingredients are easily obtainable or grown locally. But which become, in other places, expensive and impractical to cook easily and practically on a regular basis.

Obviously, I am not talking about the occasional experiment, or the attempt to recreate a much-enjoyed meal experienced while travelling, for example. And, of course, I am not talking about those communities or individuals who have established regular special imports in order that they enjoy their homeland cuisines in their new lands.

I guess it's a matter of balance and common sense.

So go ahead and cheat. Because after all, sensibly substituting a very similar ingredient is not really cheating as much as flying in some rare ingredient from the ends of the earth just so you can have a 'genuine' regional experience in your own home.

If you were having that, you would be sitting down in that region to eat it.