Start with beet salad, move onto Chicken cacciatore with a side of penne with vodka sauce.

The tomato-flavoured "yolk" isfloated in a cocktail of vodka, spices, celery salt and Tabasco, toppedwith a Worcestershire sauce foam and served in an oyster shell.

But in the end, it was the combined efforts of a great dish, a properly made horseradish sauce and a slug of straight vodka that convinced me that the root had a place in my life.