After caviar ... the new luxuries

Two shock announcements yesterday - first a ban on the trade in caviar, second the news that balsamic vinegar is naff, according to top chefs - have left middle-class kitchens dangerously short of overpriced gourmet foodstuffs. To find replacements that can quickly achieve the same cachet among people who can't really cook will take, at the very least, some lateral thinking. Below, the long list:

Apple hearts. Top British apples whittled down to their nutty, woody essence by teams of poorly-paid eastern Europeans, the only ingredient to use for a proper tarte au coeurs des pommes.

Pure Scottish dishwasher salt. The saltiest salt, pound for pound, on the planet. OK, so it's not actually fit for human consumption, but that's what they used to say about mouldy cheese.

Foetal peppers. It's hard to believe that once upon a time English cooks discarded the little tiny peppers you sometimes find growing inside big peppers. With recipes such as foetal pepper, truffle and apple heart salad on the horizon, these little delicacies will soon cost more per gram than smack.

Line caught mackerel eyes. Mackerel may be relatively cheap, but you only get two eyes per fish, so it costs almost £400 to fill up a good-sized tin. Connoisseurs say they taste a bit like chicken eyes.

Mini-dwarf-baby-fine beans. Exquisite to the point of being invisible to the naked eye. At a suggested price of £80 per kilo, it's sometimes known as the emperor's new delicacy. It's that posh.

Cat-licked butter. Premium lightly salted butter is left uncovered until it develops the tiny, tell-tale indentations which show that the cat has been at it while no one was looking. An acquired taste to be sure, although kids don't usually notice the difference.

Silver balls. This most exotic of cake decorations - often called the jelly diamond of kings - aren't just for cakes any more. They can be used to garnish gourmet soups, or to add a touch of class to an eyeless mackerel. And what gives these little baubles their mysterious silvery sheen? It's the much-prized E173 - or, as it used to be known - aluminium.

Tinned hot dogs. Italy has bottarga, Spain has baby eels, but does anyone do a canned hot dog to rival Britain's? It's high time we applied for regional status, before France starts copying them.

Hob Nob dust. Great for thickening sauces, flavouring risottos, or making a light batter for frying just-picked courgette flowers. Environmentalists, however, fear that a worldwide surge in demand may lead to the extinction of the Hob Nob. Still, you only live once.

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