Have you noticed that there are fashionable words, phrases and ingredients used in food and restaurant reviews? So like when one writer uses it, then for the next few months everyone seems to be squeezing it into their prose. These are my Top 10 Food Memes that we should all love to hate.

1. Yuzu juice. I blame Nigel Slater for this but then I blame him for a lot of things. It’s just like strong lemon juice with a cool sounding name. Why not just add a bit more PLJ (*) and leave us in peace?
2. Eat immediately. Does it really make all that much difference if you keep it warm for 10 minutes? It sounds like we should be running from the kitchen to the table in breathless haste just because some self-important food writer wants us to. Relax.
3. Salted caramel on everything. The shops have only just picked up on this one. In the Coop today I saw a small carton of salted caramel custard. It’s in everything! Leave it out!
4. My grandmother’s recipe (or nonna, for some reason.) Why does every food writer have a grandma, preferably Italian, who taught them all she knew? Back in those days they only had four ingredients to work with so it can’t have been that good. Use your own recipes and your own imagination, stop pretending that you have a fake grandma. Actually my own (real) grandma was a cook “in service” but the only recipes she passed on to me were for cow heel stew and pig’s foot. I told you they were short on ingredients. Must have been the war or something. She also called them “trotters” and she was a grown-up.
5. Yum. Really, this is the most lazy, disgusting word I have ever seen in a recipe list, usually at the end when they can’t think of anything smart to say (except “eat IMMEDIATELY!”) Please boycott this word forever. And take it off the back of the new Marmite jars or I will have to stop buying it and have jam on my toast instead.
6. N’duja. It’s just like mashed up chorizo. Not special at all but we can’t get enough of it all of a sudden. Nigel again, I think.
7. Save some of the starchy pasta water to add to your sauce. You can’t read a carbonara recipe without this gem cropping up. It’s not starchy at all, it’s just salty water. And if you read the next gripe you will see why this is a bad idea.
8. Pasta cooking water should be as salty as the Med. If you’ve ever swum in the Mediterranean Sea and swallowed a mouthful you’ll see why it is just too salty to add to anything. One teaspoon of salt per litre of cooking water will do nicely. Dreams of ancient Romans cooking their pasta with Med water are just a lost, romantic fantasy. They mostly ate Greeks anyway.
9. Don’t even think about having dinner before 10pm. More of a travel writer’s meme that a foodie phrase. When we went to Seville, all the reviewers were using this line with dire warnings of the Sevillianos being night owls and nothing will be open until 10pm. Rubbish. Most places were open all day. Madrid too, so forget the “night cats” image they like to write about.
10. If liked. This optional extra goes at the end of far too many recipes these days. Use your imagination and find another phrase.

*PLJ. An old fashioned drink made of pure lemon juice. Plus a ton of preservative. Just buy a real lemon, they sell them everywhere.