WHEN Marks & Spencer introduced grown for flavour tomatoes a few years ago there was much merriment among food writers

WHEN Marks & Spencer introduced "grown for flavour" tomatoes a few years ago, there was much merriment among food writers. What else were tomatoes being grown for? Making use of genetic modification, they were being grown for resistance to disease, a redder skin to give the illusion of ripeness, and hardier skins for a longer shelf life Certainly not for flavour. Moving down further still, consider Les Fontanelles Vin de Pays d'Oc 1998, Merlot-Syrah (Waitrose, pounds 3.99), succulent and sweet from the Merlot, touched with spice from the Syrah.But if you're looking for something to accompany a mastodon-sized chocolate egg filled with genetically modified marshmallows, I'm afraid you're on your own.. Just in case, here are some ideas for a trad lamb lunch with roast potatoes, or just about any meal event later than 10.30am.First, Argentinian Balbi Barbaro 1997, Mendoza (Safeway, pounds 9.99). This is a massive wine, strong and pungent with ultra-ripe blackberry flavour, nice oak sweetness, and with generous ripe tannins.

It will love lamb, roasted with garlic and rosemary or braised in stock with tomatoes.Moving down in price, the same meal could happily be served with Barbera D'Asti 1997, Tabarin Icardi (Oddbins, pounds 5.99), with appropriately tart fruit and a peppery accent. All four cost pounds 1.69 for 500ml.If you're a grape fiend, you'd better have something resting at home in preparation for sacrifice: wine doesn't like to travel too soon before it goes to work. This would be a better brew to carry on into the meal if you like something grainy with your Sunday lunch. The richer 1798 Revolution Ale is made with roast barley and crystal malt, producing the most magnificent rubicund fullness (hold it up against a bright light); rich sweetness with a saline touch, perhaps from the Irish moss used in brewing, and a hoppy finish. This is a really wonderful ale, worth queuing up for.Finally, Beckett's Gold Dublin Beer, similar in flavour to 1798 but somewhat lighter in every respect, including colour, and with more sharpness on the palate and more sweetness on the finish.

This is liquid bread, with fine bubbles and smoothness in the mouth, minimal hop sharpness, clean and utterly winning. This relatively new company (established 1996) is already making some really stunning things, including the fabulous D'Arcy's 1740 Craft Brewed Dublin Stout, voted best stout at the 1998 Stockholm Beer Festival.I think stout's a little heavy for egg-hunt watching, so I'm more inclined to sip on Maeve's Crystal Wheat Beer. It scooped a brace of medals (including supreme champion) in the beer and cider competition at the International Food Exhibition in February. It has a lovely light amber colour and good depth of malty flavour, but a refreshing zing in the mouth. Lager for grown ups, not louts, despite a hefty 6.6 per cent alcohol. It costs pounds 1.29 for 33cl at Asda, and pounds 1.39 at Safeway (from 18 April) and is worth it.Serious beer lovers should hightail it to Oddbins for four guest beers from the Dublin Brewing Company. I don't know about oriental brewing traditions, but I do know a fresh, clean lager when I taste one and, with 4.7 per cent alcohol, that's what you get.For something more serious, I urge you to try Peroni Gran Reserva, a double-malted premium lager from Italy.

But the brewers disagree, and just keep adding to the supply. What's more, some of the good new additions come from places you would hardly regard as likely sources of tip-top beer.For example, Shanghai Imported Beer (Asda, 355ml, 99p), made in China by Foster's International and combining "oriental brewing traditions from Twenties Shanghai and modern technical innovation". IT'S EASTER Sunday, and I assume you're contemplating the prospect of some serious relaxing with family and/or friends. But is there enough to drink, or will you have to rush out and replenish supplies while the lamb is cooking and the Easter eggs are being secreted in the garden? For me, today begins with the children's Easter-egg hunt, which I'll observe with either a cup of coffee or a bottle of beer (depending on how early the egg hunt starts). The number of beers on the market just seems to keep on growing, even though it's arguable that we already have quite enough. Farinata, I reckoned, is one thing he would not have eaten.Wrong. He apparently loved the stuff so much on his last trip to Liguria that he lugged two incredibly heavy farinata pans back to America.Omigod, America Farinata burgers, anyone?. Dating from pre-Roman times, it is traditionally cooked in a special wrought- iron baking dish.The reason so many of these local dishes are not known outside the area is because of the relative isolation of the Ligurian coastline, fringed by the sea, and hemmed in by steep mountain sides.Feeling proud of myself for unearthing one of the last bastions of real regional cooking, I found myself boasting across a table to the New York food critic and author Jeffrey Steingarten, self-billed as the man who ate everything.

McDonald's now rules Rome and the queues outside the KFC in Beijing are longer than those outside the venerable Qianmen Quanjude Peking Duck restaurant.So testaroli has become a symbol for me, a shield held high against the onset of the global kitchen.Another weapon in my armoury is the memory of Uncle Mario's farinata, a flat, chickpea flour tart, flavoured with olive oil and pepper and oven- baked until crisp and golden outside, and meltingly soft inside. There is no Testaroli Haven, Planet Testaroli or Testaroli King.You will barely find it in an Italian food reference library. It doesn't rate a single mention in Carluccio's Italian Food, and is nowhere to be found in Anna Del Conte's marvellously comprehensive Gastronomy of Italy.We live in a world where slow-cooked salmon with porcini risotto and black pudding appear on the one plate, and where it's considered OK to serve harissa-spiced poussin on Chinese cabbage with a mirin-infused jus.The most popular restaurant in Shanghai is German In Taipei, they're all eating Italian pizza. There are no testaroli bars in Venice Beach; and no testaroli- to-go corners in our local supermarkets. Uncle Mario dresses it in the famous Ligurian pesto, made from his sweet, home- grown basil.What makes testaroli even more delicious is the realisation that there is practically nowhere else in the world you can eat it.