MY SUPPLIERS often send me a list of their 'specials' of the week, which helps with menu planning. However, there are often items that, although interesting, are unlikely to find their way on to my menus.

This week they included zebra haunches, impala loin and kangaroo medallions. And you can always get springbok haunches and ostrich, which reminds me of the time I was sent a sample of ostrich meat.

I cooked it at home, and told my boys, who were quite young at the time, that it was beef. After they had finished, I told them what it was. Their mum had to confirm this before they could be convinced about what they had just eaten.

When one thinks about foods consumed around the world, it makes what we think of as exotic seem very plain. You could eat a piranha salad in Brazil, for instance, or crocodile kebabs in Kenya, wichity grub soup in Australia and some truly unmentionable specialities in Vietnam.

These foods are not new, although seldom on western menus. I was sent samples of alligator meat (farmed - the only method of production of these rare meats that can be legally imported), when I was chef at a West End restaurant a few years ago.

I came up with some ideas, one of which was served in the bar - an alligator sandwich, a triple decker, a sort of club sandwich. This story made it into one of the evening newspapers, with the comment 'at last you can go into a bar and ask for an alligator sandwich, and make it snappy'.

Now you may wonder what kind of recipe could follow that, but here is an 'unusual recipe' with a not-so-unusual ingredient.

Pumpkin crème brûlée

Serves four

Ingredients

* 3 egg yolks

* 50g caster sugar

* 100g pumpkin purée

* Pinch each of cinnamon, ginger and allspice

* 1/4 tsp vanilla extract

* 50ml double cream

* 2 tbsp demerara sugar

Method

1) Whisk together all but the cream and demerara sugar.

2) Bring the cream to the boil and add, whisking continuously. Return to the pan and cook gently over a low heat, stirring well until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon. Be careful not to allow it to boil.

3) Pour the mixture into individual ramekins and chill in the fridge for three to four hours.

4) Sprinkle the tops evenly with the demerara sugar, and brown with a cook's blow torch, or under a hot grill. Allow to cool and set before serving.