How to cook using tobacco, for sweet and savoury dishes

I wasn't aware that tobacco could be used as a spice, rather than a smelly leaf that people smoke, until 2006, when I first visited El Celler de Can Roca, a restaurant in Girona, Spain, run by three brothers. Jordi Roca, the pastry chef, is famous for making desserts that taste like perfumes smell - this is much better than it sounds. But probably his best-known creation is called A Trip to Havana, which looks like a burning cigar, complete with ash - again, it's much better than it sounds. I normally dislike cigars, but this dessert was excellent; Roca had infused the flavour of burning tobacco into the ice cream, and it was so vivid, I could almost feel the ash on my tongue.

While tobacco isn't a common spice, I've seen (and tasted it) in sweet and savoury dishes, including chocolate truffles, and in a sauce for pigeon, which contained the bird's blood.

There are different ways to get the tobacco flavour into food. Naturally enough, you can burn it: mix the chopped up tobacco with uncooked rice, rock sugar and aromatics, before placing the ingredients in a wok that's been lined with aluminium foil. Place the food you want to smoke on a rack, cover with the lid and place the wok over a high flame. The food should be pre-cooked before you do this, because smoking it will only add flavour. Let the food smoke over the smouldering ingredients but not for too long, or the flavour will be acrid rather than subtly smoky. If you're preparing a small amount of food, you can use one of the "smoking gun" hand-held smokers.

Another method is to let the tobacco infuse in cream, sugar syrup or alcohol. With cream or sugar syrup, chop the tobacco and add it to the liquid then put the ingredients in a pan and set it over a low flame until the mixture simmers, because heat will help to draw out the tobacco flavour. Pour the liquid through a sieve to strain out the tobacco. Don't heat alcohol, though, because the fumes might ignite. Just put the tobacco in the bottle and let it infuse over time.

Of course, there are health concerns when consuming tobacco. You're not smoking it as a cigar or cigarette, so there's less worry about lung cancer or emphysema. But even as a food, tobacco does contain high amounts of nicotine, which can be poisonous in large doses. With desserts and savoury dishes, though, the amount you're consuming is very small. Still, it's best avoided if you're very young, very old, have health problems or are pregnant.