Saccharine cooking

SIR – I am infuriated by the constant gush of asinine clichés from food critics and pseudo chefs on television.

My eyes roll to high heaven whenever I read or hear them talk of “food cooked with love”. It seems that this four-letter ingredient is now indispensable to the pot and no recipe is complete without it – as distinct from a sprinkling of hate.

Vincent Power

Limerick, Ireland

Bennion says: “There also exists a race of tiny, cheeky, big-footed critters who live among the grass and soil. No, not hobbits – harfoots” (Arts, August 26).

Mr Bennion should read the prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring. There Tolkien states plainly that Harfoots “were the most normal and representative variety of Hobbit, and far the most numerous”, as distinct from the Stoors and Fallohides. Richard Hawkins

Dublin, Ireland