As at the tables of the epicures of the later Roman Empire, new delicacies arrive weekly from all the corners of the world. In the past month miniature lemons, black garlic and a sweeter broccoli have landed in my house.

To think how the British foodie classes thrilled to the arrival, circa 1985, of the sundried tomato! Now it's hard to raise an eyebrow at the latest lark's tongue. And, after the recent isolation of the DNA of the melon , we are promised a torrent of hybrid fruits and vegetables all with desirable melony qualities. Just how much happier will we be?

Garlic first. The people at Black Garlic ("garlic just got better") sent me a box of the stuff, peeled and unpeeled. An American invention, it is made by fermenting garlic for a month: the garlic is mushroom-coloured in its skin and like wizened pieces of black olive when out of it. The biggest garlic fan in our house, my ten-year-old son, spat his clove straight in the bin. "Tastes like liquorice," he said, disgusted.

But I like liquorice and I rather liked black garlic — it is sweet, soft and intriguingly malty. I chopped it up and sprinkled it on a salad of tomatoes, basil and goat's cheese. That worked. And I put half a dozen cloves in a tomato sauce for pasta, which provided a nice bass note to the concoction. The company suggests a "sea bass with a black garlic rub", but massaging fish is not really my sort of thing.

Do you need black garlic in your cupboard? Not desperately, unless the smell of garlic frightens you: the black has no odour at all. But garlic's aggressive tang, you may feel, is half the point of it. Fermented garlic is not "better": it is no more of a substitute for normal garlic than cheese is for milk. And at £1.50 a bulb it's not so cheap. Black Garlic claims — as all new foods must — lots of "health benefits", including double the usual level of antioxidants. But does it deal with vampires?

The South African mini-lemon is aimed at people who believe that progress lies in things getting smaller, a trend that, to most of us, just results in the mobile phone getting lost more easily. M&S has just launched ping-pong-ball sized lemons as useful for drinks mixers — you don't end up with half a dried-up lemon after you've made the G&Ts. But as usual, smaller isn't cheaper: a mini-lemon will cost 25p, against a normal lemon, four times the size, at 35p.

Much more interesting is Bellaverde Sweet Stem, the new broccoli introduced by a Lincolnshire grower last month. Waitrose and Sainsbury's are stocking it. The world is divided between those who like broccoli and who loathe it: apparently about 30 per cent of us possess taste receptors that react to a chemical in the brassica family of vegetables (Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage and broccoli) that makes them taste bitter.

I quite like the slightly rank edge to these vegetables, but researchers have bred the bitterness out of Bellaverde. They say it is sweeter and, of course, so stuffed with "health benefits" it is amazing there is any room in the plant for the green.

I tried it on five children, all of whom quite like broccoli, and the results were mixed. We did a blind taste test against an ordinary organically farmed head of broccoli and they didn't express much of a preference, though three thought the Bellaverde was a little sweeter. The advantage was that for once everyone gobbled up the stalks. Usually with broccoli, my five-year-old agrees to "eat the branches, but not the tree trunks". I couldn't find a broccoli-hating child who would give Bellaverde a go.

The problem is that if you have the wrong taste receptors, you really, really hate broccoli. Even confectionery bribes won't induce brassicaphobic kids to try twice. It still looks like broccoli, you see.But soon, of course, it could look like