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The problem with rogue states, as George Bush has certainly learned by now, is that they seldom obey orders. The clue might lie in the word "rogue." So when Gill Partington looks down at the skillet and sees that her Iranian omelette is behaving in an infuriating manner, she's hardly surprised.

"I'm never making an omelette again in public," she says. It really is insolent, this omelette - a little more homophobic and hirsute and it could be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The thing has fallen into three pieces in the pan, but as Ms. Partington pokes the fragments with her spatula, she brightens. "Actually, look at it. It's a map of the Axis of Evil. It's not as bad as we thought - or maybe it's much worse."

Oh, it could have been worse all right - we could be making Dog Stew or Sheep Testicles or Tongue of the Judge or one of the other recipes contained in her new book, The Axis of Evil Cookbook. Even the enemies of America have to eat, and they eat quite well, judging by the recipes that Ms. Partington has collected from Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria and Cuba (while the first three are traditionally considered the "Axis of Evil" countries denounced by the U.S. President in a speech in 2002, the final three were added later by the State Department. Ms. Partington calls them "The Axis of Somewhat Evil.")

When I invited Ms. Partington over to prepare a luncheon of mass destruction, I was hoping she might suggest Vaca Frita, or Fried Cow, one of my favourite Cuban dishes. Alas, she's a vegetarian, although she began eating fish while completing her PhD thesis on the dissemination of conspiracy theories.

And yes, that did help her in writing the cookbook, an endeavour she'd never attempted before. Academic articles, yes. But kimchi? A little less familiar.

I ask her if a fish-eating herbivore is what's called "pescatarian."

"I think that's what's called being a hypocrite," she says.

She's only tested the vegetarian recipes, so if you make the sheep's testicles and they taste slightly off, feel free to drop her a line.

So with meat off the menu and fish clearly a touchy subject, we're forced into the world of legumes. A good thing that most of America's enemies eat a bean- and grain-rich diet, then. They'd surely outlive their Denny's-scarfing rivals, if not for the diseases and suicide bombings and food shortages and such.

Deprivation provides an unlikely source for the black humour in Ms. Partington's book, which is as much a piece of satire as it is a cookbook. If we were making the above-mentioned Fried Cow, for example, we'd need to follow the Cuban example and smash the beef with a mallet. "But then they have a lot of pent-up aggression," she writes, "what with the shortages."

Saddam Hussein, she notes, loved eating gazelles that were reared for him on a diet of cardamom. (He would occasionally poison enemies during family barbecues, as well.) After being captured, Mr. Hussein was known to wolf down family-sized bags of Doritos in 10 minutes. "And in an irony that surely even George Bush would grasp, the former scourge of America then spent his last days eating hamburgers and fries," Ms. Partington writes.

My kitchen contains no gazelles or cardamom, and even less poison.

Tongue of the Judge, an Iraqi dish of fried aubergine topped with ground lamb and tomato, is also out. Instead, we've decided to make two vegetarian dishes: a Persian omelette (Persia being the former name of Iran, of course) and a pineapple-and-avocado salad much loved in Cuba.

"I'd never done a cookery book before - I wasn't even much of a cook," says Ms. Partington as she vigorously shreds a bunch of coriander and tosses it into a bowl with a leek, three eggs, two green onions and some cumin and parsley. She seldom measures anything, though when I suggest this makes her the Nigella Lawson of the political satire set, she raises an eyebrow. That look would be enough to send Moammar Gadhafi running for his female bodyguards.

Ms. Partington may not have Cordon Bleu training, but she did have a few other relevant qualities for this project: a questioning political sensibility, an interest in the dissemination of conspiracy theories and a sense of humour.

"That's why I was interested in doing this," she says. "The ridiculousness of the book draws attention to the ridiculousness of the concept in the first place. Why were these three countries arbitrarily grouped together?"

At this point, Ms. Partington's bushy omelette would prompt a profanity tornado from Gordon Ramsay, and I've sliced off the tip of my fingernail and inadvertently added it to the pile of diced onion. Could Dick Cheney be spying on us from a subterranean bunker and sabotaging the process by remote control? We soldier on.

Having never visited any of the Axis of Evil countries, Ms. Partington, an English literature professor by day, relied on research and visits to London's ethnic minority communities. She read books on regional cooking and current affairs, haunted the Syrian and Persian restaurants of Edgware Road, and hung around in specialty food shops asking questions about food preparation and techniques - while trying not to blow her cover as the Julia Child of rogue states.

The hardest recipes to gather were the ones from North Korea. There just aren't that many North Korean tourists hanging around Buckingham Palace, and there's no area of town called Little Pyongyang.

Ms. Partington posted on various websites, looking for authentic North Korean fare, but she admits that in the end many of the recipes are from the South, although the cuisine is very similar anyway. Yes, there is Dog Stew, which is apparently valued for its virility-enhancing qualities. "For vegetarians or those who are just too busy to cook a whole dog," she notes, "Quorn pieces make an acceptable substitute."

Of course, Fido's there for shock value; more familiar to fans of Korean cuisine will be the kimchi, bibimbap and rice-and-prawn soup. She's also prepared for the criticism that it might be a bit cruel to mock the cuisine of a people who are mainly in the news for not having enough to eat.

"The butt of the joke isn't North Koreans," she says. "The butt of the joke is Kim Jong-il and leaders like him, with their lavish lifestyles. He's importing delicacies from all around the world while his people are eating rice with bootlaces."

Researching The Axis of Evil Cookbook made Ms. Partington "even angrier" and more politically aware than before she'd set out. It appears, at the end of our cooking session, that some of her anger may have been taken out on the rebellious Persian omelette, which slides out of the skillet in three golden chunks.

It might not look like much, but it is quite tasty - certainly tastier than my Cuban salad garnished with duxelles of fingernail. In her book, America - or precisely, its current government - is the focus of scorn. Does she know that it was a Canadian, David Frum, who was at least partly responsible for the phrase Axis of Evil?

"You Canadians," she says. "You really do have a dark side."

*****

Tongue of the Judge (from Iraq)

"This doesn't really involve a judge's tongue," Gill Partington writes. "That would be disgusting and probably illegal."

What you need

2 onions, chopped

2 tomatoes, chopped

3 tablespoons tomato purée

1 teaspoon turmeric

2 large eggplants

1 pound minced beef or lamb

What you do

Make the sauce: Sauté one chopped onion, then add the tomatoes, tomato purée and turmeric. Add a mugful of water, season and simmer for 20 minutes.

Chop the stalk and bottom from the eggplants and cut lengthwise into slices about ¼-inch thick. Fry the slices quickly in oil so they're browned but not too soggy.

Make the stuffing by mixing the minced meat and the other chopped onion. Season it and form into little sausages. Roll each of the sausages up in an eggplant slice and lay them on a baking dish.

Pour over the tomato sauce and stick the dish in a medium-hot oven for 40 minutes, or until the sauce is bubbling.

Excerpted from The Axis of Evil Cookbook by Gill Partington, published by Saqi, http://www.saqibooks.com

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