A friend texts me on the morning of the dinner party to remind me that his wife is vegetarian. I groan. Will she eat fish? No, he says, but she’ll have whatever is on the side and we can eat the real food. I can’t resist the challenge, though, so I tear up the shopping list and start grubbing around in the cupboard and fridge for the makings of a vegetable stock.

Unlike some foodies, I don’t despise vegetarians. I do feel sorry for them — what a waste of an eating life. And I do think it’s naughty to lie to them, as many cooks do.

That’s not hard. After all, who’s to know that the tomato sauce was beefed up with a few chopped anchovies? That there was chicken stock in the minestrone? Vegetarians are mild people: they are hardly going to put down their spoon and challenge you.

What I object to is how they bang on about it. Discussing what sort of vegetarian — vegan, fruitarian, nutter — you are is as tedious as the theological debates of the early Christian sects. There is no interesting reason for becoming a vegetarian; no moral epiphany or animal-welfare revelation that will grip me. Clearly you can’t open the gates on a billion domesticated pigs, chickens and cows and send them back to the wild: the answer is to farm meat humanely and pay a price that that will guarantee respect for them.

This week the Belgian city of Ghent announced that it was having a non-compulsory vegetarian day once a week, which may reduce the greenhouse gases emitted by animal production a smidgin. But the burghers of Ghent would have had much more impact on the planet’s health if they had announced that they were all going to have one less child. I don’t have much truck, either, with the argument that if we all ate only greens and grains we could feed the planet: half the people of southern India are vegetarian by credo, yet the country has appalling rates of malnutrition among children.

Lapsarianism — giving up being vegetarian — is a more interesting topic. I once helped with the menu for a friend who had decided to have a grand coming-out feast to celebrate her new carnivorousness. We planned foie gras terrines, venison carpaccio and daube of beef, spiced pork crackling and the finest bresaola. But in the end she settled for bacon sandwiches. They were the cause of her apostasy: after a decade, she had just missed them too much.

My wife was a vegetarian for nine years — before we met, of course — and her story about why she tore up her membership card is the best I know. She was working in northern Kenya during the drought of 1992, distributing aid food. After a month, a Samburu elder announced a meal to say thank you to the visitors. Before she could intervene, he had killed one of the tribe’s few remaining goats. “They skinned it and boiled it for a long time. It was disgusting and very humbling and I had to eat it — how could I explain to the guy that I had to refuse his incredible generosity because I had ethical problems with eating meat?” The goat’s severed head sat on a low branch and watched while she ate. Now she likes her steak medium rare.

Gordon Ramsay said recently that if one of his daughters married a vegetarian, he would never forgive her — prompting a pained response from Sir Paul McCartney, who boasts that his daughter was vegan at four years old. That, of course, is one of the chief problems with vegetarianism: ever since the founding of the Vegetarian Society in Britain in 1847, the “movement” has been characterised by sanctimony and humourless virtuousness. George Bernard Shaw — “a man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses” — and Bart Simpson’s sister Lisa are archetypes. Vegetarians will tell you that meat-eaters are essentially violent: mention the most famous massmurdering vegetarian of the 20th century (German, had a toothbrush moustache) and they get awfully cross.

But in other cultures vegetarianism is less about politics, more about taste and pleasure. I was once sent to Madras to learn to cook and eat the vegetarian diet of Tamil Nadu for a week. It was a revelation. Glorious vegetable stews full of spice and texture, with dosa and idli pancakes; crisp-chewy bhajis dipped in coriander chutney. Ingredients such as coconut, asafoetida and tamarind add the punch that you might get from meat. I was perfectly happy — my only regret was the lack of beer to wash it down with.

So, that vegetarian dinner party. Vegetable stock will work if you use lots of herbs and meaty, strong-tasting veg such as parsnips and celery. Keep the skin on the onions. Dried mushrooms help. If you want it really pungent, put in a dose of soy sauce. With the stock simmering, I fried sweet organic carrots in olive oil until they were brown at the edges, added roasted cumin, coriander and chilli, put in half the stock, and whizzed it all up as carrot soup. Dairyvores can have a dollop of crème fraîche in the bowl. It worked: in fact, to paraphrase the margarine ad, they couldn’t believe it wasn’t meat.

The rest of the stock went into an asparagus and pea risotto — my vegetarian guest ate cheese, thank goodness. Parmesan has the highest glutamate content of anything in your cupboards except Marmite, so drab flavour is not an issue. And, of course, risotto’s tang is based partly on the alcohol you add: use vermouth to give it an especially satisfying boost.

We do eat too much meat, damaging both our health and our appreciation of it as a food. Michael Pollan, the American food policy writer, has a good dictum for your kitchen wall: “Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.” I wouldn’t waste away as a vegetarian. The best bit, though, would be the lapses: boy, would I enjoy them.

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