IN DEFENCE OF...

We regularly offer chefs the chance to stand up for a much-maligned food. Here, three of our favourite writers fight the good fight for their personal top picks

CHICKEN AND MUSHROOM POT NOODLE JIMI FAMUREWA

Age may signal more intense hangovers but it also, helpfully, brings a better diagnostic understanding of what’s needed to combat them. Some thud loud and hard but can be quelled with bacon and Anadin Extra; others, I find, need to be drawn out of the system with something spicy. There are certain lurching, nauseous ones where anything that isn’t lying very, very still is ill-advised.

And then, for me, there is a strange, specific category of hangover that calls for a dish that I wouldn’t dream of eating in any other context. Suddenly, I will realise that nothing else will do but to listen to my body. And the thing that my body will invariably be crying out for is a Chicken & Mushroom Pot Noodle. That grubby, steaming broth of additives and bad-old-days culinary nostalgia that is also, in my opinion, just about the most consistently effective, slyly magical and unfairly maligned convenience food in the history of the world.

I do not need to tell you that not everyone shares this view. From the moment Pot Noodle first emerged in the late 1970s right through to its 1990s heyday and beyond, it has carried with it the whiff of shame, unhealthiness and the thwarted degeneracy of, say, a student halls kitchenette or someone spray-washing with Lynx on the third day of a festival. This, after all, is the product that proudly branded itself ‘the slag of all snacks’ in a series of contentious, early-2000s adverts. Nobody chooses a nest of freeze-dried noodles that you ‘cook’ with boiling water if they have a better option; the dusty rattle of a Bombay Bad Boy landing in a supermarket basket may well be the precise sound of gastronomic defeat.

And yet, I think to focus solely on a Pot Noodle’s junky, base attributes is to somewhat misunderstand it. Yes, a large part of the abominable appeal is the hefty whack of MSG, an intense but hollow calorific hit, and a sauce that practically amounts to a liquefied packet of crisps. But beyond that there is the mystic alchemy and ritual of it. To prepare one now is to feel the surge of multiple Proustian triggers firing at once; the half-buried little sachet of soy sauce, the squint and stoop to locate the ‘fill-line’, the muscle memory of using a fork to dunk, stir and twizzle noodles that are somehow almost always still slightly crunchy.

What’s more, when it comes to the actual intricacies of a chicken and mushroom — the only flavour that matters — there is, well, if not quite sophistication then at least unexpected subtlety and subversiveness. Those little snipped chives. The steamed kernels of sweetcorn. Dinky rehydrated mushrooms and wrinkled pieces of veggie soy protein. (That Pot Noodle was long promoting stealthy vegetarianism among unwitting, meat-loving consumers is both impressive and quite funny.) There is something both miraculous and quaintly, rubbishly British about them. To eat one is to devour a piece of the past and the space-age future all at once. And, well, as you slurp at the dregs of that sauce from an upended pot, you may find yourself almost grateful for the hangover, and the burning, familiar urge that led you there.

PUDDING AT LUNCHTIME RAVEN SMITH

“Pudding-less meals are unfinished symphonies. ‘Titanic’ before the iceberg. ‘The Sixth Sense’ psychologist before he finds out he’s dead, too”

I love a sneaky lunch meeting as much as the next guy. I like booking and I like RSVPing. I like getting seated and I like little coat hooks. I care if I’m near the toilet, but I don’t mind the kitchen. I like all the fuss over the menu, the worry you ordered wrong. But after the small talk and business chat, after the starters and the mains, nothing annoys me more than the pudding menu being offered and people hesitating. People ‘being careful’. People saying, ‘I really shouldn’t’.

People get weird about pudding at lunch; it feels too naughty, gauche, as if the calories should be saved until after supper. This ethos makes me want to glue my hand to a Van Gogh in protest. I need you all to know that lunch itself is a vehicle for pudding, nothing but an elongated appetite whetting, the destination a compassionately cloying velveteen custard. Pudding-less meals are unfinished symphonies. Titanic before the iceberg. The Sixth Sense psychologist before he finds out he’s dead, too. Lunch isn’t over until someone has been sponged, set or souffléd. Does nobody realise that the naughtiness compounds the deliciousness? And you’ll sleep better when somebody brûlées your crème. You’ll feel closer to your kids tonight if you’ve had a little crumble.

Having a sweet tooth is seen as a bit un-grown-up, a bit babyish, a bit on the verge of a tantrum. But God blessed me with the palette of a sugarholic nine-year-old well into adulthood (incidentally my favourite flavour profile is gummy, but you sadly rarely get it served on a plate). I’m committed to Hungry Caterpillar-ing my way through London’s best puds. Café Cecilia’s deep-fried bread and butter pudding with cold custard is orgasmic, and I’m partial to two testes of profiterole at Quo Vadis. St John’s commitment to noseto-tail should always see you finishing up on a spotted dick.

So when that pudding menu is offered, I don’t want to see a question mark or an unsure shrug. I don’t want to hear you’re being careful. Hearing your forecast for Q1 was nice, but stop lying to yourself, pudding is the reason we’re all here. Pudding is the reason I left my desk. Pudding is the reason this meeting that could have been a Zoom isn’t a Zoom. I did not get the Central line at 12.45 on a weekday to get the bill after the main. I got it to live, laugh, lemon sorbet.

TINNED FRUIT BRE GRAHAM

At my local off-licence, the shelf that gathers the most dust is the one chock-a-block with tinned fruit. Huge, near-litresized tins of Alphonso mango slices sit next to tiny vessels of delicate peaches and — the dustiest of them all — tropical fruit cocktail studded with dubious coloured grapes and maraschino cherries. Each time I diligently restock my favourites, I have to scrub this grey layer from the top of each, but I don’t mind because despite the fact tinned fruit is viewed all too often as a bit dated, to me it’s always special.

I have suspected that my affinity to such canned goods might have something to do with the fact that I’m also in another camp that’s treated with suspicion: defending tinned pineapple on pizza. But I think there’s more to it than that because there are simply so many possibilities.

Did you know that Thai lychees, frozen in ice cube trays and blitzed with lemon and cream, make a sherbet that’s a match made in heaven with a striking shot of vodka? Or that a tin of tart black cherries, simmered, then sandwiched between chocolate sponge cake with coconut crème pâtissière will have you sourcing and savouring them for life?

This time of year I make spiced peaches with perfectly yellow halves spiked with fresh red chilli, cloves, bay and star anise, and poached in their syrup to pair with glazed ham — the smell of which is a highlight of the season. Plus, even the worst of the lot, the cocktail mix, can be saved with lots of ice, a blender and roughly six shots of tequila, that I promise will make you forget any festive family bust-ups.

It’s no wonder I was nicknamed ‘fruit bat’ while growing up in Australia because as you can probably tell, it was all I wanted to eat. Later, when I lived in Singapore, fruit took on a different kind of status, with durian auctions and supermarkets selling pristine Japanese strawberries priced at more than gold.

So, by the time I moved to London at 18, wintertime became a struggle. Over here, when the plums are gone but oranges haven’t yet arrived, I feel a sense of panic. It’s in those long weeks of winter that tinned fruit keeps me company as I refresh Skyscanner and rethink my life choices. Keeping it within reach makes me feel like summer, home and all those good things I want to feel close to aren’t really so far away. Bre Graham’s debut cookbook, ‘Table for Two’ (Dorling Kindersley), is published in January