Sometimes we pretend we’re ok and we can trick ourselves into thinking this is true, but our appetites cannot lie. I say this as someone who has not been doing a great job of pretending to be ok. Because heartbreak has been showing on my face, rolling down my cheeks, and I’ve been dropping not-so-subtle hints; alluding to random outbursts of crying in public and not being able to pick up a pan or find any excitement to go grocery shopping (a sure sign that something is wrong).
My appetite did not disappear. I fed it dumplings and noodles coated in chilli oil to numb my mouth and my heart, and that worked for a few weeks. Then came a period of time where I definitely felt hunger, but no joy in what I was eating, which to me is about as depressing as not wanting to eat at all. I tried to cook; that didn’t work. I roasted a chicken for a friend’s birthday but it just felt different when it’s not London, not your home, not your pan, not your comfort.
Returning to London meant returning to restaurants. Rotisserie chicken at Royale. Plump spears of asparagus for almost every meal. Crunchy pickled ferments at Little Duck before a pistachio and pecorino pesto that I’ll try and fail to recreate. All of these dishes have been little stitches, repairing the tear of my broken appetite, found in the pit of my stomach. A few homemade meals too. Precisely three (unless you count the daily plates of eggs on toast, usually accompanied by some green leaves and a hefty spoon of Lao Gan Ma chilli crisp). A yellow courgette pasta, slow cooked until the rounds fall apart and melt into the garlic, oil and chilli. A courgette and yoghurt dip, following the same principle but swap pasta for full fat Greek yoghurt, add feta, spring onions and kale. And finally the OG sad pasta, which lived up to its name, made last night, my eyes puffy, my stomach only wanting comfort and salt and oil.
I’m not doing a good job of writing about this brand new feeling, which is why I’ve avoided this newsletter for the past couple of weeks. I have no perspective because I’m inside of it, and I’m trying to eat and cook my way through it, even when I don’t feel like it, because that’s what being an adult is apparently.
Bee Wilson wrote a piece in The Guardian about how comfort food can save the soul. “Comfort food should really be called trauma food,” she writes. “It’s what you cook and eat to remind you you’re alive when you are not entirely sure this is true… When you feel you are falling apart, cooking something familiar can remind you of your own competence.”
I’ve experienced this before – when I felt lost in my own body and didn’t know who I was or what I was doing and why I was doing any of it. I cooked through that pain: the risotto that quite literally picked me up off the floor, or the puttanesca made in the middle of the day because I couldn’t not cook, otherwise I’d fall apart. But I feel silly for considering this heartbreak as serious as those feelings of isolation and loneliness and desperate sadness. It’s inexplicable in a different way to those deeper bouts of anxiety; both felt like they came out of nowhere, both felt like they were out of my control.
Except when I was 25 years old and lying on the floor of my shed unable to move, feeling like I was being weighed down by my own incompetence or self-hatred, I did not know myself. Not truly. I knew versions of myself that I performed or projected or copied from other people. But now? I’m a whole person and I think it was food and cooking that got me to that place. Years of eating and learning and experimenting. If I had experienced this five years ago, I’d be back on the floor, questioning myself – what I’d done wrong, what I could have done better, hating myself for not being enough for that other person. I would have lost my appetite completely.
This isn’t to belittle how I’m feeling now. For weeks it felt like a tear right down the middle, a physical pain, like I was missing something vital. And not even food or cooking could fill that void. But slowly the eggs on toast taste better. The takeaways and the restaurant meals are replaced with actual, real life cooking. The inspiration will come back, and I’ll want to recreate that dish or roast that chicken.
Food can only give you comfort if you allow yourself to be comforted; and the old me didn’t want that. She wanted to punish herself as if she’d done something wrong. But I’d like a bit of comfort now.
Something to keep in your fridge for warmer days when no one wants to be in the kitchen, instead reclining in the park with a good book and half a bottle of wine stashed in your thermos.
A riff on an Ottolenghi classic: simply slice half a big yellow courgette into thin rounds, smash a few garlic cloves and heat a lot of olive oil in a pan on a medium heat. Lower it slightly and add the garlic gloves until they soften but not brown. Throw in a pinch of chilli flakes. Then the courgettes with a big pinch of salt. Let them get coated in the oil, pop a lid on and leave them on a low heat for about 25 minutes. They should start to melt into the oil. Add some chopped kale right at the end then transfer to a big bowl. Add some Greek yoghurt (I used about 1/3 of a large Total 5% pot), stir through and crumble some feta in. Throw in some sliced spring onions. Season to taste. Maybe it’s a dip, maybe it’s something you slather on toast, maybe you leave it in your fridge and tuck into it every time you’re hungry. Goes well with a good old Sauvignon Blanc.
I am looking forward to reading more of your articles, not just for the recipe suggestions, but for your outlook on life.
Your writing, even when it's sad, is all comfort food.