When the going gets tough, the tough need refined carbs

“Hi there, sorry for the slow response – things have been absolutely manic.” It’s a familiar beginning to an email, and one I have been guilty of using, even when things are not manic at all. At the moment, though, things are. As well as a salvo of deadlines, events and trips, I’m planning a wedding in very little time. I’m eating – I always do – but I’m not always eating properly; and sometimes the effort to think about what “properly” means is overwhelming.

And that’s without having a restaurant to run, kids or elderly parents to care for, builders to manage, books to write or a serious illness to recover from. If I’m struggling, how do chefs and food writers who are grappling with those things feed themselves?

Fortunately, I know a few well enough to ask them, starting with Ravneet Gill, who with her husband, Mattie Taiano, has been building a new restaurant with their young son in tow and chronicling their journey on Substack. “Omelettes,” she says at once. “We’ve been having a lot of them – which is funny, because I hate eggs. Mattie masks them with garam masala, coriander, cumin and chopped green chillies. They’re good if you have nothing in the house.”

Itamar Srulovich describes scrambled eggs on toast as the culinary equivalent of a reset button. “It’s my, ‘OK, let’s take a deep breath’ dish. They are deeply savoury, good for you emotionally and physically. They are grounding,” he concludes, and in times of stress staying grounded makes a difference. It’s why Thomasina Miers always has homemade sourdough in the freezer, so that she always has a solid, nourishing base to build a meal on, no matter what is happening in her life. “I might rub it with garlic and a little olive oil, and have it with whatever seasonal vegetable is in my fridge,” she tells me. “Or if there aren’t any vegetables – and we are talking about chaos here – then there is always bacon in the freezer, or odds and ends of cheese I can melt down for a welsh rarebit.”

Yet eating “properly” doesn’t have to mean homemade – nor does it even have to mean healthy, at least not by today’s standards. “We’re probably keeping the fish and chip shop alive,” Ravneet says. “The builders have them, we smell them and we want them, too.”

Ravinder Bhogal agrees: with builders in her house and a restaurant to run, she finds simple pasta dishes keep her going. “We’re lifting a lot of boxes at the moment, so we need all the carbohydrates we can get,” she says. And if that means something as easy as spaghetti aglio e olio, so be it. When the going gets tough, the tough need refined carbs.

Because, sometimes, you just need to satisfy your cravings. Last year, Rukmini Iyer grappled with breast cancer alongside the birth of her second child and found solace in white basmati rice. “Brown rice tastes so relentlessly virtuous, no matter how much oil and salt I stir through,” she wrote, in homage to the carb that has been there “at any point I’ve needed comfort food”. I love the sound of her mum’s pilau rice (pictured top), and will be whipping that up at the earliest opportunity.

Georgina Hayden has an equally easy way of sating the craving for spice she has when life feels out of control: “I have packet noodles to hand for the quickest five-minute meal. Lots of broccoli. Egg on top. Chilli oil for comfort,” she says – although she has been known to outsource spice to someone else in very busy periods. “I’m a huge fan of Roti King, if I can’t be bothered to cook. I’ll get the full spread.”

Familiar restaurants are like eyes in the storm: havens in which you can satisfy your hunger without cooking, or cleaning up. For me, it’s our local pub – there’s nothing like a glass of wine in a home-from-home when home is madness – followed by Diana Henry’s linguini all’amalfitana, from her book Simple: a recipe that has seen my through heartache, happiness, engagement, ennui and exhaustion. I’ll be cooking it a lot in the coming months.

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Pasta’s greatest hits | Despite serving up some of very best pasta in London (and the bar is high), Officina 00 seems to fly somewhat under the radar. Perhaps that’s because there are no airs, graces, classics-with-a-twist or all-you-can-eat lasagne. They deliver just the greatest hits – pappardelle with beef short rib ragu, pumpkin gnocchi with sage – done exceptionally well.