It’s 3.20pm on a Tuesday, and on the other end of the line, the esteemed food writer and author Bee Wilson is clacking her kitchen tongs so I can hear them. They’re called Happy Hands, she tells me, because they look like hands and “clap” pleasingly, and I can’t help but smile at the sound coming down the phone. “They are stainless steel, from the 1940s. They’re designed for salad, but my friend Katy, who told me about them, used them for everything.” For Katy, and now Wilson herself, Happy Hands make cooking feel fun again.

Like Wilson, Katy cooked as part of her job, but, like most people, she had days when she didn’t enjoy cooking. That’s a feeling with which food people are surprisingly familiar but over the years they’ve found ways of falling back in love with the process.

For some, it is a great piece of kit. “A bad workman blames his tools, but sometimes the tools really are bad,” Wilson says. “Cooking can feel laborious, and that is partly to do with our busy lives.” But, occasionally, the knife is blunt or the pan isn’t distributing heat evenly. “That feeling of something being effortless under your hands – it gives you power and creativity – and when you can access those as a cook, anything is possible,” says Wilson. (Her former mother-in-law’s tuna salad with anchovy dressing is pictured top.)

Her most recent book, The Heart-Shaped Tin, explores the role kitchen objects play in our emotional lives – but practicality and emotion go hand-in-hand when cooking. For Katy, those Happy Hands, which feature in Wilson’s book, are indelibly connected to her mum, because she used them when they made doughnuts together, but they are also versatile and durable. Similarly, I think of a friend every time I juice a lime in the FreshForce lime juicer he gave me, but I also love its pleasing efficiency.

For others, it’s an ingredient or dish that, either in its familiarity or its novelty, makes cooking great. When Feast columnist Meera Sodha fell out of love with cooking a few years ago, she found solace in eggs: “There is no barrier to entry,” she says. “Anyone can crack an egg, but they are also magic in the different ways they transform.” The way an egg can so easily become the basis of dishes as contrasting as Sodha’s Thai fried egg salad and her kimchi and cheddar okonomiyaki feels like sorcery – and who doesn’t want to feel like a wizard in the kitchen?

For Sodha, the same is true of lentils: “They sit there in the cupboard, dusty and dull, then you pour them into a pan and they transform into something delicious” – such as her Malaysian dal, which was one of the first dishes she cooked when she was starting to love cooking again.

As obvious as it sounds, knowing what you want to eat is one of the best foundations for enjoyment. For that, you need to stop scrolling. “Instagram feels like an efficient way to be inspired, but it never is, because there are too many things,” Sodha observes. Food writer Noor Murad, author of Lugma, has experienced a similar kind of burnout, and puts it more strongly: “Social media is a monster. When we are consuming food photos and videos, we are not residing in our bodies, losing connection with our gut and appetite.”

To reconnect, she recommends going back to the food you grew up with, and cooking for your physical and emotional self. For Murad, that means rice, which might be a slightly more complex Gulf-style recipe or even a simple, buttery pilaf. “I think it’s the act of cooking rice – the movement. It’s so engrained in me, the steps of soaking, draining, simmering. I make rice whenever I have an identity crisis around food.”

That doesn’t mean inspiration cannot be found outside oneself. On the contrary, Sodha, Murad and Wilson all swear by the magic of cookbooks. “There is something about a printed recipe,” Murad says. “It centres you in yourself and in the moment of cooking, and encourages you to trust your instincts, rather than thinking, ‘Why doesn’t mine look like that?’”

Sodha adds: “You just need a starting point.” That may be as easy as flipping through a cookbook or as simple as checking in with a friend. “I always ask my friend [food writer and cook] Ben Benton what he’s eating, and his recipes feature in several of my books.” Just looking at his ben ben noodles and his chilli-braised aubergine and celery makes me want to get cooking.

“It’s about re-enchantment, isn’t it?” says Wilson. “Accessing that beautiful, playful space, which is what cooking should be.” Sometimes, that’s something sophisticated and slow, such as her ratatouille, which allows anticipation to build with the aromas, but more often than not enchantment lies in something as simple as “a pancake – that always makes you feel like a child”. Or in a pair of Happy Hands kitchen tongs, merrily clapping away.

Open sesame | I am so obsessed with tahini that I sent my brother Meera Sodha’s recipe for tahini tiramisu, momentarily forgetting how puritanical he has become since he moved to Rome. He won’t be making it, but I shall, as well as Anna Jones’s tomato tahini cassoulet from her book Easy Wins, which I cook at least twice a week when tomatoes are in season.

Definitely something | I love food, and I love fiction, so food scenes in fiction are my nirvana. Lauren Bravo’s novel Probably Nothing was, therefore, everything. Funny, heartwarming and replete with food – as character-revealing, as metaphor, as narrative and delight – it opens in a queue for a small plates restaurant in Soho, where the protagonist finds out that the man she’s been dating has died. And eats the confit potatoes, anyway.

Sea change | It’s easy to be cynical about London’s Borough Market, but there are some treasures that remind you why it has been an institution for centuries. Applebee’s is one. It started 25 years ago as a fishmonger, has been family-run ever since, and reopened earlier this year as a seafood restaurant with a banging menu sourced from day boats in Devon and Cornwall. The eponymous (and delightful) Jack Applebee runs it now, and is reason enough to go; the gilda martini, equipped with olives, anchovies and a piquillo pepper, is another.

Winsome, Manchester | ​T​his gem brings refined and generous modern British cuisine to Manchester. Playful yet polished, it serves towering yorkshire puddings, nostalgic desserts and expertly crafted dishes, such as Creedy Carver duck with Sunday roast trimmings. ​T​here is a welcoming, confident atmosphere ​at this classy, inviting, and indulgent​ spot. ​Read the full review.