When your brain is noodles, you eat noodles by Angela Hui
Guest essay from Writing with the Seasons - August 2024
Welcome to Writing with the Seasons, a collection of writing prompts, ideas and inspiration that follow the rhythms of the natural world as the year unfolds.
This month, we’re sharing guest essays on the theme of recipes to celebrate the Write & Shine Summer Festival—our feast of creativity, with delicious, virtual writing workshops on food, memory and taste.
Our final piece is by Angela Hui, author of ‘TAKEAWAY: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter’. Enjoy! And let us know what you think in the comments!
I have a love-hate relationship with cooking.
There are days when I love the powerful act of tying the apron strings around my waist, like putting on armour before heading into a battle of splashes and splatters. I love the process of tasting and tweaking, trusting my taste buds to guide me toward the desired outcome. I love tag-teaming with my mother when we cook together, seeing her sun-spotted hands—which have been through so much—rolling, folding, and pleating dumplings as we bond, learn from one another, and work side by side as she tells me stories of her childhood in China.
The thing I love most about cooking? Seeing loved ones’ reactions after the first bite of a shared meal, whatever the occasion—happy, sad, celebratory, birthdays, anniversaries, long-overdue catch-ups, or simply just because. Cooking can be a good thing, a life-affirming thing, but sometimes food is a stress before it’s a pleasure—especially when life is too much. Right now, life is too much.
This year feels like it's been stuck on fast-forward, with everyone on a giant hamster wheel spinning at full speed. The overwhelming nature of social media and the depressing news cycle often leaves me crying myself to sleep. I've grown numb to the world's terrors, swiping from cute dog videos to the horrors in Palestine, from a roast chicken recipe to race riots in the UK, and back to more adorable dogs. I want to curl up and wallow in the state of the world. After 6+ hours of screen time, my brain feels like a tangled mess, like noodles accidentally stuck together in a pot.
On days when I can't bear the thought of cooking, feeding myself feels like the least of my worries. Any kind of noodle will do—cheap, expensive, spicy, or salty—as long as it sustains me to keep going.
For as long as I can remember, instant ramen has been my number one depression meal. It’s the simplest, most straightforward meal—requiring little brainpower, even on days when I can’t muster the energy for anything strenuous. I dream of egg noodles that resemble Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger’s dyed-blonde curly hair circa 2007 to 2010. Those perfectly coiled strands unravel around my chopsticks, swimming in the savoury MSG-laden broth. I take comfort in the springy texture of the noodles, the soul-restoring slurping, and the final act of lifting the bowl to my mouth to drink every last drop, which never fails to pull me out of a funk.
The beauty of instant ramen lies in its convenience and versatility. It’s a blank canvas, perfect for using up odds and ends in the back of the fridge. You can customise it with whatever you have on hand. There’s instant ramen for every mood: chicken Nissin Demae for comfort, Shin Ramyun for a satisfying chew, and Baijia A-kuan Sichuan Broad Noodles for those fancier moments.
Roman Empire? This is my ramen empire.
Recipe:
Boil water
Add instant noodles to a pot, pour in boiling water, and cook according to packet instructions (roughly 3-5 minutes, depending on noodle thickness and type of ramen)
If you’re feeling up to it and want to make this more of a balanced meal, I like adding blanched pak choi or choi sum, tofu puffs, seafood sticks, chopped spring onions, a sunny-side up fried egg, and topping it with a healthy heaping of Lao gan ma chili crisp
Angela Hui is an award-winning writer and editor. She was the former food and drink editor at Time Out and lifestyle reporter at HuffPost. Her first non-fiction book TAKEAWAY: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter was BBC Radio 4's book of the week and The Guardian, i News and Waterstones book of the year.
This essay is brought to you by Write & Shine, a programme of morning writing workshops. Summer Festival artwork is by Alice Ferns.