Noodle bar

One of my favourite staples is the noodle. Or, for some reason, since people prefer it in plural – as do I, come to think of it – noodles. It hits the spot when I am feeling particularly empty and is in its own long-winded way as soothing as dahi chawal or mashed potatoes with the requisite dollop of butter is at the end of an over-long and multiply-frazzled day. Perhaps this comes from the one and only time I ate lunch in my school cafeteria in Geneva – it was not bad at all, but violated all norms of my usual apple-and-chocolate midday meal with its balance and completeness. The lunch was simple, nothing too highly flavoured or exotic, nothing to rich or heavy, nothing too remarkable or memorable. It consisted of a breast of roast chicken, petit pois with a little butter and, much to my startlement, no potatoes in any form. Instead, there was pasta – a tangled heap of spaghetti, hot, bathed in butter or olive oil – I did not know enough to differentiate then – and surprisingly delicious.

But pasta was not a new concept to me. I had eaten plenty of it at home and in restaurants whenever I had lived, from the most primitive of macaroni and cheese messes in the school canteen to the more sophisticated Pho in a small Vietnamese café in a side street in Florence to the exceedingly chi-chi version of chicken noodle soup in a ritzy New York hotel. And, just to get off the long-think track, there had been ravioli, cannelloni, fusili and more shapes and formats that I could remember that had travelled happily from my plate to my tummy. But spaghetti, lightly buttered and unsauced, as an alternative to potatoes mashed, fried or otherwise processed, was novel. For me, it worked.

Until I got to a college dorm, pasta in its various avatars was a fairly nutritious concept for my gustatory resume. It was only when I found myself in an environment where food had to be fast and easy and, most of all, cheap, that I learned the virtues of the instant noodle. Ra-men, with its different brands and spellings, came to me as manna from supermarket heaven. Just peel back the foil-plastic lid, pour in hot water, wait a few moments and you have food, my roommate taught me. It was fabulous! Even though, as so many of my more adult mentors and teachers tried to educate me, it had all the dietary value of limp string, it touched that special space in my system that needed not only to be comforted, but also filled with anything that would cushion the aggravation of being a young adult in an alien situation and the cravings of a stomach that wanted to go home.

But as I got older, wiser and more conscious about what was good for me, I started trying out more healthy forms of eating pasta. Today, I prefer the whole-wheat, high-fibre kind, the type that looks a pale-chocolate brown in its wrapper and can cook up to a gritty, nasty, chewy mass if not taken out of its boiling water soon enough. Made just right, it is perfect with my bolognaise sauce, goes nicely with a blob of butter and a few flakes of softened garlic and touches the needy spot with a grating of sharp cheese.

However, I do regress, regrettably too often for my own comfort. One of my secret cravings is fast-cook noodles, flavoured with an over-salty cube of chicken extract (probably synthetic) and smothered in a blanket of grated cheese that melts into a sticky goo. It is horribly calorific, has no discernible dietary health value and does more for that frazzled nerve ending than any elevator muzak ever managed. And, in spite of knowing that it is as bad for me as it can possibly get, I relish every mouthful. And crave more…