WhatIF BamNut and Pumpkin Noodles - Cheeky Curry product reviews

I was in Uni during the 90's, a time when many students were living on very tight budgets even while others were hitting the headlines with monster drunken parties that shut down entire streets for weeks. No stranger to a life of 2-minute noodles and whatever else your meagre budget could extend to, to add flavour. Usually frozen veggies or a budget bag of deli meat scraps from the cutter.

So, I was curious to see how such an iconic staple of my youth could be elevated by changing a few ingredients. It was worth digging through my old notebooks to find recipes that I would be able to use as a good benchmark to measure against. Despite the curry flavour sachets, I was feeling in a more Italian mood, so opted to use the noodles in place of fettuccini in a pork meatball and Napoli sauce.

Preparing the noodles was just as simple as the cheap-n-nasties, though it took a couple of minutes longer because I used a slightly lower heat setting to give me time to cook the meatballs and sauce in time to meet the noodles for the last couple of minutes of cooking time together. I retained the supplied flavour sachets for later use.

To say these came out well would be an understatement. They held together as you would expect from a quality noodle or pasta, had a delightful texture with enough firmness that you know you bit something, but still soft enough to part without any struggle leading to sauce-laden noodles swinging from your chin, redecorating things nearby. Having tried a couple of noodles during the cooking process, to assess their tenderness, I can say the flavour of the bare noodle was mild and surprisingly, nothing really of much note. Exactly as you would expect from an ungarnished noodle or piece of pasta. For me, that is a huge plus right there - it's a known-quantity which makes it easy for me to figure out good uses.

Naturally, I also tried the noodles as per the directions, flavour sachets and all. With nothing else to change the flavour, there was a nice curry note - which for me was quite mild, but others may not agree - and a soft glow that hints at the deeper layers of flavour. The next batch I try, I will double-down on the flavour by adding in the sachets not used in my Italian experiment as I think that should boost the subtler notes for me.

Though this may seem, at first glance, to be an upmarket posh 2-minute noodle pack, there are fundamental differences that explain the price tag. For a start, a good chunk of the flour used to make these comes not from wheat, but from the Bambara Nut - an understated African legume that is rapidly becoming the next big revelation in sustainable, renewable food crops. There is some wheat flour used, so the noodles are not gluten-free, as they would be if it was just the BamNut flour, but the reduction will be of help to those who are transitioning to a GF diet. Another factor is, of course, that it uses better-grade ingredients, and offers some unusual combinations in the range.

Overall, as with all new things, the price tag is a little higher than ideal - partly due to the rules of "economy of scale" and partly due to everything costing more anyway. You can pay less for worse or more for better, and if you are aiming for the 'better' end of the scale then these are the noodles you are looking for.