Comfort food can take many forms

There are two types of heartbreak. The romantic kind, the stuff of sad ballads and bad poetry and the sporting kind, which is usually louder, more dramatic, and involves a lot more shouting at the telly.

My wonderful Mr T suffered the latter last Sunday as Cork went down to Tipperary in the All-Ireland final, a match that had promised glory but delivered grief and frustration.

So naturally, as a caring and compassionate wife (and a food writer who’s been known to use home-baked cookies to cope with mild disappointments), I started thinking about how to comfort the poor soul and thought of comfort food. Real comfort food. The kind that doesn’t just fill your belly but gives you the soft, emotional equivalent of a big woolly hug.

Comfort food should do three things. It should be warm (or at least room temperature and slightly melty), it should have a bit of heft to it, and it should never - under any circumstances - ask too much of you. No tweezers, no foam, no deconstructed creations. This is not the time for showing off or ‘elevating’ anything.

I considered making him coconut muffins. He loves coconut, and there’s something cheerful about those golden tops and the way they fill the kitchen with the smell of a halfway exotic holiday we’ll never go on. I could have added some glace cherries to keep with the Cork theme.

Then I thought, maybe fresh-baked bread. Nothing says ‘I love you and I understand your emotional devastation’ like a still-warm loaf, cut thick and slathered with butter that melts into all the craggy bits. Add some gooey cheese and a glass of red wine and you’ve got yourself a holy trinity of edible consolation but Mr T had made his famous brown bread already the day before.

In the end, I did nothing. I watched his grieving face and heard him muttering things like ‘we need to rebuild from the minors’ and ‘Tipperary got every break going’ (or at least I imaged him saying something like that – I stayed out of his way).

As part of a heartfelt therapy session, I eventually sent him off down to the pub to share his theories and grievances with other wounded warriors. Honestly, it was probably for the best. Men like him prefer to wallow in company and shout things they’d never dare say to anyone wearing a whistle. My one request as he headed out the door? ‘Bring me back a packet of Tayto.’ Because at the end of the day, comfort food isn’t always about doing the most.

Sometimes it’s a mug of tea and a crisp sandwich. Sometimes it’s a muffin you meant to bake. Sometimes it’s just knowing there’s a man sitting in a pub ranting about half-forwards while holding a red-blue bag of cheese and onion glory that he’ll bring home to you. Here’s to next year’s All Ireland Final with Cork hopefully bringing the McCarthy Cup home again.