I don’t have guilty pleasures. I love eating all sorts of different things. It’s true that some of those things are relatively high in fat, sugar or salt, but I never feel guilty for eating them because I get so much joy out of it. And of course there’s another side to this equation, a golden rule that has subconsciously managed my relationship with food my entire life: no food is ‘bad’ food, it’s just how you eat it.

Enter sesame prawn toasts: cheap white sliced bread, topped with a savoury prawn mixture, deep fried until golden and crisp. It reads like a nutritional nightmare. But I adore them, because every single crunchy and juicy bite hits the proverbial spot and lights up the pleasure centres in my brain. And importantly, I’m not eating sesame prawn toasts every night.

In fact, the last time I had these before making this video was well over a year ago. In that sense I do see them as a treat, but never a treat that I should feel guilty for eating! It’s actually quite the opposite: delicious stuff like sesame prawn toast, Korean fried chicken, doughnuts, and triple-cooked chips make me feel very happy. They pop up like rare little bursts of sunshine and colour amongst the vegetables, grains and proteins of everyday eating. What’s not to love?

And here’s another secret to really enjoying these so-called ‘naughty’ foods: make them yourself. That way you have executive control over what goes in, which in itself must surely be better by virtue of eliminating the artificial flavours, colours, preservatives and lower-quality ingredients that by necessity end up in mass-produced and processed food.

Meeting up with Amy this week to make our homemade sesame prawn toasts came at the perfect time for me. I’d been nursing a persistent cold and feeling quite unsettled after moving into a new place (boxes *everywhere*). This combination left me feeling pretty run down. Without making it too deep and meaningful, I really believe that great, tasty food has healing properties. In the most basic way, it can warm us from the inside out, put smiles on our faces and elicit deep sighs of satisfaction. That’s what sesame prawn toast does for me. For you it could be your mum’s lasagne, sausage and mash, or even just a generous blob of crunchy peanut butter on a bagel.

With all that said, here’s our recipe for sesame prawn toast. They’re very quick to make with just a few ingredients, and you don’t need a deep fryer to produce a superior crisp on the toasts. You can also cook them in the oven from frozen: just make up the toasts then freeze in a single layer, then brush some vegetable oil on the bottoms and cook at 200 degrees celsius for 10-15 minutes, until they’re nice and golden underneath.