Not cooking from scratch still gets called lazy, conjuring up instant noodles, freezer crumbs and someone chewing in front of a laptop. In reality, most of us are not lazy, just tired. Long days, crowded trains and decision fatigue. By the time the fridge door opens, the idea of cooking a proper meal can sometimes feel miles away.

That shift in how people actually eat has opened up an interesting middle ground, somewhere between scratch cooking and microwave mystery. Food that gets you most of the way there without taking over your evening.

Daniel Humm clearly sees an opportunity. The chef behind three-Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park has recently gone from tasting menus to dinner in a cardboard box.

Riff, created with CPG entrepreneur Mark Ramadan, is a range of shelf-stable pasta and noodle meals. Pasta or noodles, seasoning and a crunchy topping, cooked in one pot in around 20 minutes. But unlike convenience food designed to remove cooking altogether, Riff leaves some of it to you. Cook the box as it comes or add vegetables, herbs, leftover chicken, lemon, whatever happens to be in the fridge.

The name comes from music. A riff gives you something to start with and room to improvise, which is a pretty good description of what happens here.

Center carries that idea onto the packaging. The oversized Riff logo dominates the box, with the dot over the ‘i’ changing colour across the range to match the plate below. Each variety gets its own colour, tying the range together when the boxes sit side by side. The palette was partly inspired by Humm’s watercolour paintings of vegetables in his book Eat More Plants, bringing something of his restaurant world into a very different kind of meal.

The food itself gets plenty of space too. Big plate, big logo, very little getting between you and what you’re having for dinner. It suits the product. Riff gives you the starting point and leaves you to decide how much further you want to take it.

Packaging that mirrors the product itself. Direct, unfussy and built for evenings when ambition is low but appetite is not.

Straight-talking design for anyone who wants to eat well without pretending they’re Nigella.