The people’s baker
Anna King Shahab chats to Allyson Gofton about how the landscape of food writing and home cooking has changed and continues to change, and gets some insider tips on some of the baking basics that can ruin a good recipe. Some recipes call for fresh eggs, d
When Allyson Gofton picks up my FaceTime call, she’s surrounded by boxes. She and her family recently shifted from Auckland to Cambridge and, with equipment nagging to be unpacked, and a new, unfamiliar kitchen she describes as ‘‘form over function’’, she’s very much not living the food writer dream. The tins are not filled.
‘‘My 16-year-old son headed off to French immersion camp today and I didn’t see the notice asking for home baking and a packed lunch until late last night.
‘‘So first thing this morning, it was straight to Countdown to buy a banana cake and things for the lunchbox.’’
Gofton says she felt a flush of shame – a homecooking queen packing her son off with a bought cake? But her son Jean-Luc wasn’t fazed.
‘‘I’ll just fit in with everyone else with this,’’ he told his mum.
It makes sense Gofton would readily admit to buying cheap supermarket cake. She’s not a food snob.
Despite enjoying the trappings of a well-to-do life, with children at private schools and the years the family spent living in France, Gofton has always been conscious that her brand sits firmly in the bosom of middle New Zealand.
‘‘When you’ve been Allyson Gofton from Food in a Minute for 13 years, you don’t start trying to be something too different,’’ she says.
So it is then that the recipes in her new book, The Baker’s Companion, call for vanilla essence or extract – the cheap vanilla knock-off dismissed by many food writers in favour of the more expensive vanilla pod extractions.
Gofton is equally dismissive of the idea that organic eggs or a particular brand of sea salt will make for better baking.
‘‘You might notice the difference if you’re having an egg for breakfast, but when you’re baking – not one bit.’’
It’s not that Gofton doesn’t believe in quality over quantity, she’s just realistic about what’s achievable for most people.
‘‘What I think is most important is that you eat healthfully and nourish yourself and your family,’’ she says. ‘‘[And] that in our world we take consideration as to how well that food was raised or grown.
‘‘Have a mindful presence,’’ she says. ‘‘Do you need Zimbabwean snow peas? No, you don’t. If you use frozen chopped onion to make a bolognese, good for you. The important thing is you’re making the bolognese in the first place.’’
She doesn’t begrudge meal kits because they encourage people to cook. In fact, she wishes
Food in a Minute had gone down that path.
The Baker’s Companion is the third iteration of Gofton’s The Great Baking Book, which first came out 25 years ago.
Gofton has written her latest offering ‘‘not for my generation, but for parents and grandparents to give to their children and grandchildren’’. Many of the recipes are old favourites. Basic questions from her 23-year-old assistant on the book made Gofton realise that basic cooking skills that were once assumed – how to beat an egg, say – needed to be explained more clearly these days.
If anyone is up for the job of helping the next generations to easily succeed in the kitchen, it’s Gofton.
She cut her teeth in the test kitchen of
New Zealand Woman’s Weekly in its heyday.
‘‘There were five cooks from different backgrounds – cordon bleu, army and so on.’’
As research, these workers chewed through cooking manuals and vast books with no photography that were written like technical guides. The Weekly cooks thoroughly understood the chemistry at work in the kitchen, especially in baking.
This sense of unfrilly integrity has stayed with Gofton. She wants to ensure that if you’ve bought butter – expensive as it now is – it won’t be wasted on some vague recipe seemingly out to trip you up. Where the eggs are paramount to the ending, such as in a meringue or pav, then yes. As eggs age they get softer and are unable to hold the sugar, which can weep out the edges. Firstly, don’t use the butter spreads. They’re blended with oil. And don’t try to melt butter as a big block.
I chop butter into pieces and pop it in the microwave at 50 per cent for a brief time.
Or if you’re creaming butter and sugar, you can put your sugar and diced butter in a bowl, then put it in the oven for a short time with the door open.
Many people think they can just start a recipe with melted butter, but melted butter acts as an oil and won’t cream with sugar.