Food’s got to be
BAKE OFF WINNER DAVID ATHERTON TELLS ELLA WALKER ABOUT HIS BREAD-MAKING, MCDONALD’S-FREE CHILDHOOD, AND WHY YOU NEED TO GET KIDS COOKING YOUNG
GREAT British Bake Off 2019 winner David Atherton was “already having a bit of a crazy year” – so throw in the pandemic and “it’s just added to it”.
The Whitby-born health professional was that rare contestant in the feted tent: a calm, collected baker – qualities that have bolstered him during the post-win melee.
“Everything is all new and very exciting, but also you feel very lost and you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing,” he says frankly. “You just want to be able to take the opportunities without burning out, basically.”
It’s a pragmatism that has also served the 37-year-old well during the pandemic. He’s been teaching his partner Nik to make sourdough (“Now I can’t get near the bread!”), crafting (they made a quilt together), cooking and encouraging people to sign up to a symptom tracker. And now, he’s celebrating his debut cookbook – although it might not be what you’d expect from a classic Bake Off winner.
For starters, My First Cook Book is for kids, and second, it’s not a glorification of sugar-spun, candied concoctions. Instead, its bedrock is David’s nutrition background, and his interest in how “people who had an upbringing like myself, where their mum was in the kitchen with them all the time, tend to understand food and diet better”, he explains.
“My mum was very different, it’s funny because she would definitely be called hipster now, but back then she was called ‘hippie’,” he says fondly. “She had five kids and had to feed us all, and cooking from scratch is obviously the cheapest way – and also the healthiest.”
David recalls how they had a small house but a big garden, which was filled with vegetable patches, chickens and an apple orchard: “Food was just one of the things we did. We weren’t allowed to watch TV really,” he continues, “so we had to spend our lives playing with each other and cooking and baking. It was idyllic.”
The most amazing thing, he says, was that his mum whipped up homemade bread for the seven of them. “We never had shop-bought bread – and she saw that as a way of keeping us entertained. She made massive batches twice a week, and as kids we would spend the whole morning playing with bread dough. I’m not sure how much of that got cooked and eaten...”
She didn’t shy away from
Join me, now, as I nip to France with
Domaine la Paleine, Saumur Rouge
(£12.95, online at Tanners Wines). Saumur is in the Loire Valley; the grape in this wine is cabernet franc. I love cabernet franc. I love this wine.
The grapes grow in a biodynamic vineyard before undergoing a natural, wild ferment. This creates a sip which is elegant, fresh, bright with raspberries and nods towards spice
Pinot noir is my favourite grape. This wine is from my favourite place, New
Zealand.
Adnams Central Otago Pinot Noir 2015
(£19.99, Adnams.co.uk) made me feel a little sad. But don’t fret for me, as it also made me very happy indeed. letting them use knives either. “We were allowed to stir pots on the stove, use a knife to cut things, and crack our own eggs – and yes we would get shell in, but [with that attitude], by the age of three you can crack an egg!”
He says he still meets adults today “who can’t crack eggs properly”, and so the idea of My First Cook Book is to get all ages in the kitchen, learning about food, and spending time together. “It’s really important to capture kids young, and instead of trying to make it seem like a chore, food’s got to be fun,” David enthuses.
The book is charmingly illustrated by Rachel Stubbs, a friend David lodged with when he first moved to London, and
My plan to revisit Central Otago, the world’s most southerly wine-growing region early next year isn’t likely to happen now. No prizes for guessing why. Nonetheless, I can still dream. This wine has aromas of dusky cherries. It is confident in itself through maturity yet still holds on to youth. It breezes in the mouth with a dash of spice but with a flurry of fruit and acidity.
I’ve been transported to Spain via my glass this week; as opposed to my daughter who was transported from Spain via a plane. Hence the selfisolating.
The Rueda region produces some zippy, fresh white wines from verdejo and sauvignon blanc grapes.
The wines are fab with food, such as prawns, chargrilled lamb or even a curry.
To celebrate this food magic, the Rueda region has now joined forces with food and wine pairing expert Fiona Beckett to create a booklet to give an insight into the many and varied food and Rueda white wine pairings you can enjoy. A #tasteRueda campaign is also running with several retailers across the UK until the middle of September. You can find out more at
Download 50 Great Ways to Enjoy Rueda (£3.50) at
tasterueda.uk. matchingfoodandwine.com