I’d rather die clutching a bag of Haribo than a stick of carrot
ELLA WALKER GETS THE LOWDOWN ON WHAT FOOD MEANS TO BAKE OFF WINNER, JOHN WHAITE
JOHN WHAITE won the third series of the perfect family-viewing cookery show The Great British Bake Off – but off air his approach can be a little more strident.
Get him started on the likes of ‘superfoods’ (“It’s a marketing ploy”), the word ‘glow’ (“What does this mean? It’s a load of BS. You’re only going to glow if you’re sunburnt!”), the demonisation of sugar (“A bit of sugar never killed my 93-year-old grandma, who’d have a slice of cake a day and three whiskies a night”), or celebrity cookbooks (“So many are absolute c**p...”) and you’ll find him both frank and witty.
He saves the bulk of his ire, however, for “the clean-eating brigade, the Lycra-clad clan of self-flagellation”, who he says have “taken over” the food world in recent years. “Food should not be about guilt.”
In his fourth cookbook, Comfort, the Chorley-born food writer, cookery-school owner and telly chef, now 28, is hoping to get people back onto food that’s hearty and wholesome. “You don’t have to spiralize vegetables – it’s nonsense,” he says, incensed. “I’d rather die clutching a bag of Haribo and a family-sized Galaxy than a stick of carrot and hummus!
“Guilt isn’t something I associate with food. I’ve been in a situation where I’ve had an eating disorder – I was almost too thin to function at one point – and that’s because I was so obsessed with my body image.”
The key, he says – to eating, cooking and to life – is to find a way to “be happy with who you are, and comfortable in your own skin – I mean, don’t sit on the couch all day eating buckets full of fried chicken.
“You’ve got to look after your body; I do yoga, I go to the gym, but that’s not say I deprive myself of the things I need to eat if I’m feeling sad or ill or just in need of comfort,” he explains. “Be careful of junk, but don’t feel guilty about good, home-cooked food.”
Comfort is full of homecooked goodness, and is divided into sections to mirror mood and cravings – cheesy; sticky; sweet – and every recipe is intended to soothe the soul in some way.
John explains that to him, the idea of comfort, and finding it in food, taps into “needing to belong and feel reconnected with people or places in which we feel safe”.
It also brings back memories of cooking with his mum as a child – hence why a peppery Lancashire hotpot would still be his death row meal, because it’d remind him of her version.
Since winning GBBO in 2012, John’s been candid about how he was shoehorned into the Bake Off champion mould. “I don’t berate them,” he says of his two ‘Bake Off’ books, “but they weren’t me. The recipes were, but the style of them, the feel, had no reflection of who I am.
“You win Bake Off and get offered a ridiculous sum to write two books,” he explains. “I was just out of university, I wanted to break away from the career I was in.”
Despite five years of moving away from Bake Off, career-wise (he’s studied patisserie at Le Corden Bleu and presented daytime ITV cookery show Chopping Block), John is, of course, watching the new series. “I love it – Prue Leith is amazing, so constructive, she knows more about food than anyone I know.”
The ad breaks? “A chance to get a tea and a slice of Battenberg.” Homemade? “Oh no!”