When she was growing up in Australia, baking didn’t feature in pastry chef and author Helen Goh’s household. “My mother used the oven to store funky dried fish,” she laughs, “not to bake.”
Goh’s family are Chinese in origin and emigrated from their home in Malaysia when she was 11. Her mother cooked dishes such as Siamese vermicelli noodles in tamarind broth, preserving the family’s traditions – “but sweet things and baking don’t really feature in Chinese cuisine,” says Goh, who has co-written two books with Yotam Ottolenghi and this year published her own first cookbook, Baking and the Meaning of Life.
She remembers the day her older sister Lily brought a book of Women’s Weekly recipes home and made a lemon slice. “I was fascinated to see this watery mixture go into the oven and emerge a thing of glistening beauty,” says Goh. “Everyone gasped, like the kid had performed a miracle.” She recalls later sneaking up to Lily’s room to look at the book “like it was some kind of pornographic magazine – I’d pore over its recipes lustfully”.
The title of Goh’s book speaks to her dual identity as a pastry chef and psychologist, two careers she has always pursued concurrently. In Australia, she saw patients by day and “moonlighted as a chef”; when she moved to London in 2006, she worked part-time at Ottolenghi while studying for her psychology doctorate.
For years she kept these worlds separate, but something changed when she was having fertility treatment. “I didn’t know if it would work,” she says, “and I warmed up to ideas in existential psychotherapy about how to live a meaningful life, whatever happens.” For Goh, that meaning comes in the form of baking, which “taps into community and tradition in a way nothing else can”.
“No one needs to eat cake,” she says – you make it for love – “so baking’s inessentiality makes it meaningful and symbolic.” This thought crystallised at a charity bake sale in London in 2023. Goh and a host of professional cooks rallied to raise money following the Syrian earthquake with an impressive spread of biscuits, cakes, doughnuts and pies. “The energy of the event felt more important than how much money £2 cupcakes could make,” she says. “It oriented us to empathy.”
Goh’s fertility treatment did work, and she and David have two boys, aged 14 and 10. On weekends, after her sons have finished their football, she cooks. “I love to have warm, snacky food on the table,” she says, such as Cornish-style pasties (in the book they’re filled with roast vegetables, kimchi and cheese) or a communal congee.
Often, she makes this galette – a bake that finds its meaning in David’s love of puttanesca pasta sauce, which Goh adapts into a pastry filling here. That pastry – “nubbly, flaky, wholemeal” – is easily thrown together in a food processor for a Sunday brunch with salad, or sometimes a starter when friends visit.
Goh says that, “for their inclusivity”, she almost prefers savoury bakes to sweet ones. But, either way, “baking is a symbol of certainty and permanence,” she says: “No matter what, there’ll be mince pies on my table at Christmas.”
Interview by Mina Holland
Photographs by Laura Edwards
Puttanesca Galette with Lemon Ricotta
Serves 6
Ingredients
Wholemeal pastry
175g plain flour, plus extra for rolling out the pastry
70g plain wholemeal flour
½ teaspoon fine sea salt
⅛ teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
30g parmesan cheese, grated
150g unsalted butter, cold, cut into 4–5 cm pieces
30ml full-cream milk, cold
30ml water, ice-cold
¾ teaspoon white vinegar or lemon juice
Lemon ricotta filling
30ml extra virgin olive oil
3 onions (about 450 g), peeled and thinly sliced
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
1½ tablespoons thyme leaves
2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped or grated
¼ teaspoon dried chilli flakes
150g ricotta cheese
20g anchovy fillets (about 8), finely chopped (optional)
finely grated zest of 1 large lemon (reserve the lemon to serve)
250g cherry tomatoes, halved
Olive and caper topping
110g pitted black olives, chopped
30 g small capers, roughly chopped
10g flat-leaf parsley leaves, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
Glaze: 1 small egg
Method
Begin by making the pastry: place the flours, salt, pepper and parmesan in the bowl of a food processor and process for about 30 seconds to combine. Add the butter and process for another 30 seconds, until the mixture has the consistency of coarse breadcrumbs. Add the milk, water and vinegar or lemon juice, then pulse until the dough just starts to come together in uneven clumps.
Tip the dough out onto a clean work surface and knead for a few seconds to bring it together into a ball. Wrap the ball loosely in plastic wrap, then press to flatten it into a disc. Refrigerate for about 45 minutes (but it will keep in the fridge for up to 2 days).
Meanwhile, prepare the filling. Heat the oil in a large frying pan and cook the onions and salt over medium–low heat, stirring occasionally, for about 12 minutes, until soft and translucent. Add the thyme, garlic and chilli and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring regularly, then remove the pan from the heat and set aside to cool.
Combine the ricotta, chopped anchovies (if using) and lemon zest in a small bowl. Smoosh some of the anchovies into the ricotta with the back of a spoon and stir well to combine, then set aside.
Make the olive and caper topping by putting all the ingredients except the olive oil in a small bowl, then set aside. The oil will go in later.
Preheat the oven to 190˚C fan.
Remove the disc of dough from the fridge. If it has been in the fridge for more than a few hours, leave it on the kitchen bench for about 10 minutes to soften a little. Lightly dust a large sheet of baking paper with flour, and lightly flour the bench too. The dough will be larger than the baking paper once rolled out.
Place the dough disc on the flour-dusted baking paper. Roll the dough out evenly into a large circle, about 40 cm wide and 2 mm thick. Don’t worry if it is slightly misshapen – that’s the beauty of galettes, they can be irregular! But do try to roll to an even thickness, as this will ensure the galette bakes evenly. Transfer the circle, along with the baking paper underneath, onto a large baking tray. It won’t all fit on the tray yet, but it will once the edges are folded in.
With a small offset spatula or spoon, spread about two-thirds of the ricotta mix in a thin layer all over the pastry circle and right up to the edges. Now scatter the onions all over the pastry, leaving a 4–5 cm clear border all around. Then, spoon about half of the olive and caper topping all around the perimeter of the onions, leaving the ricotta border clear. Scatter the tomatoes, cut-side up, all over the tart, again leaving the border clear. Finally, use a teaspoon to dollop small mounds of the remaining ricotta mixture all over the filling, then carefully draw the pastry border up and over the top, roughly pleating it as you go, and leaving the centre of the galette exposed.
Lightly beat the egg in a small bowl and use a small pastry brush to paint it evenly over the pastry border. Bake for about 40 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown, then remove from the oven and set aside to cool for about 30 minutes. Just before serving, add the olive oil to the remaining olive and caper topping and spoon over the tart. Serve with lemon wedges.
Baking and the Meaning of Life by Helen Goh is published by Murdoch Books