The baker and food columnist shares her top baking tips and favourite Malaysian treats
I first came across Helen Goh's work while reading Sweet, a cookbook co-authored by Goh and Israeli-born chef, Yotam Ottolenghi. Like other bright-eyed, bushy-tailed home bakers during the heat of the pandemic, I had made one too many loaves of banana bread and sourdough, and soon turned to the aforementioned dessert book, kindly gifted by a family member.
Flipping through, I was thoroughly surprised when local ingredients such as ginger and kaffir lime leaves jumped out from the pages. The cherry on the cake was when I discovered a recipe for a fragrant pineapple and star-anise chiffon cake.
Everything fell into place when I realised Goh was a fellow Malaysian. Based in London, Goh has worked with Ottolenghi as a lead product developer and is currently penning another book on comfort foods, which will hit shelves in 2024.
Read on to find out Goh's favourite meals to cook for family and friends, and how she uses local flavours in her fabulous bakes.
When did you know you wanted to become a pastry chef?
I stumbled upon baking quite circuitously. I was in the pharmaceutical industry and part of my job was to speak to doctors about new products. I found that I had a more receptive audience if I spoke over lunch, so I engaged a caterer to prepare the food for my meetings. Over time, I found that I was really more interested in the food at the events than the products.
One day, I approached the caterer to ask if I could do some shifts. I was absolutely terrible at it but it ignited a passion for cooking. Shortly after that, my boyfriend at the time had the option to take a redundancy package at work and casually asked me what I would do if I suddenly had a stack of cash. I said, naively and without thinking, "Oh that’s easy, I would open a cafe". Two weeks later, he said, "Let’s just do it!".
It was sheer stupidity—neither of us had any experience (he was a journalist) but against all advice, we took the plunge, and opened a tiny little cafe. We worked all day and all night, and somehow our ethos of ‘freshly cooked, with painstaking attention to detail’ took off. Several newspaper articles featured our food and we never slept a full night again after that!
But I always felt insecure about not being properly trained, so when we sold the cafe, I took up an apprenticeship at a large restaurant with a traditional, hierarchical kitchen brigade. I started at the cold larder, washing lettuce leaves, but on the second day, the pastry chef had done a runner and I was shoved in the pastry section to cover. I never left and eventually became the head pastry chef.
See also: World’s 50 Best Bars 2022: Asian Bars Halved in Number on This Year's List