Time to Make | Turmeric and Peppercorn Curry

Helen Goh always travels with a jar of chilli crisp and a pot of vegemite in her suitcase. “Put Nasi Lemak, a curry and rice dish, in front of me, and I would eat it at 7am but a continental breakfast is my idea of hell,” explains the Chinese-Malaysian co-author of Ottolenghi’s just-launched cookbook Comfort, over a cup of chrysanthemum, goji berry and ginger tea at her home in London. “If there’s an egg and I’ve got chilli crisp to drizzle on it, I can eat it. It’s the same with toast, if I spread on vegemite. Those are the things that provide my own kind of comfort at breakfast when I’m away.”

This notion of comfort and what it means is at the heart of the book, which combines recipes by four authors (including, of course, Yotam Ottolenghi) based on personal experiences of places each has lived and travelled. Five years in the making, the idea was born when Helen and Yotam were in America promoting Sweet (their first joint recipe book, released in 2017). “Every night we ate in restaurants which was lovely but I think we were missing home cooking. We started talking about foods that we crave,” she recalls. “Later, conversations came up about how everybody’s comfort food is different, as well as movement, migration and how we adopt each other’s eating habits.”

Helen’s contributions to Comfort include chicken and lime leaf curry (“it seemed to always be on the stove when I was a child; on the first day we ate it with rice, then the thickened leftovers would be mopped up with roti”); poached chicken congee, a version of which she now makes for her children; and steamed eggs. “My mum’s version had minced pork on the bottom and I hated it as a child because I always connected it with frazzled Sundays,’ she recalls.”‘I didn’t eat it for years. Then, at a fancy Japanese restaurant, it was served with seafood and beautifully refined. The two dishes didn’t taste that different so I began to think of steamed eggs as exquisite.” The version in the book is served with prawns and chives, and the perfect example of how nostalgic food memories have been given a novel twist.

Dishes from Helen’s childhood were of a particular comfort when, aged 10, her family moved from Malaysia to Australia. “We left so much behind but we did take our recipes and create them in our new home,” she says. Another form of food to shape Helen’s life has long been baking, through her dual career as a pastry chef and psychologist. In Melbourne she had her own café, Mortar & Pestle which (thanks to a newspaper article) became known for the “world’s best chocolate cake.”

When, after a long-distance relationship with her now husband, she moved to London in 2006, her plan was to transition into practicing psychology full-time – until she discovered the Ottolenghi deli in Notting Hill. “I loved the window display and everything about it. I decided that I had to work there so I wrote Yotam a letter and e-mailed it. An hour later he called me back. Unbeknown to me, he had an Aussie neighbour who knew that I was moving here and gave him a tip off to look out for my name.”

For the next few months, Helen worked in the Ottolenghi kitchen making salads before eventually pivoting to create recipes for their restaurants and delis from home, while simultaneously completing her doctorate in psychology. “Yotam and I are always talking about food. I might see him for lunch socially but mention something that I’ve baked, which I then either knock up myself for him to taste or it’s fed back to the test kitchen,” she explains. “It’s all very fluid and I think if it had been any other way I wouldn’t had lasted. Ottolenghi is like that: if they see a particular way that you can contribute, they’ll make it work, which means you grow with them. The business is very open to ideas, new ways of doing things, and that feeds directly from Yotam.”

As well as creating recipes for Ottolenghi, Helen has a regular baking column in the Sydney Morning Herald, sees a handful of patients as a practicing psychologist (“I don’t take on new patients but I keep my door open to those whose story I’ve held for a long time”) and is currently editing her first solo book, Baking and the Meaning of Life: The Psychological Joys of Baking in 100 recipes (out September 2025). “It’s an expansion on my belief that baking is completely unnecessary - no one needs to eat cake or biscuits - yet it brings so much joy and meaning, especially to how we mark occasions like Christmas or Easter,” she says. “I might make a Malaysian cake with pineapple and tamarind that says something about my identity or brownies for a community bake sale.” Much like the ritual of baking then, sharing our personal comfort foods offers a true sense of connection.

Fresh Turmeric and Peppercorn Curry with Prawns and Asparagus

Serves 4

Ingredients:

145ml coconut cream
1 x 400ml tin of coconut milk
25g palm sugar, roughly chopped (or light soft brown sugar)
20ml fish sauce 500g asparagus, cut into 3cm lengths, keeping the tips separate
500g peeled raw prawns
Steamed jasmine rice, to serve

For the cucumber and ginger relish:

125ml rice (or other white) vinegar
80g caster sugar ½ cucumber, quartered lengthways, deseeded and thinly sliced (200g)
20g ginger, peeled and julienned
1 red chilli (or 2 bird’s-eye chillies, if you like the heat), halved, deseeded and thinly sliced lengthways
10g coriander, stems finely chopped, leaves roughly torn
1 lime, cut into wedges, to serve
Salt

For the spice paste:

5g dried red chillies (or more, if you like)
½ tsp whole white peppercorns, toasted and coarsely ground
2tsp coriander seeds, toasted and coarsely ground
1-2 shallots, roughly chopped (60g)
4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
20g coriander stems, roughly chopped
10g fresh turmeric, peeled and roughly chopped
1tbsp coconut cream

Recipe:

First make the relish. Put the vinegar and sugar into a small saucepan, along with 60ml of water and ¼ teaspoon of salt. Bring to the boil, then simmer for a minute, stirring once or twice, until the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat and, once cool, add the cucumber, ginger, chilli, and coriander stems. Transfer to a sealed container and keep in the fridge.

To make the spice paste, place the dried chillies in a small bowl, cover with boiling water and set aside for a few minutes. Put the ground white peppercorns and coriander seed into the small bowl of a food processor, along with shallots, garlic, coriander stems, turmeric, coconut cream, soaked chillies and 1 tablespoon of the chilli-soaking liquid. Blend to form a smooth puree, scraping down the sides of the bowl and few times.

Put the 145ml of coconut cream into a medium saucepan and place on a medium-high heat. When it begins to simmer, add the spice paste and cook for 15-20 minutes, stirring frequently until thick, clotted and oily. Add the coconut milk, sugar, fish sauces and ¼ teaspoon of salt. Stir gently, then bring to a simmer. Add the asparagus stalks, cook for 4 minutes, then add the prawns and asparagus tips. Cook for another 3-5 minutes, until the prawns are just cooked through, and serve.

Comfort is available now.

Helen cooks her dish in the La Chamba Clay Carrousel Dish.

Words by Emma Love.

Photography by Lesley Lau.