Allyson's IVF miracles - FOOD IN A MINUTE MADE ME A MUM!

TV’s cooking icon solved our weeknight dinner dilemmas and got her family dream

- Wendyl Nissen

It was the potato pom poms on a cottage pie that did it. It was 1996 and a new face on the telly, Allyson Gofton, was performing the somewhat miraculous task of producing a meal for dinner in the minute before the six o’clock news.

Food in a Minute would take New Zealand by storm and 25 years later, it remains a big presence in our lives through its website and social media channels.

Talking to the Weekly during level 4 lockdown from her home in the Waikato, Allyson, 61, has not lost any of the fun and vibrancy which made her so appealing on the TV every night.

She has her two children, Jean-Luc, 18, and Olive-Rose, 14, in lockdown with her and her husband, Warwick Kiely, as well as three more teenagers who are friends of her eldest.

“We’re having so much fun!” she exclaims before detailing the kitchen she is trying to have built to her specifications (“think eclectic!”) and the house nicknamed “the drug baron’s mansion” she and Warwick are attempting to renovate.

“The house is pavlova cream, but will become ochre, with library red window ledges and turquoise shutters before Christmas – Covid pending.”

Both children attend school in Cambridge and so the couple have moved closer for just such an occasion as lockdown. They wanted to be there for them and most importantly cook meals, some of which are Food in a Minute classics.

“I still cook the Butter Chicken because it’s so damned good and easy. I make it all the time.”

Allyson credits its success to a very talented woman who worked for Wattie’s and created cans of flavoured tomatoes. This recipe (see overleaf) uses the Indian tomatoes.