Meet Our Regular Recipe Contributor, Olivia Galletly

You may recognise Olivia’s name from the recipe sections of dish: she creates one spread in almost every issue.

But she also does much else – including food photography and recipe development for big-name food brands, and running a successful blog, The Hungry Cook. Here, she reveals her favourite restaurants, how she built her food career and why she’s a big believer that you don’t need a fancy kitchen to cook well.

How did you come to cooking?
My parents are both very good cooks, so cooking has always been a part of my life. A lot of my fond childhood memories involve sitting on the kitchen bench watching my parents cook, tasting things and chatting about food. And I was very much into after-school snacks. When I was a teenager, if Mum wasn’t home, I’d cook every day after school, which was a nightmare for poor Mum, but I loved it!

My mum cooked a lot of classic French food and my dad made very elaborate meals which took days to prepare – Christmas would be something like an 18-course degustation. His style of cooking was not something I ever strived to learn how to do, but Mum’s French home cooking had a huge influence on the kind of food I like to make. 

You started your career as a graphic designer for an ad agency. How did you make the transition to freelance recipe development and photography?
I was a graphic designer for six or so years, and I realised very quickly that it just wasn’t my passion. Then I moved out to Whangaparoa with my boyfriend and found it really challenging being away from my friends and family. I started cooking lots and lots to make myself happy, making elaborate dishes on the weekends and lots of intense cakes, but then I’d have nothing to do with them. It was my sister who suggested I start photographing and blogging about my food.

I’d take photos in my kitchen with these crappy backgrounds I’d painted and I’d go on YouTube and figure out how to use LightRoom… that’s how it started. I had a little Instagram following, but it was moving very slowly, which I didn’t mind. Mostly, it was about having an outlet to use my creativity. But it grew from there.

It was thanks to my sister Alice [Galletly, dish’s former Deputy Editor] leaving dish that I got a foot in the door at the mag. I made a strawberry and rhubarb cake for Alice to take in on her last day and the next week, Claire [Aldous, dish Food Editor] asked me if I’d mind sharing the recipe, which was SO exciting! The recipe went on the dish website and then it became a semi-regular thing – maybe once a month, dish would ask for a baking recipe from me.

As time went on, a couple of other brands got in touch and asked me to do some work for them, so I started taking a Friday off and only doing four days a week in my old job. And then Nadia Lim asked me to take some photos for her website and obviously that was something I couldn’t turn down. So I quit my job, did that job for a couple of months and just hoped I would get more work from other places… and I did. A couple of months after the Nadia job, I got my first spread with dish in the physical magazine. It was a section on bowl food in Issue #74 and I was wildly excited.

Now I spend a week on my dish spread about once every six weeks. The rest of the time I work as a food photographer and/or recipe developer for brands – so I’ll come up with recipes using their product or shoot some of their own recipes, and the images will be used in their advertising campaigns and on social media. I also do a little influencer work, where I’ll use a brand’s products to come up with a recipe, then share it on my own website.

I think it’s important to note this wasn’t my intended career path and I’ve kind of found my feet on my own – a lot of my knowledge has come from working things out using YouTube. And there are still lots of things I don’t know how to do. But it’s definitely possible to do it on your own if you put the time and effort in. Also, I think it’s important to say that I have a very, very tiny, crappy kitchen. You don’t need a flash kitchen to do this sort of stuff!

What is your process for developing new recipes?
I get lots of inspiration for new recipes from social media – my Pinterest and Instagram saved folders are huge! So anytime I see something I’m drawn to – I don’t even have to know what it is, I can just look at the colours and go oh that looks amazing – I save it. I do a lot of scrolling, looking at what people are eating in the UK or the US in the off-seasons, and at what people are eating here and what produce is available.

I’m also inspired by eating out! There are so many great restaurants in Auckland with a diverse range of foods on offer. I’m particularly fond of South Indian and Chinese cuisine. And before having kids, my husband and I did quite a bit of travel through South and Central America and Asia. The street food in these regions is phenomenal and has definitely influenced the food I like to cook. 

As for recipe testing, I really enjoy that process. Sometimes I’ll end up having to test a recipe several times – there’s one cheesecake I had to do about nine times before I was happy with it! – which is infuriating and I hate the food by the end of it, but it’s important to get it right.

If it’s a particularly difficult dish or a dish from a cuisine I’m not too knowledgeable about, I’ll do some research before I start – I’ll get books from the library or look at recipes online, try a bunch of different things and go, okay, how can I make this work for an everyday Kiwi cook? Some dishes can be a bit too elaborate or involve ingredients that are really hard to find. I think making it work for a keen cook who only has the local supermarket is really important.

Your food always looks SO good. How do you style and photograph your dishes?
At dish, I hugely appreciate Sarah and her eye. She comes up with incredible moodboards for me, which are always a huge help when it comes to styling. Generally, I think it’s key to look at what you have in the way of backdrops. I’m constantly looking for textured pieces of metal or interesting bits of wood – things normally found at junkyards. You do have to make friends with the local scrap metal yard places and tile shops, and I do spend a bit of time opshopping.

Mostly, it comes down to spending time researching the styles I think will look great and knowing what you like in a photo. My favourite sort of food is really intense comforting food, things that are maybe less beautiful, but that you really want to pick up and eat. I spent a lot of time when I was just starting out copying other people’s style, but now I’m a lot more confident doing what I know I personally like.

Who are some of your favourite chefs, cookbooks or Instagram food accounts?
Lately I’ve been getting inspo from Alison Roman, Shobha and Keryn Kalyan’s cookbook Pass It On, Ottolenghi, Yael Shochat’s book IMA Cuisine and Carla Lalli Music. Instagram accounts I’m loving at the moment are @mizu_bread, @beatrixbakes, @ladyandpups and @felicityspector.

And any favourite restaurants to share?
In Auckland, I keep going back toCazador (my all-time favourite), Pici, GoGo Music Café, Lilian, Ras Vatika, Cielito Lindo Café & Taqueria and Depot.

What are you looking forward to cooking and eating this winter? 
The meals I cook for my family these days either need to be quick and easy to prepare or something I can throw on in the morning and let slowly cook all day, such as pies, curries, stews and ragùs. I am really enjoying roasted winter vegetables, like Jerusalem artichokes, yams, parsnips and Brussels sprouts. I also love a spicy and aromatic broth so I’m making a few of those with noodles and crunchy vegetables.