Sharon Crosbie interviews 'icon' cook Alison Holst about her career.
She originally wanted to be an architect, but was told nobody employed female architects so was encouraged to go into home science instead. She enjoyed the scientific and food aspects rather than sewing or housekeeping. Nutrition and the chemistry of foods were her favourite subjects, but she also learned things like how to properly iron a shirt.
She started teaching evening home science classes for women when her daughter was a baby.
Food was a big part of her family life; it was her mother's way of showing love. Her family was loud and funny and shared a love of food.
She met her husband at a dance. He has always been interested in food but it was only recently that she found out he could cook very well. He cooked while she was recovering from a hip replacement.
She talks about putting love into her food - she would not open a restaurant because she can't fathom cooking for people who might not appreciate it.
She talks about the rise of food programmes on TV, and how people do not learn how to cook at home any more. She feels that television cooking shows will give people more cooking skills and therefore thinks they are a great thing. She feels that all children should learn to cook, and if she had the money she would donate an oven to each primary school so the children could practice simple cooking skills.
She worries that people are losing the skills that were taught in home science - they are no longer taught life skills like cooking, mending, gardening. She thinks this is an issue as young people can no longer grow their own food or take care of themselves properly. She considers that it is as important to be productive with your hands as with your brain.
Holst describes how she got into making cookery programmes for television. The TV chef Graham Kerr was popular but did not cook food that seemed attainable to most people. TVNZ received feedback from the public that they wanted someone who could do low-cost everyday cooking, so they approached the home science school where she was working, who recommended Holst. She was approached to fill a 6-week slot while Kerr's programme was on a break.
She said the producers never had any idea what she was going to make; she was given free rein to do as she liked, but nobody ever thought to help. She was told to keep going throughout the programme, never to stop, so she had to produce things like pies at different stages of completion.
She says it was an interesting feeling of power that she could cause New Zealand to sell out of an ingredient because she had featured it on one of her shows. She liked to introduce new ingredients or ways of cooking, but to do it in a way that would not be intimidating. She discusses the difference between buying convenience foods and learning to make them herself.
She ends the interview by reflecting on how people all over New Zealand view her as 'their own' and come to her with their cooking questions.