Speaker 1: You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in Partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: Arriving home yesterday after a busy night, a book was
Speaker 2: waiting on the table. The book was a memoir from
Speaker 2: Under the Truck, and the author was my friend, Josh Brolin.
Speaker 2: I say friend, but for full disclosure, Josh and I
Speaker 2: have only met once, when Glenn Close called me to
Speaker 2: say she was bringing him to the River Cafe and
Speaker 2: would I be able to stop cooking for a bit
Speaker 2: and join them. I did, and right away there was
Speaker 2: a connection between us. Josh is a story teller, and
Speaker 2: I sat there listening as he described what it was
Speaker 2: like to be a fourteen year old chef in an
Speaker 2: Italian restaurant and the way food and love for his
Speaker 2: family sustains him to day. He also told me about
Speaker 2: filming with Glenn in London and Knives Out, working with
Speaker 2: the Cone Brothers on No Country for Old Men, and
Speaker 2: making Gus Vansan's movie Milk with Sean Penn. Josh was
Speaker 2: leaving for la the next day, but before he did,
Speaker 2: a text arrived on my phone, Ruthie, let's do a podcast.
Speaker 2: I think we'll have fun, or at least it will
Speaker 2: be beautifully revealing, very nice. I thought it was very
Speaker 2: moving on the last pages of your book, last chapter
Speaker 2: really that you end with a recipe of your mother's
Speaker 2: with Oreo cookies, which I brought. But you also wrote
Speaker 2: a very moving paragraph which I thought perhaps you could read.
Speaker 3: I loved her, let's see, but the one thing she
Speaker 3: could do without any hassle was cook She'd leave food
Speaker 3: on people's fence posts at the start of their driveways,
Speaker 3: and they'd waive at us the next day as she
Speaker 3: was taking me to school. She'd help start small local
Speaker 3: restaurants in the area, then talk about starting her own.
Speaker 3: How she even filled the fridge with six dessert dishes
Speaker 3: the night she died. Three days later, when we had
Speaker 3: the gathering at the ranch to honor her, that's where
Speaker 3: everyone ate her sweet creations, the only sweet she could muster.
Speaker 3: She moved inside my mother even when she was dead.
Speaker 3: And from these strewn scraps of recipe ingredients comes a history. Wow.
Speaker 3: I haven't read that for a while. It's funny because
Speaker 3: I thought of this on the way over here, which
Speaker 3: I never do. I never prep for interviews or podcasts
Speaker 3: or any of it. And on the way over here,
Speaker 3: I started to write on my phone different foods and
Speaker 3: different things that I kind of have a history with
Speaker 3: or that resonate within me. And then that moment of banafi.
Speaker 3: That's what she made the night before banafi and key
Speaker 3: lime pie and these rectangular glass trays and there were
Speaker 3: six of them, and that those were the desserts for
Speaker 3: the gathering.
Speaker 2: Food and music bring back memories. You hear a song
Speaker 2: and you know where you were when you heard it.
Speaker 3: You know. It's one of those things with books that
Speaker 3: I'll say that it's like the one thing that I've
Speaker 3: heard compliment about the writing is that it's very vivid.
Speaker 3: And my mother lived very vivid, And you go, so,
Speaker 3: what is it about that? With music? What you just
Speaker 3: said with food? There's been these things in my life
Speaker 3: that have been extremely vivid.
Speaker 2: So tell me about the early days when you remember
Speaker 2: her in terms of the way she fed you, the
Speaker 2: way you ate, or the way where you grew up.
Speaker 2: You grew up on a ranch.
Speaker 3: I grew up on a ranch. My mother's from Corpus Christi, Texas.
Speaker 3: She ran away from home when she was nineteen. She
Speaker 3: came to Hollywood and the first people she met were
Speaker 3: Clinton Maggie Eastwood, and that's who took her under their wing.
Speaker 2: Did she run away from home because.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know. No, I don't think so, because
Speaker 3: she always talked of her parents fondly, you know. And
Speaker 3: then I just found out. I just did a book
Speaker 3: reading and somebody came up to me and kind of
Speaker 3: handed me six pages that were stapled together, and they said,
Speaker 3: I went to school with your grandfather, my mother's dad.
Speaker 3: And I said wow, and I started looking through. This
Speaker 3: is very my mother. I started looking through the pages
Speaker 3: before I went on stage, and it turns out that
Speaker 3: my mother was married before she left Texas. I never
Speaker 3: knew that. I just found that out something I guess
Speaker 3: for a week.
Speaker 2: Wow. But she hasn't run away to do it.
Speaker 3: I just think, you know, it was one of those
Speaker 3: innate things that she just felt like she needed more.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 2: I think she ran away from her husband.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I just think she needed more vivid,
Speaker 3: she needed more music, she needed more food, she needed
Speaker 3: more something. So when she came to La I think
Speaker 3: that it was what she was looking for. But I
Speaker 3: also think it was overwhelming. So she started, I think
Speaker 3: sleeping with a bunch of married guys, and she was
Speaker 3: you know, religious, and she'd been you know, to go
Speaker 3: to church all the time. And so then she came
Speaker 3: to La. She starts getting into this Hollywood thing and
Speaker 3: then she ended up taking some pills and driving into
Speaker 3: park cars and she got kind of hauled off to
Speaker 3: Camerio State Hospital, which was the local funny farm.
Speaker 2: She wanted to be an actor.
Speaker 3: No, animals were always her thing, so she started a
Speaker 3: wildlife waystation. She met my dad. She was assistant casting
Speaker 3: the series of her Batman, and my dad did an
Speaker 3: episode of Batman, so that's when they met. But they
Speaker 3: got married twelve days after they met. My dad was
Speaker 3: more of a subservient type and my mother was not.
Speaker 3: My mother just made things happen. She was always making
Speaker 3: things happen, whether it was food, whether it was whatever
Speaker 3: she was involved with was had a high octane gasoline involved.
Speaker 2: So you describe josh Livigana Ranch early age, your mother
Speaker 2: taking you out of an urban existence and into the wild,
Speaker 2: and that includes animals and her passion for animals or
Speaker 2: protection of animals. Can you tell me a bit about
Speaker 2: what that was like.
Speaker 3: Itved out of La to a place called past Robos California,
Speaker 3: which is about two hundred miles north of Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: I think I was five at the time. And she
Speaker 3: always had animals. Before that, she had cages, and so
Speaker 3: she had she ran a wildlife way station. She would
Speaker 3: take animals who had illegally been taken out of the
Speaker 3: wild and she would have those people jailed and she
Speaker 3: would nurse those animals back to health. If they'd been
Speaker 3: defanged or declawed. She would find the most habitable zoo.
Speaker 3: You know, she would find those lyon country safari type places.
Speaker 3: But you know, there were a lot of There were wolves.
Speaker 3: My brother got sixty stitches in his leg from a wolf.
Speaker 3: We cleaned the cages. There were mountain lions. I have
Speaker 3: a picture right here. I mean, you want me to
Speaker 3: show you the picture. I have a picture of an
Speaker 3: adolescent mountain lion in my crib.
Speaker 2: In my crib, Oh, my gosh, is that you? Is
Speaker 2: that you?
Speaker 3: That's a mountain lion? God, I mean, that's me. If
Speaker 3: you if you look at every single picture of me
Speaker 3: as a kid, if you swipe has my face looks
Speaker 3: like it's the attempt to eat it off has been had.
Speaker 2: It makes me kind of crazy to think of that. No, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, this makes me crazy.
Speaker 3: Oh it's insane. Yeah, it's insane. That's nothing.
Speaker 2: And there was no protection for you. There was never
Speaker 2: anybody around.
Speaker 3: He said, this case, I would and I don't victimize
Speaker 3: in my book. When you read my book, I don't
Speaker 3: victimize myself and I don't feel victimized. But there is
Speaker 3: an indictment. I was talking to Howard Stern about man.
Speaker 3: They said, you don't indict your parents, sy said, I do.
Speaker 3: The reality. Yes, they're incredible, irresponsible because that was the
Speaker 3: least of it. We had to clean those cages. You
Speaker 3: go in there at eight years old and you have
Speaker 3: a rake and you're looking at a wolf in the eye.
Speaker 3: But if you look down too much, it's going to
Speaker 3: see you as prey and weak. But if you if
Speaker 3: you confront too much, it's going to see it as
Speaker 3: a confrontation and attack.
Speaker 2: Do you remember domestic life? Do Would you sit down
Speaker 2: to meals with every food.
Speaker 3: Always on the table? Oh? Yeah, always? That was the
Speaker 3: one thing. It's the one through line that I remember
Speaker 3: in my childhood, because you know, I'd wake up sometimes
Speaker 3: my brother and I would wake up three o'clock in
Speaker 3: the morning with my mother shaking us and saying, I
Speaker 3: want a waterburger, and then would drive, you know, fifteen
Speaker 3: hundred miles with us in the car, even though we
Speaker 3: had school and fifteen hundred oh yeah, fifteen hundred miles.
Speaker 3: My mother didn't fly. She had she had been a stewardest.
Speaker 3: What is a water waterburger? Texan burger that started in
Speaker 3: Corpus CHRISTI is. It's like r in an out burger
Speaker 3: in America.
Speaker 2: Also, it was the name of a brand, and she
Speaker 2: had a craving for it.
Speaker 3: That you'd get in the car and you'd be in
Speaker 3: the car for four or five days.
Speaker 2: What would that feel like?
Speaker 3: It was? It was good. There was something that was
Speaker 3: great about the adventure of it, which I think is
Speaker 3: still in me my brother. It's interesting because my brother
Speaker 3: didn't have it was my dad describes the fight in
Speaker 3: him that that I had. So my brother was much
Speaker 3: more quiet, you know, and so his life is very simple.
Speaker 3: It's quite the opposite me. I was just writing about
Speaker 3: it on the on the way over here, not in
Speaker 3: thought of coming over here, but I was like, I love,
Speaker 3: I'm ready to go home right now. I've been traveling.
Speaker 3: I've been doing this book thing but I was like,
Speaker 3: I started describing the light and this and that, and
Speaker 3: the constant adventure is great because it's like being born
Speaker 3: again and again and again and again. You're like a child,
Speaker 3: you know, where everything became new discovery. You're like, what's that? Wow,
Speaker 3: look at the way that's hitting that. The English light
Speaker 3: is different than the Italian light, which is different than
Speaker 3: the Middle Eastern light or whatever it is.
Speaker 2: So she would with waking up at three in the morning,
Speaker 2: or having the animals that you describe so vividly in
Speaker 2: your book, or the ranch, there was a kind of
Speaker 2: structure of that. We would always sit down to a
Speaker 2: meal or.
Speaker 3: Always Yeah, that's why I say, that's the only kind
Speaker 3: of domestic reality within our family. My dad was constantly
Speaker 3: traveling because he was working. My mom was always looking
Speaker 3: for something to do and something to kind of mix up,
Speaker 3: and then there would be her cooking.
Speaker 2: So describe her kitchen in the house.
Speaker 3: The house was just put up for sale. So I
Speaker 3: was able to see an actual picture because the ranch
Speaker 3: is three miles from the ranch that we're on now. Okay,
Speaker 3: so where I grew up is three miles away from
Speaker 3: where our ranch is. Now. Where is that Pastor Roobos, California.
Speaker 3: Where is that central California?
Speaker 2: How far from.
Speaker 3: Four hours north of La three and a half hours
Speaker 3: south of San Francisco. Yeah, Selina's valley close to Steinbeck
Speaker 3: Country and all that. But so I could see what
Speaker 3: my memory was. But it's a very Spanish type, you know,
Speaker 3: Spanish tiles all handpicked by her. Yeah, and the stove
Speaker 3: was always I always remember the flames, high flames in
Speaker 3: the stove, and then I would get up. I don't
Speaker 3: know why I started doing this. I'm thinking about it now.
Speaker 3: I would get up on Saturdays usually and I would
Speaker 3: cook breakfast for my whole family.
Speaker 2: And you still make a flame by the flame and
Speaker 2: the eggs over medium, over easy.
Speaker 3: I had the toast, I had the bacon, I had
Speaker 3: biscuits sometimes. But I don't know why. I don't know
Speaker 3: what it was about. There was some meditating, obviously, I
Speaker 3: wanted to please them. I loved the Maybe that was
Speaker 3: just me trying to extend that thing, like you stay in,
Speaker 3: I'm going to take it together. Yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 3: take care of you. It's funny. I haven't thought of that.
Speaker 2: And so do you think you used recipes or did
Speaker 2: you just instinctively.
Speaker 3: No, it was instinctive. It was always instinctive. And in
Speaker 3: my kids, my older kids who are thirty six and
Speaker 3: thirty one now will tell you that I made either
Speaker 3: the greatest food or the worst food that I would eat,
Speaker 3: because if we were out at the ranch and it
Speaker 3: was like, look, this is what we have, Like I
Speaker 3: didn't go to the grocery store today. This is what
Speaker 3: we have. So you have to experiment with what you have.
Speaker 3: And sometimes that kind of experimenting would turn out brilliant,
Speaker 3: and sometimes it would turn out like regurgitation. I remember
Speaker 3: my daughter crying and saying, it tastes so bad. I'd go,
Speaker 3: you have to eat it. Yeah, And I think that
Speaker 3: was the kind of connective tissue I had of my
Speaker 3: mother because the one time that my family was a
Speaker 3: family family, the kind of family that you see and
Speaker 3: leave it to beaver, even though it was as far
Speaker 3: from leave it to beaver as you can imagine. Gin
Speaker 3: was dinner and my mother always cooked. My My mother
Speaker 3: cooked every day. Cooking was her thing, Cooking was her art,
Speaker 3: Cooking was her canvas reading.
Speaker 2: Your book last night. And the amount of times that
Speaker 2: telephones were slammed down or noise was made, or people
Speaker 2: running away, or the anger of the fury, or the
Speaker 2: that looking back on that, you know, and then sitting
Speaker 2: down to dinner with dinners calm though, which you kind
Speaker 2: of want the food eating properly or would they also
Speaker 2: be a nice for dramatic interest.
Speaker 3: No, it wasn't. No. Even the thing that you're that
Speaker 3: you're referencing is the phone being slammed down and her
Speaker 3: throwing cups through a window at my dad and all that,
Speaker 3: which was immediately followed by a breakfast. Immediately, I say,
Speaker 3: I didn't.
Speaker 2: Even pick up why it didn't happen.
Speaker 3: It was just we just went literally right back to
Speaker 3: this default to the semblance of normal, some normalcy. There
Speaker 3: was nothing normal about it. Yeah, but when you look
Speaker 3: around and everybody's kind of got this kind of gorgeous
Speaker 3: morning smile, like like we were outside and vitamin D
Speaker 3: getting ready for the day, and it's like, do you
Speaker 3: remember what we were doing, just like for the last
Speaker 3: four hours, which was total insanity. And I think that's
Speaker 3: why when I went out into the when I went
Speaker 3: out into the world, it was that was the shock.
Speaker 3: The shock wasn't what I was experiencing because I didn't
Speaker 3: know any different. And then I got older and went
Speaker 3: out into the world and started dealing with people on
Speaker 3: the level that I had gotten used to. And then
Speaker 3: you see people reacting. I think that's why I like
Speaker 3: being in Italy, because I think people are just less
Speaker 3: they're more animated. Yeah, it seems to vibe with how
Speaker 3: I was raised, without the chaos, without the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my husband came for a very Italian family and
Speaker 2: he they were you could, you could stay out till
Speaker 2: five in the morning, He could do everything that he
Speaker 2: wanted to. He didn't have to dress in a certain way.
Speaker 2: He had to be home for meal times.
Speaker 3: That was us, you know, that was.
Speaker 2: The structure, you know. And Jake Jilanov said he opened
Speaker 2: up his podcast saying that food was the only functional
Speaker 2: thing in a dysfunctional family, you know.
Speaker 3: And I know him and his parents and his.
Speaker 2: Sharents and you know, but he said it, as can
Speaker 2: I say that. And he talked about going to the
Speaker 2: market and I don't know Westwood of Pacific Palisades with
Speaker 2: his father and seeing seeing the food and what about
Speaker 2: your mother's dinners.
Speaker 3: Her dinners were there was a lot of Mexican food,
Speaker 3: there was a lot of Italian food, there was a
Speaker 3: lot of southern food.
Speaker 2: Did she read? What do you think?
Speaker 3: So? My mother she learned at our ranch. Now we
Speaker 3: have an entire, very large bookshelf of just her cookbooks.
Speaker 2: I would love to see those sometimes. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: I mean they're all original cookbooks from decades, you know,
Speaker 3: different decades out hers that she cut out. She would
Speaker 3: do these collages. There's handwritten I mean that's only one.
Speaker 3: That's just one that I think. I actually called my
Speaker 3: daughter and said, send me a couple of handwritten recipes.
Speaker 3: There's literally hundreds, if not thousands of recipes that she copied.
Speaker 3: You know, I have in the book too. Let me
Speaker 3: see if I can find it. There's a thing that
Speaker 3: in the beginning.
Speaker 2: She said that she introduced herself as in restaurants. She
Speaker 2: would go into.
Speaker 3: Restaurants, she would always end up in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: That she would end up in the kitchen.
Speaker 3: Always, yeah, always. I think that. Let's say dusty fires.
Speaker 3: She made it. And the cook in the back, a
Speaker 3: lanky twenty eight year old who didn't know that he
Speaker 3: was her prey for the evening. She showed him how
Speaker 3: to better stir the sauce. She made him hold his
Speaker 3: hand over hers as they flipped a dish in a pan.
Speaker 3: She asked him who his favorite country Western singers were
Speaker 3: and if he had ever been to a proper rodeo.
Speaker 3: He was toast. As far as I was concerned, I
Speaker 3: knew it was going to be a long night, and
Speaker 3: that I might as well go back out into that
Speaker 3: parking lot and see what I could find in the
Speaker 3: desert beyond it. Parents of the bones we cut our
Speaker 3: teeth on, but they never talk about the parents' own teeth.
Speaker 3: They never talk about the bite you learned to see coming.
Speaker 3: I dreamed about her last night, and I awoke happy
Speaker 3: but sweating, because every moment with her was exciting. You
Speaker 3: couldn't just go have a meal in a restaurant. She
Speaker 3: had to take over the entire restaurant.
Speaker 2: Did you find it exciting or sometimes embarrassing? Both?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think both, because why wouldn't it be
Speaker 3: embarrassing as a child, you know, like, don't bring attention
Speaker 3: to us. But then at the same time I could
Speaker 3: tell I mean, it was like living with Salvado'dlly. It
Speaker 3: was like I remember hearing my dad saying I saw
Speaker 3: Salvador Dolly running down the street. It was like running
Speaker 3: down Lexington Avenue with a pork chopped capon. It's like,
Speaker 3: there's just those people. Why him, Why did he do that?
Speaker 3: Why did she do that? Why did he dress that way?
Speaker 3: Why were they? You know, somebody wears jeans and a
Speaker 3: black T shirt every day, and somebody dresses in the
Speaker 3: nicest dresses. They can get versauce in this and that.
Speaker 3: My mom just acted the way she was, unapologetically herself,
Speaker 3: and there's light growing up on the ranch. When you
Speaker 3: have to feed forty eight horses or fifty eight horses
Speaker 3: every morning, when you're doing it, it sucks. It's horrible.
Speaker 3: It's just labor. But when you look back on it,
Speaker 3: you go, thank God for that upbringing. Thank God I
Speaker 3: had to get up and get out into the elements
Speaker 3: every single morning before I went to school. It made
Speaker 3: me who I am. Pastor Robles is considered wine country now,
Speaker 3: you know, so it's a very famous wine country. And
Speaker 3: when I was growing up there there were two wineries,
Speaker 3: so it wasn't known for its wine. Napo was known
Speaker 3: for its wineries, but you know, people would it was.
Speaker 3: It was a farming community and a horse community, so
Speaker 3: people would take their kids out of school for two
Speaker 3: or three weeks when the farming happened, when the harvesting happened,
Speaker 3: and all that school was not a priority.
Speaker 2: What year was.
Speaker 3: Seventy six, Yeah, seventy seven, seventy eight.
Speaker 2: So what was it like? Well, first of all, before
Speaker 2: you left home, you worked age fourteen as a chef
Speaker 2: is cooking?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: It wasn't a chef, no, but you were in the kitchen, right,
Speaker 2: I was in the kitchen. Told the story of that
Speaker 2: very similarly, is Wolfgang cook?
Speaker 3: Really? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Because he was like but that was economic. They just said, okay,
Speaker 2: you're living in Austria, we don't like you very much.
Speaker 2: You're going to go peel potatoes in a suicide.
Speaker 3: It's in order to earn Yeah, he worked there.
Speaker 2: He found it. He must try to jump off a bridge.
Speaker 2: But for you, how did it actually be a fourteen
Speaker 2: year old at home one minute and then working in
Speaker 2: a restaurant or twelve? You were twelve?
Speaker 3: It was twelve, wow, And there was we knew the
Speaker 3: owner of the restaurant. It was called Rocky Galenti's. It
Speaker 3: was an Italian restaurant. And I started literally I did
Speaker 3: I start doing dishes in the back or just like
Speaker 3: picking just crap off the walls or whatever I was doing.
Speaker 3: And then I started getting into it. And then I
Speaker 3: started doing salads, and I started doing chopp salads, and
Speaker 3: then like drum rolls, oh yeah, at twelve, no, and
Speaker 3: that was like thirteen. By the time I had hit thirteen,
Speaker 3: but I was already smoking cigarettes in the back and
Speaker 3: taking breaks and you know, little SIPs off glasses of
Speaker 3: wine that were left on tables and big restaurants.
Speaker 2: Small restaurant.
Speaker 3: No, it was a fairly small restaurant. It felt like
Speaker 3: when I think of Italian restaurants now, like authentic Italian restaurants,
Speaker 3: they're small. They're all small, small tables. And there was
Speaker 3: a guy who would go from table to table and
Speaker 3: sing arias. There was a guy who was hired and
Speaker 3: he would sing these arias right. And then there was
Speaker 3: somebody else who would do caricatures on the wall, kind
Speaker 3: of drunken, awful caricatures on the wall that you'd pay him,
Speaker 3: and then you were forever stamped onto the Italian restaurant.
Speaker 3: Rocky Glend Santa Barbara, Lower State Street and Lower State
Speaker 3: Street now is a nice place. Lower State Street then
Speaker 3: was not a nice place.
Speaker 2: Were they kind in the kitchen to you.
Speaker 3: They were very kind to me. They liked me because
Speaker 3: I was also, you know, some version of misfit. All
Speaker 3: the cooks were misfits, you know, men and women alike.
Speaker 3: There was no gender in there. Oh, yes, yes, there
Speaker 3: was a It was like being around because I grew
Speaker 3: up around drag racing and racing because my dad, so
Speaker 3: we were on a lot of tracks. It reminded me
Speaker 3: of that. It reminded me of people who went three
Speaker 3: hundred miles an hour. The stress of working in the
Speaker 3: restaurant business.
Speaker 2: I loved, did you Yes?
Speaker 3: And I think it's the only thing that with acting.
Speaker 3: It was like, do I love acting? I don't know.
Speaker 3: Sometimes do I like the idea of having to live
Speaker 3: up to something? Yes? Do I like the fact that,
Speaker 3: you know, back in the days before digital there was
Speaker 3: film and before that that last bit of film went
Speaker 3: in the magazine. You only had that much time, You
Speaker 3: only had that take left before the sun went down.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of pressure, you know. But I think
Speaker 3: having grown up in a kitchen, not only my mother's kitchen,
Speaker 3: but that restaurant's kitchen, there was something about that pressure
Speaker 3: that I fed off of.
Speaker 2: I like, you know, and then at the end of it,
Speaker 2: I know it is.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of yelling, a lot of it was great.
Speaker 2: That's the thing about having the you know, when the
Speaker 2: open kitchen is you can't it's more like a ballet. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you move around to talk to somebody rather than that's
Speaker 2: right shot, because you know, kitchens, old fashioned kitchens are
Speaker 2: cruel and there. But these young people do you knowsh
Speaker 2: they won't take it anymore. They don't want to work.
Speaker 2: They won't they don't want to work in a place
Speaker 2: where they're bullied or they're you know what, they to feel.
Speaker 2: They're just not going to put up with it. What
Speaker 2: was it like leaving home? And how did you eat?
Speaker 2: Did you cook for yourself?
Speaker 3: Did you did? I cooked them up for myself all
Speaker 3: the time. I was a teenager and I left because
Speaker 3: I left, I was sixteen, so you've seventeen. I had
Speaker 3: finished school early. I did the goonies during this I
Speaker 3: was going to.
Speaker 2: Ask you about So how old were you when did
Speaker 2: you well?
Speaker 3: I was kicked out of my house in Santa Barbara
Speaker 3: and by my mother. She did and I went down
Speaker 3: and I think it was very temporary. I think both
Speaker 3: of us didn't think it would last. But then I
Speaker 3: because you know, i'd been to jail a couple of
Speaker 3: times already, and it was you.
Speaker 2: Know, before you were sixteen. Mm hmm, yeah, the food
Speaker 2: in jail.
Speaker 3: Do I remember the food in jail? I do very well. Actually,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: You're the first person I've asked that question to the
Speaker 2: one hundred and forty people. Have we had it? I
Speaker 2: don't think you've.
Speaker 3: Had it because you have a different echelon of people.
Speaker 2: I come from echeon, but just an experience. So what
Speaker 2: was the food like?
Speaker 3: In food was always stale, always one hundred percent of
Speaker 3: the time. There was rice crispies, There was warm milk,
Speaker 3: There was a piece of white bread.
Speaker 2: We're talking about breakfast.
Speaker 3: That's when you wake you always wake up in jail.
Speaker 3: We can talk about the rest of it, which is
Speaker 3: when you stay in line and you get the slop.
Speaker 3: There's cafeteria slop.
Speaker 2: So let's go back to the right. That would be
Speaker 2: your breakfast in your cell.
Speaker 3: That would be your breakfast in your cell, which is
Speaker 3: put on a tray and that's a little opening that
Speaker 3: you have in your door, and on that tray is
Speaker 3: usually what you did and why you're in in jail
Speaker 3: in case you were in a blackout while you did it,
Speaker 3: so you look at what you've done. You'd take out
Speaker 3: this arrest sheet and look at it and say, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm in here for whatever whatever I was in there
Speaker 3: for at the time. The jail a few times. It
Speaker 3: was a few times after sixteen. There's a general rule
Speaker 3: which is actually not but jail. You spent up to
Speaker 3: one year in prison. You spend more than one year.
Speaker 3: So I was in jail. I was never in prison,
Speaker 3: but I was in jail nine times. But yeah, jail.
Speaker 3: There was one point where I was looking at fourteen
Speaker 3: years in prisons that would be prison, but that got
Speaker 3: knocked down too.
Speaker 2: I did a few months as long as you stayed.
Speaker 3: It was a few months.
Speaker 2: A few months. And the food again, because I'm sure so.
Speaker 3: Much had a great show. Who went on because to
Speaker 3: work with Wolfgang Puck and they collaborated in a restaurant.
Speaker 2: Called Clank Spago Click.
Speaker 3: But the.
Speaker 2: No, I just went to a dinner, charity dinner and
Speaker 2: they talked about food in prisons.
Speaker 3: Did they Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is it kind of and how good they are?
Speaker 3: Or how do you know what.
Speaker 2: We spend in Britain? I think a day for three
Speaker 2: meals a day is something like one pound twenty on prisoner,
Speaker 2: so you're giving them there's no sense of rehabilitation, right.
Speaker 2: It was a meeting of chefs and we just say,
Speaker 2: how do you reckon if? Prison obviously is punishment, but
Speaker 2: it also is the idea that you're going to make
Speaker 2: somebody better, worse or worse. We're making them worse by
Speaker 2: saying we're only going to spend one pound twenty and
Speaker 2: feed you the worst.
Speaker 3: How I'm not still in prison, but listen for me.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're a parent, and you know I've been
Speaker 3: a parents since I was twenty years old, nineteen when
Speaker 3: she was pregnant, and I was looking at that jail
Speaker 3: time when she was pregnant. So I was going from
Speaker 3: once I got out of jail, I was living in
Speaker 3: a half way house and I was going on a
Speaker 3: Harley Davidson motorcycle going from a halfway house to birthing class,
Speaker 3: you know, breathe one, two, three, three. I mean it
Speaker 3: was chaotic, but it was, which is the suggestion of
Speaker 3: the book is like that was normal. That's the only
Speaker 3: type of living I knew how to do. And I
Speaker 3: was very lucky because I had books which had a
Speaker 3: massive impact on me. I had a guy named Anthony
Speaker 3: Zerbe who's an actor. He's eighty seven. He's still my
Speaker 3: best friend. And he would come and just like literally,
Speaker 3: I would open my door. We did a series together
Speaker 3: in Tucson, Arizona, when I was like twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: I would open the door and there'd be eight books
Speaker 3: just standing there at six in the morning. You know,
Speaker 3: was never read this, and this is how you should.
Speaker 3: He'd just be a stack, and then a month later
Speaker 3: there'd be another stack, and then there'd be another stack.
Speaker 3: And then we ended up doing plays together. And I
Speaker 3: heard him and roscal Lee Brown do it hour and
Speaker 3: a half of the most amazing hour and a half
Speaker 3: of poetry spoken poetry, which I can't think of anything
Speaker 3: more boring as a concept. It's like, go watch people
Speaker 3: speak poetry for an hour and a half. It's like it.
Speaker 3: But they were so dynamic and they understood the music
Speaker 3: of language and it was its own food. And I
Speaker 3: sat there watching that at twenty years old, and I
Speaker 3: just said, that's what I want. That's couldn't get enough
Speaker 3: of it.
Speaker 4: If you like listening to Ruthie's table Flour Would you
Speaker 4: please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
Speaker 4: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, O, wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Thank you so, Josh. Would you read the recipe that
Speaker 2: you chose for today and that we cooked for today,
Speaker 2: Rigatoni with cavalo narrow and the new olive oil.
Speaker 3: Would you like me to read it in Italian or English?
Speaker 2: You can read it in any language you like.
Speaker 3: Rigatoni with Cavola naro and new olive oil serves six
Speaker 3: one kilogram cavolo narrow leaves, two garlic cloves peeled, two
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty militers extra virgin olive oil, five hundred
Speaker 3: grams rigatoni freshly grated parmesan. This pasta is a celebration
Speaker 3: of two ingredients that arrive at the same moment in
Speaker 3: the year, Covola naro and the first pressed peppery, extra
Speaker 3: virgin olive oil. Remove the stalks from the covolon naro leaves,
Speaker 3: but keep the leaves hole. Blanch them in boiling salted
Speaker 3: water along with the garlic cloves for five minutes. Drain.
Speaker 3: Put the blanched cavolonaro and garlic into a food processor
Speaker 3: and pulse chop to a puree. In the last couple
Speaker 3: of seconds, pour in about two hundred millilters of the
Speaker 3: extra virgin olive oil. This will make fairly liquid, dark
Speaker 3: green pure season well. Cook the Rigatonian boiling salted water.
Speaker 3: Then drain, put the pasta into a bowl, add the sauce,
Speaker 3: and stir until each piece is thickly coated. Pour over
Speaker 3: the remaining extra virgin olive oil, and serve with parmigiano.
Speaker 2: There you go. Thank you. Oh and here's Joseph who's
Speaker 2: going to come and talk about cavaloneero pure with RIGATONI.
Speaker 3: Thank you for this.
Speaker 5: That's okay, beautiful.
Speaker 6: So the important thing about this plated pasta is the
Speaker 6: olive oil, which is barely three weeks.
Speaker 3: Old at this point, barely three weeks old.
Speaker 1: Good, yeah, the same.
Speaker 3: This is the same.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, absolutely to.
Speaker 3: Get this olive oil.
Speaker 5: To get this olive oil, where did you go? We're
Speaker 5: in Tuscany, So we go around Tuscany.
Speaker 6: This particular olive oil is from not far from Florence.
Speaker 3: Florence.
Speaker 5: Just you know, okay, I was just I wasn't sure.
Speaker 5: And it's so nice to go and then try the
Speaker 5: olive oil. And that's one thing. That's amazing.
Speaker 6: But then when you put them in food, it's it
Speaker 6: transforms again.
Speaker 2: And I think this is really.
Speaker 6: Nice with the sweet pasta.
Speaker 3: Makes me hungry.
Speaker 2: Try try so good.
Speaker 3: So what do they do? They soak it in the pepper.
Speaker 3: No no, no, no no, this is this is from the.
Speaker 2: Tree. They bring it into the press. Next year we go.
Speaker 2: You should come with us, because it's an amazing You
Speaker 2: go to these farmers. You know, they're the people works
Speaker 2: you who also produce the wine. Right, so they produce wine,
Speaker 2: and they produce the olives, right and for these guys
Speaker 2: who are making you know, every dish they can with
Speaker 2: olive oil. Then to see the process. But also this
Speaker 2: is new. You would never heat this up. So we're
Speaker 2: using the twenty three oil right now to cook with.
Speaker 2: And then this is this you would never have except
Speaker 2: on a piece of toast or yeah, i'll give you
Speaker 2: some to take home. So this is liquid gold right now,
Speaker 2: it's very we haven't had the whole process.
Speaker 3: So when you open it, how long can it keep for?
Speaker 2: We can keep because you just keep sealing it. And
Speaker 2: if you just close it, it's fine. It's fine. I mean
Speaker 2: here we you know, we use we use seven thousand
Speaker 2: bottles of olive oil year.
Speaker 3: Sure, it's amazing. I think if I didn't have young kids,
Speaker 3: I would be in Italy.
Speaker 2: But you bring them, you know, there are schools you
Speaker 2: can know, you know somebody who's living, you know, living.
Speaker 3: In We just moved usual a place that's as close
Speaker 3: to Europe as I think we can get in California,
Speaker 3: and we're very happy there.
Speaker 2: In Santa Barbara and Santa Barbara. I was at the
Speaker 2: San Sidro Ranch like millions of years, very close, millions
Speaker 2: of years the rich and I went there. It was beautiful.
Speaker 3: Is nice?
Speaker 2: Do you like? Yeah? I did? I did like we
Speaker 2: walked and except there was one thing I did. I
Speaker 2: really I am not happy with that. Snakes.
Speaker 3: Snakes.
Speaker 2: I feel pretty strongly about snakes, and I understand that.
Speaker 2: Do you get it when I go to places I
Speaker 2: now have found out that I say to people, do
Speaker 2: you have snakes here? Because I really like them? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Because you tell them you're scared, They tell you there
Speaker 2: are no snakes. Say I'd really like to see some snakes.
Speaker 3: Do you have? Then they go yeah.
Speaker 2: Then I go by out of there like.
Speaker 3: You manipulated thirty seconds. So there was really smart. Actually,
Speaker 3: I love snakes. Do you guys have any really love them?
Speaker 3: We have a ton of rattle snakes in the hills.
Speaker 3: If you go in the hills, they're everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Then you know, it's like telling your account and
Speaker 2: you're spending too much money before they tell you you do?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 2: Right now? You love them?
Speaker 3: We all love them. We all picked them up. And
Speaker 3: we like about spiders. Steel like spiders.
Speaker 2: Fine, anything, fine, anything, anything anything. I could take a spider,
Speaker 2: I could take a mouse.
Speaker 3: You don't like.
Speaker 2: It's just a snake that I don't like. So we
Speaker 2: were swimming in one of those pools at the San
Speaker 2: is Sidro and I was really happy. I was just
Speaker 2: swimming and Richard I just heard this voice saying, Ruthie,
Speaker 2: don't look to your right, look to your left and
Speaker 2: just swim. And I was going, are you telling that
Speaker 2: there's a snake? No, I'm just telling you to get out.
Speaker 2: And then we got out and they were like all
Speaker 2: over the place.
Speaker 3: They were the snake in the pool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in the pool, not in the swimming pool, but
Speaker 2: like we were hiking and we just decided to go
Speaker 2: in the pond.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't like that.
Speaker 2: I don't like it. But I liked Santa Barbara and
Speaker 2: I like that place. And there's a great Mexican isn't
Speaker 2: there like a street Mexican place that sells tacos that's.
Speaker 3: Kind of like street tacos, like small tacos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really really good area.
Speaker 3: Do you ever travel around looking for new recipes?
Speaker 6: Many recipes ideas.
Speaker 2: I'm Richard. My husband's an architect, used to say that
Speaker 2: it's just a progression, isn't it. So one day you're
Speaker 2: making an almond tart with raspberries in the summer, and
Speaker 2: then you'll say, you know, this would be good with
Speaker 2: pears in the winter. Or you'd say, maybe this time,
Speaker 2: you know, with the sea bass that we cook in salt,
Speaker 2: maybe we'll take a turbot and do it in salt,
Speaker 2: and he'll do it cold, and we'll put instead of salsaveritia,
Speaker 2: we'll put basalamon vinegar on it. And it's a kind
Speaker 2: of it isn't like for me anyway. It isn't like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I have an idea, let's make a pasta with blueberries
Speaker 2: and parmesan. You know, it isn't like an item. It's
Speaker 2: a kind of constant drip by, drip by drip that.
Speaker 6: Is exact, it's exactly right. I think that you might
Speaker 6: come in and you think, today, I'm going to make
Speaker 6: this risotto and it's you know, with pheasant like we
Speaker 6: are today, and then but then through lunch we're talking
Speaker 6: about how we could make it better, and.
Speaker 5: Tomorrow we'll do it again and it'll just be a
Speaker 5: little bit different, a little bit different.
Speaker 3: You know, the dish is the same, but every person
Speaker 3: is getting something different.
Speaker 2: Is that parallel and acting or writing your book?
Speaker 3: I think when you're doing a play, I think it's
Speaker 3: like that. If you're willing to experiment. I can't imagine
Speaker 3: doing I'm sure like you can't imagine doing a dish
Speaker 3: for a year and a half the same dish. Do
Speaker 3: you do that? Do you always have the same menu? No?
Speaker 2: No, no, we change every every meal. Every Yeah, so
Speaker 2: Joseph at the menu this morning, and then today's Sean
Speaker 2: will come in at three thirty and she'll write the
Speaker 2: menu for tonight.
Speaker 3: That's how I feel about theaters sometimes, because you can
Speaker 3: do it roll and then you can you learn different
Speaker 3: idiots and crowd it kind of I don't know behaviors
Speaker 3: in that role to better tell that story, to better
Speaker 3: get into that character. But then there's a point for
Speaker 3: me where I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, what else can
Speaker 3: we do? Or maybe I'll mix up the blocking, I'll
Speaker 3: walk in a different direction. And you have other actors
Speaker 3: that go, no, you can't do that because they rely
Speaker 3: on the repetitiveness of it. But I like being off camber.
Speaker 3: That's why I think I loved cooking. That's why I
Speaker 3: think I love painting. That's why I think I love writing.
Speaker 3: It's why I think I love photography because there is
Speaker 3: no mastering it. You know. I don't think you can
Speaker 3: ever mask it. This canvas that is getting bigger faster
Speaker 3: than you can figure it out. Then you can fill it.
Speaker 2: I'm gone right, thanks, Okay. If you were feeling that
Speaker 2: you needed a comfort from food, yeah, is there a
Speaker 2: food that you would go to a time? And what
Speaker 2: would it be? What could the diction?
Speaker 3: Something that makes me comfortable, something that makes me happy
Speaker 3: would be would be a pasta. It would have mushrooms
Speaker 3: in it, it would have I like mushrooms for some reason,
Speaker 3: I really like mushrooms. Yeah, and Banafi Banafi's a comfortab
Speaker 3: Is Banafi' is my most What.
Speaker 2: Is it tell me about?
Speaker 3: What itffe' it's toffee, bananas, homemade cream, dulcea de leche,
Speaker 3: which what is doulcea de leche? Sugar and milk, condensed milk.
Speaker 3: It can be condensed milk, or it's sugar and milk
Speaker 3: melted down in a pan. You know, it's been thirty
Speaker 3: years since she's died. But anytime that I'm anywhere, especially Europe,
Speaker 3: and they serve Banaffi, like, oh my god, look damn Binoffi.
Speaker 3: I love you, Mama. Yeah, you eat something great. It's
Speaker 3: just like getting a big hug inside. It's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I love you, Josh. You know what I mean. So
Speaker 3: if I eat banaffi, I'm not just eating Banaffi. I'm
Speaker 3: eating an experience that I've had that I not only
Speaker 3: appreciate and love looking back on, but feel like I'm reliving.
Speaker 3: My mother was very into key lime pie too, And
Speaker 3: I don't base everything just off my mother, but but
Speaker 3: key lime pie. When I ask if the key lime
Speaker 3: is real, that's the thing, is Li'm real? Is it white?
Speaker 3: It's all these things that I grew up with that
Speaker 3: felt like the knowledge, Like she had the knowledge she
Speaker 3: was going to call you out if it was fake.
Speaker 3: You know, and I loved that there was something this
Speaker 3: kind of demand for the organic. Yeah, integrity, yes, but
Speaker 3: demand for the organic, Like, are you giving me McDonald's
Speaker 3: or you giving me the real deal? Did you? Did
Speaker 3: you put your soul into this? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I wish i'd met her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too. You guys would have loved each other.
Speaker 3: You know, there's some people that I go, people go, oh,
Speaker 3: I wish you know I would have met her. I go, No,
Speaker 3: you don't. Nope, No, she would have buried you. But yes,
Speaker 3: I think you guys would have adored each other.
Speaker 2: Well, she has a great son.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, thank
Speaker 1: You, thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in
Speaker 1: partnership with Montclair