Speaker 1: In the early days of our friendship. I was amazed
Speaker 1: by Mala Guancar, then founding partner of Lumpine Capital. How
Speaker 1: could this high achieving woman be so uniquely calm, thoughtful
Speaker 1: and serene. We went to dinner in her home in
Speaker 1: notting Hill. Entering this traditional London house, we were surrounded
Speaker 1: by the best of brave and beautiful contemporary art and furniture.
Speaker 1: When we went down to dinner, there she was. Malla
Speaker 1: in the kitchen apron on finishing the curries, the rice,
Speaker 1: the vegetables and the desserts she had cooked for us.
Speaker 1: All I asked her over dinner what she was doing.
Speaker 1: She spoke about her work in public health at Harvard
Speaker 1: and with Atual guan Day, a book of short stories
Speaker 1: she had just published, the immersive theater piece she was
Speaker 1: doing with David Byrne, and a high risk skiing adventure
Speaker 1: she'd just come back from with her two sons. Today,
Speaker 1: ten years later, she is founder of Circo Capital, the
Speaker 1: largest ever fund run by a woman. Okay, so, Mala,
Speaker 1: do you chose of all the recipes, all our books,
Speaker 1: pistachia cake And you made it sound as if like,
Speaker 1: don't you know that I want to do pistasia cake,
Speaker 1: So here we go with pistachia cake, red piboa.
Speaker 2: So yes, pistachio cake, my very favorite. Must have made
Speaker 2: it abou about one hundred times two hundred and seventy
Speaker 2: grams of unsalted butter, one lemon, one vanilla pod, one
Speaker 2: hundred grams of blanched almonds, one hundred and twenty grams
Speaker 2: of pistachios, two hundred and fifty grams of castor sugar,
Speaker 2: four eggs organic, forty grams plain flour, one lemon, sixty
Speaker 2: grams of pistachios, fifty grams of castor sugar. Preheat the
Speaker 2: oven to one hundred and fifty degrees centigrade. Line a
Speaker 2: loaf tin and grease with twenty grams of the butter.
Speaker 2: Soften the remaining butter, Grate the lemon peel, split the
Speaker 2: vanilla pod and scrape the seeds. Grind the almonds and
Speaker 2: pistachios together. Beat the butter and the sugar until light
Speaker 2: and the eggs one at a time. Add the zest
Speaker 2: and vanilla seeds, fold in the nuts and sive in
Speaker 2: the flour. Spoon the mixture into the tin and bake
Speaker 2: for forty five minutes. The cake is ready when a
Speaker 2: spirit comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin
Speaker 2: for the topping. Grate the lemon, peel and squeeze the juice.
Speaker 2: Have the pistachios. Mix the lemon juice with the sugar,
Speaker 2: Boil until thick. Then add the zest. Stir in the pistachios,
Speaker 2: and pour over the cake. Delicious for breakfast with a coffee,
Speaker 2: or as a dessert with crimp fresh or anytime.
Speaker 1: That made me want to have it. But I was
Speaker 1: interested because I always think of you with the incredible
Speaker 1: chutneese and with the curries and the food that you made,
Speaker 1: and you chose a cake. Id you like to bake?
Speaker 1: I just feel like.
Speaker 2: To be a really good pastry chef, certainly in the
Speaker 2: Western tradition, you have to. It's about precision, and I'm
Speaker 2: terrible with precisions. Oh kind of person, say a little
Speaker 2: bit of sour, a little bit sweet.
Speaker 3: I'm terrible at cakes.
Speaker 2: And I felt that this was one of the few
Speaker 2: recipes I could actually make. And there I was sort of,
Speaker 2: you know, working mom to young boys with insatia of
Speaker 2: appetites that seemed for pretty much anything, and this just
Speaker 2: seemed just wonderful. It was just just a beautiful, lovely cake.
Speaker 2: I must admit, though, Ruthie, I did. I did shift
Speaker 2: it around. A great recipe is something that you can
Speaker 2: build off right like like like any creative, beautiful thing.
Speaker 2: And so what I did was, I you know, I
Speaker 2: did grow up in South India, so I kind of
Speaker 2: added let's see what did I did all kinds of
Speaker 2: things that I kept the vanilla. I added loads of clothes,
Speaker 2: clothes and cinnamon and cardamom.
Speaker 1: Crown so you crown them together.
Speaker 2: I pounded all of those up and put them in
Speaker 2: the cake. I put them in the cake. I didn't
Speaker 2: put the topping. It's a bit of a rush, but
Speaker 2: that and that just you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: you know this probably but you know, cinnamon can replace
Speaker 2: and did in medieval times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, so that's what I did.
Speaker 1: I would say the recipe is half poetry and half
Speaker 1: science as well. Yes, you know, so we kind of
Speaker 1: you know, you taste, the precision is really important. But
Speaker 1: I'm interested that you had the clothes and the climbs,
Speaker 1: and I'd like to try it. But then did you
Speaker 1: still at the pistaches at the end?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, I just put the pistache at the top.
Speaker 3: I left out the lemon and the sugar.
Speaker 1: You have cake for breakfast.
Speaker 3: I have not a cake for breakfast in a.
Speaker 1: Long time Italian. You know, Italians have their cakes in
Speaker 1: the morning, they have their cakes for breakfast, They have
Speaker 1: their ice creams on the street, and then they have
Speaker 1: a coffee for dessert. You know, in this presso so
Speaker 1: there's always a cake, a dry cake to have for breakfast. Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, in South India it's really more just a little
Speaker 2: sombar of sort of lentils or russum of lentils and
Speaker 2: spices and tomatoes and then some sort of steamed rister
Speaker 2: lentil cake like an Italy or maybe it does.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that. Your eyes light up when
Speaker 1: you start talking about clothes and cardonmen and lentils for
Speaker 1: breakfast in South India. Tell me about this India think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so my story is pretty straightforward in some ways
Speaker 2: for you know, that period of sort of American Indian immigrants.
Speaker 2: So soon as maybe people don't know this, as soon
Speaker 2: as the Civil Rights Act was passed, there was also
Speaker 2: change in the immigracial laws of people from being around
Speaker 2: place of origin and the American and the restrictions in
Speaker 2: place of origin, and so it was bailed, as you know,
Speaker 2: and so as soon as that was lifted, my parents
Speaker 2: were one of the first to come over to the
Speaker 2: US become graduate students, became academics.
Speaker 1: And what do you think that was like for them?
Speaker 1: Do you think that was?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: I think if you and I Ruthie were go to Mars,
Speaker 2: it would probably be less of the leap than it
Speaker 2: was for them. So they both came on scholarships from
Speaker 2: sort of rural really semi rural India, both in the sciences,
Speaker 2: so my father in the mathematical sort of area and
Speaker 2: my mother in molecular biology. So I think that was
Speaker 2: a huge leap for them. And I think I'm consistently
Speaker 2: sort of astonished by their bravery and the sort of
Speaker 2: almost gallantry with which it sort of went out with
Speaker 2: open curiosity to the world. And it's something I wish
Speaker 2: I think we have a lot of in the world,
Speaker 2: and I would love to see us all tap into.
Speaker 3: That a bit more because it's only good for everyone.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, no, I think it was something they
Speaker 2: did with great gusto and we're very happy, but they're
Speaker 2: also very happy to go back. And shortly after my
Speaker 2: sister was born, when I was about six, we moved
Speaker 2: back to India.
Speaker 3: They wanted to go back.
Speaker 1: Did they meet and India and come together, actually have
Speaker 1: an arranged marriage.
Speaker 2: They met in India, moved over here together, and then
Speaker 2: we moved back. As I said, when I was six
Speaker 2: or so, we moved to Bangalore. And that's where they
Speaker 2: came from. They came from just south of Goa. So
Speaker 2: they come from the coast, the Molivard coast, which is
Speaker 2: a haven up all of his spice.
Speaker 3: Growing as as you might know. And so that's very much, yeah,
Speaker 3: very much.
Speaker 2: And it come from a family of sort of academic
Speaker 2: social workers. I'm really the black sheep of the family,
Speaker 2: someone went into the vulgar world of commerce and never
Speaker 2: got a PhD. So that's where I grew up in Bangalore.
Speaker 2: That's very much part of my life until especially until
Speaker 2: seventeen when I came back to came to the US
Speaker 2: and then went off to school.
Speaker 1: And what was home life like? Did your mother work
Speaker 1: and your father worked?
Speaker 3: Did you both of my parents worked?
Speaker 2: I I'd say neither one of them was really sort
Speaker 2: of you know, affiliated with a stove in any particularly
Speaker 2: distinguished way.
Speaker 3: But we got along.
Speaker 2: My grandmother was maternal grandmother in particularly a great cook,
Speaker 2: and so she you know, showed me if she always
Speaker 2: had something pickling. Yeah, it seemed like anything could be pickled.
Speaker 2: I think at one point she even pickled banana skins,
Speaker 2: believe it or.
Speaker 1: Not, skins.
Speaker 2: Interesting wasn't successful, but she she tried. She pickled high
Speaker 2: biscus flowers, She pickled gooseberries.
Speaker 1: Did your grandmother live near you? Was she in the house.
Speaker 3: She didn't.
Speaker 2: We lived in Bangalore. She lived in the coast, but
Speaker 2: she would come visit.
Speaker 1: Do you remember the meals we had around the table
Speaker 1: in Bangalore when you were between six and seventeen? Did
Speaker 1: you go to school? Come home?
Speaker 2: Sweet dad? So in India there's this whole did you
Speaker 2: take your little tiffin carrier as they call it, with
Speaker 2: these stack little stainless steel boxes, and they all have
Speaker 2: it's a whole sort of bento box ritual to it,
Speaker 2: and so all these Arabasic traditions around how many sours
Speaker 2: and how many sweets and everything sort of architected. But
Speaker 2: you know, I took my little tip in mind was
Speaker 2: a bit less polished, but I take my little lunch
Speaker 2: box to school, and I remember that the tastes of
Speaker 2: sort of yogurt and rice and pickles.
Speaker 1: And what did you have for breakfast?
Speaker 3: Usually just a.
Speaker 2: Very simple you know, like a dosa and some lentils
Speaker 2: or something like that. And then you'd come home to
Speaker 2: very simple supper. So it was it wasn't anything primarily vegetarian, right,
Speaker 2: So it was that's but I have it was delicious
Speaker 2: because the food was very fresh and you know this routie,
Speaker 2: you know what that's all about.
Speaker 3: And so going to the vegetables bizarre.
Speaker 1: And the markets with the markets like in India, I've
Speaker 1: never been to a market.
Speaker 3: The markets were overwhelming.
Speaker 2: I mean everything is that, but you had big piles
Speaker 2: of just endless varieties of chili's or endless rides of greens.
Speaker 2: I was recently in Mexico and the markets they're very
Speaker 2: much reminded me of of India. And you know, you
Speaker 2: know what to do, and you know to you learn
Speaker 2: how to buy things. It's nothing as shrink wrapped. You
Speaker 2: can choose, right, so you think you snap the m
Speaker 2: of the gooseber, you know what to look for. And
Speaker 2: it's that I missed that very much. There was sort
Speaker 2: of sensuality and shopping that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes did you go with your mother or your grandmother, or.
Speaker 2: I'd go with my grandmother or you know, our the
Speaker 2: lady who helped out at the house, And yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you love food? Even then, I was thinking of
Speaker 1: you such a lover of food. And then we talk
Speaker 1: about food, you'd tell you make food.
Speaker 4: Food.
Speaker 1: I did you know as a.
Speaker 2: Child that you yes, yes, I still remember there was
Speaker 2: a season for the when the Kashmiri apple juice season
Speaker 2: would arrive and that would be actually affordable, and so
Speaker 2: you know, I remember things like that, like I have
Speaker 2: a very strong Pristian memory for these little flavors and smells.
Speaker 3: And Indian street food as well.
Speaker 2: And Indian street food is really just a spectacular celebration
Speaker 2: I think of humanity.
Speaker 3: It's just great.
Speaker 1: Did your parents take you to restaurants in Bangalore?
Speaker 2: Was that something at that time the eighties? I'd say
Speaker 2: it was rare. I mean, Indian food was very much
Speaker 2: about home cooking, and I think you'll probably have heard
Speaker 2: that from others. It's less about a restaurant. I think
Speaker 2: that fine dining idea is something that's developed more recently,
Speaker 2: which is the growing prosperity of India and a rising
Speaker 2: middle class, and I think it's fantastic. I mean, they're
Speaker 2: Indian cooks and chefs and doing amazing things in India
Speaker 2: right now. But that was less of the story, at
Speaker 2: least of my specific fish and bangled. Did you have
Speaker 2: very good fish? Yeah, there was really good fish. Less
Speaker 2: so meat, but more it was more around fresh fish,
Speaker 2: particularly in the coast, the Mall Park Costhen. I went
Speaker 2: to visit my grandmother there.
Speaker 1: That was did you cook with her grandmother or your mother?
Speaker 2: I did. She actually had an open fire stove, so
Speaker 2: it was a very you know, it was really wonderful.
Speaker 2: This happened very kind of like what you have. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a smaller and uh yeah. She would cook
Speaker 2: all kinds of seafood on there and all the pickles
Speaker 2: and the chutneys I mentioned. So, no, it was wonderful.
Speaker 1: So you participate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all was great, but then we had to move back.
Speaker 1: The cook of the family.
Speaker 3: I didn't really cook in childhood as much.
Speaker 2: It's more something I observed, and it's really something that
Speaker 2: started once I went to university.
Speaker 1: When you went back to university, did you all go
Speaker 1: or was it just you you went by yourself.
Speaker 2: I went by myself. I was at Harvard and wasn't
Speaker 2: much opportunity for cooking there, But you know, that was
Speaker 2: more just taking whatever it was offered to you in
Speaker 2: the dying hall. Was that a kind of showing adding hot.
Speaker 3: Sauce to it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Was that shocking those I had a big adjustment going
Speaker 1: from a home it was creating incredible food and markets
Speaker 1: and smells and memories in your grandmother to Harvard where
Speaker 1: you lived in a dorm and food was it was.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the arc after that was though,
Speaker 2: very much about I mean, you're so overwhelmed sort of
Speaker 2: the intellectual curiosity of that time, right, you don't think
Speaker 2: about food as much? Are You're absorbing so much new
Speaker 2: in terms of relationships and friendships and ideas and people.
Speaker 2: And I was just you know, becoming a young woman
Speaker 2: with all the sort of uncertainties, and I mean it
Speaker 2: was it was an interesting time.
Speaker 3: It's almost like three failures in a funeral, it was like.
Speaker 2: And literally the arc of that until now was very
Speaker 2: much around you know, failing, failing better learning and then
Speaker 2: iterating from there in terms of just you know, in life,
Speaker 2: it's going a little bit away from its food into philosophy.
Speaker 2: But I do think it's very important to make mistakes
Speaker 2: and learn and fail a bit in life, because they're
Speaker 2: all very intertwined. And I differentiate between failures of hubris
Speaker 2: and failures of curiosity, and I think failures of curiosity
Speaker 2: where you're just open mindly trying to try something and
Speaker 2: maybe you mess it up, I think those are perfectly fine.
Speaker 2: I think that's how you learn and you move on
Speaker 2: as long as you're aware of it. And that's what
Speaker 2: I meant by the three failures in a funeral in
Speaker 2: the sense that I think my first class at Harvard
Speaker 2: is one I actually did very poorly on, but it
Speaker 2: was also the class that was most impactful. And it
Speaker 2: was a class that the great philosopher John Rawls taught,
Speaker 2: and it was on developing the ideal society. So what
Speaker 2: we all had to do as a class was get
Speaker 2: together and decide what would the ideal society be if
Speaker 2: you didn't know anything about your status in that world,
Speaker 2: if you didn't know what your race would be, your gender,
Speaker 2: what you'd be endowed with in terms of talents or wealth,
Speaker 2: what kind of society you create, and ultimately what we
Speaker 2: decided is we don't know what we would be. We'd
Speaker 2: want a society where the worst person off would be
Speaker 2: not just okay, but actually flourish. We could well be
Speaker 2: that person. It wasn't just about getting, you know, sort
Speaker 2: of a pittance, and that really transformed I had a
Speaker 2: very utilitary and very rational view of the world, and
Speaker 2: it was my way of sort of coping, I think
Speaker 2: also growing up in a very poor country. But that
Speaker 2: really made sense to me. Finally, so even though the
Speaker 2: class technically in terms of my transcript was a failure,
Speaker 2: I'd argue in terms of just what it did to
Speaker 2: my life and my mindset and what I did eventually
Speaker 2: later trying to do a bit of good in the
Speaker 2: world was transformative.
Speaker 3: So that was probably failure number one.
Speaker 2: I think then that led to I've met the people
Speaker 2: I met in that class, led them to my first job, actually,
Speaker 2: which I ended up getting fired from pretty quickly. Failure
Speaker 2: number two. It's going to be a really exciting podcast.
Speaker 3: Let's us go into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I'm just thinking about it in a way.
Speaker 2: That kind of is how it laid out, and that
Speaker 2: was working for working in Russia during the privatization program
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one in Moscow. In Moscow and I
Speaker 2: there briefly and then later in Mongolia, and the World
Speaker 2: Bank really was I was really working for them through
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at the time at Harvard. And
Speaker 2: what was really interesting was that we went there with
Speaker 2: such high hopes. And it's very relevant to the new
Speaker 2: headlines we're saying nineteen ninety one. So August of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one is actually when the clup happened in Moscow,
Speaker 2: the eltson and then December of that year with the
Speaker 2: Soviet unency ceased to exist. It all happened very quickly
Speaker 2: and are there, Yeah, we're there, And that was something
Speaker 2: we went in with high hopes and then just realized
Speaker 2: this is this is probably not going to work. And
Speaker 2: ultimately that's right right away. I don't think I got
Speaker 2: that right away. Actually I might stort of give myself
Speaker 2: more credit than I deserve. But that's something I think
Speaker 2: now looking back, was fairly clear, and that's something we
Speaker 2: should have we should have addressed as a as a
Speaker 2: broader policy map, not obviously as it twenty one year
Speaker 2: old who was there for their first job, but that
Speaker 2: then I ended up in Mongolia working there as well.
Speaker 2: But I look back on that period of just such high, bigger,
Speaker 2: you know, much obviously bigger issue than just me and
Speaker 2: my journey. Was just this whole issue of how again
Speaker 2: failures of hubris. I would argue, where we think we
Speaker 2: have all the answers, but we're not listening to the
Speaker 2: local community, and you know we can, we can as
Speaker 2: a result of that mess up. And my first big
Speaker 2: philanthropic project was really around sanitation and subsidized toilets for
Speaker 2: you know, poorer populations across.
Speaker 1: South Asia, South Asia.
Speaker 2: That was my first step or you know, first worked
Speaker 2: my first fund that was working really well, and wanted
Speaker 2: to get back right away. I didn't want to sit
Speaker 2: around and wait until I was some sort of elderly person.
Speaker 2: And when I did that, I thought, oh, this is
Speaker 2: going to be great. We got all the answers. This
Speaker 2: is going to be about you know, better sanitation for all.
Speaker 2: And you know that didn't really work either. It was
Speaker 2: a complete I think when we visited some of these
Speaker 2: toilets that we'd subsidize, most of them were being used
Speaker 2: as chicken coops. Why that one was around, you know,
Speaker 2: it might be lack of plumbing, and the other was
Speaker 2: maybe around just cultural habits and what was appropriate what
Speaker 2: wasn't appropriate. So longer story for maybe a different podcast,
Speaker 2: but the bottom line is that was sort of another
Speaker 2: failure at argue, more of curiosity and hope, but also
Speaker 2: a bit of hubris there where I just stepped back
Speaker 2: and realized, Okay, there's it's.
Speaker 3: Important now to really listen.
Speaker 2: And that leads me, sadly, I think, in some ways
Speaker 2: to the funeral, which is Paul Farmer, whom I think
Speaker 2: you know as well, really dear friend and a great
Speaker 2: innovator in terms of how public health could be delivered,
Speaker 2: and he and I work together pretty extensively on a
Speaker 2: variety of projects that he did with many other plan
Speaker 2: He was a real mentor to me in terms of
Speaker 2: really listening to the community, understanding grounds up.
Speaker 3: And so that's what I do, and that's what I do.
Speaker 2: Whether I do it now is someone learning to cook,
Speaker 2: or someone learning to gather friends, or someone learning to
Speaker 2: be a better investor or philanthropists, that's very much about
Speaker 2: listening to what's happening around the ground and observing rather
Speaker 2: than as you make it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you remember the food in Moscow?
Speaker 5: That you ate going, Oh, yes, food, absolutely, there wasn't
Speaker 5: much deep but there was a good borsch every now
Speaker 5: and then there was you know, a couple of solid dumplings,
Speaker 5: very solid dumplings.
Speaker 3: Mongolia was great.
Speaker 2: That's where I had my first fermented mare's milk, which
Speaker 2: it is like sour milk, that's what you would expect.
Speaker 2: And then there was a lot of sort of lamb,
Speaker 2: mutt and gristle and that was sort of it.
Speaker 3: That was pretty grim.
Speaker 1: Was it an urban context? You win?
Speaker 4: It was.
Speaker 2: There was about we're traveling around a lot, and it's
Speaker 2: a large at that time certainly it was largely still
Speaker 2: it's largely sort of rural nomadic society.
Speaker 1: And have you been back to Russia since?
Speaker 3: I haven't been back to Mongolia, but back to Russia.
Speaker 1: And big change.
Speaker 2: Yeah, caviar galor you can afford it, lots of fancy stuff.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we wanted I think nineteen which was chairman of
Speaker 1: the take, and we were trying to get an exchange
Speaker 1: with the Hermitage for the and the Pushkin for they
Speaker 1: have great matisas and they were at the Hermitage. We
Speaker 1: were trying to exchange turners for a show and it was,
Speaker 1: you know, I went wanting to love it, but it is.
Speaker 1: It was complex, and certainly for us. I haven't been
Speaker 1: back since then, so I've missed the whole wealth and
Speaker 1: the restaurants and everything else. It's a good cuisine, that
Speaker 1: wasn't it. Sean and I are here and we're talking
Speaker 1: about that pistachio cake. I think it's a very delicious cake.
Speaker 1: It's a cake that you can have any time of
Speaker 1: day in that Italian way. But there's something about this cake,
Speaker 1: and of course it's the pistachoes, which I always associate
Speaker 1: with Lebanon, which feels almost Middle Eastern to me. The
Speaker 1: green color, the nuts and the almonds. It just always
Speaker 1: feels like something that you might not have in Italy,
Speaker 1: but you might have as part of the meal you
Speaker 1: were having it from Beirroot, for instance. Where do you
Speaker 1: think about this cake?
Speaker 4: It it's definitely a breakfast cake in my house. It's
Speaker 4: really yummy, but it's tricky to make in volume. We
Speaker 4: often have problems with it being oily because the nuts
Speaker 4: can be mean.
Speaker 1: I guess nuts of oily, aren't they. It isn't hard
Speaker 1: to make that. You have to get it right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's all in the fineness of the grinding of
Speaker 4: the almonds and the pistachios, and actually sometimes we put
Speaker 4: a bit of flour. There's some of their flour through
Speaker 4: the nuts when it gets folded in to sort of
Speaker 4: hold the nuts stopping being to sort of mop up
Speaker 4: some of the kind of oils.
Speaker 1: I love this cake and I cannot remember how we
Speaker 1: came up. I have a very strong recollection of just
Speaker 1: making it over and over and over again till we
Speaker 1: get it right. Did you know The River Cafe has
Speaker 1: a shop. It's full of our favorite foods and designs.
Speaker 1: We have cookbooks, linen napkins, kitchen were, tote bags with
Speaker 1: our signatures, glasses from Venice, chocolates from Terin. You can
Speaker 1: find us right next door to the River Cafe in
Speaker 1: London or online at Shopthrivercafe dot co dot uk. So
Speaker 1: we're sitting here in the River Cafe. It's about seven
Speaker 1: thirty and we're about to go and have dinner. And
Speaker 1: of course I chose the quietest place in the whole
Speaker 1: of Thames Wharf to have a studio, except forgetting that.
Speaker 1: Some nights we have Sylvia's which is downstairs our private
Speaker 1: dining room and so the noise in the background is
Speaker 1: a lot of people, probably fifty having celebrating something in
Speaker 1: Sylvia's having a drink, So that's the background noise. So
Speaker 1: I hope you can all hear us for cooking. You've
Speaker 1: involved in India with your grandmother and your your mother
Speaker 1: a bit, with Harvard, really not at all, and then Russia,
Speaker 1: you know, you were working and eating a bit. When
Speaker 1: did you then decide how important cooking and food was
Speaker 1: to you or was it a decision? Did it happen?
Speaker 2: I think it came with the birth of my children,
Speaker 2: you know, I think I really started thinking having spending
Speaker 2: time and allocating time to not just enjoying food obviously,
Speaker 2: but to really thinking about cooking again in a way
Speaker 2: I hadn't in a long long time, and really returned
Speaker 2: to my children some way brought me back to my
Speaker 2: own childhood in the sense of joy I got out
Speaker 2: of food. And so I started very early with them,
Speaker 2: you know, giving them all kinds of adventurous things. And
Speaker 2: I was thirty when I had Lucas, my older son,
Speaker 2: and thirty two when I had just under thirty too,
Speaker 2: actually when I had Row and my uncle one. So
Speaker 2: I was you know, relative young mother. I just we
Speaker 2: just set up long Pine at the time in ninety eight,
Speaker 2: so that was, you know, really relatively early on as
Speaker 2: well in my career. So both a young working woman
Speaker 2: and a mother.
Speaker 1: How did you come to England?
Speaker 2: We came to England, Oliver and I early in ninety
Speaker 2: nine because of his work and also because I was
Speaker 2: setting up, you know, our little office here in London,
Speaker 2: so it was sort of a combination of factors, and
Speaker 2: we stayed. We thought we'd stay here very briefly, but
Speaker 2: we end up staying here twenty years.
Speaker 1: So then, did you before you had children? Did you
Speaker 1: entertain or entertained?
Speaker 2: I definitely loved cooking and both something I did with
Speaker 2: very much driven by recipes, and so I think what
Speaker 2: really changed was this idea of thinking, going back to
Speaker 2: my Childhoo's sense, as sometimes constraints are good.
Speaker 3: Constraints force you to be great.
Speaker 2: So my big constraint was time and not being able
Speaker 2: to shop for every single ingredient on some obscure recipe list,
Speaker 2: which is what I did a bit more up when
Speaker 2: I entertained very formally for people on a Friday night
Speaker 2: after work. Now it was got to get delicious things
Speaker 2: on you want your children to enjoy it, and so
Speaker 2: I would just say, Okay, the recipe requires a lemon,
Speaker 2: you know what, Let's just try tamarant that's sour too.
Speaker 3: Let's see what that does.
Speaker 2: And so this mixing of different ingredients, different flavors and
Speaker 2: combining them, even though it might be completely different specific
Speaker 2: things from the recipe I just mentioned with your beautiful
Speaker 2: pistachio cake, that's something. And actually the pistachio cake was
Speaker 2: something I started very early with them, which is why
Speaker 2: I have such great memories of it.
Speaker 1: That was in the Easy Book.
Speaker 2: I loved it because what was so great about that
Speaker 2: book and how you constructed that book, Ruthie, was how
Speaker 2: you thought about the ingredients and really foregrounding the ingredients.
Speaker 2: And that gave me courage as a cook to really
Speaker 2: think about the ingredients as something that could be malleable,
Speaker 2: you know, like people are malleable. Recipes going to be malleable.
Speaker 2: And I had so much fun with that book.
Speaker 3: It's such a such.
Speaker 1: A nice way. When we did it, we also thought
Speaker 1: that what we wanted to do. What's hard about cooking is,
Speaker 1: you know, shopping and then the preparation and then you know,
Speaker 1: the presentation if you will, But the shopping, we tried
Speaker 1: to say, okay, we're going to give you a shop list,
Speaker 1: you know. We did the ingredients almost like a shopping list,
Speaker 1: so you could almost you know, tear it out or
Speaker 1: write it down a photocopy in those days probably and
Speaker 1: take it and then you could go to the shop
Speaker 1: with the with the ingredients, and they were all We
Speaker 1: tried to do ingredients that were accessible because shopping isn't
Speaker 1: real pain I mean the restrictions of a working woman
Speaker 1: to having our men to have to go to something
Speaker 1: on the way home from work. It's painful when you
Speaker 1: want to go home and see your kids and help
Speaker 1: them with their homework, you know, and then you have
Speaker 1: to stop and shop.
Speaker 2: And also, I think what it brought me that book
Speaker 2: was really helpful because it also brought me back, not
Speaker 2: just because of the ease. It took some of the
Speaker 2: ease out of the ingredients and searching for those. It
Speaker 2: also started making me think back to what my grandmother
Speaker 2: had told me, which is thinking in proportions, right, so
Speaker 2: not rigidly in terms of quantities, but really ratios of flavors.
Speaker 2: And that's really why I think what turned me from
Speaker 2: someone who just followed a recipe into someone who's really
Speaker 2: a proper cook who really saw you are cooking as
Speaker 2: a creative activity and outlet and something that it became
Speaker 2: a passion in a way. That and so I oiled
Speaker 2: lot to you in that book.
Speaker 1: But does the Indian influence do you? Like you used
Speaker 1: cardonmol and cloves and cinnamon for the cake. Does that
Speaker 1: does something you inherently sort of go for is to
Speaker 1: see how you can make this recipe more exotic by
Speaker 1: doing something from your childhood to it that you yes, I.
Speaker 2: Mean my sister gave me. I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: seen these big spice dubbles that they have in India
Speaker 2: where you have sort of little trays and a big
Speaker 2: oh yeah, it's a palette. It's like just like a
Speaker 2: paint palette. And that's how I think about spices. It's
Speaker 2: just how to combine them. And you know, my first
Speaker 2: gift to my partner David was really all was just
Speaker 2: a big trays of these spices and how you could
Speaker 2: combine them.
Speaker 3: And I think it's just such a just enormously fun.
Speaker 1: And you go to India or you eat food from
Speaker 1: a different culture, it does make you think how boring
Speaker 1: a lot of our food is. You know, It's just
Speaker 1: it's delicious and it's interesting and the olive oil is strong.
Speaker 1: But then that kind of assault on these senses that
Speaker 1: you have from what's your favorite Indian food? What if
Speaker 1: you I like southern Indian. But I've only been to
Speaker 1: India twice. We went once to the Jaipur out of
Speaker 1: the Delhi part, which I actually really loved just a lot,
Speaker 1: which at the children. And then when we went to
Speaker 1: the south, we went to Goa and down to Kerala,
Speaker 1: and I was very attracted to that food. It's very perfumely, interesting,
Speaker 1: light fishy, and yeah, I like that very much.
Speaker 3: It's more sort of coconut milk off the base. It's
Speaker 3: a little lighter.
Speaker 1: And when was the last time you were in India?
Speaker 3: I was in India in February of this year.
Speaker 2: Actually, yes, yeah, I went.
Speaker 3: To Bombay Mumbais we're supposed to call it now.
Speaker 2: Well, I usually go there into the south to Bangalore,
Speaker 2: and it was again you go there, and yes, it's
Speaker 2: about work and meeting people and seeing friends, but yes,
Speaker 2: it's almost always about food as well.
Speaker 1: Well, you asked me what was my food that I love.
Speaker 1: For Mindiya, what is the food that you love most?
Speaker 1: Is there a region that you particularly like?
Speaker 2: I think, like you, Ruthy, I liked South Indian cuisine.
Speaker 2: But I think there's some amazing food's obviously from from
Speaker 2: the north that I sort of think of as you know,
Speaker 2: just indulgences, the breads and the use of tundor and
Speaker 2: how that, how that has come about. But in terms
Speaker 2: of the or the luck now has just amazing cuisine,
Speaker 2: the d you know, the seal, the pots and clay,
Speaker 2: and there's amazing stuff there. But what I really love
Speaker 2: is that South Indian food in terms of the emphasis
Speaker 2: on spices and the mix of different kinds of spices.
Speaker 3: It's it's it's very it's like.
Speaker 2: A burst of flay, different flavors all layered.
Speaker 3: And I love that idea of layering.
Speaker 2: Whether it's music or literature or cooking, it shouldn't just
Speaker 2: be a one note wonder of a thing. And so
Speaker 2: that's that's what I really love about that cuisine, whether
Speaker 2: it's from Kerala or Tamil now.
Speaker 1: And it's different region, isn't that It's it's.
Speaker 2: Very different region to region. Yes, even within the South
Speaker 2: I think people forget, but there are multiple layers and
Speaker 2: regions to that. But that's that's the food I think
Speaker 2: about when I think how do I how do you
Speaker 2: recreate that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that sense of feeling.
Speaker 1: I really love to think of you is as a
Speaker 1: cook because of my friends. You know, I have friends
Speaker 1: with cooked I have friends who give dinner parties and
Speaker 1: they're great, and they have friends with gardens. I have
Speaker 1: friends with vegetables. But you you have a farm. So
Speaker 1: should we talk about the farm where we had the
Speaker 1: apple juice of the gems and the chutneys and everything.
Speaker 1: So tell us about that farm.
Speaker 2: Yes. So the idea behind that I work with Mark,
Speaker 2: who's our gardener there really closely to just grow the
Speaker 2: kinds of things that we wouldn't be able to find
Speaker 2: normally otherwise. And we ended up also doing a lot
Speaker 2: of you know, heritage native species that you wouldn't normally
Speaker 2: find otherwise that are sort of going dying out. Well,
Speaker 2: one thing we decided to do is start growing the
Speaker 2: sort of rare type of metal or fruit, and some
Speaker 2: really interesting odd plums, those parts, all those kinds of things.
Speaker 2: And then I realized that they're all of these medlers
Speaker 2: that are native to Sussex. That apparently they call all
Speaker 2: kinds of rude names because I think the local name
Speaker 2: for the metal fruit we group was called like monkeys
Speaker 2: ass or something like that. I mean, it's all kinds
Speaker 2: of like bizarre names.
Speaker 3: I just loved. And so we had a bunch of those,
Speaker 3: just a variety of those.
Speaker 2: One season and they just spank high heaven really but
Speaker 2: I pickled them as I did.
Speaker 3: That was fine, went in doubt.
Speaker 2: So those those were modestly improved by that. And then
Speaker 2: we had a whole spate of different kinds of flowers,
Speaker 2: you know, just local flowers, some edible flowers.
Speaker 1: It isn't organic and sustainable, as I just oric, did
Speaker 1: you change the soil or did you had you.
Speaker 2: It was very chalky as it's in South Down, so
Speaker 2: it's very chalky. So yes, it had to be improved
Speaker 2: us with our local just vegetable waste to be composted
Speaker 2: and stuff. We brought in a lot of fish blood apparently,
Speaker 2: which is brought in for the Yeah, all those that
Speaker 2: we compass soil over whatever twelve fIF years.
Speaker 3: And it became which is much better over time, and.
Speaker 1: What you have now that you grow what is yours?
Speaker 2: Made similar? We try and new new different things. We
Speaker 2: still have the meddlers, by the way, cause you're interested.
Speaker 2: And yeah, still the plums, still the apples.
Speaker 1: As you know, mesty foot vegetables.
Speaker 2: Lots of kale and charred and different kinds of variety.
Speaker 3: Verbs krispy krispy kale.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: Tell us how you make that?
Speaker 2: That's a good one.
Speaker 3: That's you take.
Speaker 2: We make a hoist and sauce with the plums and
Speaker 2: we grow and then we mix in a little bit
Speaker 2: of cashew nut butter believe it or not, and then
Speaker 2: a bit of soy sauce and marrin and a bit
Speaker 2: of chili and just put in the dehydrator and.
Speaker 3: There you go.
Speaker 1: How long have you had the fun?
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, it's like twenty two thousand and five or
Speaker 2: something like that. Yeah, it's where really my children grew
Speaker 2: up in a way, it's very much part of my
Speaker 2: love of sort of Britain and everything we've we've learned here.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's that's what it is. And now what
Speaker 2: I'm trying to do there is actually encourage more woman
Speaker 2: gardeners because I think it's such a great profession and
Speaker 2: such a great part of England's heritage. So we've been
Speaker 2: encouraging more sort of interns there under Mark who are
Speaker 2: sort of from the local horticultural college, so things like that.
Speaker 2: That's been great and just having that be part of
Speaker 2: the food. No, we don't have animals except for bees.
Speaker 2: We do have bees.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the honey. Yeah, how's that?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's sort of alternous cycles of joy and heartbreak
Speaker 2: because you know, it's tricky sometimes with the weather and
Speaker 2: you know, so we've had the one thing I've learned
Speaker 2: is you to keep the beehives really high up, and
Speaker 2: it's we were just way too close to the ground.
Speaker 2: I think that's a big mistake that early beepers make.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they don't like the damp.
Speaker 1: They don't like the damp.
Speaker 2: Well, if you think about it, naturally they put their
Speaker 2: eyes way high up. Why why why am i so?
Speaker 1: And do you flavor your honey? Do you do different
Speaker 1: types of honey or.
Speaker 2: My son, younger son encouraged me to start putting chili
Speaker 2: into the honey, which has been a great success.
Speaker 1: If you like listening to Ruthie's table for would you
Speaker 1: please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts. Thank you. You mentioned David, Yes, and that's
Speaker 1: David Byrne, and you brought him to meet me in
Speaker 1: the River Cafe a few years ago, some years ago,
Speaker 1: because he was just intrigued about how, as many how
Speaker 1: a restaurant works. I'm intrigued to know how a fund works,
Speaker 1: and I'm intrigued to know how being somebody from content
Speaker 1: and producers work. But it really is interesting to people.
Speaker 1: I think, how does the motzarell rive at the same
Speaker 1: time as a pasta? And how do you order? And
Speaker 1: he was very he seemed to be much more interested,
Speaker 1: almost as much as how we write the menu. We
Speaker 1: do write the menu in a kind of unique way,
Speaker 1: which is that we do it every differently for every meal.
Speaker 1: What is his interest in food?
Speaker 2: He likes just very similar to me. I think it's
Speaker 2: just a wonderful thing. It's it's food as a form
Speaker 2: of love. You know, that's what you offer your friends
Speaker 2: and your family, and it's a creative act as well.
Speaker 2: And I think one thing, Yes, that was actually a
Speaker 2: really fantastic day. I was really great to just come
Speaker 2: here and put the menu together, and and and and
Speaker 2: sort of see how everything was put together in a
Speaker 2: sort of magical place.
Speaker 1: Hey, we see, Hi, sad here we are. We've spoke with.
Speaker 7: Lots of artists and actors and musicians, and you sort
Speaker 7: of see a logical journey from their creative work they
Speaker 7: do in the studio to their work in the kitchen.
Speaker 7: We haven't spoken that many business people who have this
Speaker 7: passion for cooking, and I wonder if that's us being
Speaker 7: now reminded, whether that you are quite unique in that
Speaker 7: in that sense.
Speaker 2: I think that, well, I'm sure there are many business
Speaker 2: people who love cooking, because I firmly believe that business
Speaker 2: is a creative activity when done well. I think any
Speaker 2: when I define creative activity as connecting different areas and
Speaker 2: fresh and new ways, and that if you're good at
Speaker 2: pretty much anything, you have to think creatively, no matter
Speaker 2: what it is. And as a result of that, I
Speaker 2: don't necessarily see the dichotomy maybe as much as might
Speaker 2: otherwise seem from the outside. And I also think if
Speaker 2: you're someone who's a philanthropist and wants to do well,
Speaker 2: particularly in the public health area, thinking about the business
Speaker 2: of food and the public health aspects of food and
Speaker 2: the creative aspects of food are actually quite intertwined in
Speaker 2: some really interesting ways. I mean, one thing I think
Speaker 2: a lot about and I don't know if this is statistic,
Speaker 2: you all of you knew, but one thing I was
Speaker 2: sent was a introduction of high fructose corn syrup into
Speaker 2: the American food industry was nineteen seventy and back then
Speaker 2: the obesity rate was relatively deminimous. And you progress that
Speaker 2: ninety and hygrictos corn circus half of all sugar used,
Speaker 2: and now forty percent is a pc rate. So that
Speaker 2: sort of the business of food and how that has
Speaker 2: made food process food at least much more actually addictive.
Speaker 3: And there's some great books on this.
Speaker 2: Moss has written a great book called Hooked on This,
Speaker 2: and you lead that into the public health aspects of
Speaker 2: what that's led to. I think about that a lot.
Speaker 2: So I think about food is really just such a
Speaker 2: core aspect of our society and cultural identities.
Speaker 1: It tells you about a culture, It tells you about society,
Speaker 1: It tells you about a city. I would say, out
Speaker 1: of the market the first time we get to a city,
Speaker 1: because it tells.
Speaker 3: You that he tells you everything.
Speaker 2: The one thing that actually in food that Dave and
Speaker 2: I learned a lot about was just how the brain
Speaker 2: processes food, which is interesting for tell you as well,
Speaker 2: which is we did this project called Theater of the Mind.
Speaker 2: We wrote this theater piece together that ended up running
Speaker 2: in Denver and run a few other cities. And as
Speaker 2: part of that, one thing we learned is how the
Speaker 2: brain creates these illusions around taste. And have you ever
Speaker 2: heard of this West African miracle berry? So David told
Speaker 2: me about it. I actually haven't heard it. Heard about
Speaker 2: it first from him. So it's a West African berry.
Speaker 2: It's a little bush about two meters high. It has
Speaker 2: these olive shaped little red berries, and you chew on
Speaker 2: it just tastes quite bulerable and it binds to the
Speaker 2: sweet receptors in your tongue. And anytime you eat anything sour,
Speaker 2: it activates the sweet receptors, so you get this burst
Speaker 2: of sugar in your mouth. So you literally you're chewing
Speaker 2: on a lemon. Ever, I mean just like just until
Speaker 2: it lasts a couple of years, you chew on it.
Speaker 2: You can chew on a lemon and it literally tastes
Speaker 2: like it tastes like a you know, like a Sunday
Speaker 2: ice cream Sunday, and it's amazing.
Speaker 3: It's this crazy kind of experiences. So we put that
Speaker 3: into our theater piece.
Speaker 2: It's an immersive theater piece that people went through and
Speaker 2: people start screaming because you're such an intimate part of
Speaker 2: your sense, you know, your sensory system to have this
Speaker 2: like the lemons something sweet. Yeah, And so they were
Speaker 2: all kinds of littles.
Speaker 1: We were tusting things like that, you're immersive. I was
Speaker 1: talking to Will you were.
Speaker 6: Going to ask, Yeah, I just was interested because something
Speaker 6: that comes up on the podcast, as Ruthie says, food
Speaker 6: is memory. And obviously there's so much a connection between
Speaker 6: taste and smell. And do you think that our connection
Speaker 6: with food and memory is as strong as we think
Speaker 6: it is or do you think that it's intangible and
Speaker 6: changes time?
Speaker 2: And I think memories are definitely malleable. I mean that's
Speaker 2: not me speaking, that's just you know, what we've.
Speaker 3: Learned over the years.
Speaker 2: And I think we should think about our brains not
Speaker 2: as direct processors and senses out there. We construct the
Speaker 2: world every time we look at the world, So what
Speaker 2: we see is not a specific radio frequency. What we
Speaker 2: see is really something our brain is constructed as an image,
Speaker 2: and there are all kinds of evidence for that. For example,
Speaker 2: we don't see the blind spots in our eyes, we
Speaker 2: just paper them over. So our brain constructs the world,
Speaker 2: and I think that's taste as part of that. And
Speaker 2: I think every time we remember something, since our brain
Speaker 2: is really about learning, it's not really about being a photocopier, right,
Speaker 2: what's used is that evolutionarily speaking, since our brain is
Speaker 2: a learning engine, we revise the memories as come along
Speaker 2: to suit what is best for us, and to update
Speaker 2: them based upon what we've learned since that memory was
Speaker 2: initially formed. And so I think memories are infinitely valuable
Speaker 2: as a result, and there's a lot of really interesting
Speaker 2: research on that, and also how false memories can be
Speaker 2: ascribed to People's been interesting research on that as well.
Speaker 2: So I think one thing we learned about with all
Speaker 2: of our research when David and I went to Labs
Speaker 2: to construct the Theater of the Mind immersive theater piece
Speaker 2: that you talked about, a lot of it was around
Speaker 2: how memory is really malleable and in a way that's
Speaker 2: really good so people can go through life and they're
Speaker 2: not stuck. You know, there's always a possibility of change,
Speaker 2: which I really fundamentally see is a hopeful thing that
Speaker 2: we can evolve and move on from memories in the past.
Speaker 2: So yes, I do think it's malleable to answer your question.
Speaker 1: They certainly talk about people's memories here, and I just
Speaker 1: say that to as William said, that food is memory
Speaker 1: and memory is food. Many people's memories come back when
Speaker 1: they start talking about the food there. I've had just
Speaker 1: in the interviews we've done, people say, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I never I don't remember that until I started talking
Speaker 1: about my father when he divorced my mother and I
Speaker 1: was eight, that suddenly he started cooking because he wanted
Speaker 1: us to know that things. You know that he could
Speaker 1: do that, or you know, he is an expression of
Speaker 1: his love and mel Brooks at age ninety eight. Remember,
Speaker 1: he says, unless it's a malleable memory that he remembers
Speaker 1: the name of the woman who cooked him his first
Speaker 1: pasta when he was eight, so ninety years ago, he
Speaker 1: can remember her name because the food. He can't remember
Speaker 1: the person who taught him to tie his shoes, but
Speaker 1: he can remember somebody who taught him to make a pasta,
Speaker 1: and then the memories of sad memories, somebody making something
Speaker 1: for you before they died, or you know, somebody wanted
Speaker 1: to eat something, you know, but as they were dying,
Speaker 1: and it is you know, yeah, it's all to do
Speaker 1: with I mean, I'm sure there are other smells probably
Speaker 1: bring back memories, and pain brings back memories. But food
Speaker 1: do you think it does?
Speaker 2: Absolutely right with you? And really it really does. I
Speaker 2: think a lot about sort of my favorite foods and
Speaker 2: and what I do when I'm trying to recreate some
Speaker 2: of them. Some of them are not even ones that
Speaker 2: were in a recipe. They're just ones I remember having
Speaker 2: had or maybe it was at a restaurant such as yours,
Speaker 2: or maybe it was but you're so generous with your recipes.
Speaker 3: But you know, maybe it was.
Speaker 2: Something that my grandmother and aunt cooked for me or yeah,
Speaker 2: and and and those are the those are the memory
Speaker 2: I'm trying to recreate, you know, in my kitchen.
Speaker 1: And you were saying, your children and your mother, what
Speaker 1: is and that connection? Is it a connection for them and.
Speaker 3: For them as well? Yes, it's very much. Okay, you're
Speaker 3: coming over, what would you like to eat? It's a
Speaker 3: feeling and so going.
Speaker 1: To I suppose finding to the end, we would say,
Speaker 1: if you needed to reach for some food, my friend,
Speaker 1: beautiful friend, mama, for comfort, you wanted something to eat,
Speaker 1: is there something you would go for?
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean I think of comfort as more a
Speaker 2: sense of love or maybe even joy.
Speaker 3: And we all need that, right, I mean, I certainly do.
Speaker 2: And I think of that as this very specific rossum
Speaker 2: that my grandmother used to make for me when I
Speaker 2: was ill, and it was this sort of garlic rossum.
Speaker 2: And to the question earlier about memory, it was something
Speaker 2: I never could make and I never quite figure out
Speaker 2: the exact flavors. And this is a really interesting story.
Speaker 2: And then someone told me about a woman who lived
Speaker 2: in Chennai village in south in Tamil Nadu and her
Speaker 2: mission in life, among other things she was accomplished in
Speaker 2: many ways, was to do a compilation of all of
Speaker 2: the pickle recipes and chutney recipes in Roussam's in South India.
Speaker 2: And so she literally systematically went through and she had
Speaker 2: the book and had gone out of print. So I
Speaker 2: actually wrote her and I got this little pdf in
Speaker 2: the mail. Her name is Usha Prabakara and she literally
Speaker 2: now she has it on Amazon. And there's one called
Speaker 2: four Under Pickles and there's another one called A Thousand Russums.
Speaker 2: And I could not recommend both of these books more.
Speaker 2: And you can write her, what would you make it?
Speaker 6: This is it?
Speaker 1: This is the food. You go for it, but would you.
Speaker 3: It's meant to It's very simple.
Speaker 2: You just make it with a little bit of tour doll,
Speaker 2: which is kind of lentil, and you grind that up
Speaker 2: with coriander and cumin, and you mix it up with
Speaker 2: essentially what I almost make like a lentil stock, lentil
Speaker 2: and spice stock, and you add a bit of chili.
Speaker 2: You know, it's called the third corp where you put
Speaker 2: you mix and oils and mustard seeds and a bit
Speaker 2: of chili.
Speaker 3: And you can sprinkle it on top. It's delicious.
Speaker 2: And you know, any cold you have, I'd be curious
Speaker 2: guarantee you.
Speaker 3: I love you, Thank you, Love you too, Ruthy, thank you.
Speaker 6: Ruthie's Table for is produced by Atami Studios for iHeartRadio.
Speaker 6: It's hosted by Ruthie Rogers and it's produced by William Lensky.
Speaker 6: This episode was edited by Julia Johnson. And mixed by
Speaker 6: Nigel Appleton. Our executive users are Fai Stewart and Zad Rogers.
Speaker 6: Our production manager is Caitlin Paramore and our production coordinator
Speaker 6: is Bella Selini. This episode had additional contributions by Sean
Speaker 6: Wynn Owen. Thank you to everyone at The River Cafe
Speaker 6: for your help in making this episode