Speaker 1: Welcomed to Ruthie's Table for a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Adamize Studios. When you open a cookbook, you
Speaker 1: expect to see a photograph of the food with a
Speaker 1: recipe on the opposite page. But imagine if you are
Speaker 1: also saw something different, something completely unexpected, something that might
Speaker 1: inspire you. There's a classic, there's all some I don't
Speaker 1: know that. There's one opposite the chicken and milk, isn't
Speaker 1: it were the hands look like they've been dipped in costard.
Speaker 1: Somehow it works as a combo, doesn't it. And the
Speaker 1: one with someone disappearing into the round chair in front
Speaker 1: of the cross stater, it's really nice. I do love
Speaker 1: the pink telephone with the sawbabe, because that picture of
Speaker 1: that pink telephone and found at home, and it just
Speaker 1: it is exactly where it needs to be. The other
Speaker 1: one I love is the one which is I think
Speaker 1: it's reveal with there's a car, there's a car up
Speaker 1: on blocks and there's a big square piece of ribs.
Speaker 1: I think it is it will be your ribs or
Speaker 1: which is wrapped up? And I love that. Two years
Speaker 1: after starting The River Cafe, Rose Gray and I were
Speaker 1: asked by a publisher to do a cookbook. We replied
Speaker 1: sternly that we were chefs, not writers. But the more
Speaker 1: we thought about it, we realized that being a chef
Speaker 1: is about communicating to the people eating your restaurant, to
Speaker 1: the people who cook in the restaurant, to your family,
Speaker 1: to your friends. Thirty years and twelve cookbooks later, we
Speaker 1: have just published our newest, The River Cafe look Book
Speaker 1: for kids of all ages. It's a collaboration between a photographer, designers,
Speaker 1: and chefs. When you hold any book in your hands,
Speaker 1: there's a story to be told about how it was created,
Speaker 1: and that's what we're going to do on today's special
Speaker 1: episode of Ruthie's Table four. Joseph Travelli and Sean wyn
Speaker 1: Owen are executive chefs at The River Cafe and co
Speaker 1: authors of The River Cafe look Book. In the smartphone era,
Speaker 1: physical cookbooks offers something special and uniquely inspiring. As a
Speaker 1: kind of older adolescent, one of my first cookbooks was
Speaker 1: an Alice A Little Cookbook. Maybe that began a path
Speaker 1: that led me here. I don't know, because it's that
Speaker 1: same generation. So it was Alice a Little and then
Speaker 1: definitely on my twenty if I got the River Cafe Cookbook,
Speaker 1: but there weren't these kind of children's cookbooks. I can't remember.
Speaker 1: I love them all, Like was it on Claudia Rhodin's
Speaker 1: Food of Italy and Michel Hazzan and the Rue Brothers
Speaker 1: and people like that. I really enjoyed that French cooking.
Speaker 1: And actually, when I started being a chef, I thought,
Speaker 1: I want to go and work in the Rits in
Speaker 1: London and learn every single potato dish that exists. I
Speaker 1: always read the classics, but I've never read the six
Speaker 1: I've read the classic cookbooks. I've got children myself, and
Speaker 1: you know, my oldest she is an avid cookbook reader.
Speaker 1: She will sit in bed, the kind of cliche I
Speaker 1: used to always joke, you say, you know, I sit
Speaker 1: in bed and read cookbooks and don't cook for them.
Speaker 1: Sometimes not that much her all the time, you know.
Speaker 1: So she has all these books, some of which I
Speaker 1: find completely horrifying, loads and loads of sugar icing, but
Speaker 1: not just. She also really enjoys the Silver Spoon Italian Cookbook,
Speaker 1: as you'll sit there reading through and then you know,
Speaker 1: quotes measurements to me, which is quite funny. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: starting to cook now, and you know, we'll be leading
Speaker 1: up to this book, I think pretty quickly. To be honest,
Speaker 1: it's really good because it's going to open her eyes
Speaker 1: to a whole bunch of new things. At the heart
Speaker 1: of the book, of course, are the recipes. Sean Winnellen
Speaker 1: and Joseph Tavelli. We chose the recipes thinking about all
Speaker 1: the young people that we knew what they like to eat,
Speaker 1: and a little bit, you know, because after all, we
Speaker 1: are parents, what we'd like them to eat, So we
Speaker 1: wanted to choose things that they'd find exciting but nevertheless straightforward,
Speaker 1: not super challenging, but also not patronizing. It's what we
Speaker 1: would like to eat. And also their recipes that you're
Speaker 1: never going to regret learning how to spatch cock chicken
Speaker 1: that you've grilled or cooked in milk, or how to
Speaker 1: make a basic tomato risotto, and then you know, take
Speaker 1: from that, I actually know how to make a resutto,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll try and do something different, you know, And
Speaker 1: so their recipes that they're not children fied. One of
Speaker 1: the things we wanted to do was do a book
Speaker 1: that was the chef's book for young people or latterly
Speaker 1: kids of all ages as if a chef was looking
Speaker 1: over your shoulder, as opposed to it being kind of
Speaker 1: a step by step. The thinking behind the tips was
Speaker 1: to give some pointers and to shine just a few
Speaker 1: kind of specific lights just to help that go smoothly.
Speaker 1: I think it's really useful photography and design bring a
Speaker 1: cookbook to life. Matthew Donaldson took all of the photographs
Speaker 1: in the book. I think the first thing that we
Speaker 1: really did together was the thirty years of the River
Speaker 1: Cafe cookbook. It was like an education, you know, to
Speaker 1: see every plate of food that was put in front
Speaker 1: of me. It just wasn't something that I was photographing
Speaker 1: and had photographed before. Right now we're doing pastor, it's
Speaker 1: got to look like this. I didn't have any preconceived
Speaker 1: ideas the sort of minimal ethos and the architectural ethos.
Speaker 1: The color made it incredibly easy for me because you
Speaker 1: Joseph and Sean, you'd already taken away a lot of
Speaker 1: the things that would be fussy, that would that I
Speaker 1: would be having to trot with anybody else would be
Speaker 1: having to get rid of. So often you do photography
Speaker 1: and and people want it to be styled. They want
Speaker 1: a lifestyle or they want to dial so that involves
Speaker 1: we need to have cutlery or or salt and pepper,
Speaker 1: or we need flowers, or we need Although there was
Speaker 1: movement in the seventies and were the eighties, I guess
Speaker 1: I think I'm always looking for, um, what to take
Speaker 1: out of a photograph, rather than what to add in.
Speaker 1: I'm always, I've always always think that there's got to
Speaker 1: be something else we can get rid of. I think,
Speaker 1: and when you said to me, we don't have knives
Speaker 1: and forks in our photographs, I was so happy. Maybe
Speaker 1: a lot of those magazines and um cookbooks were kind
Speaker 1: of aspirational that if you cooked a fabulous meal, people
Speaker 1: would be impressed, or you can make it different. Seemed
Speaker 1: like you were a different lifestyle. And I think what
Speaker 1: Rose and I started with the first book and then
Speaker 1: we've continued is the idea that you know, the immediacy
Speaker 1: of actually cooking something, putting it on a table, and
Speaker 1: then taking a photograph of it. But I think one
Speaker 1: of the things before we get to River Cafe look
Speaker 1: book is shadow, and not in every photograph, but there
Speaker 1: is the beautiful, beautiful use of shadow. And I was
Speaker 1: wondering what is your thought in that it's a control
Speaker 1: I think if it's if it's always there, if if
Speaker 1: you have one thing that is like a control thing
Speaker 1: that makes all of the photographs it together. It was
Speaker 1: a real environment we had. We were using real light.
Speaker 1: But I think that the shadow really holds the image
Speaker 1: on the page. I think that if you've got a
Speaker 1: white plate on a white background or something you really
Speaker 1: need something that it frames the image really in a
Speaker 1: way that it's allowed to be there. It also, particularly
Speaker 1: with the River Cafe, it suggests that there is some
Speaker 1: and there is light, and there is and it's optimistic
Speaker 1: and it makes you feel good, but it's not. I
Speaker 1: don't think we would ever and I might have done
Speaker 1: it a couple of times. But the idea of having
Speaker 1: sunlight that sort of dappled is going into a lifestyle thing.
Speaker 1: It's putting ideas. It's trying to make a mood that
Speaker 1: I don't ever really want to do that. I just
Speaker 1: want to present the things as simply as possible, you know,
Speaker 1: and that you know, a plate of a dinner or
Speaker 1: lunch of the River Cafe is what it is. It
Speaker 1: really doesn't need any help from me. My name is
Speaker 1: Hamish I am one of the chefs here at the
Speaker 1: River Cafe, so I'm having to look through the look book.
Speaker 1: Now I'm thinking about maybe doing these slowly roasted Dattini tomatoes.
Speaker 1: We've got seven fifty grams of red and yellow Datterini tomatoes,
Speaker 1: two cloves of garlic, two tablespoons of olive oil, ten
Speaker 1: sprigs of time tea, salt, and freshly ground pepper to season.
Speaker 1: I've preheated my oven to a hundred and fifty degrees,
Speaker 1: which is gas marked. Two. I've just gone and washed
Speaker 1: my red and yellow datterin ese and then pricked them
Speaker 1: all with a toothpick. They stopped them bursting when you're
Speaker 1: cooking them. It allows the juices to flow. Okay, So
Speaker 1: the third step, after you've washed them pricked your tomatoes
Speaker 1: is to put them into a bowl with the olive oil,
Speaker 1: the garlic and the time And now I'm just tossing
Speaker 1: them around in the bowl and I'm going to season
Speaker 1: them up fairly generously with salt and pepper. Spread out
Speaker 1: your tomatoes now without overcrowding them onto a thin bacon sheet.
Speaker 1: So now we're just gonna put them into our preheated
Speaker 1: oven for about an hour and an hour and a half.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. Oh. They're beautiful, super simple, very delicious, not
Speaker 1: too overpowering in any flavor, which is why they're quite
Speaker 1: delicate and lovely to have with many dishes. Yeah, it's amazing,
Speaker 1: isn't it. How those recipes you think are so simple,
Speaker 1: but they're so good, Like the simple cooking is actually
Speaker 1: maybe the best cooking. There's a cookbooks that are really challenging.
Speaker 1: Often not always, this can be disappointing because they're so
Speaker 1: challenging and you get yourself in the right mess. You
Speaker 1: also don't maybe you want to make so much mess
Speaker 1: the rest of the times when clearing up, you just
Speaker 1: need like the best of us, few ingredients and just
Speaker 1: a little bit of knowledge and then you're away, you know.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what this kid's book is. I'm
Speaker 1: here today with Stephanie Dash and Anthony Michael, the designers
Speaker 1: are directors of everything in The River Cafe, but especially
Speaker 1: these beautiful books River Cafe thirty and today what we're
Speaker 1: going to be talking about is The River Cafe a
Speaker 1: Look book. The idea for having the book in two
Speaker 1: different sections came quite late in the day. The book
Speaker 1: started off as a cookbook for kids and was based
Speaker 1: around how kids might interact with making food. We would say,
Speaker 1: you know, as I say, by a tomato peel, the
Speaker 1: tomatoes squeeze a tomato, fried tomato, and we're doing it
Speaker 1: and we I think Anthony's definitely all of us thought
Speaker 1: and at a certain point it's been done before and
Speaker 1: probably done better than I could possibly do it. We
Speaker 1: just felt uncomfortable with that method. It was very process driven,
Speaker 1: and we were doing it sort of a step by step,
Speaker 1: and then we did it and looked at it and
Speaker 1: it just looked no fun, and then worse than that,
Speaker 1: it looked patronizing. So I think we all just looked
Speaker 1: at it on everyone. Everyone just liked it and it
Speaker 1: was back to the drawing board. In any creative process,
Speaker 1: there are moments when you feel stuck. What inspired the
Speaker 1: creation of the River Cafe look Book was a pamphlet
Speaker 1: I was given created by an artist, a photographer and
Speaker 1: two neurologiers funded by the Nesse Foundation, pairing diverse images.
Speaker 1: Matthew Donaldson or we didn't really know we were onto something.
Speaker 1: I don't think until we had those books. There were
Speaker 1: books that you had at home that paired photographs together,
Speaker 1: and they were done by a doctor and a researcher
Speaker 1: for neurological patients to stimulate by putting pictures opposite each other,
Speaker 1: like a picture of a baboon opposite I can't remember
Speaker 1: what's opposite of a booon picture, but there would be
Speaker 1: a picture of her building or something. Something clipped and
Speaker 1: something happened. I remember when Stephanie put two pictures together,
Speaker 1: and one was a picture of some stilly sits DeLine
Speaker 1: a soup like chicken soup, basically the suit that you're
Speaker 1: in my house and anyway, if anyone's ill, that's what
Speaker 1: they've given tiny little pastors in a chicken broth. And
Speaker 1: Stephanie put it opposite a photograph of a fire escape,
Speaker 1: which I'd photographed in Los Angeles in and I had
Speaker 1: been lying in bed in my hotel room, and I
Speaker 1: looked at that every day, and I've just been very
Speaker 1: ill and definitely not knowing anything about the about these
Speaker 1: photographs of where they come from. And put the two together,
Speaker 1: and there was the view of the person who was
Speaker 1: recovering with the suit. They should have been eating the
Speaker 1: thing that they were looking at, and immediately there was
Speaker 1: something in it. We went from kind of teaching in
Speaker 1: a very small way how to cook to a kind
Speaker 1: of almost inspirational book. You know, how do you inspire
Speaker 1: somebody to cook? How did you inspire somebody to make
Speaker 1: a recipe? And we, you know, we thought it's not
Speaker 1: by perhaps having a photograph and then the recipe, because
Speaker 1: that could be intimidating or overwhelming, or you love the photograph,
Speaker 1: but then when you look at the recipe, it's thinking, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I won't. And so we did work are pairing photographs.
Speaker 1: Having worked with Matthew a lot, we knew his pictures
Speaker 1: very well, so we used the food pictures and then
Speaker 1: literally trawled through his instagram, which was relentless job, and
Speaker 1: then matched the photographs. There was a really challenging process
Speaker 1: of how you put a vase of flowers next to
Speaker 1: a spaghetti anglais or you know, Roman villa next to
Speaker 1: a plate of piers. It's easy, somewhat obvious. Some just
Speaker 1: felt they were they were meant for each other, that
Speaker 1: they were they were separated at birth, and then others
Speaker 1: you have to work out what would you like to
Speaker 1: describe what we're So we're looking at a horse that's
Speaker 1: a Spanish decorated dress horse and a plate of tomatoes
Speaker 1: in the same colors, all circles, all dogs. The relationship
Speaker 1: is really about. Yeah, I mean it's a very obvious relation,
Speaker 1: but putting the two together and having food next to
Speaker 1: an image which has nothing to do with food, and
Speaker 1: I think that came really from I think children have
Speaker 1: the amazing thing, whether they just are not they're not programmed,
Speaker 1: they're not programmed to think plate on a food recipe
Speaker 1: next to the page, and they have this amazing I
Speaker 1: think their visual thinkers. I think they imagine things in
Speaker 1: pictures and they don't necessarily need this perfect picture of
Speaker 1: food and to copy it. And that's kind of what
Speaker 1: we didn't really want to do. So putting all the
Speaker 1: pictures together and doing that old druxposition just seemed to
Speaker 1: be to work. But I don't think it's a specifically
Speaker 1: child centric thing. I think a lot of adults think
Speaker 1: like that. And it's lying on your back and looking
Speaker 1: at clouds and seeing what you see in the clouds.
Speaker 1: There's lots of things that children see that we all see,
Speaker 1: so things that remind you of things like so you
Speaker 1: sometimes you look at a piece of polished wood and
Speaker 1: you can see figures in there or animals in there,
Speaker 1: and you make the shapes up because I think your
Speaker 1: mind's searching all the time to see things to recognize.
Speaker 1: So when you present two images next to each other
Speaker 1: that have got an obvious relationship, you start to see
Speaker 1: the similarities and it can make you smile. And I
Speaker 1: think that the books, the original books that Ruthie was given,
Speaker 1: I've got a much more serious intent that they're They're
Speaker 1: meant to open up pathways in somebody's head that might
Speaker 1: have closed. But these are these are just good fun.
Speaker 1: But it really Ruthie was the was the the instigator
Speaker 1: and the pusher. She she she planted the idea and
Speaker 1: then the concept of it, and then and then we
Speaker 1: sort of took it with Matthew's pictures, and strangely we
Speaker 1: did the juxtaposition because I think Matthew probably there were
Speaker 1: his photographs, so us putting them together, and then we
Speaker 1: put them all together around the table and everybody sit around.
Speaker 1: Ruthie would changed we then at that point then we
Speaker 1: would all look at them and move them around until
Speaker 1: everyone was happy. Some like ones and not another. But
Speaker 1: they're very they are very subjective. Some things are jarring,
Speaker 1: and I can imagine it's a bit like food as well.
Speaker 1: So if you put two flavors together, you sometimes think,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I can't eat that possibly, but once
Speaker 1: you've had it a few times, you think, actually, do
Speaker 1: you know what? I really enjoy that sort of bitter
Speaker 1: and sweets or something. I don't know. So I think
Speaker 1: the pictures can do the same thing. So I think
Speaker 1: that there are ones that obvious couplings, and then there
Speaker 1: are ones that you have to learn to enjoy it
Speaker 1: to like. And then you decided that it should just
Speaker 1: be those photographs the book, the first hundred pages of
Speaker 1: the book. Let's say, I think it is hundred pages
Speaker 1: should just be photographs. Do you have a page that
Speaker 1: you particularly love. I like the one I mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: with the Stele neighbor because of that story. I do
Speaker 1: love the pink telephone with the sorbet because that picture
Speaker 1: that pink telephone has been around knocking around my studio
Speaker 1: and draws and computers for such a long time, and
Speaker 1: I'm so happy that it found at home and it
Speaker 1: just it is exactly where it needs to be. It
Speaker 1: does I mean maybe that I'm not allowed to say this,
Speaker 1: but we're I do look through it, and I have
Speaker 1: looked through it quite a lot lately because obviously it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's just arrived and so curious to look
Speaker 1: at what we did. I think that it makes it
Speaker 1: does make me. It makes me smile, and that can't
Speaker 1: be a bad thing. Not in a cookery book. Joseph
Speaker 1: Travelli and Sean Wino and our executive chefs in the
Speaker 1: River Cafe and co authors of The River Cafe Look Book,
Speaker 1: every single picture of food we cooked ourselves, every single
Speaker 1: picture of the food we did, and it is as
Speaker 1: a recipe. It was taken in real time, wasn't It
Speaker 1: wasn't wasn't styled as such. It was just out of
Speaker 1: the off and onto the plate. And then trying to
Speaker 1: select the image that went alongside it. That was maybe
Speaker 1: one of the hardest bits of the book because there
Speaker 1: was five of us, so it was Anthony and Stephanie, Matthew, Ruthie, Me,
Speaker 1: Joseph and trying to get five people to agree on
Speaker 1: what picture sits opposite spaghetti bongala for example. That probably
Speaker 1: took about a year. What's so nice I think we've
Speaker 1: been talking recently is about the way that especially you're
Speaker 1: a beginner cook and you get a picture and a
Speaker 1: recipe you want to cook. You know the picture exactly,
Speaker 1: And what's lovely is that with the with the juxtaposition
Speaker 1: of the pictures, you've got these two images and you
Speaker 1: get more of a kind of feeling or something. And
Speaker 1: then again the recipe isn't right there. You've got to
Speaker 1: keep shuffling backwards and forwards. So I think that will
Speaker 1: give people their ability to cook better food. Actually, but
Speaker 1: one of the things we thought, I I felt having
Speaker 1: got a teenage kid, is how they you know, giving
Speaker 1: them a book may not be the most popular present
Speaker 1: you buy a teenager, and so you know, knowing how
Speaker 1: image lead they are, I like the idea of the
Speaker 1: fact it is almost like scrolling through Instagram, where you
Speaker 1: are getting a lot of images that are just mixed up,
Speaker 1: and it's up to you how long you stay on
Speaker 1: a picture. And then if you know, often some of
Speaker 1: the pictures you rest upon are actually not the food,
Speaker 1: and you're like, I like that picture of a telephone,
Speaker 1: but I don't know why. Or you might hover over
Speaker 1: a picture of as cream in a old and things
Speaker 1: I want to make that. But then also at the end,
Speaker 1: you've got all the colors. So even if you just
Speaker 1: look at the book just because you like the colors,
Speaker 1: it feels like it's you can use it in many ways.
Speaker 1: But for me, I was interested in trying to get
Speaker 1: a teenager to enjoy it or to to want to
Speaker 1: own it as well. And I thought, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: that that element of image image image was might just
Speaker 1: get them to pick it up. Hi, I'm Monica. I'm
Speaker 1: a waitress at the River Cafe. I have the cookbook
Speaker 1: at home. We only just got it, so i haven't
Speaker 1: cooked from it, but I'm hoping that when I do
Speaker 1: have a couple of weeks spare, that I can make
Speaker 1: the potatoes from it. Next to each of the pages,
Speaker 1: there's sort of a picture of kind of a visual comparisons.
Speaker 1: As I flicked through the book, I like the stairwell
Speaker 1: next to the Paranoma tarp. I think that the pair
Speaker 1: and Almontae is a transporting experience like a stairwell. I
Speaker 1: think when a lot of people come to the River Cafe,
Speaker 1: they really look forward to their desserts. I think the
Speaker 1: three probably most popular are the Paranorma Talk, the Lamon Talk,
Speaker 1: and the Chocolate Nemesis. I used Cope books a lot.
Speaker 1: I think what makes the River Cafe some of the
Speaker 1: recipes so special is that they are accessible. One of
Speaker 1: the beauties of this book. And I think it was
Speaker 1: a challenge because you remember, we had all the photographs,
Speaker 1: and then how do we segue from these photographs into
Speaker 1: the recipes, you know, how do we do that? We
Speaker 1: had black and white and white and black, and we
Speaker 1: had and then one day you said two words to us,
Speaker 1: and it was baracous airport. We used to have a
Speaker 1: client in Madrid and used to have to go to
Speaker 1: Madrid probably twice week to come a month, and I
Speaker 1: used to not like going to the meetings, but I
Speaker 1: and I just really loved the airport and just loved
Speaker 1: landing and seeing the rainbow colors on the stanchions as
Speaker 1: you as you came in. Just always always sort of
Speaker 1: stayed with me for a really long time. So then
Speaker 1: when we came to the Rainbow Kings, all sort of
Speaker 1: came together and we actually used photographs and Richard's reference
Speaker 1: points for those colors. We've done the images, and we've
Speaker 1: done the cover, and we were trying to do the layout,
Speaker 1: and then we were sitting in the private room. And
Speaker 1: remember and we were just talking about something I can't
Speaker 1: in the book didn't quite come together. We couldn't put
Speaker 1: a finger on what was missing it for like, had
Speaker 1: all this visual stuff, there's great recipes, but this somehow
Speaker 1: it was a bit of a disconnect. And we were
Speaker 1: just talking about someone was being in Spain. Ruth was
Speaker 1: talking about Madrid Airport and how Richard designed it with
Speaker 1: the color walk through different color zones. And then we
Speaker 1: were like, maybe we should do that with the book.
Speaker 1: And we didn't know whether it would work or not
Speaker 1: because there's no ware testing it. So we did know
Speaker 1: whether there will be enough creep of the color into
Speaker 1: the edges of the pages so that we would be
Speaker 1: able to make a rainbow out of all the text
Speaker 1: pages on the edge, because we like to paint the
Speaker 1: edges of books normally. UM. And when we discovered that
Speaker 1: we couldn't for budgetary reasons then and the fact that
Speaker 1: we were we were, yes, we've extended the time quite significantly. UM.
Speaker 1: We were really hoping that this this rainbow would appear.
Speaker 1: It was just so fun and it just thought, oh,
Speaker 1: this is maybe what it needs, because you know, it
Speaker 1: is also meant to be like a fun book, you know,
Speaker 1: and then it just brought it together. It felt like
Speaker 1: that was quite nice at the end. And so let's
Speaker 1: talk about the back of the book. I always say
Speaker 1: that the recipes from the writing of it were it's
Speaker 1: a book more verbs than adjectives. So it's mixed or
Speaker 1: whisk bake, you know, plate serve, it's all. It's very
Speaker 1: it's very verbal, isn't it that you have a verb
Speaker 1: saying what you have to do, not what you have
Speaker 1: to sort of think about that came from the fact
Speaker 1: that you, with your chefs constantly craft these recipes to
Speaker 1: be as instructive as possible without being superfluous. There's no
Speaker 1: It is utility in the fact that it's it's very
Speaker 1: very it's it's well crafted so that everything is is
Speaker 1: done with the least amount of words to do give
Speaker 1: the maximum effect. And I think that's a real skill
Speaker 1: in itself. That's a kind of book that you could
Speaker 1: take off to college and just have it in your
Speaker 1: in a repertoire of just recipes are so easy that
Speaker 1: you can take them with you through your young adult
Speaker 1: life as well or as a beginner. I suppose in
Speaker 1: this day age where you can get so many meals
Speaker 1: delivered so easily, or but you know, these are like
Speaker 1: ready meals, you know, ready for your teenager to take
Speaker 1: to college with them. My favorite thing about the book
Speaker 1: is the fact that, you know, is the physical book,
Speaker 1: the fact that it's a book. It's not you know,
Speaker 1: it's obviously completely visual, but it's not an line thing.
Speaker 1: And of course you know we're all cookbook fans, but
Speaker 1: this one, with the soft cover and the way it's bound,
Speaker 1: it just feels really nice in the hands. So I
Speaker 1: think my favorite thing about the book is the physical form,
Speaker 1: because it's soft, so that feels quite good. I like
Speaker 1: the fact that it reminds me of the restaurant in
Speaker 1: many ways, because it's not just about the food, is
Speaker 1: it because the restaurants about the design and the color
Speaker 1: and the people and the way it makes you feel
Speaker 1: when you walk through the door. I think that book
Speaker 1: is very much not one thing. It's many things, and
Speaker 1: it feels a bit like where the River Cafe is today. Also,
Speaker 1: having been involved with the production of a few books,
Speaker 1: now um, this is the one that I just you know,
Speaker 1: having you know, we've lived with it for a couple
Speaker 1: of years, I'm just happy to keep picking it up
Speaker 1: and keep looking through it and scrolling through it, you know,
Speaker 1: really enjoy it. And I think, I mean Anthony and Stephanie,
Speaker 1: the designers are just unparalleled. Yeah, I was going to
Speaker 1: say that is a very good example, isn't. It's incredibly
Speaker 1: long process and I think we did a hundred and
Speaker 1: eighties six different versions of this book. But I will
Speaker 1: I will say when we were very young designers, we
Speaker 1: went to a lecture given by Milton Glazer, the probably
Speaker 1: most famous graphic design of all time, and he showed
Speaker 1: us his work, and everybody was an auditorium of a
Speaker 1: designer is sitting there in awe this man, and he said,
Speaker 1: I'll just give you one piece of advice. It's the
Speaker 1: only work for people you like. And at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, that's a piece we've taken it, and
Speaker 1: we only ever work for people we like. I think
Speaker 1: this is I can't remember said we say it's our
Speaker 1: twelve or thirteenth or whatever coup book. But I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever given a book, and they've all been
Speaker 1: beautiful books, but I don't think I've ever handed a
Speaker 1: book to someone and said, look at the printing. Look
Speaker 1: at the quality of the printing in this book. I
Speaker 1: usually say, look at the you know, of course I do.
Speaker 1: I talked about the colors, and I talked about the
Speaker 1: juxtaposition and everything we tried to do to inspire children
Speaker 1: to cook. But what really and you really blew me away.
Speaker 1: And you did tell me this on the telephone quite
Speaker 1: a few times, and we spoke that you were preparing
Speaker 1: this book to be printed in the most rigorous way.
Speaker 1: And I know that you worked with the printers, you
Speaker 1: worked with someone who you felt with. You know, I
Speaker 1: would say this book get the Nobel Prize for printing.
Speaker 1: I do really think that on matt paper to see
Speaker 1: the qualities. Do you do you feel that way? I
Speaker 1: do think it's just And what did you do Stephanie's rigor? Again,
Speaker 1: there are there are things that you, you, as designed
Speaker 1: as you, you mustn't let go of. And some of
Speaker 1: those is some of those are the process of preparing
Speaker 1: the materials in the best way you can. And I
Speaker 1: think we start off like recording the beginning material is
Speaker 1: always really important. Matthews. Pictures are beautiful, pictures are beautifully lit,
Speaker 1: They're so exquisite, and we get beautiful files to convert
Speaker 1: those files is a challenge, and the first couple of
Speaker 1: tranches of files we got through, we're not we're not right.
Speaker 1: But Matthew went through individually and adjusted every single one,
Speaker 1: and then the next step we got through or a
Speaker 1: hundred times better. But it's it's again. It is this
Speaker 1: doing things over the wire, doing things by zoom, doing
Speaker 1: things digitally where you're not sitting in a room with people.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to understand. There's lots of ways of
Speaker 1: interpreting the same material, but Matthew is the person to
Speaker 1: interpret it because his picture, so he knew how he
Speaker 1: wanted them printed. It's the food, it's the cooks, it's
Speaker 1: the restaurant, it's the designers, it's the photographer, it's Ruthie.
Speaker 1: I think you can see everybody in that book, everyone
Speaker 1: that was involved. I don't think you can forget Richard
Speaker 1: in this. You know, my first time I ever met
Speaker 1: him when he said that thing he said Ruthie. I
Speaker 1: got paraphrasing because I can't remember exactly, but I think
Speaker 1: it's in the film that we made. Ruthie is a
Speaker 1: very good cook, and I'm very good at eating. You know,
Speaker 1: there's this everyone's every every I can't cook, but I
Speaker 1: can eat, and so everybody, whether they were actively involved
Speaker 1: or they were heavily influencing what was going on, will
Speaker 1: all involved. And that brings me more joy than any
Speaker 1: of it, that we all got to do it together.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, I think that Richard loved
Speaker 1: the River Cafe, he loved food, he loved you, he
Speaker 1: loved your work, and I know that he would have
Speaker 1: loved this book. Thank you, Matthew, My pleasure. The River
Speaker 1: Cafe Look Book is now available in bookshops and online.
Speaker 1: It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs
Speaker 1: from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty
Speaker 1: delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of
Speaker 1: River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks.
Speaker 1: The River Cafe Look Book Recipes for Cooks of all ages.
Speaker 1: Ruthie's Table four is a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.