Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe, Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adami Studios.
Speaker 2: In his most recent book, A Beautiful, Clear Collection of Essays,
Speaker 2: Language of Truth, Salmon Rushti, my friend writes in his
Speaker 2: first line that before books, there were stories, and that
Speaker 2: children ask for stories as they ask for food, stories
Speaker 2: and food, food and stories, food and family. Salmon has
Speaker 2: been a member of our family for over thirty years.
Speaker 2: When we were planning dinners when salmon was coming, I
Speaker 2: would be thinking about what to eat, and my husband, Richard,
Speaker 2: and my son Rue would be planning to make sure
Speaker 2: that the ping pong balls and the bats were in
Speaker 2: top condition. For Salmon was one of the few people
Speaker 2: who could beat Richard at the game. When I was
Speaker 2: once falsely quoted as saying to Rue, why did you
Speaker 2: let Salmon win? Salmon almost didn't speak to me for
Speaker 2: over a year. But speaking is what we're going to
Speaker 2: do today. That's what we're here for.
Speaker 3: Hi, someone, Hello, Ruthie.
Speaker 4: So it's nice we're here in the River Cafe and
Speaker 4: a rainy day for change. But would you like to
Speaker 4: read the recipe?
Speaker 3: Yes, this is a recipe for marinated grilled lamb serve six.
Speaker 3: The ingredients. Five garlic cloves, peeled and crushed, two tablespoons
Speaker 3: chopped fresh rosemary leaves, a good pinch of coarsely ground
Speaker 3: black pepper, one leg of spring lamb, boned and butterflied,
Speaker 3: two tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, three tablespoons of olive oil,
Speaker 3: and one tablespoon of sea salt. Mix together the garlic, rosemary,
Speaker 3: and black pepper. Rub into the cutside of the meat.
Speaker 3: Place the lamb in a shallow dish and pour over
Speaker 3: the lemon juice and olive oil. Turn over a couple
Speaker 3: of times, then cover and leave to marinate at room
Speaker 3: temperature overnight or for at least four hours, turning occasionally.
Speaker 3: Remove from the marinade and pat dry. Season and carefully
Speaker 3: place on a hot grill. Brown on one side until
Speaker 3: very dark, then turn over, lower the heat and continue
Speaker 3: to cook for at least eight minutes on each side.
Speaker 3: Serve with salsa verde or fresh horseradish sauce.
Speaker 2: Thank you, so when I asked you to choose a recipe,
Speaker 2: you didn't even take a breath, You didn't pause, You
Speaker 2: just said immediately grilled marinated lamb.
Speaker 4: I was wondering, why.
Speaker 3: Well you know, in my family, we've always been big carnivores.
Speaker 3: We eat a lot of meat, so I know, you know,
Speaker 3: meat is unfashionable in some quarters these days. But it
Speaker 3: was always going to be a meat recipe. And I'm
Speaker 3: just thinking, which was the thing that I always chose
Speaker 3: what I came to each other?
Speaker 2: And it was always that the menu today, you know,
Speaker 2: and I think, interestingly enough, it was actually on the
Speaker 2: very first menu of the very first day, which had
Speaker 2: like four things on the menu about average price of
Speaker 2: five pounds, and one of them is grilled marinated lamb.
Speaker 3: Well there you are, you see, go right back to
Speaker 3: the beginning here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's probably when we met, was
Speaker 2: just before the River Cafe opened, maybe early eighties, middies
Speaker 2: and so. But I'd really like to start with with Mumbai.
Speaker 2: We were born there, and what are your memories of
Speaker 2: food and memories.
Speaker 3: Born and raised there? And my memory of food is
Speaker 3: home cooking, yeah, and my mother's kitchen and the kind
Speaker 3: of flavors that came out of that. My mother didn't
Speaker 3: like very highly spiced food. She didn't like chilis, so
Speaker 3: the food was always quite mild. In fact, my sister
Speaker 3: Samine and I grew up on this food.
Speaker 4: So your mother was the cook shed.
Speaker 3: Well, she cooked, but she also I mean we had,
Speaker 3: you know, a cook, and she would always train the
Speaker 3: cook in the food of the household. And one of
Speaker 3: the things I've always thought about India is that in
Speaker 3: middle class kitchens, kitchens which employ cooks, there's always a
Speaker 3: copy book is it's called hanging on a hook And
Speaker 3: in that book are the recipes of the family. And
Speaker 3: I've always thought if somebody could just go and gather
Speaker 3: the recipes in those copy books, that would be the
Speaker 3: greatest Indian cookbook of all.
Speaker 4: Do you remember your grandmother? Was your mother's mother a cook?
Speaker 3: Yeah, my mother's mother was not a cook. My mother's
Speaker 3: mother sort of shouted at.
Speaker 2: Cooks, ah, okay, yeah in that way.
Speaker 4: Do you think she knew what she wanted?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, she was a grubby old lady. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have liked to be cooking at her kitchen.
Speaker 4: Oh really? And what about your mother and her?
Speaker 3: But my mother was very a gentle person, you know.
Speaker 3: And I also had an Ayah nanny from South India,
Speaker 3: came from Mangalore, which has its own very distinctive cooking
Speaker 3: her kind of pickles and chutney's got into midnight'staurant because
Speaker 3: I grew up on those. There was a particular green
Speaker 3: chutney which is famously in the book. It was just
Speaker 3: a lot of green things chopped up with a lot
Speaker 3: of chilies. It was very particular South Indian recipe that
Speaker 3: arrived in our house through her go and South Indian
Speaker 3: Aya mary mayonnaises. She was called lived to one hundred
Speaker 3: and two did she spoke seven languages and was illiterate.
Speaker 3: There's a line somewhere in Midnight's Children where where the
Speaker 3: character the narrator talks about stirring feelings into food. And
Speaker 3: I always believe that that if you're in a good mood,
Speaker 3: the food tastes one way, and if you're in a
Speaker 3: bad mood, the food tastes another way. You know, that
Speaker 3: sense of emotion, your own emotion getting into the cooking.
Speaker 3: You know, it's something I always thought.
Speaker 4: Did your mother put an emotion into her cooking?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean she actually she wasn't like a great chef,
Speaker 3: but she enjoyed it. Yeah, she enjoyed it, So the
Speaker 3: food was enjoyable.
Speaker 4: What about your father?
Speaker 3: My father.
Speaker 4: A Friday day never. Never.
Speaker 2: I don't think so, yeah, because I do talk to
Speaker 2: a lot of men who were discouraged from going into
Speaker 2: the kitchen, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, I mean I wasn't discouraged, but I was
Speaker 3: only thirteen when I left home to go to boarding school.
Speaker 3: So and then food was a whole other thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that country? Did you go before we leave Mumbai?
Speaker 2: Did you when you were growing up in Mumbai?
Speaker 4: Was food?
Speaker 2: Would you go to the markets? Because it must have
Speaker 2: been a very rich culture of food.
Speaker 3: Well there's, first of all, there's this wonderful covered market
Speaker 3: in what is now called South Bombay but was then
Speaker 3: just called Bombay, a place called Crawford Market where you
Speaker 3: can buy everything from like hair dryers to live chickens.
Speaker 3: And Crawford Market was an incredibly exciting place to go,
Speaker 3: thronging with life, very noisy and as I say, with
Speaker 3: everything you can imagine buying, including lots and lots of
Speaker 3: food and fruit and vegetables and chickens.
Speaker 4: And you were allowed to go there, there.
Speaker 3: Was no I went very often there.
Speaker 2: Did you travel throughout India? Did your parents take care.
Speaker 3: Making See my father's family was originally from Delhi. Although
Speaker 3: my parents have moved to Bombay before I was born,
Speaker 3: but he had still had a lot of connections and
Speaker 3: he had business in Delhi and sometimes I would go
Speaker 3: with him and stay in a hotel in Deli and
Speaker 3: sort of mess around while he did his work.
Speaker 4: But did you go to restaurants there?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And I mean and Delhi of course is the
Speaker 3: heart of North Indian cuisine. So that what's Moclai cooking
Speaker 3: is it's called the cooking that is left behind by
Speaker 3: the Mongol.
Speaker 2: Empire, right, And how does that differ from southern It's.
Speaker 3: Richer, you know, it uses a lot of yogurt and
Speaker 3: ghi and stuff like that. And it's also I mean,
Speaker 3: the further south in India you go, the more vegetarian
Speaker 3: the cuisine becomes. From the further north you go, the
Speaker 3: more meat orients it goes. And that's just the difference
Speaker 3: between Muslim culture in the north, where the Muslim conquerors
Speaker 3: were there for hundreds of years, and the Hindu culture
Speaker 3: of the south, which is largely vegetarian.
Speaker 2: And when you came, you said, you said you were thirteen,
Speaker 2: when you did your whole family.
Speaker 4: Come to London?
Speaker 3: No, I just got sent to boarding.
Speaker 4: Sent you to boarding school. Wow.
Speaker 2: Wow, I'm sure there's a lot we could explore in
Speaker 2: the difference between as a thirteen year old going to England.
Speaker 3: But food wise, no subject.
Speaker 4: Well where would you go on that subject?
Speaker 3: I mean, the food was kind of inedible, you know,
Speaker 3: it was a dreadful school food. But it, like this said,
Speaker 3: when we got overcooked beef burger patties, that was the
Speaker 3: highlight of the week.
Speaker 4: Yeah, did you mind or did you just get used
Speaker 4: to it?
Speaker 3: No? I just I mean I didn't like much about school,
Speaker 3: and the food was certainly part of what I didn't like.
Speaker 3: I was quite isolated, but I really didn't like boarding school.
Speaker 3: And actually when I left, I mean, I had got
Speaker 3: my place at Cambridge, but I didn't want to go.
Speaker 3: You know, I said to my parents, I said, just
Speaker 3: let me go to the university here. Finally there's good
Speaker 3: universities here. I go. My father had been to King's College,
Speaker 3: Cambridge and I had got in, and so he was
Speaker 3: very keen that I should follow him. And in the
Speaker 3: end I went, And actually I'm very glad I went
Speaker 3: because it was a very different experience than school. You know,
Speaker 3: I had a much better.
Speaker 2: Time going from Cambridge to London you have your own apartment.
Speaker 3: Well, no, I mean my college friends and I there
Speaker 3: were five of us who rented a place just off
Speaker 3: the New King's Road, on the sort of corner of
Speaker 3: the Wandsworth Ridge Road in the New King's Road, five
Speaker 3: bedroom house, five pounds each, nineteen sixty.
Speaker 4: Eight, nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those were the days.
Speaker 4: And what did you eat there?
Speaker 3: Do There was a kitchen, soho we would all pile
Speaker 3: in and make spaghetti. You know.
Speaker 2: So London in the sixties, working in an advertising agency,
Speaker 2: you weren't part of the Martini lunch of no.
Speaker 3: No, no, no no. I mean I worked in two
Speaker 3: or three different agencies for a long time at Ogilvy
Speaker 3: and made that. But in those days, Ogilvy's was kind
Speaker 3: of more or less on Waterloo Bridge. I mean, if
Speaker 3: you were to go all the way down the strand
Speaker 3: and turn right to walk over Waterloo Bridge, it was
Speaker 3: just there. There wasn't much I mean there you would
Speaker 3: you would walk into Covent Garden if you wanted to
Speaker 3: get something to eat. So, I mean, I've always remembered
Speaker 3: the day when the fruit and vegetable market closed in
Speaker 3: Covent Guard. Yeah, because what happened is.
Speaker 4: Can I ask you that it was?
Speaker 3: It must have been in the early seventies, you know.
Speaker 3: But what happened was that the entire neighborhood, the streets
Speaker 3: were full of rats because the rats all had nothing
Speaker 3: to eat, you know, and they swarmed. I mean it
Speaker 3: was amazing. You would walk on the strand, which with
Speaker 3: that had its usual crowds the rat and the rats
Speaker 3: headed over the bridge and I think they found their
Speaker 3: way to nine Elms.
Speaker 2: That's where the new that's where the new cover of garden.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it was an extraordinary day. The rats took
Speaker 3: over London.
Speaker 4: And did they did? Ogilvy and meither. Did you ever
Speaker 4: meet David Ogilvy?
Speaker 3: I was just in his presence on one occasion, I know.
Speaker 3: But I was working full time to begin with. But
Speaker 3: then I managed to get a job which was either
Speaker 3: two or three days a week, and and that gave
Speaker 3: me either four or five days a week to stay home.
Speaker 4: And right, do you have a discipline?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean my idea, which is probably very bad
Speaker 3: in terms of how one should eat, is that you
Speaker 3: should work hungry.
Speaker 4: Ah okay, tell me about that.
Speaker 3: In other words, you know, if I've had a nice meal,
Speaker 3: I can't write just I get slow and sleepy, you know.
Speaker 3: And so my view is work first.
Speaker 4: Tell me about you're working day and food.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean I just in the morning, I have
Speaker 3: virtually nothing other than a cup of coffee. I mean
Speaker 3: sometimes I have some fruit juice with it, but that's
Speaker 3: not much more than that really, And then then I.
Speaker 4: Go to work, you know, for how long.
Speaker 3: How long depends where I am in the writing process,
Speaker 3: because in the early stages of writing a book, when
Speaker 3: it's making something out of nothing, then you know, two
Speaker 3: or three hours a day, and really you're burned out
Speaker 3: and you start writing things that you know you're not
Speaker 3: going to use. But in the later part of a book,
Speaker 3: when you're writing a final version, I work all the time.
Speaker 3: I work like twelve hours, thirteen, fourteen hours a.
Speaker 4: Day, and you don't start to eat.
Speaker 3: Then I do sometimes, because I mean the hardest thing
Speaker 3: is the blank page. Once you've got a version there,
Speaker 3: no matter how approximate it is, working on that is
Speaker 3: less difficult than the first active invention. And then sometimes
Speaker 3: I do it. Yeah, I do sometimes have a bit
Speaker 3: of lunch.
Speaker 4: Do you like to go out, Yes, I like to
Speaker 4: go out.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, living in New York. That's what
Speaker 3: everybody does. I do it before the pandemic. It's what
Speaker 3: everybody did, and now again it's beginning to be what
Speaker 3: everybody can do.
Speaker 4: Restaurants.
Speaker 2: When you walk in a room in a restaurant, what
Speaker 2: do you like to see? Do you have a feeling about, well,
Speaker 2: the kind of restaurant you want to be in.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, the grand old restaurants, so once we
Speaker 3: just have a great feeling in them. You know, if
Speaker 3: you walk into Indosine or Balthazar or the Waverley in
Speaker 3: you think this is a place you want to be.
Speaker 3: This is not another one of those places. But also
Speaker 3: I think what's interesting about places like that, Like Industan's
Speaker 3: been there since the mid nineteen eighties, and the food
Speaker 3: has never dropped in quality. You know, it's it's obviously
Speaker 3: not anymore what it used to be, which is like
Speaker 3: the hottest ticket in town. But they've never allowed the
Speaker 3: food to become ordinary, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when I talked to Michael Kine, he said that
Speaker 2: he'd never done a movie deal that didn't take place
Speaker 2: in a restaurant, and it was always over at lunch.
Speaker 2: In Hollywood, you go out to lunch and you discuss
Speaker 2: the deal for the movie and then I don't know
Speaker 2: if that still goes on, but did you do it
Speaker 2: with your publishers?
Speaker 4: An you agent?
Speaker 3: I remember when I was looking for an American agent
Speaker 3: being taken out for a very swanky lunch at the
Speaker 3: Russian tea room by a very powerful agent whose name
Speaker 3: I won't mention, and she was so kind of grand
Speaker 3: at me that it was actually off putting you. And
Speaker 3: meanwhile there was this other agent that was wooing me
Speaker 3: who had an office which was one and a half rooms.
Speaker 3: It was like him and a secretary and a xerox machine.
Speaker 3: But he was so dynamic and energetic. I thought, I
Speaker 3: want that one, not the fact that you know. And
Speaker 3: that's how I came to a point Andrew Willy, and
Speaker 3: it's the best decision I ever made.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you learn a lot about somebody in a restaurant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it teaches you. Do they thank the waiter? Do
Speaker 2: they share their food? Do they eat quickly? And I
Speaker 2: think that's why people go for dates in a restaurant,
Speaker 2: don't you?
Speaker 4: Or why tells you what?
Speaker 3: It tells you? If people have good manners, you know?
Speaker 3: And that used to be something when we were kids
Speaker 3: that we were taught, you know, how to behave. I'm
Speaker 3: not sure people are quite taught that in the same
Speaker 3: way now, but some people have it naturally, you know.
Speaker 3: And I think it's incredibly appealing when somebody has good manners,
Speaker 3: as you say, when they're polite to the white.
Speaker 2: Stuff, or conversely, if they're rude to the white stuff,
Speaker 2: you never want to see them again.
Speaker 3: If they're rude, forget about it. Yeah, it's over. And
Speaker 3: I'm always shocked when I see that happening. So I
Speaker 3: think good manners and you know, you are what you eat,
Speaker 3: don't you. So it's it's very interesting decide.
Speaker 2: About food is seduction? Would you ever want to seduce
Speaker 2: a woman through food or watch it?
Speaker 3: I do think that works.
Speaker 4: It does.
Speaker 2: I've found out from interviewing other people that they can
Speaker 2: remember the first meal they cooked a woo a woman,
Speaker 2: you know, or what they how they tried to or
Speaker 2: go to a restaurant to see, you know what about.
Speaker 3: It happened the other way round one or two people
Speaker 3: who've cooked meals for me in order to that work.
Speaker 4: Did that work out?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: And dates at restaurants?
Speaker 3: Do you think that I'm not sure that I'm not
Speaker 3: sure that a restaurant is a great place for a
Speaker 3: first date. Yeah, it's I think it's more interesting to
Speaker 3: to do something else. I go for a walk, something,
Speaker 3: something with less pressure on it, you know, and maybe
Speaker 3: go out to dinner. When you worked out that you
Speaker 3: might enjoy spending the time together. Yeah, because one of
Speaker 3: the worst things in the world is to sit in
Speaker 3: a restaurant knowing after ten minutes that you that you
Speaker 3: really want to leave. Yeah, so I think it's a
Speaker 3: good second date.
Speaker 4: And what about right now? Who's cooking in your how
Speaker 4: are you cooking? Are you cooking or I'm going.
Speaker 3: You know, I mean I have a partner and she's
Speaker 3: And also, you know, New York is New York. You
Speaker 3: can order in Yeah, And especially in this pandemic, a
Speaker 3: lot of restaurants as a surviving method, you know, restaurants
Speaker 3: which never delivered are now delivering, and you want to
Speaker 3: do that because you want to help these places survive.
Speaker 2: I've read every one of your novels, and I got
Speaker 2: to know you through your novels. And a really pivotal
Speaker 2: book in my life was The Jaguar Smile because as
Speaker 2: an American, nicaragen is so close it was so intensely
Speaker 2: political and resonated. Tell me about going to Nicaragua.
Speaker 3: Well, what happened was that in the mid eighties, when
Speaker 3: the Contra War began, I became kind of involved with
Speaker 3: thing here called the Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign and was involved
Speaker 3: in protesting against the way in which the then American
Speaker 3: administration was siding with the Contra in order to try
Speaker 3: and crush this tiny country, you know. And then I
Speaker 3: was at a literary festival in New York in fact,
Speaker 3: and I met various Nicaraguan writers. It's one who had
Speaker 3: been invited there and they said they invited me. So
Speaker 3: I went as a guest of the writers' union, I guess,
Speaker 3: you know, And and I went. I thought I would
Speaker 3: probably write something, but I thought it would probably be
Speaker 3: a newspaper article or something. And instead what happened is
Speaker 3: I got I kind of fell in love with the place,
Speaker 3: and I got obsessed with its tragedy and came back
Speaker 3: and ended ended up writing something. It's a short book,
Speaker 3: it's but it's a book leg thing. And one of
Speaker 3: the things that talking of food that was heartbreaking was
Speaker 3: how great the shortages were. I mean, I remember staying
Speaker 3: in this guesthouse is a government guesthouse that was made
Speaker 3: available to me. And in the morning, going down to breakfast,
Speaker 3: and there were you know, two boil eggs, and I said,
Speaker 3: I had this interpreter who was always there with me
Speaker 3: because my Spanish is not very good. And I said
Speaker 3: to her, look, you know, I don't really eat a
Speaker 3: big breakfast. And she said to me, you know, you
Speaker 3: should eat these eggs because they were the only eggs
Speaker 3: in the market today. They've been provided for you eat
Speaker 3: the damn eggs. And I just was one indication, you know,
Speaker 3: of how impoverished. I mean, we went to I remember
Speaker 3: meeting a farmer who said that it was so hard
Speaker 3: for him to make any money that when he wanted
Speaker 3: to service his tractor he had to sell a cow.
Speaker 3: That's not the thing you can do very long, you know,
Speaker 3: because you run out of cows. So it was horrifying
Speaker 3: how badly off people were. And then how kind of
Speaker 3: in a way pro American they were, you know, so
Speaker 3: they want the things that everybody loved. Everybody loved major
Speaker 3: League baseball. You know, Ni Karagan's crazy about baseball. But
Speaker 3: the thing is that the dictatorship which preceded the Sandinistas.
Speaker 3: The Somosa dictatorship had been entirely in the thrall of
Speaker 3: the United States, and the tragedy of Nicaragua is that
Speaker 3: the Sandinista revolution spawned another dictatorship, you know, so that
Speaker 3: now we have the Ortega brothers, Daniel Ortego, who is
Speaker 3: as bad as any Somosa. I mean, I did on
Speaker 3: one occasion actually had dinner at the house of Daniel
Speaker 3: Ortega with the whole Sandinista leadership, and there there was
Speaker 3: kind of a being explained to me that the banquet food,
Speaker 3: you know, but the banquet food felt a little revolting
Speaker 3: given what I'd experienced in the rest of the country.
Speaker 4: What was it, do you remember?
Speaker 3: Well? It was great, heaping dishes of beef, things that
Speaker 3: nobody in the country could dream of. And the funny
Speaker 3: thing was that I thought, Okay, they know that I'm
Speaker 3: here to write, so they know that they're on the record.
Speaker 3: But I thought, if I put a tape recorder on
Speaker 3: the table, it'll completely change the conversation and everybody will
Speaker 3: speak to the tape recorder. So but I thought, I
Speaker 3: need to make a record of this is you know,
Speaker 3: six of the nine man Standani said directorate is around
Speaker 3: the table. So what I did was I invented a
Speaker 3: stomach upset.
Speaker 4: Oh back to food.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I said, I'm sorry my stomach, and I would
Speaker 3: go to the bathroom scribble crazy in my pocket, and
Speaker 3: then I'd come back and sit down and listen for
Speaker 3: by that's I'm so, I really have to go again,
Speaker 3: rush back to the bathroom. And that's how I managed
Speaker 3: to keep some kind of a record of the dinner.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it was a very intense experience Nicaragua. You know,
Speaker 3: it's the first It's such a beautiful country and in
Speaker 3: such terrible shape.
Speaker 2: When you travel to well Nicaragua, to write to Italy,
Speaker 2: to Spain, to India to wherever you go, do you
Speaker 2: think about the food that you're going to eat in
Speaker 2: that culture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I remember, you know, like just before
Speaker 3: the pandemic the a few months before, I was able
Speaker 3: to go to a literary event in Wahaka in Mexico,
Speaker 3: and they eat amazing stuff. They eat grasshoppers. Did you
Speaker 3: this whole plate full of fried grasshoppers? And I did
Speaker 3: eat them. China, I've never been to trying to be
Speaker 3: into Hong Kong. I've been to Hong Kong, but so
Speaker 3: long ago that it was still British at the time.
Speaker 3: That's my big hole is the far East of Asia,
Speaker 3: the Japan, Vietnam, China very high on my list of
Speaker 3: places I'd like to go. Food does a lot to
Speaker 3: tell you where you are. I mean, one of the
Speaker 3: things that is sensational about Italy is that it's impossible
Speaker 3: to have a bad meal, you know, just impossible. And
Speaker 3: I think the same is true of places like Paris,
Speaker 3: that you don't have to go to fancy restaurants. You know,
Speaker 3: you could sit at a corner brasserie and have something delicious.
Speaker 3: You know, that kind of culture of food is exciting.
Speaker 4: I have ever written about food? Did you write? Over
Speaker 4: a few?
Speaker 3: Not exactly. I once had to do a thing for
Speaker 3: British Vogue a couple of years ago. It's exactly what
Speaker 3: you were saying about traveling. So they asked me for
Speaker 3: like favorite places in different countries and so on. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I wrote about half a dozen restaurants in different places.
Speaker 3: No more. I was lucky.
Speaker 4: Oh did you go to Noma in Copenhagen? Y?
Speaker 3: Yes, I did. Out that he's a bit of a
Speaker 3: fan of mine, so I got a reservation, which is
Speaker 3: not easy, and then I had to eat this thirty
Speaker 3: nine course meal in two hours.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a temple of food. Do people come up
Speaker 4: to you in restaurants.
Speaker 3: Sometimes find that?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 3: Sometimes, yeah, but I mean it's not very often.
Speaker 2: Yeah, growing up in a house where your mother had
Speaker 2: her book and your grandmother had the cook and growing
Speaker 2: up with food and you have a sister has not
Speaker 2: only a cook, but she's written books and she's very
Speaker 2: respected in the food world.
Speaker 4: So tell me what that feels like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was sort of a it happened
Speaker 3: by accident, because you know, she's all sorts of things.
Speaker 3: I mean, she's a very good lawyer. You know, she's
Speaker 3: she's worked in community relations a lot of her life,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And then I think really what she wanted
Speaker 3: to do was in some way capture our home cooking.
Speaker 3: And I egged her on because I knew that she
Speaker 3: was a very good cook, and she found the book
Speaker 3: very difficult to do. It took her a long time.
Speaker 3: And anyway, what came out of this agonized process was
Speaker 3: a kind of something close to a classic I think,
Speaker 3: you know, is sa in Russian's Indian Cookery it's called
Speaker 3: and she really did capture the flame. I mean not
Speaker 3: all the recipes are memories of my mother's kitchen, but
Speaker 3: but that's where the book started. And then she added
Speaker 3: stuff of her own. So it turns out she's ridiculously.
Speaker 4: Food and memories.
Speaker 2: You know, as we started out, food and stories, food
Speaker 2: and family, food and comfort because food is comfort, isn't it?
Speaker 2: And so if I were to ask you is I
Speaker 2: ask everyone that my last question. If you have a
Speaker 2: comfort food, what would it be?
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, my comfort food is always going to
Speaker 3: be Indian food, so it's it'd be something very simple,
Speaker 3: not at all complicated. I'm very happy with yellow dil
Speaker 3: in white rice. One of the bad habits I have,
Speaker 3: which you're not supposed to do, is to have bread
Speaker 3: at the same time as rice. You're supposed to have
Speaker 3: either all. You know, if you're having dial and rice,
Speaker 3: you shouldn't also have a chapati or et cetera. But
Speaker 3: I do. So that's my bad behaving comfort food.
Speaker 4: Yes, thank you, someone, I love you.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: This holiday season, if you can't come to the River Cafe,
Speaker 2: the River Cafe will come to you. Our beautiful gift
Speaker 2: boxes are full of ingredients we cook with and design
Speaker 2: objects we have in our homes. River Cafe olive oil,
Speaker 2: Tuscan chocolates, Venetian glasses of Florentine Christmas cake made in
Speaker 2: our pastry kitchen and more. We ship them everywhere. To
Speaker 2: find out more or to place your order, visit shop
Speaker 2: the Rivercafe dot co dot uk.
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