Speaker 1: You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: One of the many things I love about cooking is collaboration, sourcing, prepping, presenting, delighting,
Speaker 2: and healing each other with the food we choose to
Speaker 2: eat or to cook. Ask any of the friends of
Speaker 2: Kiera Knightley and James Ryden as I did, or people
Speaker 2: have worked with them as I did, and they talk
Speaker 2: of them as almost one person. How they parent their children,
Speaker 2: Edi and Delilah, bringing music and acting into their home,
Speaker 2: immersing themselves in the communities they live in, and most
Speaker 2: appealing to me, investing a large amount of time and
Speaker 2: deciding what and where they're all going to eat. Kia
Speaker 2: and James love and they are loved. We've seen Kiera's
Speaker 2: jewels bend it like Beckham, Elizabeth Bennett, Pride and Prejudice,
Speaker 2: Annacrenna Collette. We've listened to James as a keyboardist of
Speaker 2: indie rave Sensation that Clason's. He's now solo artists working
Speaker 2: in TV film, recently helping Benny and Bjorn create abb
Speaker 2: a Voyage two worlds joining together music and theater. I
Speaker 2: last saw Kier and James a few months ago in
Speaker 2: the River Cafe with our close friends Erdam and Joseph,
Speaker 2: after an evening of non stop talking how to raise
Speaker 2: children in a tumultuous world, the movies we've been watching,
Speaker 2: and above all, where and what we've been eating. We
Speaker 2: vowed to meet soon. Schedules, families, work and travel got
Speaker 2: in the way. But here we are on a Monday
Speaker 2: morning in the River Cafe, three friends together. Now that's
Speaker 2: the best collaboration.
Speaker 3: Oh how do we speak after that? So we do
Speaker 3: talk a lot about food.
Speaker 2: But you did choose, of all the recipes in all
Speaker 2: twelve cookbooks spaghetti I love Angelais and Imagen is here
Speaker 2: to bring us the recipe?
Speaker 3: Did you make it?
Speaker 2: Imagen?
Speaker 4: Is this?
Speaker 2: Do you want to just tell us about this? What
Speaker 2: do we have here?
Speaker 4: We've got fresh taglerini which has just been made now
Speaker 4: with eggs and flour and semolina and the clams. The
Speaker 4: bongolais from Cornwall, very fresh, and this is one of
Speaker 4: my absolute favorite dishes. It's cooked finished off with butter
Speaker 4: and our lovely olive oil, and it's got a little
Speaker 4: bit of lemon, and it's cooked with fiano white wine.
Speaker 3: Yum. Now, can I ask everybody how would you if
Speaker 3: you've got the bongol eate you're the professional. Do you
Speaker 3: use the shell to take the clams out, do you know?
Speaker 3: Or do you just like get it with.
Speaker 4: The Yeah, I mean they normally sort of fall out
Speaker 4: as you cook them.
Speaker 3: That's delicious, woe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're gorgeous, aren't they. Initially we cook them with
Speaker 4: fresh chili parsi stalks, which are really sweet, and then
Speaker 4: you once you've got them coated in the lovely olive oil,
Speaker 4: we finish it with the white Fiano white wine and
Speaker 4: just let them steam open.
Speaker 2: They always say littally, you know, take take the person
Speaker 2: out of the cupboard and then decide what sauce you're
Speaker 2: going to have with it, because they're very clear about
Speaker 2: different sauces. And also and then we just love it
Speaker 2: with the tag. And so we've broken the rules a
Speaker 2: few times. So many rules to break. But is that
Speaker 2: actually then you find out it's not breaking a rule,
Speaker 2: you know, because spaghetti bongelais comes from the South, and
Speaker 2: so you know, butter is really no not the norm,
Speaker 2: so you know, but it just makes that sauce a
Speaker 2: bit richer, doesn't it. All Right, let's read the recipe
Speaker 2: then so we have.
Speaker 3: No I'm going to do the list, and then you're
Speaker 3: going to read the difficult bit. I find recipes one
Speaker 3: of the most with dyslexia that it all okay. Spaghetti
Speaker 3: alivongla for six seventy five grams butter, extra virgin olive oil,
Speaker 3: two garlic cloves peeled and chopped, one dried red chili crushed,
Speaker 3: one kilogram small clams washed, half a bunch fresh flat
Speaker 3: leaf parsley, picked and chopped. Two hundred and fifty milli
Speaker 3: liters Vermanino wine. Four hundred grams dried spaghetti.
Speaker 5: Check over the clams and discard any that are not closed.
Speaker 5: Place half the butter in a wide pan with two
Speaker 5: tablespoons of olive oil. The garlic and chili, season with
Speaker 5: salt and freshly ground pepper. Fry for a minute and
Speaker 5: add the clams and passy and toss over the heat.
Speaker 5: Add the wine and cover with a lid. Cook for
Speaker 5: about five minutes. Shake in the pan from time to time.
Speaker 5: Cook the spaghetti and plenty of boiling water until al dente.
Speaker 5: When the clams are open, discard any that remain closed,
Speaker 5: Mix them with the drained spaghetti and toss in the
Speaker 5: remaining butter serve.
Speaker 2: There you go go beautiful. So growing up in your house,
Speaker 2: what was food like? Did you my mom's down she was, yeah,
Speaker 2: but she of full time.
Speaker 3: No, she's a writer. Yeah, so she's a writer. My
Speaker 3: dad's an actor. But my mum was the cook and
Speaker 3: it was very seventies. We were not allowed sugar. It
Speaker 3: was very like brown ricey, but it was very very good.
Speaker 3: Mum's bastard pasta sauce. He was very when he's gone
Speaker 3: for his like you go for your purest moments and
Speaker 3: you go very anti. My mother's bastard pasta sauce. It delicious,
Speaker 3: but it's delicious, delicious, Yeah, yeah, delicious.
Speaker 1: What is it?
Speaker 5: It's everything that I wouldn't do. That's why I love it.
Speaker 5: Onions and garlic, like literally everything.
Speaker 3: Me and my brother ate everything. There were roast chickens,
Speaker 3: there was fish, there was fish cakes. There was I
Speaker 3: remember she made a green sauce with fish cakes. But
Speaker 3: we had a very tiny kitchen, so you could never
Speaker 3: cook with her. But it meant that, I think for her,
Speaker 3: the private time was the cooking time. So I never
Speaker 3: learned to cook from her because you couldn't be in
Speaker 3: the kit You couldn't both be in the kitchen cooking.
Speaker 5: Did you cook with your No, No, I was a
Speaker 5: different kind of I grew up with my dad who
Speaker 5: had a little kind of business that you ran at
Speaker 5: the same time, and so I grew up on it.
Speaker 5: Probably killed me for saying this, but it was, you know,
Speaker 5: Marks and Spencer's Carbonara ready meals in the.
Speaker 3: Microwave fair enough, which you know, but I have to say,
Speaker 3: he makes shepherd pie incredible. Every time we go back,
Speaker 3: I asked for his Shepherd's pie.
Speaker 1: Because it's it's really good.
Speaker 5: It's really great. But my nan would cook for me
Speaker 5: like she was kind of a real old school lots
Speaker 5: of lard.
Speaker 2: She the mother of your father.
Speaker 5: No, no, my mother's mother, your mother's mum. But it
Speaker 5: was a lot of kind of sausage rolls and that
Speaker 5: kind of British kind of where were they from area,
Speaker 5: Stratford upon Avon, And so.
Speaker 2: It was this a kind of cooking that she'd grown
Speaker 2: up with.
Speaker 5: Saying so, yeah, there's lots of pastries, was terrible looking
Speaker 5: about cakes, sausage rolls. Cheese on toast was the big thing.
Speaker 5: Crust off the cheese on toast, the whitest of white
Speaker 5: bread with had It was amazing. Though it still kind
Speaker 5: of feel I still miss that. I still don't know
Speaker 5: how she made that cheese on toast taste?
Speaker 2: Did she ever let you go in the kitchen if you.
Speaker 1: Just hang out there?
Speaker 3: But I have to say when we first met, you
Speaker 3: did You've always made an amazing roast.
Speaker 1: And that was her.
Speaker 5: She made an amazing roast in Yorkshire put in you know
Speaker 5: classic there was it was. They were always incredible and
Speaker 5: she used to I had a job where I worked
Speaker 5: on a boat on the River Aven, so be a
Speaker 5: boat boy and like these a mini like cruise ships
Speaker 5: that do least half hour towards the River Aven.
Speaker 1: And every time.
Speaker 5: I'd always go into a bridge, she'd be at the
Speaker 5: top with these sausage rolls in a little kind of
Speaker 5: tupperware and she dropped them and I'd have to catch them.
Speaker 5: And with my mom, I just remember being this kind
Speaker 5: of I mean, she's amazing my mum. But a lot
Speaker 5: of my food phobias stemmed from kind of her slightly
Speaker 5: chaotic but wonderful kind of kitchen lots. What was it
Speaker 5: like There were a lot of kind of jars of
Speaker 5: things with like Hellman's e jars that were kind of oozing, and.
Speaker 3: He has condiment issues.
Speaker 1: Amazing no content in America.
Speaker 2: Being in America, I think I heard the word condiment
Speaker 2: or we just had probably ketchup and Mustard.
Speaker 5: World condiments, condiments, anything's at the end of it, mustard,
Speaker 5: can't stand it.
Speaker 1: Catch up. Butter.
Speaker 3: There was a butter. No butter you'll have when it's
Speaker 3: when it's melted.
Speaker 1: Not that makes sense because it doesn't can't get you.
Speaker 2: Did you why did you begin?
Speaker 1: I think I, like I said, I think it was
Speaker 1: maybe because I don't want to blame my mom for it.
Speaker 3: Did she did?
Speaker 4: She? Did?
Speaker 2: She have a refrigerator, Yeah, but it was just she
Speaker 2: put it in the don't you know?
Speaker 5: It was kind of like that Helman's he must have thing,
Speaker 5: and it was it's mayonnaise, mayonnaise, that one on the same.
Speaker 1: I banned them all together in this.
Speaker 3: But so this was when when we first got together
Speaker 3: and I really found out about the issues, and I
Speaker 3: knew that it was serious when he very seriously turned
Speaker 3: around to me and said, you know, if you want
Speaker 3: to keep mayonnaise in the fridge, you can, And I was.
Speaker 2: Like, that was that was yeah, I get it with
Speaker 2: the mayonnaise and the ketchup and the mustard and all that.
Speaker 2: But it's interesting that you have butter.
Speaker 5: Is that you know, it is a shame, but this
Speaker 5: is it as well a ketch up. You know when
Speaker 5: you see on a table mayonnaise that's had some ketchup
Speaker 5: in it, and it's.
Speaker 3: That swirl of like this is your dad, your dad,
Speaker 3: You've got a big There's a butter and jam issue
Speaker 3: which I found out again when I stayed with his dad,
Speaker 3: and like you must now maybe you agree with this,
Speaker 3: but you must never use the same knife. The butter
Speaker 3: and the jam must never meet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably say that's logical, logical.
Speaker 1: I don't have my issues.
Speaker 3: I never noticed that I've got one knife. Maybe I
Speaker 3: don't know.
Speaker 2: It's like that. I would never be just proving of
Speaker 2: it at all. You could do anything you want.
Speaker 3: Well, no, I've now got I've got big.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 3: Really, I'm very careful about the separate.
Speaker 2: Do you think you could ever fall in love with
Speaker 2: somebody who didn't care about food?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Did you ever go out to restaurants?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: We did.
Speaker 5: I remember one of my best my favorite Christmas is
Speaker 5: was Dad took us to the local Chinese for Christmas
Speaker 5: dinner and it.
Speaker 1: Was just duck.
Speaker 2: Did you go out to restaurants as a child.
Speaker 3: We had the local Indian restaurant, which I loved, and
Speaker 3: then the local Chinese restaurant, which I remember the name
Speaker 3: of it was called Walk This Way. That was brilliant. Ye,
Speaker 3: that was amazing. Yeah, so you do. I mean, it
Speaker 3: was definitely like treats. But we'd got know. We'd go
Speaker 3: once a week to the Indian restaurant, which I loved.
Speaker 1: It's still a family thing, isn't it. I mean, you
Speaker 1: guys want everyone'm there.
Speaker 3: It's an Indian takeaway all the way. Yeah, And I
Speaker 3: remember I have a love of spicy food, a deep
Speaker 3: love of spicy food. But it was all from being
Speaker 3: ten and being there with my brother who is five
Speaker 3: years older, and his friend and then daring me to
Speaker 3: eat a spicy curage and me just like being I'm
Speaker 3: going to eat this and I'm and just sweating but
Speaker 3: eating it. And every week after that, I'd go for
Speaker 3: the spiciest thing.
Speaker 1: And now still do I mean, crazy spy.
Speaker 3: I do love it.
Speaker 1: You do love it.
Speaker 5: I do love it.
Speaker 2: The River Cafe Cafe steps away from our restaurant is
Speaker 2: now open. In the morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti,
Speaker 2: ciambella and cristada from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon,
Speaker 2: ice creamed coops and River Cafe classic desserts. Come in
Speaker 2: the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.
Speaker 2: No need to book, see you here. What was it
Speaker 2: like when you left? How old were you when you
Speaker 2: left home?
Speaker 3: By the time I was sixteen, I was working away
Speaker 3: a lot, and then eighteen I was properly out. Did
Speaker 3: you know that you wanted to add I'd wanted to
Speaker 3: act from the age of three, and my mom and
Speaker 3: dad had not let me because they did not want
Speaker 3: a child actress in the family.
Speaker 2: Were they involved in theater?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so one's a writer, one's an actor. And they didn't,
Speaker 3: you know, they didn't want me doing it at all
Speaker 3: because they wanted me to be a kid, you know,
Speaker 3: I think. But I was absolutely desperate. And then finally
Speaker 3: the school said, well, look, she can't read at all,
Speaker 3: and we need a carrot to dangle in front of
Speaker 3: us so she knows there's something that she wants. And
Speaker 3: they said, well, she wants an agent. They said, it's
Speaker 3: no I want an asia because they always had agents calling,
Speaker 3: and I remember answering had land and it could be
Speaker 3: it's your mum's agent. So I think it was like, well,
Speaker 3: if you've got an age of wine and I have
Speaker 3: an agent, that is so unfair. But also i'd be
Speaker 3: with them, you know, a lot backstage at theaters, so
Speaker 3: my dad, if they didn't have any childcare, then i'd
Speaker 3: be sitting in his dressing room and he'd go on stage,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. And it was that was
Speaker 3: how it was. So I wanted to be a part
Speaker 3: of that anyway. So they said, right, there's your carrot.
Speaker 3: And it was always if you read, if your grades
Speaker 3: go up, you're allowed to keep on acting, but if
Speaker 3: they go down, then it stops. It was a carrot.
Speaker 1: It works, didn't you memorize a lot of well, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the thing.
Speaker 3: So it's still sit reading I find really hard. It
Speaker 3: really bounces. But I listened to it again. I mean
Speaker 3: I basically I record it and listened to it and
Speaker 3: listen to it and listen to it, and that's how
Speaker 3: I learn it. But now we have a dyslexic kid
Speaker 3: and she's doing the same thing. Her memory is absolutely amazing.
Speaker 5: She'll look at but she'll have memorized the book basically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So you left home? What age then to be an actor?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: Sixteen? So were you so bender like Beckham? I did
Speaker 3: at sixteen, but I was living at home. But I
Speaker 3: really remember on that one the because we had a
Speaker 3: lot of Indian actors and their families would come and
Speaker 3: they brought food.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And I remember Grinda Chada's family, she was the director,
Speaker 3: bringing this amazing Indian food.
Speaker 2: Did you have your own apartment? When did you have
Speaker 2: your own apartment?
Speaker 3: When eighteen? I had my own apartment?
Speaker 2: What was that like?
Speaker 3: You know, I was doing quite well, so it was
Speaker 3: very nice. Yeah, and I lived with my brother and
Speaker 3: his then girlfriend, and she was a great cook, and
Speaker 3: we had a lot of Indian take aways.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you would you entertain? Would you have friends over?
Speaker 3: We had a lot because at that point I was
Speaker 3: ridiculously famous and I couldn't get outside and so the
Speaker 3: only way to see people was to have them around
Speaker 3: at my apartment. So we had big Yeah, it was
Speaker 3: a big. Big parties were always around at mine.
Speaker 2: When did you leave?
Speaker 5: When I say eighteen, I went to UNI in Cardiff,
Speaker 5: and then I spent a year in Madrid, which was
Speaker 5: kind of fun.
Speaker 1: Year after graduation, Yeah, and then I moved to London.
Speaker 2: And tell me about Madrid.
Speaker 1: I was amazing, but it was food. Like in Madrid
Speaker 1: for me, it was like I get this beer and
Speaker 1: then I get free food with it. This is amazing.
Speaker 5: I'm just going to go where that pretty minimal condiments,
Speaker 5: you know, I can deal with this. So I went
Speaker 5: there for a year and taught English, which was really fun,
Speaker 5: and just playing music at that point, played music since
Speaker 5: I was a kid, since I think I was ten
Speaker 5: or eleven. At primary school there were there was this
Speaker 5: band primary school, like the other kids in my year,
Speaker 5: who are the coolest kids. They're just amazing. They're into Nirvana.
Speaker 5: It is just at the time I think Kirkmaye just
Speaker 5: died basically, and my dad is a brilliant musician. He didn't, Yeah,
Speaker 5: he studied, got a scholarship at Durham clarinet, piano, guitar.
Speaker 1: He just plays everything.
Speaker 2: So we had a lot of music in the always.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I remember like in the house, like being
Speaker 5: in my dad's car just listening to like the Stranglers
Speaker 5: and like Golden Brown and it was just music always
Speaker 5: and so then I was away, you know, and then
Speaker 5: at Union in Madrid, I just kind of made music
Speaker 5: on my own.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was just always something.
Speaker 2: That Madrid was exposure to, food, to tap us to. Yeah,
Speaker 2: did you ever live in a foreign country? Were you
Speaker 2: when you were not? Were always on set?
Speaker 3: I mean I was always on set, so sort of,
Speaker 3: but like early on Rome, and I mean America a
Speaker 3: lot and the Caribbean a lot. I think catering on
Speaker 3: film sets it's the hard It is the hardest thing
Speaker 3: to do because you've got to be there so insanely early,
Speaker 3: and then often we do these things called running lunches,
Speaker 3: which means that you have to have all the food
Speaker 3: ready for like this three hour period where it just
Speaker 3: sits there and you grab it when you know. So
Speaker 3: it's an incredibly difficult kind of thing. But I don't
Speaker 3: think that you get a love of food from it,
Speaker 3: although that was the amazing guy. Do you remember it,
Speaker 3: run it through the garden. In America, they famously have
Speaker 3: much better catering. You know, there's there's just more. So
Speaker 3: they always had like a guy that would do like
Speaker 3: an omelet stand or something, you know, like he'd be
Speaker 3: the guy making and he had this thing if you
Speaker 3: wanted like vegetables in it, and he'd say, do you
Speaker 3: want to run through the garden?
Speaker 1: Run it through the garden.
Speaker 3: Yeah, run it through the garden. But it's really hard.
Speaker 3: And then you go you go back and you're always
Speaker 3: slower when you go back, are you.
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, you shouldn't take you should always it on an
Speaker 5: empty stomach, a vocal take any takes as a band, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: you don want to eat and then do a gig,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean before and no one likesping
Speaker 5: on the mar I mean, no one's going.
Speaker 1: To appreciate that.
Speaker 2: So you were in Madrid, get there?
Speaker 5: Yeah, And then I started This was in his band collection,
Speaker 5: so we did that for I started that two thousand.
Speaker 1: And five, touring a lot.
Speaker 5: Of ten years all over them everywhere, which is Asia, everywhere, Australia.
Speaker 5: I feel like, food wise unbelievable. That was my favorite
Speaker 5: bit about kind of touring was to go to he's.
Speaker 3: An amazing traveler, Like it's no, but you are, like
Speaker 3: it's a skill that and you have. Like so when
Speaker 3: he used to be in the band and we get
Speaker 3: on the tour bus, and so you'd only ever have
Speaker 3: like what a couple of hours in each place to
Speaker 3: do things, and everybody else would sort of stay and
Speaker 3: they'd be on their computers or they'd be watching a film.
Speaker 3: And he has researched the top things to do in
Speaker 3: the city and the top places to eat in the city,
Speaker 3: and he's like, right, in three hours, we can hit
Speaker 3: this and we can get there, and we can get there.
Speaker 3: His band called it fear tours, because you never quite
Speaker 3: knew if you were going to die.
Speaker 1: We almost did die.
Speaker 5: I didn't know this, but I was told there's a
Speaker 5: really good steak place in this near La Bocca in
Speaker 5: Buenos Aires. So I convinced the band to all follow
Speaker 5: me on this like magical mystery tour to the restaurant.
Speaker 1: I didn't know.
Speaker 5: The Boka is quite a heavy area of buen As.
Speaker 5: We're all dressed like Duran Duran or something, with our
Speaker 5: cameras out, you know, and then from out of nowhere,
Speaker 5: some guy came over and whacked our drummer with something,
Speaker 5: and his camera went flying, and we ended up in
Speaker 5: a police car going around.
Speaker 3: Quite a lot with him police car.
Speaker 2: He's two year old in a police car as well,
Speaker 2: what happened five minutes before you went into the police
Speaker 2: car with your two year old?
Speaker 3: But I was working in Boston. He's looking at the
Speaker 3: six year old we put in school. It was COVID.
Speaker 3: It wasn't the best, but anyway, so he's with the
Speaker 3: two year old. Winter in Boston, very cold. I'm on
Speaker 3: set and all I get is I get an assistant
Speaker 3: coming again. Don't don't worry. But James and Delilah are
Speaker 3: in a police car. Why why?
Speaker 1: And James there is fine.
Speaker 3: We were fine.
Speaker 1: They were like, we're all good.
Speaker 5: Well, basically I'd heard in Boston that there was this
Speaker 5: place that did pizza, pizza, that it's it's open, opens
Speaker 5: at like eight am, and the minute it sells out
Speaker 5: of the pizza and it sells out by So I
Speaker 5: was like, Okay, Delilah, our youngest, who's then one, I said,
Speaker 5: you know today the Daddy Adventure, We're going to go
Speaker 5: get pizza. So we drive at like seven am in
Speaker 5: the snow to this Italian district of Boston. It's minus
Speaker 5: twenty wrapper up. We get out the car, it's like
Speaker 5: a blizzard storm into this pizza place, order a couple
Speaker 5: of slices of cheese pizza. We sit there, we have
Speaker 5: a lovely slice of pizza. Breakfast, breakfast. Then I get
Speaker 5: out the restaurant or the pizza place, and I walked
Speaker 5: down left like this, walk down there's no carca'd walk
Speaker 5: down the other way back there, there's no car there. Okay,
Speaker 5: go back into the restaurant.
Speaker 3: But what I love is what he's very vocal, right,
Speaker 3: So they wouldn't have just been, oh, I'm chilled up
Speaker 3: because I can't find the car. It was. It's more
Speaker 3: like I'm with my two year olds taking our car. Yeah,
Speaker 3: drove there in your car.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then and then and then you know, it
Speaker 1: was the police came. I went out.
Speaker 5: I saw a policeman and I said, look, I've had
Speaker 5: my car still and said I get in the car.
Speaker 1: So get in this car.
Speaker 5: And it's like plastic seats with the one year old,
Speaker 5: and we just you know, so then and they got
Speaker 5: the Boston accent, a thick iron, you know, and we
Speaker 5: drive out and we drive a little bit around the
Speaker 5: corn just walk a little bit, and they've got the
Speaker 5: key and they're pressing.
Speaker 1: I didn't know you can press a button on a
Speaker 1: on a car remote and hear the beep.
Speaker 3: It was there.
Speaker 1: They hadn't been stolen. Four year old jaw.
Speaker 3: When we were in the back of the police car.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was really fun.
Speaker 2: Can I just very simply ask you how you met?
Speaker 3: Where do we meet? We met at Dean Street Townhouse
Speaker 3: in London, which was okay. So that week my agent
Speaker 3: said to me, I've had this dream I was single.
Speaker 3: I've had a dream that you're meeting your future husband
Speaker 3: this week. That's exciting. So I got invited out to
Speaker 3: loads of things and I have to say I'd met
Speaker 3: a load of people that week and I was sorry,
Speaker 3: this is happening anyway. So the end of the week
Speaker 3: was an oscar viewing party, which anyway, so I was like,
Speaker 3: really didn't want to go. It was a Sunday night,
Speaker 3: I was in the theater. I couldn't be bothered to go.
Speaker 3: And then I was like, but I meant to meet
Speaker 3: my future husband, so I'm going to go to this
Speaker 3: thing that I don't want to go to. And I
Speaker 3: sat down and I didn't. I was like, again, everybody's
Speaker 3: very nice, but my future husband definitely isn't there. And
Speaker 3: my very good friend Tim Phillips, who is a composer.
Speaker 3: He phoned me up very drunk, like incredibly drunk.
Speaker 1: Hey man, I'm in Sohomeman and with friends.
Speaker 3: Where are you? And I was like, no, no, I'm
Speaker 3: a sit down thing. You're not allowed to go. Where
Speaker 3: are you?
Speaker 4: Then?
Speaker 3: Man, Dean Street Town? Okay, man, I'm coming. Please don't come,
Speaker 3: Please don't come. No, please don't come anyway. And the
Speaker 3: door of this private room opens and my friend Tim's
Speaker 3: head comes around like this, and my friend's Curran's head
Speaker 3: and I'm like, oh my god. And the third head
Speaker 3: come around with James, and James grabbed a seat. There
Speaker 3: was a seat and he just grabbed it around and said, hello,
Speaker 3: I'm your your future.
Speaker 5: There he is.
Speaker 3: And then and then you just hate and drank and
Speaker 3: we basically and drank until we got married. You got married,
Speaker 3: well drank until I got pregnant.
Speaker 2: And so you just knew that you had this love
Speaker 2: of food and alcohol.
Speaker 3: It was alcohol, but it was at that point it
Speaker 3: was alcohol, but it was a food. No, but how
Speaker 3: did you food if you.
Speaker 2: Were playing, you were you were a musician, you were like,
Speaker 2: I know that you loved alcohol, but you had to
Speaker 2: get up in the morning and work, So how did
Speaker 2: you know at that point? Was at yeah, And I think.
Speaker 3: Actually maybe if I'd been filming at the time, we
Speaker 3: never would have got together. But because I was in
Speaker 3: the theater and it was I was doing a show
Speaker 3: with a lot it was great. Was a children It
Speaker 3: was Helmut Lillian Hellman children. Yeah, and it was with
Speaker 3: Elizabeth mass and it was great because it was a
Speaker 3: bunch of girls. We were all like in our early
Speaker 3: mid twenties. We were all single, and we were having
Speaker 3: a really really really really good time. And so I
Speaker 3: met him in the middle of that when he was
Speaker 3: also having a really really really really good time. But
Speaker 3: the food thing, he was not into food and he
Speaker 3: wouldn't try because of the condiment pre previously mentioned condiment issues.
Speaker 3: There were other food issues at that point, like he
Speaker 3: really wouldn't eat much apart from the cheese on toast situation,
Speaker 3: and I was like, this is not going to happen
Speaker 3: if we can't go out. So again, my my oldest
Speaker 3: and very close friend who's a big foodie, Charlie, he
Speaker 3: met him. He was I really like him, but the
Speaker 3: food situation is terrible. So we used to take him
Speaker 3: to all of our favorite restaurants and we'd yeah, we'd
Speaker 3: order for him and we we'd be like and he'd
Speaker 3: look at it. No, no, no, no, and then we'd
Speaker 3: be like, close your eyes and eat it. So basically
Speaker 3: I bullied him into education and then created a monster
Speaker 3: overtook both of us.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: No, it's literally the passion and the kind of Yeah,
Speaker 5: I have to find it's a recipe. I can't substitute
Speaker 5: that ingredient for that ingredient.
Speaker 3: That's a problem.
Speaker 1: It is a problem because you kind of end up
Speaker 1: around London. Yeah, ingredients.
Speaker 2: Can you go places if you're in a film or
Speaker 2: you're doing something, do you try and all uplift and
Speaker 2: go or do you one of you stay home? How
Speaker 2: do you manage?
Speaker 3: You know, we have done since children, We've all we've
Speaker 3: traveled together the whole time to just take it gets
Speaker 3: to Boston, I mean with our first, since our second
Speaker 3: because then COVID hits, so I haven't done as much
Speaker 3: since the second one was born. But the first one
Speaker 3: we were I mean everywhere. Yeah, yeah, we were everywhere.
Speaker 2: Tell me about a day in the life of your
Speaker 2: house and you get coffee.
Speaker 5: And coffee, make the coffee good, grind it, you know,
Speaker 5: fresh b sixty pour over coffee. She gets black coffee
Speaker 5: in the morning, get the kids to school, children breakfast.
Speaker 2: Do they have breakfast of anything or.
Speaker 1: Justeal cereal apple? That's fine.
Speaker 3: They have to finish the fruit they do, so they.
Speaker 1: Get an apple or you know, blueberrithes.
Speaker 3: That's the only.
Speaker 5: And then I go to my studio and work. You
Speaker 5: go to your office and work, and then we pick
Speaker 5: the kids up, and then what.
Speaker 2: Might you both have your lunches?
Speaker 3: Do you know what I mean? I'm a picky kind
Speaker 3: of I'll buy antipacity from our local lovely Italian daddy
Speaker 3: and I'll do that. But actually, I mean again, he's
Speaker 3: the cook in the house. So there isn't ever a
Speaker 3: moment where you don't go, I want to make something lovely.
Speaker 2: When you wake up in the morning, do you think
Speaker 2: about what you're going.
Speaker 5: To do that night?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, always all the time.
Speaker 3: It's literally.
Speaker 1: I found the way.
Speaker 3: I've got some really great and that will go with that.
Speaker 5: But it's not a million miles to away from maybe
Speaker 5: writing a song or something.
Speaker 1: It's the same.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's talk about the.
Speaker 5: I don't know it's creativity. I guess that you're kind
Speaker 5: of trying to make something from nothing. Say if it's
Speaker 5: like at the moment, I'm doing lot scoring, so I
Speaker 5: know the kind of world, well it is scoring, composing
Speaker 5: for film or TV, and so you know the kind
Speaker 5: of you know, this is the palette of instruments we'll
Speaker 5: use for this project. Let's say, just like the these
Speaker 5: are the ingredients you've got, and this is what you
Speaker 5: can do with them, and that limitation that you can
Speaker 5: put is good. You know that kind of restrictions are
Speaker 5: restrictions are great, like restrictions always. So I think that
Speaker 5: that's that's one of the similarities.
Speaker 3: But I think because you know, he's obviously a musician.
Speaker 3: We have a lot of musician friends. What I'm really
Speaker 3: noticing with all of them is that there is an
Speaker 3: obsessive collector's quality. It's like rare records, right. They all
Speaker 3: go through a period where it's like I've got this
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies Japanese synth music from blah. But you know,
Speaker 3: it's that thing. And wine is a similar thing. And
Speaker 3: that's why, like the natural wine thing really suits a
Speaker 3: musician because they're like, great, there's this weird producer who
Speaker 3: will only make you know.
Speaker 5: And it makes the sharing of that knowledge that the
Speaker 5: getting off on like sharing, Oh you don't know about this,
Speaker 5: check this out over here.
Speaker 1: It's sharing of the knowledge of getting.
Speaker 3: Excited about you'll do it, you'll do it about ingredients.
Speaker 3: So sorry, but the totally I mean the funniest one
Speaker 3: with the Totally Citrus Foundation two, which you probably know about.
Speaker 3: So there's a okay, So James found out about the
Speaker 3: Totally Citrus Foundation that is in Valencia. But he hears
Speaker 3: from Layla Leila. Her name is Lila Lilah's shop in
Speaker 3: East and she's got all of the citrus fruit and
Speaker 3: so going, oh, wow, what's the citrus and she says
Speaker 3: about the Totally Foundation, which is basically that a load
Speaker 3: of the citrus. They can't grow all of the different
Speaker 3: varieties of citrus fruit anymore in Valencia because they're building
Speaker 3: on all of the land. But somebody has bought this
Speaker 3: plot of land and he's trying to bring back all
Speaker 3: of the different varieties of citrus fruit. So James comes
Speaker 3: back from Lila's shop. He has an entire box everything
Speaker 3: of like every single so many, but there's only two
Speaker 3: of us. Wow, this is an intense amount of citrus.
Speaker 3: Can't waste the thing. They were eating everything. I actually
Speaker 3: get to the point where I'm like, no, I care,
Speaker 3: I actually can't. I mean, it's amazing, amazing. Did you
Speaker 3: squeeze them and everything?
Speaker 1: Some of them you can eat the skins, you know,
Speaker 1: it's kumquats.
Speaker 5: It was this one lemon that I got really excited
Speaker 5: about that you can eat, you cut it and the
Speaker 5: skins aren't bitter.
Speaker 2: It is it like in a mouthy lemon with Admiral.
Speaker 2: There are some lemons that have just a huge amount of.
Speaker 1: Piths, a huge amount delicious and you did, like you
Speaker 1: eat the pith.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it was amazing. But he ate so much
Speaker 3: that he.
Speaker 1: Volited everywhere too much acid, as he found out. But
Speaker 1: it's funny because there is a lot of things.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of musicians who do I remember going
Speaker 5: to a wine fair and there will be like a
Speaker 5: bump into guy. Weren't you in a band like ten
Speaker 5: years ago and we played together? Like yeah, now now
Speaker 5: I got a you know, a vineyard in.
Speaker 1: The middle of France and I grow this indigenous great
Speaker 1: you know, it's like.
Speaker 3: Or who is it from groove Armajo?
Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing.
Speaker 2: It's also collaborating, you know when we started out about
Speaker 2: collaboration and we do solitary work in the opposite way.
Speaker 2: Michael Caine said that he loved a garden because every
Speaker 2: time he acted it was with you know, so many,
Speaker 2: so many. This is something he could do in a
Speaker 2: solitary way. Sometimes if you're in a band, then you
Speaker 2: can be solitary. If you're cooking, if you're solitary, then
Speaker 2: it's all to do with the.
Speaker 5: Going back to the Lemon Foundation, for example, is one example.
Speaker 5: It's it's stories and it's it's it's story. It's stories
Speaker 5: which connect probably both of us. It's like, you know,
Speaker 5: a wine maker just finding out about how that wine
Speaker 5: is made, the winemaker's story. There's We used to have
Speaker 5: a place in France where we grew wine, we actually
Speaker 5: made wine, and we went to visit this one wine
Speaker 5: maker who was just.
Speaker 1: And she was a nurse who tended to the vines
Speaker 1: as if they were.
Speaker 3: As if they were people. And so she took around
Speaker 3: and she didn't it was all done by hand or horses.
Speaker 3: So it's really old school. It was in the foot
Speaker 3: of a mountain and she'd grow like wild roses up
Speaker 3: next to it, and I mean it was so beautiful,
Speaker 3: but she she talked about each plant like it was
Speaker 3: a person, and she wouldn't pick the fruit or she
Speaker 3: was tending to some of them and she wouldn't use it.
Speaker 3: And the wine was the most beautiful, you know. But
Speaker 3: that story is something that's so kind of powerful, and
Speaker 3: you see somebody who's committed their whole life, and particularly
Speaker 3: I think with wine, it's like it's so, I mean,
Speaker 3: a hailstorm comes and you've lost the whole thing, you know,
Speaker 3: So it's really on.
Speaker 2: The edge agriculture. You go to go, you know, very
Speaker 2: involved with olive oil and wine. A lot of the
Speaker 2: people who produce you know, wine produce olive oil. And
Speaker 2: then you'd go in a year and they've had had
Speaker 2: a hailstorm in August and then the harper is over,
Speaker 2: you know, and so they're living on this creativity. But
Speaker 2: it's based on especially now.
Speaker 5: Especially she was amazing because also she was in an
Speaker 5: area where the lot there's a lot of big wine,
Speaker 5: little hot wine.
Speaker 1: She was getting really fresh, beautiful wine that she's.
Speaker 3: Arguably because she was farming it naturally, so the roots
Speaker 3: had to go down so far so instead of like
Speaker 3: spraying it, and the roots are on the top, so
Speaker 3: you're getting those really big, heavy ones.
Speaker 1: It was like, really the roots were deep.
Speaker 2: So it was like very very.
Speaker 3: Lightly amazing wine. But all of that, Like finding out
Speaker 3: stuff like that is incredible. You know, it makes you
Speaker 3: enjoy it all so much more. You're like, this is
Speaker 3: actually magic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what are you doing now?
Speaker 3: I just finished a Netflix six part series called Black Doves,
Speaker 3: which is about Tory MP's wife who is actually a
Speaker 3: deep undercover secret agent selling government secrets. I'm basically a
Speaker 3: complete two faced psychopath and I've been having an affair
Speaker 3: and my the person I've been having an affair with,
Speaker 3: gets murdered, and my best friend played by Ben Wisher,
Speaker 3: who's gorgeous and he's an assassin, and we go on
Speaker 3: a murderous rampage trying to avenge my boyfriend.
Speaker 5: There was an amazing I went to set one on
Speaker 5: one day and there was an amazing, amazing, juicy scene
Speaker 5: between Ben, yourself and Tracey Ullman, which was I was
Speaker 5: so lucky to watch them.
Speaker 1: Just masters, all of you are brilliant.
Speaker 3: Nice. You had to flow.
Speaker 2: Saved it, Okay, James, tell me what you're working on.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 5: I finished a TV show called Daddy Issues composed of
Speaker 5: music for that which is coming out in August on
Speaker 5: BBC One, which is a lovely six part series with
Speaker 5: Amy Leewood and David Morrissey. And then I'm just doing
Speaker 5: the music for a documentary on a cappella singers in America.
Speaker 5: It's an intercollegiate competition that they have in America, very
Speaker 5: American college.
Speaker 2: In America, Yale.
Speaker 5: They all saying that, yeah, and you can be very
Speaker 5: you know, you could be cynical and go oh. A
Speaker 5: lot of them, you know, singers, they just want to
Speaker 5: be stars and stuff. But actually these people do the
Speaker 5: work and they're very, very good, and there's a lot
Speaker 5: of kind of very touching human stories behind a.
Speaker 1: Lot of their journeys.
Speaker 2: Great, when is that coming out.
Speaker 5: It's been made right now, so it'll be finished in
Speaker 5: the next month and then it'll probably go.
Speaker 1: To the festivals.
Speaker 2: What's the connection.
Speaker 1: Oh, this is a weird one.
Speaker 5: So we have a mutual friend called Johann who is
Speaker 5: a director, and we were on holiday in France and
Speaker 5: I was at a supermarket getting food for the kids
Speaker 5: and they get this cool from Johann saying, hey, James,
Speaker 5: abba are reforming. They've made a new album and they're
Speaker 5: going to do shows. Do you want to be involved?
Speaker 5: And I said yeah, sure. So the next thing you know,
Speaker 5: I'm I met up with Benny and Bjorn in London
Speaker 5: and they tell me about their album and what the
Speaker 5: plans for what they were doing and this is the
Speaker 5: Abba Voyage show. And then I had to kind of
Speaker 5: put the band to find forty odd musicians in London.
Speaker 5: We had to rehearse them and audition and pick pick them,
Speaker 5: and then I went to Stockholm for a month with
Speaker 5: Benny and Bjorn in the band and we kind of
Speaker 5: figured out the set and how it would work, and
Speaker 5: I spent it was like the most magical month of
Speaker 5: my life, just hanging with Benny and Bjorn and getting
Speaker 5: to deconstruct Abba songs and listen to all the individual
Speaker 5: parts of.
Speaker 3: A phone calls from you and you were like like
Speaker 3: this is the actual.
Speaker 1: Sense, that's the one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And they're the most lovely people and it was
Speaker 5: all a bit of a kind of no one knew
Speaker 5: exactly how it would work out.
Speaker 2: So I suppose if we're thinking about all your stories
Speaker 2: and all your thoughts, is there a food that you
Speaker 2: would go to if you needed some comfort.
Speaker 3: Spaghetti bollonais Yes, is it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean that's the thing that's come like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: love it. I mean, if I could have a bowl
Speaker 3: and that's what's going to be in it, I'm just
Speaker 3: going to be like the happiness, preferably with a glass
Speaker 3: of red wine. But you know, if not on its
Speaker 3: own is fine, what would be?
Speaker 1: I don't know? Whe do you know?
Speaker 3: I know?
Speaker 1: The first thing came to my head was actually one
Speaker 1: of those toasty machines which we don't have, you know.
Speaker 2: That little pattern.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nice, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Let's go back to why the cheese sandwich?
Speaker 5: I guess because it goes back to maybe comfort. My
Speaker 5: NaN's house was comfort. It was that probably because there's
Speaker 5: no risk, there's no condiment involved.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you're so wrong. What do you
Speaker 3: mean because you have to put a bit of mustard
Speaker 3: in there? Because that's what And can I tell you
Speaker 3: the best cheese sandwich that you've ever had? Come on?
Speaker 3: It was Charlie's Charlie Charlie again, Charlie really good. Where
Speaker 3: he did the thing? And yes he did of course, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean I know he told you he didn't, but
Speaker 3: I was like, was there Mustard. Of course, that was
Speaker 3: just talking.
Speaker 2: About comfort and you're argument. Come on, guys, I think
Speaker 2: we have to do another one part too, don't you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're still together.
Speaker 2: I think you will be.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Great, let's go have some lunch.
Speaker 5: Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
Speaker 5: with Montclair