Speaker 1: This now is getting very official.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're on the red chair. Have a sea Oh
Speaker 2: my headphones? Yeah? Yeah, get headphones.
Speaker 1: Okay, do I put my hands onto it?
Speaker 2: Yes, of course, Okay. I've always lived with and loved
Speaker 2: only connect Im Foster's epigraph in his novel Howard's End
Speaker 2: expressing the moral importance of connections between people, and this
Speaker 2: is one of the reasons I'm so happy to have
Speaker 2: Trudy Styler, producer, actress, activist, farmer here today, for she
Speaker 2: and I are connected. Trudy and I are both passionate
Speaker 2: about the landscape, wine. Trudy has her own vineyard, food
Speaker 2: and history of southern Tuscany where every summer we fill
Speaker 2: our houses with our children, our children's friends, and our
Speaker 2: friend's children, occupying every bed and making space for yet
Speaker 2: another chair around the big table. So here we are.
Speaker 2: Trudy has stories to tell, a recipe for grouse she's chosen,
Speaker 2: and knowledge about all that she produces. Trudy is a
Speaker 2: woman I admire, a woman I adore. What a connection.
Speaker 3: Hello Ruth, Hello.
Speaker 1: Judy, I'm crying. Okay, it's been a long time since
Speaker 1: I've seen I.
Speaker 2: Know you chose of all the recipes in all our books.
Speaker 2: The grouse.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm very excited about roast grouse from the River Cafe.
Speaker 1: One grouse, plucked and cleaned, and two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: mills of Aliatico di Pulia. So preheat the oven to
Speaker 1: two hundred and thirty s, place the grouse in a
Speaker 1: roasting tin, and roast for twenty to thirty minutes. Depending
Speaker 1: on the size and how rare you like your grouse,
Speaker 1: we saw them slightly pink. The easiest way to test
Speaker 1: for dumbness is to pull the leg away from the
Speaker 1: body at the thigh. Remove from the oven and leave
Speaker 1: the bird to rest for two to three minutes. Remove
Speaker 1: and untie the string. Heat the roasting tin over a
Speaker 1: medium high heat. Add the remaining wine and reduce by half.
Speaker 1: Return the bird to the tin and turn to coat
Speaker 1: it in the juices. Then serve. This is delicious, served
Speaker 1: with braised gaboloniro.
Speaker 2: Can I introduce Sean. We know and who is the
Speaker 2: executive brilliant chef at the River Cafe, and she knows
Speaker 2: more about grouse than probably either of us or even
Speaker 2: a grouse, don't you, Sean, Yes, and everything else. So
Speaker 2: we can talk with Sean as well, what do you
Speaker 2: think that grass? Is it your of the game birds?
Speaker 2: Is it your favorite? Sean?
Speaker 4: I think it's when you get them in August September,
Speaker 4: before they've become high and really aged. You can they're
Speaker 4: very perfumed and that you can really taste you know,
Speaker 4: what the grouse feed on for example, you know, like
Speaker 4: heathers and little berries, and you can almost imagine the
Speaker 4: hills that they've they've eaten off, and you can really
Speaker 4: taste it in the flesh.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I can't wait because this really is the bird
Speaker 1: that I have never and I don't ask me why
Speaker 1: I've never tasted grouse, but I haven't. So when I
Speaker 1: saw it on the menu, this is for me today.
Speaker 2: Yeah brave? Yeah, yeah, it's good. And when you cook it?
Speaker 2: Where do you think if you were, if truly wanted
Speaker 2: to go home and cook a grass, would you say
Speaker 2: to be brave as well? Would you think?
Speaker 4: I think in English restaurants or like people cook the
Speaker 4: game very pink, But I think in the way we
Speaker 4: cook at the River Cafe. If you think of dishes
Speaker 4: like a rosta misto in Italy, where things might go
Speaker 4: on an open fire and cook for for longer you
Speaker 4: can cook the meat slightly more.
Speaker 2: We also put brisketter and really for just for the juices.
Speaker 4: Today we're doing it with a massive big tomato, like
Speaker 4: a Sorrento tomato and a bit of brunello actually, and
Speaker 4: cook all that with the grouse. And tomato works with
Speaker 4: the grouse at this time of year, because the grouse
Speaker 4: isn't too strong.
Speaker 1: Why does it get more pungent as it goes on India?
Speaker 4: So I think if it's hung so once it's being shot,
Speaker 4: that they'll hang them for a while and they seem
Speaker 4: to get more punchy. And I'm sure that's why they
Speaker 4: would have served them in gentlemen's clubs followed by cigars.
Speaker 2: Because Richard, my husband, used to come in and always
Speaker 2: embarrassingly to me, I always say, I'd like a grouse
Speaker 2: to the wage it and I'd like it really well hung,
Speaker 2: a well hung grouse, which could have another connotation like okay,
Speaker 2: but he liked it. He liked it. When a friend
Speaker 2: of mine once told me that Peter Rice tell me
Speaker 2: that he was sent to grouse and it was over
Speaker 2: the holiday, and so it just sat in the post
Speaker 2: office of some Irish small town and then he went
Speaker 2: home and cooked it and it was just he said
Speaker 2: it was the best grouse he's ever had, but just
Speaker 2: been probably about to disintegrate it was so old. So
Speaker 2: this recipe for grouse seems to not be something that
Speaker 2: you might have eaten in your childhood, because I know
Speaker 2: that you had a very very different kind of childhood,
Speaker 2: probably from your children's, And so maybe we should go
Speaker 2: back to the very early days. What was it like
Speaker 2: growing up in your family food wise?
Speaker 1: Well, I was born in the Midlands, in the West Midlands,
Speaker 1: that little village called Stokebriar, near to a town called Bromsgrove,
Speaker 1: near to the county of Worcestershire, and so we were
Speaker 1: brought up on a council house estate in Worcestershire, where
Speaker 1: sort of being post war I was born in the
Speaker 1: mid fifties, there was still this feeling of people had
Speaker 1: to come serve and preserve. My mum could go to
Speaker 1: the butcher's just once a week for the roast on
Speaker 1: the Sunday roast, and then the Sunday roast was made
Speaker 1: to stretch, you know, throughout the week, and she was
Speaker 1: very inventive with how she could stretch it. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I became a lover of awful, which I preferred over
Speaker 1: the Sunday roast, just because it was just very flavorful.
Speaker 1: And so we would have liver, liver and onions and
Speaker 1: kidneys that she'd sote with some mushrooms, and then we
Speaker 1: would have do you know what fagots are? Or savory ducks?
Speaker 1: Because my mother was from the north, few was about faggots.
Speaker 2: What are faggots?
Speaker 3: So fagots were sausage.
Speaker 1: So no, it was using up the rest of the
Speaker 1: joint that hadn't been used on the Sunday, so you
Speaker 1: could use cooked meats or if you hadn't gotten enough
Speaker 1: to stretch for three kids in our cades and mom
Speaker 1: and dad, then she would buy some sausages.
Speaker 2: And then raw on you.
Speaker 1: Lots of raw onions were used, and I got the
Speaker 1: job of being her apprentice to mince everything up.
Speaker 3: And then she.
Speaker 1: Would buy a pigs bladder and then the cooked meats
Speaker 1: and raw sausage meat with the onions, salt and pepper
Speaker 1: wrapped up in the bladder the pigs bladder and into
Speaker 1: the oven it went and was utterly delicious the.
Speaker 2: Way to describe her. To take that effort, you know,
Speaker 2: to do that. She could have easily made kind of
Speaker 2: cold beef sandwiches or done lots of other things that
Speaker 2: they've leftover joint that she actually did that work was
Speaker 2: going to get the pigs bladder and to make the
Speaker 2: faggots shows.
Speaker 1: But I think it was really you know, at the time,
Speaker 1: living in rural England, you had a butcher who had
Speaker 1: every part of the animal and nothing was ever wasted
Speaker 1: because you know, now we have you know, so called superfoods.
Speaker 1: I live in New York and so oh, let's have
Speaker 1: bone broth, you know, But we were having bone broth
Speaker 1: because my mum made stock from big animals bones, and
Speaker 1: she would make soups from her stock.
Speaker 3: And that was very typical of the time. I think.
Speaker 2: Did you sit down for dinner as a family every night?
Speaker 2: Did she work during.
Speaker 1: The day, Yes, she worked at school. She was the
Speaker 1: school dinner's lady.
Speaker 2: Have you had faggots, yes? Did you ever make them? No?
Speaker 4: But my mum the same had that kind of post
Speaker 4: war kind of do you think with faggots? And I
Speaker 4: vaguely remember having gravy on.
Speaker 2: Did she also cook one big roast and then do
Speaker 2: that with it?
Speaker 3: My mom did?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then in Welsh actually the day Thursday actually
Speaker 4: translates into liver day, and that was the day you
Speaker 4: just have liver.
Speaker 2: I love liver, but I like very pale, real liver, really.
Speaker 3: Really, but bring on the blood sheep's liver.
Speaker 4: I think would be gun normal for us.
Speaker 3: To have lambs.
Speaker 1: Yes, lambs liver was the sort of the po one, yes,
Speaker 1: and pigs.
Speaker 3: Pigs liver was the cheapest one.
Speaker 1: Lambs liver was actually very tasty tho, yeah, very yes
Speaker 1: and bigger.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But also I have to say that before you know,
Speaker 2: it was just that if you look at Italian food,
Speaker 2: you know, the food of Tuscany, and one to particularly,
Speaker 2: you'll make a miniestrone on a you know one day,
Speaker 2: and then you'll make rebalta and then you know you'll
Speaker 2: have tomatoes, and then you make you know, using the
Speaker 2: bread as a way of extending the food again, no waste,
Speaker 2: you know, everything is always used, was it? You're only
Speaker 2: your mother who cooked?
Speaker 1: We all, I mean, we were three girls in my
Speaker 1: family and dad worked in a lamp shade factory and
Speaker 1: he was also the school caretaker, and I was also
Speaker 1: co opted to help him, which was always much more
Speaker 1: fun than helping mom sort of like because I got
Speaker 1: the washing up jobs, but with Dad I got to
Speaker 1: change into my overalls and sweep the playground with him.
Speaker 1: And in the summer we were given permission from the
Speaker 1: headmistress to go into the orchard which was part of
Speaker 1: our playing ground fields and was full of plums and apples,
Speaker 1: and we would put the ladders up against the trees
Speaker 1: and we would take home literally boxes of apples, and
Speaker 1: as we both rode bikes, we'd have to sort of
Speaker 1: do copious journeys to get the apples back. So we'd
Speaker 1: wrap up the apples in newspaper or brown paper. It's
Speaker 1: usually newspapers. We had the Daily Express every day, so
Speaker 1: we had piles of Daily Express papers and they would
Speaker 1: all go under my bed. So under my bed I
Speaker 1: would have throughout the winter my little pals piles of
Speaker 1: our apples. There's smell, and yes, yes I did like
Speaker 1: an apple. And then we would sort of start to
Speaker 1: use them through the winter bit by bit. But still
Speaker 1: by March they were going strong.
Speaker 2: Why wouldn't they go off?
Speaker 1: Having them in a dark place. They didn't go off,
Speaker 1: but they did get a bit wrinkled, but it didn't
Speaker 1: stop being able to make, you know, baked apples, and
Speaker 1: she made so many apples. She made toffee apples for
Speaker 1: Walls Road when Yeah, in November, November fifth, Bonfire night,
Speaker 1: she made all the kids in our street toffee apples
Speaker 1: from the the purloined with permission apples that were under
Speaker 1: my bed.
Speaker 4: We used to get sent out BlackBerry picking with a
Speaker 4: big tupple thing and my mom would be like, you
Speaker 4: can't come home till it's full, and then she'd make
Speaker 4: obviously chutney jam and then apple crumble apple pie. Because
Speaker 4: you've got your in your We've got the.
Speaker 3: Suet, haven't you, Rucy?
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't know. Have you come across the Torah
Speaker 1: suet in your No.
Speaker 2: I grew up in upstate New York. You have to remember,
Speaker 2: truly arrived in the River Cafe with a basket, a
Speaker 2: beautiful basket. And I would like you to tell Sean
Speaker 2: and I what's in this basket?
Speaker 1: Yes, so Rucy. This it's called the original, a Torah
Speaker 1: shredded beef suet for fluffy dumplings, pastries, puddings and pies.
Speaker 2: And we're going to throw up. Yeah, but that's right,
Speaker 2: that's a classic. I love it so this.
Speaker 3: This is my appointment to his majesty, And actually.
Speaker 2: I really like the packaging, if I'm allowed to say that,
Speaker 2: because it does look of its time, didn't it beautiful?
Speaker 1: So fluffy dumplings were one of the first things that
Speaker 1: my mum taught me to make, and they couldn't be
Speaker 1: simpler to make because it's three ingredients. It's a tora
Speaker 1: beef suit, which is lard. Really, it's sort of like
Speaker 1: made from a cow. They've shredded it for you.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have to be refrigerated.
Speaker 1: You just this is no I just keep it in
Speaker 1: the pantry. And so you have say, eight ounces of
Speaker 1: a tora suit, eight ounces of self raising flower, pinch
Speaker 1: of salt water, combine the lot, and then as your
Speaker 1: chicken casserole or chicken stew is bubbling away nicely, you
Speaker 1: put them in at the last twenty minutes, and so
Speaker 1: the gravies go into the dumplings, but the dumplings are
Speaker 1: rising because of the self raising flower. They actually sort
Speaker 1: of like provided much needed carbs for kids in the
Speaker 1: growing up late fifties sixties, So if you couldn't afford
Speaker 1: potatoes at the time, this was a very sort.
Speaker 3: Of cheap fare, but you.
Speaker 2: Make that, yeah, yeah, let them put them in soup,
Speaker 2: in stews and soups, and yes, it's a And of
Speaker 2: course I live in New York too now, so I
Speaker 2: have chicken soup and mulcible I know. I mean, I
Speaker 2: was going to say that, I'm sure every culture has
Speaker 2: their dumpling. Chinese food has dumplings, and Jewish food that
Speaker 2: I grew up with. My grandmother always made mats of ale,
Speaker 2: so mars is that cracker, and there would be chicken
Speaker 2: soup and mulcibles. These are probably better have you cooked
Speaker 2: with sup?
Speaker 4: I mean that is really familiar to me as well.
Speaker 4: My mum and my grandma used to make dumplings. It
Speaker 4: was such the most delicious thing, really. Yeah, but it
Speaker 4: does sort of slightly explain. It's just pure saturated fat,
Speaker 4: isn't it. Like nowadays they probably have a health warning
Speaker 4: on them, like too many dumps.
Speaker 2: And eight hundred and sixteen calories in one hundred grams
Speaker 2: of this. So yeah, they're so yummy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but then you could use that to make pudding
Speaker 4: as well, can't you.
Speaker 2: So you can make.
Speaker 3: Puddings.
Speaker 2: They're good, and so grow up food was it was
Speaker 2: clearly important there was a value to sitting down and
Speaker 2: having a meal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think my mom had it in her
Speaker 1: to open cans of things and make pies. I mean
Speaker 1: Stingh talks about his mum making frey bentoss pies from
Speaker 1: cans of beef cubes and then making a pastry case,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's pretty inventive. But my mother was
Speaker 1: just what she'd say, it was a scratch cook. She
Speaker 1: would begin with the stock, and she'd begin at the
Speaker 1: beginning and then and the end of it was that
Speaker 1: we would sit down, even in a council house, with
Speaker 1: an embroidered tablecloth that she'd embroidered, and sit together.
Speaker 3: It was important to her.
Speaker 2: Did you ever go to a restaurant? No, you'd never
Speaker 2: been in a restaurant.
Speaker 1: No. We went to a restaurant once with my nana
Speaker 1: that works cook grandmother, and she brought us to sort
Speaker 1: of was like a Lion's tea house in Cheshire and
Speaker 1: that was the first, my first memory of being in
Speaker 1: a restaurant six seven something like that. And I saw
Speaker 1: somebody eating or looked like a plate of worms to me,
Speaker 1: and it was they were these long, long strands and
Speaker 1: it was red and I could not believe my eyes.
Speaker 1: It's like, are they eating worms with all that red sauce?
Speaker 1: Is that the worm's blood? And I think back to
Speaker 1: that image spaghetti, Yes it was spaghetti, and declaring I'll
Speaker 1: never eat that in my life, only to now sort
Speaker 1: of like spaghetti. Ili olio pepperoncino is actually my favorite
Speaker 1: thing and it served every day in our house in
Speaker 1: Italy because I just love it so much I could
Speaker 1: I could eat it all day long.
Speaker 2: And you said that you had an accident you had
Speaker 2: to get through, which has sounded very scary and very disabling.
Speaker 1: I was only two and a half, so i'd toddled
Speaker 1: out of the house. My mum was bathing my younger sister,
Speaker 1: and I went down the stairs and the little girl
Speaker 1: from over the street had called me to see if
Speaker 1: I could if I could come over to her place,
Speaker 1: and did I want to have a sweet tea? So
Speaker 1: I said, oh yes, And she was only about five herself,
Speaker 1: I think, and she took me over to their house.
Speaker 1: She got me a suite, and I think her mother
Speaker 1: thought that I was going to be escorted back to.
Speaker 3: Our house and I wasn't.
Speaker 1: So I was crossing the road and a fifteen year
Speaker 1: old kid had jumped into a baker's van. The baker
Speaker 1: was delivering his bread, and the kid had jumped into
Speaker 1: this lovely big van and knocked it from neutral into
Speaker 1: first and took the hand break off, and the truck
Speaker 1: started to The van started to roll down the hill
Speaker 1: the same time that I was on the ground, and
Speaker 1: luckily the wheels missed me, Otherwise I wouldn't be telling
Speaker 1: the story now. But the exhaust pipe caught me at
Speaker 1: the back of my head and dragged me along the street.
Speaker 1: So I sort of like really taking off quite a
Speaker 1: lot of the left hand side of my face.
Speaker 2: Do you memory of that?
Speaker 3: No, don't have a memory of it. What I do
Speaker 3: have a memory of.
Speaker 1: Because it must be sort of deep in my cellular
Speaker 1: system of being fearful of the road, So yes, being
Speaker 1: I think growing up, you know, kids can be a
Speaker 1: bit cruel to children who look a bit different. And
Speaker 1: I did look a bit different as a youngster. You know,
Speaker 1: I had the very livid marks on my face. But
Speaker 1: mom got a job as the school as dinner's lady,
Speaker 1: and she's sort of like she was very formidable looking
Speaker 1: at my mom. She was about fifteen and a half
Speaker 1: Stone and like nobody was going to mask with Pauline Styler,
Speaker 1: so she protected me from a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: unfair remarks that would being made.
Speaker 2: Did you know The River Cafe has a shop. It's
Speaker 2: full of our favorite foods and designs. We have cookbooks
Speaker 2: and then in napkins, kitchen ware, toad bags with our signatures,
Speaker 2: glasses from Venice, chocolates from Turin. You can find us
Speaker 2: right next door to the River Cafe in London or
Speaker 2: online at shop The River Cafe dot curl uk. So
Speaker 2: you grew up in a house that valued food, picking
Speaker 2: apples and with your father it seems like a very close,
Speaker 2: you know, childhood with a very severe trauma. What was
Speaker 2: it like when you left home? You know when you
Speaker 2: decided to be an actor?
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I decided to be an actor. Well, things
Speaker 1: weren't so good when I decided to be an actor
Speaker 1: with my dad and me, because he was very fearful
Speaker 1: of you know what is that nobody in Walls Road
Speaker 1: has become an actor And it was just an upsetting
Speaker 1: time because I was headstrong seventeen year old who you
Speaker 1: know had been had been to a grammar school and
Speaker 1: had a great education and loved literature and loved everything
Speaker 1: to do with the performing arts. And I think it's
Speaker 1: a way to sort of like express myself too, that
Speaker 1: I felt that all those years of not knowing who
Speaker 1: I was was expressed.
Speaker 3: Through a character.
Speaker 1: And so it was very it's a big passion to become,
Speaker 1: to become somebody in the performing arts.
Speaker 2: That was his ambition for you. Do you know did
Speaker 2: he want you to go to university.
Speaker 1: No, he wanted me to have a safe job that
Speaker 1: guaranteed a paycheck. And the Harris Brushworks was the paintbrush factory.
Speaker 1: That was the closest to us. That he wanted me
Speaker 1: to get a job in the typing pool and make
Speaker 1: use of my grammar school education by an office job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've suddenly my life changed profoundly being an actor, the
Speaker 1: student actor, going to Bristol, learning the arts, getting a
Speaker 1: job sort of like going off to Manchester, so exploring
Speaker 1: areas in England and then eventually the Rawal Shakespeare Company
Speaker 1: in London. And I had a season at the Warehouse
Speaker 1: when it was the don Mar was the RS's.
Speaker 3: Other home other than the Old Witch.
Speaker 1: And then they moved to the Barbicane and put all
Speaker 1: the blaze into the barbecane, So you know, the horizons
Speaker 1: just being opened and opened and opened with these life experiences,
Speaker 1: and then you know, sort of then if we're talking
Speaker 1: food and wine, sort of trying new new things. Traveling
Speaker 1: to Morocco was a big change of scenery for me
Speaker 1: when I was eighteen, hitch hikings through the country with
Speaker 1: my boyfriend and staying there for three months. It was
Speaker 1: sort of like an amazing experience of the first time
Speaker 1: I'd had Middle Eastern food.
Speaker 3: So you know, all these.
Speaker 1: Sights and sounds and smells or evocative, aren't they to
Speaker 1: the country's palette and what they are like? And so
Speaker 1: you begin to be inclusive in your own diet of
Speaker 1: so many different flavors and tastes that you acquire with
Speaker 1: the years that go by.
Speaker 2: I think it's exposure, isn't it. And I always think
Speaker 2: that one of the defining things for our families. You know,
Speaker 2: I know that my grandparents were immigrants from Russia and Hungary,
Speaker 2: so their vision was very small. So my father and
Speaker 2: mother were a product of that and grew and grew.
Speaker 2: But when I think about what my children are exposed
Speaker 2: to in terms of travel experiences, food, restaurants and exposure
Speaker 2: factor is so much greater than what I had. But
Speaker 2: did your father hold it against you? Did you see him?
Speaker 2: Was he a friend or did.
Speaker 1: He We took a while to become close. But when
Speaker 1: Sting and I bought Lake House, it's a farm that
Speaker 1: we've had in Wiltshire for thirty two years now, we've
Speaker 1: had two kids, he came and visited and then I
Speaker 1: found my dad again, because you know, he was a
Speaker 1: man of the country. I loved the country and we
Speaker 1: would go through the grounds and I'd say, Harry, what
Speaker 1: shall we Well after we fell out, I never called
Speaker 1: him dad again.
Speaker 3: He was Harry to me.
Speaker 1: And I'm proud to say I've got a beautiful grandson
Speaker 1: who's named after him. But we became house, you know,
Speaker 1: and that was important that and I didn't need him
Speaker 1: as my dad anymore because I'd sort of found my
Speaker 1: place in life without my parents. But he became a
Speaker 1: really important component of steering and guiding me with how
Speaker 1: to create a really good organic farm and made me
Speaker 1: sort of feel more more courageous about us having this
Speaker 1: sort of diverse farm, and it was an organic farm
Speaker 1: and Soil Association were like pastically helpful and Dad was
Speaker 1: always coming over and giving me his you know, his
Speaker 1: ten cents worth of you know, you know, just plant
Speaker 1: different varietals and of apples and of potatoes and uh,
Speaker 1: you know. He we'd had like even in our very
Speaker 1: modest garden in the Midlands, we because we were in
Speaker 1: middle House, we sort of had this double lot and
Speaker 1: so we grew a fantastic amount of of veggies and
Speaker 1: Dad was very proficient with that and didn't use any
Speaker 1: fertilizers or anything. You know. It was what we were
Speaker 1: always rapturous when we saw so many worms in the garden.
Speaker 2: Even with lake House, your first home that you did
Speaker 2: an organic garden. Was that a family decision? It was
Speaker 2: something that you no, I think.
Speaker 1: I think it's to do with my very early childhood
Speaker 1: of I'm not afraid of the soil. I know that
Speaker 1: if the soil is good, good things will come from
Speaker 1: good soil, bad things will come from bad soil. So
Speaker 1: when you know, having lake House, creating an organic farm
Speaker 1: was sort of easy because it was England. Getting to Pellagio.
Speaker 2: And I was going to ask you how Tuscany and
Speaker 2: so culture Mary so Pelagio.
Speaker 1: I didn't I certainly planted a veggie garden so many tomatoes,
Speaker 1: because that was sort of like hugely satisfying that these
Speaker 1: brilliant tomatoes just grow and thrive in the heat, and
Speaker 1: you can smell the heat in them and the sweetness
Speaker 1: that comes from them. But taking on Palagio, which just
Speaker 1: was a whole different animals than taking on lake House.
Speaker 1: But what I did decide, after two years of just
Speaker 1: having vegetable gardens and seeing that we've got rather wonderful olives,
Speaker 1: that probably just I should learn a bit about the vineyard.
Speaker 1: And so with that started to get the hands into
Speaker 1: the soil.
Speaker 2: It was a vineyard when you bought the house.
Speaker 1: There was a very broken down vineyard, not really tended
Speaker 1: that world, no drainage really, what was.
Speaker 2: The wine like?
Speaker 1: The wine was well, it was being sold into the
Speaker 1: community at that point. But I was having my neck
Speaker 1: adjusted at a chiropractice and I said, that's where is
Speaker 1: that picture? It was a picture of a marvelous vineyard.
Speaker 1: And I said, what is that vineyard doing on your wall, Stefan?
Speaker 1: And he said, oh, that's my vineyard. And I said, oh,
Speaker 1: can I come of see it? And I said how
Speaker 1: are you doing this? And he said, well, this guy
Speaker 1: called Alan York and he does biodynamic wine, and would
Speaker 1: you like to meet him. I said absolutely, cut to
Speaker 1: Alan York coming to Pellagio. And so for the first
Speaker 1: seven years we worked together Alan and I and I
Speaker 1: had the great pleasure to learn a lot from Alan.
Speaker 1: And two thousand and two we planted a lot of
Speaker 1: varietals and so.
Speaker 2: We placed all the vineyards with your own grapes.
Speaker 1: We kept some and we created more. In two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven we had our first vintage for Sister Moon
Speaker 1: and when we dance, and.
Speaker 2: Then we have to say that the wine name after
Speaker 2: the songs.
Speaker 1: So a lot of the wines are named after sting songs.
Speaker 1: Message in a battle, message in a bottle.
Speaker 2: Moon when we died, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I bought you today my favorite, which is a
Speaker 1: white Vermentino. Actually it's called back, it's called batch Sealaboka.
Speaker 1: We made this in twenty twenty when we were full on,
Speaker 1: you know, pandemic and wearing male Nobody seemed to be
Speaker 1: kissing anybody. So I said, let's call this kisses on
Speaker 1: the mouth and hope for the day to come back.
Speaker 1: And so that's that's the Vermontino. This is a Canti
Speaker 1: Reserver called when we dancels me.
Speaker 2: Do you do that? Yeah? I do them. I love
Speaker 2: that label. It's beautiful. Why don't you describe it? Because
Speaker 2: nobody can see it.
Speaker 1: So the picture of of a lady dressed as catwoman
Speaker 1: and she's in point shoes, ballet point shoes, and she
Speaker 1: is very nimbly walking across the top of two wine bottles,
Speaker 1: perfectly balanced. Because I think that wines should be balanced,
Speaker 1: and food should be balanced, and in all things in
Speaker 1: life we aim to be balanced.
Speaker 2: I always think when we do the olive oil trip
Speaker 2: to taste the new olive oil and the wine in November,
Speaker 2: it you know, we have a romance about wine. We
Speaker 2: have a romance about olive oil. We see these beautiful
Speaker 2: bottles of the product. But you know, in the end
Speaker 2: or in the beginning, it is agriculture. It is a farm.
Speaker 2: It is about the weather. And when you talk to
Speaker 2: them about what olive oil were going to have and
Speaker 2: when it's going to taste like, they'll talk about a
Speaker 2: bug that they had, you know, or they'll talk about
Speaker 2: this year. You know, everyone is very, very worried about
Speaker 2: the fact that the heat of the summer has going
Speaker 2: to mean that both wine and olive oil production is
Speaker 2: going to be very endangered for this year. Are you
Speaker 2: involved to the extent that you are concerned about whether.
Speaker 1: We're quite lucky where we are because we we have
Speaker 1: a cooler evenings. There wasn't one evening I don't know
Speaker 1: about for you, Lucie, but we so we had those
Speaker 1: insufferable forty one degree days, but in the evenings, you know,
Speaker 1: we went it went down to you know, maybe in
Speaker 1: the late seventies, and that is the best news for
Speaker 1: the vines because they recover themselves. And it wasn't morning
Speaker 1: without the sort of being a sort of feeling of dewey,
Speaker 1: sort of mourning.
Speaker 2: And how can we talk about the olive oil? Is
Speaker 2: that olive oil that I see in there? Yes? Okay, nice,
Speaker 2: nice part? Is it all from your yes? Absolutely, don't
Speaker 2: mix it with other no.
Speaker 1: So it's extra virgin, biological means organic and the olives
Speaker 1: of front Oyo, Mariolo and Licino.
Speaker 2: So we do you want to when you talk about
Speaker 2: the wine trip and the olive oil trip, because this
Speaker 2: is a big deal in the River Cafe that we've
Speaker 2: done since almost the day Rose and I started. But
Speaker 2: when we did it the first years there were like
Speaker 2: five of us or four of us actually Rose and myself,
Speaker 2: and now.
Speaker 4: Every October we take anyone that's worked at the restaurant,
Speaker 4: for any of the chefs, if worked for a year
Speaker 4: or above a year. We taked to Tuscany to do
Speaker 4: big olive oil tastings and wine tastings at the main
Speaker 4: wineries that we that we kind of buy from, but
Speaker 4: I mean, we can always swing by if you're around.
Speaker 2: It's a very special relationship that we have to meet
Speaker 2: the people who grow the olive oil, who produced the wine,
Speaker 2: who live It's all mostly in Tuscany, although now we've
Speaker 2: we've extended to Piermonte and Pulia. It's now probably about
Speaker 2: six producers that we go to that are really like family.
Speaker 2: You taste the wine, you taste the olive oil, and
Speaker 2: you learn and what it is for the people who've
Speaker 2: worked here, who've been cooking you know this food, who've
Speaker 2: been making the brusquetoes or frying cavalon you know, cavalonaro
Speaker 2: or whatever they've been working. They haven't it's a bit
Speaker 2: back to our children. It's it's about exposure and some
Speaker 2: of them have never been to Italy or have ever been,
Speaker 2: certainly to Tuscany and have certainly never sat down at
Speaker 2: a table where the food was cooked in the kitchen
Speaker 2: and the ingredients were grown in the garden in Tuscany.
Speaker 2: And so it's a really important trip for us that
Speaker 2: they do this. We go for about four days, don't we.
Speaker 1: And you do it sort of after presumably the grapes
Speaker 1: have been harvested, and then during the time of the
Speaker 1: vendemia of the of the olives. Yeah, so we're talking November.
Speaker 4: No, beginning of November, usually early early November, and then
Speaker 4: and what I think what it shows the chefs often
Speaker 4: is the fact that you'll only get maybe two bottles
Speaker 4: of oil of one tree, and people just chug oil
Speaker 4: in until they've been to Tuscany and Sunday they're like,
Speaker 4: this is it's insane the amount of trees that you
Speaker 4: need to produce bottles of oil. And they suddenly have
Speaker 4: more respect for, you know, the ingredients, and.
Speaker 2: They're inspired when they come back, and they they're so
Speaker 2: proud of having been.
Speaker 4: Don't you think it's Yeah, just to sit on the
Speaker 4: bus going up the mountains and down the mountains after
Speaker 4: drinking a pint of.
Speaker 2: Oil, I'm here with Joseph Travelli. We just were talking
Speaker 2: to this truly style and we've just been cooking lunch
Speaker 2: in the restaurant, and so did you do a grouse today?
Speaker 5: We did grouse today. We'd had them for a few days.
Speaker 2: That was quite nice, and tell me about it.
Speaker 5: So today we cook grouse in red wine, which one
Speaker 5: we use the canty. You know, grouse is a very
Speaker 5: traditional thing. You have these kind of old fashioned London
Speaker 5: restaurants that serve grouse with sweet little sauce and game
Speaker 5: chips and all this stuff, which is lovely but really
Speaker 5: quite different to what we do, which is we just
Speaker 5: put it in the wood oven and it gets kind
Speaker 5: of heat from all over in some wine, and this
Speaker 5: kind of becomes this kind of self sourcing bird. Very
Speaker 5: often we put a piece of bread, a bit of
Speaker 5: brisquet underneath the grouse and that kind of soaks up
Speaker 5: the flavor and the wine and you know, a little
Speaker 5: olive oil and you've got the most wonderful dish.
Speaker 2: If you were telling somebody at home who doesn't have
Speaker 2: a wood of it wants to have a grouse, what
Speaker 2: advice or what tips would you give to the person
Speaker 2: cooking a grouse at home.
Speaker 5: Rest it a little bit in the pan that you
Speaker 5: cook it in, you know, maybe cooking in a pan
Speaker 5: with some wine. It doesn't have to be wine, actually,
Speaker 5: it could be anything. Sometimes we might have a little
Speaker 5: brandy and a little bit of tomatoes is also quite nice.
Speaker 2: Olive oil or.
Speaker 5: Butter definitely inside the grouse. It's nice to put a
Speaker 5: little bit of oil or a little bit of butter
Speaker 5: because that gets hot and then it cooks from the
Speaker 5: inside out as well. So I'd say that's a pretty
Speaker 5: good tip actually, and then you know, we bring it
Speaker 5: to the front of the oven. But I would say,
Speaker 5: you know, after a little while of roasting, just leave
Speaker 5: it on the side.
Speaker 2: If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
Speaker 2: please make sure to rape and review the podcast on
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. Thank you. Tell us about what you were
Speaker 2: doing in Naples.
Speaker 1: Two and a half years ago, I was asked would
Speaker 1: I like to direct a documentary about Naples. I said, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know Naples, and they said exactly, so we
Speaker 1: would like as sort of like a foreign pair of
Speaker 1: eyes on a city. They don't know anything about and
Speaker 1: what do you think of it? And this two and
Speaker 1: a half year journey has been this revelatory really in
Speaker 1: the humanity that is there as well as the art
Speaker 1: and the extraordinary food that you can be served in Naples.
Speaker 1: I can honestly say there was not one bad restaurant
Speaker 1: that I visited and with a camera or without a
Speaker 1: camera that didn't sort of like give you just wonderful
Speaker 1: food that is just so just the quality as just
Speaker 1: couldn't be bettered anywhere. And so this feeling of this
Speaker 1: city that is ignored and passed over started to give
Speaker 1: way to a city that i'd rather sort of started
Speaker 1: to fall in love with. And I would visit certain
Speaker 1: people that I thought were interesting for me to interview
Speaker 1: and what they were doing, and got to hear their
Speaker 1: stories and listen to them. And so I've covered a
Speaker 1: sort of like a big spectrum of what Naples is
Speaker 1: and what it was looking at through the eyes of
Speaker 1: two nonagenarians of the Second World War, which was brutal
Speaker 1: for the Neapolitans.
Speaker 3: I even have a rapper.
Speaker 1: Give us the three thousand years of its history in
Speaker 1: three minutes to sort of like just put things in perspective,
Speaker 1: how can I see it? So I was going to
Speaker 1: the Roman film and which I'm very happy about, and
Speaker 1: then it'll have a theatrical release in Italy.
Speaker 3: Title it's called it's called Posentrare.
Speaker 1: An ode to Naples, so means may I enter, may
Speaker 1: I come in? I would ask permission to people who
Speaker 1: lived in these very sort of modest homes on the
Speaker 1: street level, and they didn't even have windows. Some of
Speaker 1: them they had just shutters, and so the shutters are
Speaker 1: open in the day to give daylight. But I would
Speaker 1: tap on their shutters and say pass, and they'd say.
Speaker 3: Marci.
Speaker 1: The falls road, who welcome, And before I knew it,
Speaker 1: there was an espresso delicious on the table and biscotti,
Speaker 1: and then we've become friends in minutes, and I would
Speaker 1: hear their stories. And the thing about the Neapolitans are there,
Speaker 1: it's it's actually no accident of Felini or even though
Speaker 1: he didn't really make any movies in Napoli that I
Speaker 1: can name, but he always cast out of Naples because
Speaker 1: they are the most telegenic natural just they will give
Speaker 1: their all in front of the camera and their most
Speaker 1: incredible faces from the you know, the amount of DNA
Speaker 1: mixtures that that I alluded to three thousand years of
Speaker 1: history in these twelve conquests, so that the DNA is
Speaker 1: as in their words, very contaminated. And they don't use
Speaker 1: that word as a pejorative. They use it as absolute
Speaker 1: pride in who they are.
Speaker 2: You tell me that you are going to now have
Speaker 2: a new home in New York. As there a way
Speaker 2: that you would bring the kitchen to New York, or
Speaker 2: you can for it in Central Park? You know, I
Speaker 2: once did a dinner with Alice Walters in New York,
Speaker 2: and I tell you, I know what I'm going to do.
Speaker 2: I'm going to call Alice and say, Alice, what are
Speaker 2: you cooking? We're doing a charity bed for Edible school Yard.
Speaker 2: And I said, where are you gonna You know, we've
Speaker 2: ordered this from here and that from here, and the
Speaker 2: vegetbles from here. What what? Who have you ordered your
Speaker 2: vegetables from? And she said, oh, Ruthie, I am going
Speaker 2: to forage in Central Park for our food. Did she
Speaker 2: find little ala for the wrist? She found salad leaves,
Speaker 2: and she found some herbs, and she fought, probably she
Speaker 2: probably didn't find anything. She made me feel really inferior.
Speaker 2: What will you do for food in New York?
Speaker 1: Do you think, well, we go you know, it's of
Speaker 1: course it's no, you just can't compare it. But we've
Speaker 1: got really good farmers markets. And I go go there
Speaker 1: on a Sunday and take the little grandchildren along now
Speaker 1: and they like to carry them to baskets and get
Speaker 1: some fruits and veggies put in. But I like supporting
Speaker 1: the folks who've come in from the different areas and
Speaker 1: traveled three or four hours.
Speaker 2: I mean, I grew up in Upstate New York and
Speaker 2: there was corn in the summer and sort of you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know, cabbage and whatever in the winter. And
Speaker 2: now you see these farmers in this market. Did we
Speaker 2: go there together? I kept remember if we went. We
Speaker 2: were there to Union Square and they have like five
Speaker 2: different kinds of rugelo. They have, you know, all these
Speaker 2: tomatoes and they're growing them in Long Island and it's
Speaker 2: very it's very inspiring.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, yeah, No, I like.
Speaker 2: To do you eat that much in restaurants?
Speaker 1: Do I eat out in restaurants? Yeah? A couple of
Speaker 1: nights a week, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And you've described food being part of your family values,
Speaker 2: your grandmother's cooking, your father's picking the blackberries, your apples
Speaker 2: under your bed, you know, buying, living in houses, producing wine,
Speaker 2: producing olive oil, honey, having children and grandchildren to cook
Speaker 2: for and to take to the market. So food is
Speaker 2: all that, and in a life of ever changing times,
Speaker 2: we have also food which is comfort. So I suppose
Speaker 2: my last question to you, one that I've asked everyone
Speaker 2: since Kirsty Young told me, Ruthy have one question for everybody.
Speaker 2: And the question we ask is if you needed food
Speaker 2: for comfort, for comfort, not because you're hungry, but because
Speaker 2: you need comfort. What is there food in your past,
Speaker 2: or in your future, or just that you love that
Speaker 2: you would go to when you need comfort from food.
Speaker 1: Yes, I brought you my ultimate comfort food in my
Speaker 1: basket this morning. Ruth Torah shredded beef suet to make
Speaker 1: the most fluffy dumplings.
Speaker 2: I'm really looking forward. Will you make some for me?
Speaker 2: I'm coming.
Speaker 3: I'm going to make you.
Speaker 2: I can't wait. I'm going to have a fluffy dumpling.
Speaker 2: And until then, you can make the Okay, we'll make Yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll come with the stew at the soup, but we
Speaker 2: can make it. We can make a great chicken soup.
Speaker 2: So thank you Sean, thank thank you to this is
Speaker 2: such a good, good error and we will connect. Yeah, yes, please,
Speaker 2: thank you so hungry. Listen to.
Speaker 5: Ruthie's Table four is produced by Atamei Studios for iHeartRadio.
Speaker 5: It's hosted by Ruthie Rogers and it's produced by William Lensky.
Speaker 5: This episode was edited by Julia Johnson and mixed by
Speaker 5: Nigel Appleton.
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Fay Stewart and Zad Rogers.
Speaker 5: Our production manager is Caitlin Paramore, and our production coordinator
Speaker 5: is Bella Selini. This episode had additional contributions by Sean
Speaker 5: win Owen.
Speaker 1: Thank you to everyone at The River Cafe for your
Speaker 1: help in making this episode.