Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2: There is an infinite amount of subjects I'd like to
Speaker 2: discuss with Speaker of the House Pelosi, but you know
Speaker 2: the rules of River Cafe Table four. We only discuss food,
Speaker 2: memories and how food fits into our lives, family, work,
Speaker 2: and values. Nancy Pelosi and I share the same aspirations
Speaker 2: and concerns inequality the environment. The difference is that I
Speaker 2: wake up every day worrying about the world, and she
Speaker 2: goes to work every day to change it. In an hour,
Speaker 2: fifty guests will be arriving for dinner in our home
Speaker 2: to celebrate this awesome woman. While we are talking agripher
Speaker 2: cafe chefs are cooking risotto ammaroni, poaching Langestine, roasting pumpkin,
Speaker 2: And because Speaker Pelosi loves chocolate, We're going to have
Speaker 2: two chocolate desserts, a bit of chocolate sorbet and a
Speaker 2: rich chocolate cake.
Speaker 3: I'm very happy to read the recipe for chocolate sorbet,
Speaker 3: one of my favorite basic foods. In order to achieve
Speaker 3: this work of art, you take seven hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: milli liters of water, two hundred and fifty grams of
Speaker 3: castor sugar, one hundred and fifty grams of cocoa powder,
Speaker 3: one hundred milli liters of recchio romagna. Gently boil the
Speaker 3: water and sugar together to this light syrup. Add the
Speaker 3: cocoa powder, quit gently stirring for fifteen to twenty minutes
Speaker 3: until the coco powder is completely He dissolved strain, cool
Speaker 3: and add the brandy. Put the mixture into an ice
Speaker 3: cream maker and churn until frozen or freeze and flat
Speaker 3: freezer trays.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Before we go into food and values, and
Speaker 2: food and family and food and memories, tell me about
Speaker 2: your love for chocolate.
Speaker 3: My earliest memories are about loving chocolate. I remember once
Speaker 3: when I was a very little girl, my big brother,
Speaker 3: who was a teenager. My parents said, you can have
Speaker 3: the car if you bring Nancy home some ice cream. First,
Speaker 3: he brought vanilla ice cream home. I put it under
Speaker 3: the bed, never ate it because it wasn't chocolate. Why
Speaker 3: would he bring me vanilla ice cream? But I've always
Speaker 3: loved it, And as time has gone by, I've loved
Speaker 3: it darker and darker and darker.
Speaker 2: And what about ice cream? Because I did read that
Speaker 2: you have ice cream for breakfast or is that an
Speaker 2: urban myth.
Speaker 3: No, it's not an urban myth. It's convenient, it's right there,
Speaker 3: it has long shelf life. I don't have to worry
Speaker 3: about it. It's right there, and but I have it
Speaker 3: for breakfast. It's a great way to start the day.
Speaker 3: I don't have it every day, but I have it often.
Speaker 3: And when I was younger, I used to have it
Speaker 3: before I went to sleep, a pint device chocolate ice cream.
Speaker 3: But as time has gone by, the later the chocolate,
Speaker 3: the less sleep I have.
Speaker 2: You find the caffeine and the chocolate. So as a child,
Speaker 2: so you ate chocolate. Did your mother know that you
Speaker 2: were having a pint of ice cream before you went
Speaker 2: to sleep? And that was fine.
Speaker 3: It was not usual. We didn't have sodas or soft
Speaker 3: drinks or anything in our home like that. Everything was fresh,
Speaker 3: except we had chocolate ice cream.
Speaker 2: I love ice cream. When I go to the River Cafe,
Speaker 2: my restaurant, or go to any restaurant, the dessert I
Speaker 2: go for is always ice cream.
Speaker 3: Well, people say to me, you're going to some of
Speaker 3: the fanciest restaurants in the world and you're ordering chocolate
Speaker 3: ice cream. For dessert. Don't you think you should have
Speaker 3: something more sophisticated.
Speaker 2: I think it's delicious. I think it's the way to
Speaker 2: end a meal. Should we go back then to your
Speaker 2: mother and your older brother. How many of you were
Speaker 2: there in your family?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm talking about my oldest brother. At the time,
Speaker 3: there were seven children, six boys, one girl. I was
Speaker 3: the youngest, and I'm talking about my brother who was
Speaker 3: like eleven years older than I was. My oldest brother.
Speaker 3: When we talked about if you want to have the car,
Speaker 3: you have to get ice cream for Nancy first.
Speaker 2: So your parents had six boys and then they had you.
Speaker 3: One of them died when he was young. So I
Speaker 3: was really raised with five five boys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the Della Sandra household of six children. How
Speaker 2: is the food? Who cooked?
Speaker 3: The cook cooked? And my mother, may she rest in peace,
Speaker 3: bless her heart. She had a cook and what was
Speaker 3: what was it like?
Speaker 2: Well, it was very.
Speaker 3: Italian, but it was also very fresh and delicious. Sin
Speaker 3: of the rest, I mean the cook would come in
Speaker 3: the morning and make breakfast in that what would that be?
Speaker 3: It could be anything you want. It could have eggs
Speaker 3: or you could have oat meal. There were some standard
Speaker 3: things sometimes that would even drink coffee at an early age,
Speaker 3: like eleven or twelve, and.
Speaker 2: Would you all sit down to breakfast, So that would
Speaker 2: be if six or seven children and two parents, was
Speaker 2: breakfast and meal that you all shared.
Speaker 3: Sort of dinner was what we shared. Now. My father,
Speaker 3: my whole life, My father was the mayor of Baltimore
Speaker 3: from when I was in first grade when I went
Speaker 3: away to college my freshman year of college, he was
Speaker 3: still the mayor of Baltimore. So our routine was he
Speaker 3: would come home and in those days a long time ago,
Speaker 3: he would go out to make all of his speeches
Speaker 3: in the evening in black tie. Everything was very formal.
Speaker 3: So he would come home from work, we would have
Speaker 3: our family dinner together early. What time would that be
Speaker 3: like five point thirty, Yeah, because he'd have to then
Speaker 3: go on the campaign trail or just the civic engagements.
Speaker 3: So that was the time that we were together. And
Speaker 3: then of course Sunday brunch and those kinds of things.
Speaker 3: But I'm just talking about every day and to this day,
Speaker 3: my husband, Paul, who was born and raised in San Francisco,
Speaker 3: I was born and raised in Baltimore. To this day,
Speaker 3: he likes to dine at eight, and I like to
Speaker 3: eat at five early, like a peasant.
Speaker 2: Now well, actually I find that now in the restaurant,
Speaker 2: more and more people are eating earlier. We used to.
Speaker 2: Everybody used to make fun of Americans for wanting to
Speaker 2: eat early, and now it's harder for us to sell
Speaker 2: the later tables. Even young people. Everybody wants to eat early.
Speaker 2: But going back to this day of your father coming
Speaker 2: back from work and you're all sitting down, would it
Speaker 2: would there be? Would it be raucous? Would it be talk?
Speaker 2: Would everybody be? What was it like at the table?
Speaker 3: Would be a mixture, just depending what the mood was
Speaker 3: at the time. But there were certain things that I
Speaker 3: carried over to my own children, and I'm still that way.
Speaker 3: In a restaurant I had, we always had to have
Speaker 3: a tablecloth, you know. I mean that was a long
Speaker 3: time ago, so it doesn't it isn't so unusual to
Speaker 3: think tablecloth then. Now it's almost a luxury. And so
Speaker 3: for my own children, we've never had a meal without
Speaker 3: two things, some linens, whatever it might be, could be
Speaker 3: place matt and salad and whatever else we happen to have.
Speaker 3: And when they were growing up, the five of them
Speaker 3: five and six years in one week to the day
Speaker 3: a pack. I had different things I would try. I
Speaker 3: would try when they came home from school. I'd say,
Speaker 3: let's have dessert now for three thirty four o'clock, we
Speaker 3: have dessert and then we'll have dinner later. Then I
Speaker 3: decided wouldn't be a good idea because they came home
Speaker 3: that they were hungry to have dinner at four o'clock,
Speaker 3: So that they would have their dinner and then we'd
Speaker 3: have dessert later. We've tried all kinds of things to
Speaker 3: satisfy their appetites.
Speaker 2: I loved that you said that your families were basically
Speaker 2: a map of Italy of those very and so tell
Speaker 2: me about the Italian influence on the food.
Speaker 3: Well, my father's mother was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but
Speaker 3: her parents, which would be my great grandparents, one was
Speaker 3: born in Venice and one was born in Genoa, so
Speaker 3: there was a lot of that influence in the in
Speaker 3: the food Northern and northern Italian. My mother's family was
Speaker 3: from Compobasso, which is in the center of Italy, but
Speaker 3: we lived in an Italian neighborhood, so there was every
Speaker 3: food you can imagine in the neighborhood and every dialect
Speaker 3: that you could imagine in the neighborhood. But there was
Speaker 3: one thing in common, the smell of very fresh bread
Speaker 3: early in the morning, fresh Italian bread. To this day,
Speaker 3: it's one of the my happiest memories, the smell of
Speaker 3: fresh bake bread smells.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good smell. But I think we always
Speaker 2: talk about Italy, you know, which was became a country
Speaker 2: very late. So you have the very strong regional dishes,
Speaker 2: don't you. So in Venice you have the polenta, and
Speaker 2: in southern Italy you have smattest, and then in Florence
Speaker 2: it's very in Tuscan it's very bread oriented. And then everybody,
Speaker 2: I guess came to Baltimore and there was there was
Speaker 2: everything in every area.
Speaker 3: Thing. You had the Trascana, the Siciliana, the Marca, John
Speaker 3: or bruts As, the what do they call the Genovase
Speaker 3: Gena Basically they were the other different names from Ligorian, Yeah,
Speaker 3: the Venezzi that goes from Venice, by the name of
Speaker 3: where they came from, because they were all sort of
Speaker 3: like city states. Whny of the northern Italians came early,
Speaker 3: you know, As I say, my father's mother she was
Speaker 3: born in Baltimore, probably like in the eighteen eighties or
Speaker 3: something like that. Yeah, they came earlier than the others.
Speaker 2: And then the Southern Italians came later. You think the more.
Speaker 3: Later, the middle and later. And then San Francisco is
Speaker 3: a very Italian American city. The Bank of America was
Speaker 3: originally the Bank of Italy. Yeah, as a bank of Italy,
Speaker 3: and the influence there is very Italian in terms of food.
Speaker 3: So it was a comfortable move for me.
Speaker 2: And what did you so, what would a meal be liked?
Speaker 2: Would they make? Did you have a lot of spaghetti
Speaker 2: or pasta?
Speaker 3: Well, we laugh because we used to say in those
Speaker 3: days you had macaroni and gravy and ice cream, and
Speaker 3: then it became pasta and sauce and gilato.
Speaker 2: Did you have pasta every day?
Speaker 3: Regularly? It may may not be actually every day, but
Speaker 3: on the average of every day in one form or another.
Speaker 2: And we had, you know, my husband's family Italian. My
Speaker 2: husband was born in Florence, and his mother was born
Speaker 2: in Trieste, and his father was born he was born
Speaker 2: in Nice and they moved to Triesta. The whole family
Speaker 2: is very Italian. We tell the story that one of
Speaker 2: the cousins came to visit from Florence to London and
Speaker 2: they put the food on the table and there wasn't
Speaker 2: a pasta. Started to cry because it was just a
Speaker 2: meal without pasta.
Speaker 3: It was not and pasta wasn't the meal, it was
Speaker 3: part of the meal. Yeah, yeah, it's a PREMI When
Speaker 3: my friends this or that where they'd have a exchange
Speaker 3: student or something like that, it would be we tell
Speaker 3: the story when they were having lunch and they said, well,
Speaker 3: you know who's having peanut butter and jelly, who's having
Speaker 3: this or that? What would you like? And the child said, well,
Speaker 3: how about a little veal with lemons. Yeah it came
Speaker 3: from Tuscan exactly.
Speaker 2: And so did you remember the pastas that you had?
Speaker 2: Do you remember the food? Exact food?
Speaker 3: Oh? I know, all the standard stuff that you see now,
Speaker 3: of course, but I loved it. I always liked it
Speaker 3: a little thicker and a little more all Dante, whether
Speaker 3: it was that chuccini, of course, Rigatoni would be hard.
Speaker 3: I preferred cheese ravi only polenta, and was very amused
Speaker 3: because my big brother. One day a very fancy restaurant
Speaker 3: opened up in Maryland, not in Bolt but in sort
Speaker 3: of eastern shore of Maryland, it was very acclaimed and
Speaker 3: it's hard to get into and this or that. And
Speaker 3: my brothers went to the restaurant and he came back.
Speaker 3: He said, Nancy, you'll never believe it. They had polenta,
Speaker 3: as if it was from a former I said, no,
Speaker 3: tell me if that's become She.
Speaker 2: Out, no, exactly what year would that have been?
Speaker 3: Remember probably about twenty five years ago that became. It's
Speaker 3: not like they're having your grandma. There's polenta they're having. Well, now,
Speaker 3: let me just say, people say to me, what is
Speaker 3: your In fact, my grandch son said to me for
Speaker 3: our family tree project in our class, we have to
Speaker 3: have a family favorite family recipe that's been in our
Speaker 3: family for generations, and what would you suggest? And I said, well,
Speaker 3: when I would suggest, it's probably chocolate supflor chocolate moves.
Speaker 3: And he said, no, I mean a traditional family thing.
Speaker 3: My mother wasn't. She wouldn't like me saying this. She
Speaker 3: wasn't a big cook. I mean she was capable of cooking,
Speaker 3: but she always had a cook and her mother didn't
Speaker 3: cook because her husband cooked. He was a chef. He
Speaker 3: would I would see him break the neck of an
Speaker 3: eel or whatever it is, and cook these fabulous Your grandfather,
Speaker 3: my grandfather and so my grandmother never cooked and I
Speaker 3: was like, you better talk to your father about a
Speaker 3: family recipe.
Speaker 2: So the Italian influence so stayed and stayed.
Speaker 3: Well you think the deliciousness of it.
Speaker 2: So I think, you know, it's funny that you say
Speaker 2: about polenta, because polenta and a lot of the dishes
Speaker 2: that come from very traditional family are I hate the word,
Speaker 2: but what they call peasant food. I would never let
Speaker 2: it be called peasant food. But rest of cooking, family cooking,
Speaker 2: family dishes are now so as you say, so sophisticated.
Speaker 3: Well, my husband's mother made tripe all the time, and
Speaker 3: that was pretty standard. She made Oh she made tripe
Speaker 3: with polenta, tripe with polent or polenta with almost anything.
Speaker 3: So when it became chic, we thought, oh my gosh, Nana,
Speaker 3: it's really on the forefront.
Speaker 2: Did your parents speak Italian?
Speaker 3: No, Well, I don't know. Do you know I didn't
Speaker 3: speak Italian. See, my father's mother was born in Baltimore,
Speaker 3: so it wasn't the case of his He didn't know Italian.
Speaker 3: My mother she spoke some, but I don't know how
Speaker 3: good she was. And every time I would go to
Speaker 3: see my grandfather, who was so beautiful and wonderful, and
Speaker 3: I loved him so much. The chef he was going
Speaker 3: to teach me how to speak Italian, and every time
Speaker 3: i'd go, he'd get out a map and we'd start.
Speaker 3: These are different diet elects of Italian. So I could
Speaker 3: give you the map of Italy and the different dialects,
Speaker 3: but I don't know to speak Italian because we'd start
Speaker 3: with that map every day.
Speaker 2: No, there are they're very you know. My again, my husband,
Speaker 2: I was saying, was born in Florence, but when we
Speaker 2: would go to Venice, very often he couldn't understand some
Speaker 2: of the fishermen, you know, what they were speaking. It's
Speaker 2: interesting because in these podcasts I talked to many people
Speaker 2: who recall their grandparents cooking almost more than their parents cooking,
Speaker 2: And very often they come from families that emigrated from
Speaker 2: another country. And I often think that perhaps the mother
Speaker 2: was trying to adapt to the new environment where the
Speaker 2: grandparents probably, you know, that was their identity and took
Speaker 2: it with them. But I haven't ended you know the
Speaker 2: fact that your grandfather was actually a professional chef.
Speaker 3: My understanding of this is before I was aware of
Speaker 3: what he was doing. He sold postive. He had one
Speaker 3: of those shops that's sold products from Italy, pasta, dry
Speaker 3: pasta and those kinds of things. So he was a foodie.
Speaker 3: I mean, he was into food and a chef. And
Speaker 3: my grandmother was treated like a queen. She never did
Speaker 3: any housework or anything like that. And she didn't cook.
Speaker 3: That's I mean, I never knew how to cook. One thing.
Speaker 3: In my mother's case, she had these seven children. Is
Speaker 3: she were alive in another generation, who knows what she
Speaker 3: would have been. She was a mom, she was a
Speaker 3: political organizer from my father. She was a poet, she
Speaker 3: was an inventor. She did all kinds of things. She
Speaker 3: said to me once when I was a little girl,
Speaker 3: I know that the telephone can be used for more things.
Speaker 3: I just have to figure it out.
Speaker 2: And also you were her only daughter.
Speaker 3: We're very by the way, in all of this, very
Speaker 3: devoutly Catholic. So lots of times the ritual of food
Speaker 3: surrounded Mass, either after or midnight or Sunday branch or
Speaker 3: A lot of it revolved around going to.
Speaker 2: Church, coming home and each afterwards.
Speaker 3: As I always say, we were born in the family
Speaker 3: was devoutly Catholic, fiercely patriotic, proud of our Italian American heritage,
Speaker 3: and staunchly democratic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, staunchly democratic. Those principles came in very early.
Speaker 3: They related to our Catholicism in our view of taking
Speaker 3: care of other people and food. People came to our
Speaker 3: door when people were poor. My brother Tommy, my older brother,
Speaker 3: he used to tell me that when he was a
Speaker 3: little boy, people would come to the door and Mommy
Speaker 3: would always be giving them food, giving them food, giving
Speaker 3: them food. And even in her old age, she was
Speaker 3: giving ice cream to children and they knew to come
Speaker 3: to the door to get ice cream. So it was
Speaker 3: all about nourishment one way or another.
Speaker 2: And when you left this incredibly close family and centered
Speaker 2: around the table and food, food and church, when you
Speaker 2: left this family and went to university to college, how
Speaker 2: did you deal with food then? Do you remember?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I went away. The only place that I was
Speaker 3: allowed to go would be a woman's Catholic college.
Speaker 2: That would be where was that? What college?
Speaker 3: It was called Trinity College in Washington, d c. The
Speaker 3: oldest Catholic women's college in America. It was strict academic school,
Speaker 3: and it was within fifty miles of Baltimore, Maryland and
Speaker 3: our college. It's not exactly a culinary July any but
Speaker 3: we used to. We used to don't tell anybody who
Speaker 3: told you this. We used to go at night. They
Speaker 3: know now years later they know. But we used to go,
Speaker 3: like in the middle of the night, down to the
Speaker 3: dining room and break into the freezer to get ice cream.
Speaker 3: Now they was locked, so you can only lift it
Speaker 3: a little bit and put the scooper in there and
Speaker 3: pull it out.
Speaker 2: We better not tell certain members of the house about
Speaker 2: this exactly.
Speaker 3: It's hard to tell a flavor and the dark and
Speaker 3: the dark, and you could tell if it's chocolate or not,
Speaker 3: but peach, strawberry and the rest it kind of comes together.
Speaker 3: And sometimes we would order pizza so that the guard.
Speaker 3: We'd say to the guard. Somebody would go talk to
Speaker 3: the guard and said, I ordered pizza. I'm waiting here
Speaker 3: for the pizza, while we would go down and steal
Speaker 3: the ice creams steal the ice cream.
Speaker 2: And so your college days were spent stealing ice stealing
Speaker 2: ice cream. Basically twenty minutes speaker Nancy Pelosi was never
Speaker 2: going to be enough time to explore her movie and
Speaker 2: memorable food story. So join us next week when we
Speaker 2: will continue our conversation River Cafe Table four Part two.
Speaker 2: To visit the online shop of the River Cafe, go
Speaker 2: to shop Therivercafe dot co dot UK.
Speaker 1: River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and
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