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Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio

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Speaker 1: and Adamie Studios.

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Speaker 2: There is an infinite amount of subjects I'd like to

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Speaker 2: discuss with Speaker of the House Pelosi, but you know

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Speaker 2: the rules of River Cafe Table four. We only discuss food,

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Speaker 2: memories and how food fits into our lives, family, work,

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Speaker 2: and values. Nancy Pelosi and I share the same aspirations

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Speaker 2: and concerns inequality the environment. The difference is that I

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Speaker 2: wake up every day worrying about the world, and she

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Speaker 2: goes to work every day to change it. In an hour,

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Speaker 2: fifty guests will be arriving for dinner in our home

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Speaker 2: to celebrate this awesome woman. While we are talking, River

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Speaker 2: Cafe chefs are cooking risotto ammaroni, poaching languestine, roasting pumpkin,

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Speaker 2: and because Speaker Pelosi loves chocolate, We're going to have

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Speaker 2: two chocolate desserts, a bit of chocolate sorbet and a

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Speaker 2: rich chocolate cake.

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Speaker 3: I'm very happy to read the recipe for chocolate sorbet,

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Speaker 3: one of my favorite basic foods. In order to achieve

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Speaker 3: this work of art, you take seven hundred and fifty

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Speaker 3: milli liters of water, two hundred and fifty grams of

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Speaker 3: castor sugar, one hundred and fifty grams of cocoa powder,

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Speaker 3: one hundred milli liters of recchio romagna. Gently boil the

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Speaker 3: water and sugar together to this light syrup. Add the

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Speaker 3: cocoa powder, quit gently stirring for fifteen to twenty minutes

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Speaker 3: until the cocoa powder is completely He dissolved strain, cool

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Speaker 3: and add the brandy. Put the mixture into an ice

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Speaker 3: cream maker and churn until frozen or freeze and flat

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Speaker 3: freezer trays.

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Speaker 2: Thank you. Before we go into food and values, and

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Speaker 2: food and family and food and memories, tell me about

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Speaker 2: your love for chocolate.

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Speaker 3: My earliest memories are about loving chocolate. I remember once

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Speaker 3: when I was a very little girl, my big brother,

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Speaker 3: who was a teenager. My parents said, you can have

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Speaker 3: the car if you bring Nancy home some ice cream. First,

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Speaker 3: he brought vanilla ice cream home. I put it under

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Speaker 3: the bed, never ate it because it wasn't chocolate. Why

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Speaker 3: would he bring me vanilla ice cream? But I've always

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Speaker 3: loved it, and as time has gone by, I've loved

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Speaker 3: it darker and darker and darker.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, what about ice cream? Because I did read that

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Speaker 2: you have ice cream for breakfast or is that an

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Speaker 2: urban myth.

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Speaker 3: No, it's not an urban myth. It's convenient, it's right there,

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Speaker 3: it has long shelf life. I don't have to worry

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Speaker 3: about it. It's right there, and but I have it

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Speaker 3: for breakfast. It's a great way to start the day.

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Speaker 3: I don't have it every day, but I have it often.

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Speaker 3: And when I was younger, I used to have it

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Speaker 3: before I went to sleep, a pint device chocolate ice cream.

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Speaker 3: But as time has gone by, the later the chocolate,

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Speaker 3: the less sleep I have.

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Speaker 2: Yah, you find the caffeine and the chocolate. So as

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Speaker 2: a child, so you ate chocolate. Did your mother know

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Speaker 2: that you were having a pint of ice cream before

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Speaker 2: you went to sleep? And that was fine?

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Speaker 3: That was not sual. We didn't have sodas or soft

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Speaker 3: drinks or anything in our home like that. Everything was fresh,

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Speaker 3: except we had chocolate ice cream.

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Speaker 2: I love ice cream. When I go to the River Cafe,

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Speaker 2: my restaurant, or go to any restaurant, the dessert I

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Speaker 2: go for is always ice cream.

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Speaker 3: Well, people say to me, you're going to some of

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Speaker 3: the fanciest restaurants in the world and you're ordering chocolate

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Speaker 3: ice cream for dessert. Don't you think you should have

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Speaker 3: something more sophisticated.

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Speaker 2: It's delicious. I think it's the way to end a meal.

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Speaker 2: Should we go back then to your mother and your

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Speaker 2: older brother. How many of you were there in your family?

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Speaker 3: Well, I'm talking about my oldest brother. At the time,

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Speaker 3: there were seven children, six boys, one girl. I was

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Speaker 3: the youngest, and I'm talking about my brother who was

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Speaker 3: like eleven years older than I was. My oldest brother.

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Speaker 3: When we talked about if you want to have the car,

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Speaker 3: you have to get ice cream for Nancy first.

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Speaker 2: So your parents had six boys and then they had you.

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Speaker 3: One of them died when he was young. So I

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Speaker 3: was really raised with five five boys.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and the Della Sandra household of six children. How

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Speaker 2: is the food? Who cooked?

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Speaker 3: The cook cooked my mother? May she rest in peace,

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Speaker 3: bless her heart. She had a cook and what was

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Speaker 3: what was it like?

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Speaker 2: Well? It was very.

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Speaker 3: Italian, but it was also very fresh and delicious. Sin

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Speaker 3: of the rest, I mean the cook would come in

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Speaker 3: the morning and make breakfast in.

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Speaker 2: That What would that be?

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Speaker 3: It could be anything you want. It could have eggs

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Speaker 3: or you could have oatmeal. There were some standard things

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Speaker 3: sometimes that would even drink coffee at an early age,

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Speaker 3: like eleven or twelve, And.

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Speaker 2: Would you all sit down to breakfast, So that would

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Speaker 2: be if six or seven children and two parents, was

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Speaker 2: breakfast and meal that you all shared.

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Speaker 3: Sort of dinner was what we shared. Now. My father,

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Speaker 3: my whole life, My father was the mayor of Baltimore

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Speaker 3: from when I was in first grade when I went

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Speaker 3: away to college my freshman year of college, he was

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Speaker 3: still the mayor of Baltimore. So our routine was he

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Speaker 3: would come home and in those days a long time ago,

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Speaker 3: he would go out to make all of his speeches

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Speaker 3: in the evening in black tie. Everything was very formal.

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Speaker 3: So he would come home from work, we would have

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Speaker 3: our family dinner together early. What time would that be

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Speaker 3: like five point thirty, Yeah, because he'd have to then

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Speaker 3: go on the campaign trail or just the civic engagements.

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Speaker 3: So that was the time that we were together. And

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Speaker 3: then of course Sunday brunch and those kinds of things.

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Speaker 3: But I'm just talking about every day and to this day,

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Speaker 3: my husband, Paul, who was born and raised in San Francisco,

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Speaker 3: I was born and raised in Baltimore. To this day,

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Speaker 3: he likes to dine at eight, and I like to

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Speaker 3: eat at five, so early, like a peasant.

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Speaker 2: Now well, actually I find that now in the restaurant,

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Speaker 2: more and more people are eating earlier. We used to.

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Speaker 2: Everybody used to make fun of Americans for wanting to

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Speaker 2: eat early, and now it harder for us to sell

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Speaker 2: the later tables, even young people. Everybody wants to eat early.

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Speaker 2: But going back to this day of your father coming

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Speaker 2: back from work and you're all sitting down, would it

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Speaker 2: would there be? Would it be raucous? Would it be talk?

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Speaker 2: Would everybody be? What was it like at the table?

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Speaker 3: Would be a mixture, just depending what the mood was

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Speaker 3: at the time. But there were certain things that I

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Speaker 3: carried over and to my own children, and I'm still

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Speaker 3: that way. In a restaurant I had, we always had

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Speaker 3: to have a tablecloth, you know, I mean that was

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Speaker 3: a long time ago, so it doesn't it isn't so

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Speaker 3: unusual to think tablecloth then. Now it's almost a luxury.

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Speaker 3: And so for my own children, we've never had a

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Speaker 3: meal without two things, some linens, whatever it might be,

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Speaker 3: could be place mat and salad and whatever else we

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Speaker 3: happen to have. And when they were growing up, the

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Speaker 3: five of them five and six years in one week

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Speaker 3: to the day a pack. I had different things I

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Speaker 3: would try. I would try when they came home from school.

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Speaker 3: I'd say, let's have dessert now for three point thirty

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Speaker 3: four o'clock, we have dessert and then we'll have dinner later.

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Speaker 3: Then I decided wouldn't be a good idea because they

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Speaker 3: came home they were hungry to have dinner at four o'clock.

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Speaker 3: So that they would have their dinner and then we'd

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Speaker 3: have dessert later. We've tried all kinds of things to

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Speaker 3: satisfy their appetites.

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Speaker 2: I loved that you said that your families were basically

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Speaker 2: a map of Italy of those very moving and so

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Speaker 2: tell me about the Italian influence on the food.

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Speaker 3: Well, my father's mother was born in Baltimore, Maryland, but

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Speaker 3: her parents, which would be my great grandparents, one was

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Speaker 3: born in Venice and one was born in Genoa, so

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Speaker 3: there was a lot of that influence in the in

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Speaker 3: the food, the northern and northern Italian. My mother's family

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Speaker 3: was from Campobasso, which is in the center of Italy,

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Speaker 3: but we lived in an Italian neighborhood, so there was

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Speaker 3: every food you can imagine in the neighborhood, and every

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Speaker 3: dialect that you could imagine in the neighborhood. But there

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Speaker 3: was one thing in common, the smell of very fresh

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Speaker 3: bread early in the morning, fresh Italian bread. To this day,

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Speaker 3: it's one of the my happiest memories, the.

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Speaker 2: Smell of fresh baked smells. Yeah, that's a good smell.

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Speaker 2: But I think we always talk about Italy, you know,

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Speaker 2: which was became a country very late. So you have

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Speaker 2: the very strong regional dishes, don't you. So in Venice

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Speaker 2: you have the polenta, and in southern Italy you have smartest,

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Speaker 2: and then in Florence it's very in Tuscan it's very

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Speaker 2: bread oriented. And then everybody, I guess came to Baltimore

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Speaker 2: and there was there was everything in one area.

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Speaker 3: Thing. You had the Tuscana, the Siciliana, the Marca John

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Speaker 3: or bruts As, the what do they call the Genovase

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Speaker 3: Gena Basically they were the other different names from the Ligorian. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: the Venezzi that goes from Venice, by the name of

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Speaker 3: where they came from, because they were all sort of

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Speaker 3: like city states wheny of the northern Italians came early,

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Speaker 3: you know, as I say, my father's mother. She was

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Speaker 3: born in Baltimore, probably like in the eighteen eighties or

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Speaker 3: something like that. Yeah, they came earlier than the others.

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Speaker 2: And then the Southern Italians came later. You think the

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Speaker 2: more later, the middle and later. And then San Francisco

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Speaker 2: is a very Italian American city. The Bank of America

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Speaker 2: was originally the Bank of Italy. I didn't know, yeah,

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Speaker 2: as a bank of Italy, and the influence there is

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Speaker 2: very Italian in terms of food. So it was a

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Speaker 2: comfortable move for me. And what did you so, what

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Speaker 2: would a meal be liked? Would they make? Did you

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Speaker 2: have a lot of spaghetti or pasta?

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Speaker 3: Well, we laugh because we used to say in those

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Speaker 3: days you had macaroni and gravy and ice cream, and

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Speaker 3: then it became pasta and sauce and gilato.

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Speaker 2: Did you have pasta every day regularly?

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Speaker 3: It may may not be actually every day, but on

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Speaker 3: the average of every day in one form or another.

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Speaker 2: And we had, you know, my husband's family Italian. My

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Speaker 2: husband was born in Florence, and his mother was born

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Speaker 2: in Trieste, and his father was born he was born

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Speaker 2: in Nice and they moved to Triesta. The whole family

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Speaker 2: is very Italian. If we tell the story that one

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Speaker 2: of the cousins came to visit from Florence to London

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Speaker 2: and they put the food on the table and there

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Speaker 2: wasn't a pasta. Started to cry because it was just

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Speaker 2: a meal without pasta.

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Speaker 3: It was not and that past it wasn't the meal,

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Speaker 3: it was part of the meal. Yeah, yeah, it's a

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Speaker 3: PREMI when my friends this or that, where they'd have

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Speaker 3: a exchange student or something like that, it would be

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Speaker 3: we tell the story. But they were having lunch and

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Speaker 3: they said, well, you know who's having peanut butter and jelly,

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Speaker 3: who's having this or that? What would you like? And

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Speaker 3: the child said, well, how about a little veal with

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Speaker 3: lemon that it came from Tuscan exactly.

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Speaker 2: And so did you remember the pastas that you had?

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Speaker 2: Do you remember the food? Exact food? Oh?

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Speaker 3: I did all the standard stuff that you see now,

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Speaker 3: of course, but I loved it. I always liked it

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Speaker 3: a little thicker and a little more all Dante, whether

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Speaker 3: it was that chuccini. Of course, rigatoni would be hard.

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Speaker 3: I preferred cheese ravi only polenta, And was very amused

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Speaker 3: because my big brother one day, a very fancy restaurant

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Speaker 3: opened up in Maryland, not in Bolt, but in sort

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Speaker 3: of eastern shore of Maryland. It was very acclaimed and

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Speaker 3: it's hard to get into and this or that. And

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Speaker 3: my brothers went to the restaurant and he came back.

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Speaker 3: He said, Nancy, you'll never believe it. They had polenta,

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Speaker 3: as if it was from a former I said, no,

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Speaker 3: tell me that's become she's out.

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Speaker 2: No exactly, that's what year would that have been?

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Speaker 3: Mean, Oh, my gosh, you remember probably about twenty five

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Speaker 3: years ago that became. It's not like they're having your grandma.

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Speaker 3: There's polenta they're having. Well, now, let me just say,

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Speaker 3: people say to me, what is your In fact, my

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Speaker 3: grandcha son said to me for our family tree project

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Speaker 3: in our class, we have to have a family favorite

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Speaker 3: family recipe that's been in our family for generations. And

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Speaker 3: what would you suggest? And I said, well, when I

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Speaker 3: would suggest, it's probably chocolate souffle or chocolate moves. And

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Speaker 3: he said, no, I mean a traditional family thing. My

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Speaker 3: mother wasn't. She wouldn't like me saying this. She wasn't

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Speaker 3: a big cooked. I mean she was capable of cooking,

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Speaker 3: but she always had a cook and her mother didn't

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Speaker 3: cook because her husband cooked. He was a chef. He

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Speaker 3: would I would see him break the neck of an

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Speaker 3: eel or whatever it is, and to cook these fabulous

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Speaker 3: Your grandfather, my grandfather, and so my grandmother never cooked,

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Speaker 3: and I was like, you better talk to your father

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Speaker 3: about a family recipe.

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Speaker 2: So the Italian influence so stayed and stayed.

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Speaker 3: Oh, you think the deliciousness of it?

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Speaker 2: I think you know, it's funny that we say about

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Speaker 2: polenta because polenta and a lot of the dishes that

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Speaker 2: come from very traditional family are I hate the word,

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Speaker 2: but what they call peasant food. I would never let

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Speaker 2: it be called peasant food. But rest of cooking, family cooking,

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Speaker 2: family dishes are now so as you say, so sophisticated.

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Speaker 3: Well, my husband's mother made tripe all the time, and

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Speaker 3: that was pretty standard. She made Oh she made tripe

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Speaker 3: with polentae, tripe with or polenta with almost anything. So

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Speaker 3: when it became chic, we thought, oh, my gosh, Nana,

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Speaker 3: it's really on the forefront.

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Speaker 2: Did your parents speak Italian?

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Speaker 3: No, well, I don't know you. No, I didn't speak Italian. See,

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Speaker 3: my father's mother was born in Baltimore, so it wasn't

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Speaker 3: the case of his, he didn't know Italian. My mother

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Speaker 3: she spoke some, but I don't know how good she was.

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Speaker 3: And every time I would go to see my grandfather,

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Speaker 3: who was so beautiful and wonderful, and I loved him

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Speaker 3: so much, the chef he was going to teach me

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Speaker 3: how to speak Italian, and every time i'd go, he'd

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Speaker 3: get out a map and we'd start. These are different

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Speaker 3: die elects of Italian. So I could give you the

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Speaker 3: map of Italy and the different dialects, but I don't

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Speaker 3: know to speak Italian because we'd start with that map

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Speaker 3: every day.

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Speaker 2: No, there are they're very you know. Again, My husband,

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Speaker 2: I was saying, was born in Florence, but when we

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Speaker 2: would go to Venice very often, he couldn't understand some

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Speaker 2: of the fishermen, you know, what they were speaking. It's

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Speaker 2: interesting because in these podcasts I talked to many people

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Speaker 2: who recall their grandparents cooking almost more than their parents cooking,

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Speaker 2: and very often they come from families that emigrated from

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Speaker 2: another country. And I often think that perhaps the mother

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Speaker 2: was trying to adapt to the new environment where the

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Speaker 2: grandparents probably you know, that was their identity and took

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Speaker 2: it with them. But I haven't ended. You know the

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Speaker 2: fact that your grandfather was actually a professional chef.

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Speaker 3: My understanding of this is before I was aware of

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Speaker 3: what he was doing. He sold positive He had one

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Speaker 3: of those shops that's sold products from Italy pasta, dry

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Speaker 3: pasta and those kinds of things. So he was a foodie.

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Speaker 3: I mean, he was into food and a chef. And

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Speaker 3: my grandmother was treated like a queen. She never did

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Speaker 3: any housework or anything like that. And she didn't cook.

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Speaker 3: That's I mean, I never knew how to cook one thing.

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Speaker 3: In my mother's case, she had these seven children. Is

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Speaker 3: she were alive in another generation, who knows what she

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Speaker 3: would have been. She was a mom, She was a

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Speaker 3: political organizer for my father. She was a poet, she

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Speaker 3: was an inventor. She did all kinds of things. She

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Speaker 3: said to me once when I was a little girl,

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Speaker 3: I know that the telephone can be used for more things.

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Speaker 3: I just have to figure it out.

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Speaker 2: And also you were her only daughter.

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Speaker 3: We're very by the way in all of this, very

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Speaker 3: devoutly Catholic, YEA. So lots of times the ritual of

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Speaker 3: food surrounded Mass, either after or midnight or Sunday branch

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Speaker 3: or a lot of it revolved around going to church.

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Speaker 2: Coming home, and each afterwards.

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Speaker 3: As I always say, we were born in the family.

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Speaker 3: It was devoutly Catholic, fiercely patriotic, proud of our Italian

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Speaker 3: American heritage, and staunchly democratic.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, staunchly democratic. Those principles came in very early.

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Speaker 3: They related to our Catholicism and our view of taking

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Speaker 3: care of other people and food. People came to our

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Speaker 3: door when people were poor. My brother Tommy, my older brother,

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Speaker 3: he used to tell me that when he was a

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Speaker 3: little boy, people would come to the door and Mommy

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Speaker 3: would always be giving them food, giving them food, giving

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Speaker 3: them food. And even in her old age, she was

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Speaker 3: giving ice cream to children and they knew to come

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Speaker 3: to the door to get ice cream. So it was

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Speaker 3: all about nourishment one way or another.

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Speaker 2: And when you left this incredibly close family and centered

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Speaker 2: around the table and food and church, when you left

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Speaker 2: this family and went to university to college, how did

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Speaker 2: you deal with food then? Do you remember?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I went away. The only place that I was

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Speaker 3: allowed to go would be a woman's Catholic college.

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Speaker 2: That would be where was that? What college?

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Speaker 3: It was called Trinity College in Washington, d c the

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Speaker 3: oldest Catholic women's college in America. It was a strict

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Speaker 3: academic school and it was within fifty miles of Baltimore, Maryland,

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Speaker 3: and our college. It's not exactly a culinary July, but

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Speaker 3: we used to. We used to don't tell anybody who

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Speaker 3: told you this. We used to go at night. They

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Speaker 3: know now years later they know. But we used to go,

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Speaker 3: like in the middle of the night, down to the

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Speaker 3: dining room and break into the freezer to get ice cream.

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Speaker 3: Now they was locked, so you can only lift it

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Speaker 3: a little bit and put the scooper in there and

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Speaker 3: pull it out.

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Speaker 2: We better not tell certain members of the house about

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Speaker 2: this exactly.

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Speaker 3: It's hard to tell a flavor in the dark and

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Speaker 3: the dark and you could tell if it's chocolate or not.

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Speaker 3: But peach, strawberry and the rest it kind of comes together.

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Speaker 3: And sometimes we would order pizza so that the guard.

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Speaker 3: We'd say to the guard. Somebody would go talk to

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Speaker 3: the guard and said, I ordered pizza. I'm waiting here

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Speaker 3: for the pizza, while we would go down and steal

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Speaker 3: their ice cream, steal the ice cream.

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Speaker 2: And so your college days were spent stealing ice stealing

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Speaker 2: ice cream, basically, twenty minutes speaker Nancy Pelosi was never

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Speaker 2: going to be enough time to explore her movie and

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Speaker 2: memorable food story. So join us next week when we

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Speaker 2: will continue our conversation. River Cafe Table four Part two.

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Speaker 2: To visit the online shop of the River Cafe, go

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Speaker 2: to shop Therivercafe dot co dot UK.

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Speaker 1: River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and

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Speaker 1: Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.