Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and Adami Studios.
Speaker 2: A conversation takes place every Thursday morning between me and
Speaker 2: Carrie Fucanaga. It begins like this, what are we going
Speaker 2: to cook on Sunday night?
Speaker 3: You call it dramatic. It does look like a murder scene.
Speaker 3: It's like you're trying to hide the body of the fish.
Speaker 3: It's somehow been revealed by the elements.
Speaker 2: It is a whole fish covered in salt. It's kind
Speaker 2: of an eccentric recipe, isn't it. That is kind of weird.
Speaker 2: Ever since February twenty first, when Carrie came back to
Speaker 2: London to direct the series Masters of the Air, we
Speaker 2: have cooked dinner together for the same group of six
Speaker 2: friends for twenty four Sundays.
Speaker 3: I hadn't thought about it as being dramatic before I
Speaker 3: picked it, but I suppose there's a whole theatrical element
Speaker 3: to it. I remember seeing the way people do it
Speaker 3: in Italy, for example, and they sit there and they
Speaker 3: crack open the sawt and it's a whole process, and then
Speaker 3: using the two spoons, you know, slowly pulling off that soft,
Speaker 3: juicy flesh that retains all of its moisture.
Speaker 2: You are destroying the evidence.
Speaker 3: Afterwards, especially you.
Speaker 2: Didn't say when you serve it and then you crack
Speaker 2: it open. Maybe nobody would know that.
Speaker 3: All the best food he destroyed the evidence.
Speaker 2: We destroy the evidence. Right now. If my voice sounds hoarse,
Speaker 2: it's due to celebrating the premiere of No Time to Die,
Speaker 2: including a screening in Monaco where we all planned not
Speaker 2: just what to wear, where to stay, but what we
Speaker 2: were going to eat. Carrie flew on to New York
Speaker 2: for more Bond, and the first text I received from
Speaker 2: him was a photo of a tomato sauce he'd made
Speaker 2: on arrival. Everyone knows Carrie is a great writer and
Speaker 2: a great director. I know Carrie is a great cook.
Speaker 2: Your mother was Swedish and your father Japanese.
Speaker 3: My mom was like a Midwestern Swede essentially, you know,
Speaker 3: and so like for her cooking was like I think,
Speaker 3: very Midwestern, but like for Christmas, her gift to people
Speaker 3: would be doing a Swedish meatball mix, you know, and
Speaker 3: give the sort of spice package away to people so
Speaker 3: they can make, you know, Swedish meatballs. My dad had
Speaker 3: kind of his go to favorites One of the things,
Speaker 3: like when I started going to friends houses and seeing
Speaker 3: other people lived it was different, was that no matter
Speaker 3: what my dad made it could be spaghetti, he still
Speaker 3: had rice with the meal, spaghetti with rice, always rice.
Speaker 3: One was white rice inside within the rice maker all
Speaker 3: the time. And then in the morning there was always
Speaker 3: rice fried rice for breakfast.
Speaker 2: So and did he grow up?
Speaker 3: Was he born in Japan or I know he So
Speaker 3: he's third generation, which makes me fourth generation, and my
Speaker 3: grandparents are considered niece second generation, but they're kind of
Speaker 3: a special class because they were sent back to Japan
Speaker 3: for their education. So it's a different name, which was Kibe,
Speaker 3: and so they're more Japanese, I would say, than American.
Speaker 3: They would speak Japanese to each other and uh do
Speaker 3: you speak Japanese? Uh? You know, like like my dad's generation,
Speaker 3: they understand it, but they can't speak it. And then
Speaker 3: my generation, if we speak, it's because we learned in school.
Speaker 3: So I studied after university and lived in Japan for
Speaker 3: a while. I was teaching English and French and snowboarding,
Speaker 3: so it's great. I was living in Hokkaido, which was
Speaker 3: like a really did you say snowboarding? Yeah? Snowboarding. So
Speaker 3: you're in the ski area of Yakaido, like northern Northern Island.
Speaker 2: Is it a regional Japanese food? Can would you have
Speaker 2: a different kind of It's very regionally. Yeah. What what
Speaker 2: was it like then?
Speaker 3: Well, it's a lot of fresh vegetables, soba especially, which
Speaker 3: is a big part of New Year soba uni, a
Speaker 3: lot of uni from Hokkaido. So it's just seafood in general.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I would say the buckwheat and the uni
Speaker 3: are like the two things I think of when I
Speaker 3: think of Hokkaido. After Hokkaido, I think q Shoe for
Speaker 3: me has like the next sort of most distinct sort
Speaker 3: of food.
Speaker 2: Where is that.
Speaker 3: Q Sho's an island in the south. My family's from
Speaker 3: the southern part of Hanshu. They're from the last county
Speaker 3: the bottom of han Shoe, which is Yamaguchi, which is
Speaker 3: right next to Hiroshima, and Qshu is kind of in
Speaker 3: that region. And Qshu, for example, one of the things
Speaker 3: they're known for is, aside from also a lot of
Speaker 3: different fish and produce, is horse meat. For example, horse
Speaker 3: sashimi is a specialty there. I really like it, you know,
Speaker 3: it comes in a kind of you dip it in
Speaker 3: sort of a sweeter soy sauce sometimes with like you know,
Speaker 3: green onions. It's not super tender, but it's also not
Speaker 3: you know, it's similar to beef chuck. I remember I
Speaker 3: had this moment the last time I was in Tokyo
Speaker 3: for work, where I was at a kind of a
Speaker 3: group dinner and there was a guy sitting across from
Speaker 3: me that he was half Asian like me, and I
Speaker 3: think he was trying to have one of those like
Speaker 3: who's more exotic kind of competitions of me, and I
Speaker 3: didn't realize it was happening until until he was kind
Speaker 3: of like, you know, what's the weirdest thing you've ever
Speaker 3: had or eaten? And I was like, I think the
Speaker 3: two strangest things I can imagine eating are either like
Speaker 3: whale blubber or spiders. Okay, and whale blobber is in Alaska.
Speaker 3: A buddy of mine I was in film school with
Speaker 3: he was intuit, and he eat the whale blubber when
Speaker 3: you're on the ice because it actually has a lot
Speaker 3: of calories and it keeps you warm. And the spider
Speaker 3: was kind of an anomaly that when I was traveling
Speaker 3: in Cambodia late nineties, actually with the Japanese guy that
Speaker 3: met one of the hostels. We were motorcyclan across the country.
Speaker 3: He wanted a detour to this town that was known
Speaker 3: for its stir fried sort of spiders. These giant spiders
Speaker 3: to me, yeah, tasted like crab crab.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, there's you know, we crab liked spiders,
Speaker 2: not a spider like spider.
Speaker 3: But he wanted to one up me and he's like, well,
Speaker 3: have you ever had horse? Oh?
Speaker 2: And you said?
Speaker 3: I said I hadn't, you know? And he was really
Speaker 3: satisfied that he'd eaten a lot of horse, and I
Speaker 3: just wasn't sure. Really did he win that competition?
Speaker 2: I think he won that competition.
Speaker 3: He won that competition.
Speaker 2: Didn't Maybe I had to say that you might have
Speaker 2: lost having played cards with you, that you might have
Speaker 2: lost that. What did spiders taste like?
Speaker 3: The ones I had in Cambodia were so covered in sauce.
Speaker 3: They mainly tasted like this, with a kind of a
Speaker 3: crunchy texture, with the white meat of a spider inside
Speaker 3: of the legs. The body was pretty gross. I have
Speaker 3: to say, it wasn't mine. Maybe it's an acquired taste.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to River Cafe Table four.
Speaker 3: I was in Mexico in January. I was in Naith,
Speaker 3: so it was on the Pacific coast.
Speaker 2: Do you love the food of Mexico?
Speaker 3: I do. Actually, I realized when I was there how
Speaker 3: much I missed it.
Speaker 2: I was shocked by it. Not shocked, but the only
Speaker 2: Mexican food that I'd had before I went to Mexico
Speaker 2: was that kind of Mexican food where you get so
Speaker 2: many dishes on a plate and it's also heavy, and
Speaker 2: then you go and it's so so clean, fine, and
Speaker 2: I love the breakfast.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, when I was so when I made Seen Numbre,
Speaker 3: we were based in Mexico City lot and when we
Speaker 3: drive to the studio, a lot of the early morning
Speaker 3: sort of commuter would stop at these vendors and get
Speaker 3: in line and order this like sort of steaming milky drink.
Speaker 3: And I didn't know what it was, and so I asked,
Speaker 3: you know, our location scout, if we could stop one
Speaker 3: time and have this. And it was a kind of
Speaker 3: a corn meal drink with cinnamon and sugar that was
Speaker 3: just delicious. And from every day on after that, I
Speaker 3: would stop. My breakfast would be to have some of that.
Speaker 2: Did you cook? On set?
Speaker 3: They have this thing in Mexico you do with your
Speaker 3: crews which is different than the States, which is you
Speaker 3: work a six day week, with the six days just
Speaker 3: a half day, and at the end of the half day,
Speaker 3: it's not a written rule, but it's an expected rule
Speaker 3: that you have what's called a snack, and a snack
Speaker 3: is not like peanut butter on toast and hand it around.
Speaker 3: It's beer and tequila and a cook to launch and
Speaker 3: the entire crew kind of basically gets drunk together and
Speaker 3: hangs out and you sort of it's a bonding moment.
Speaker 3: You get your any kind of tension that was building
Speaker 3: up out for the week, and then I'm sure a
Speaker 3: lot of new relationships started out as well. But the
Speaker 3: snack was like one of the best parts of the
Speaker 3: filming week. And you had the rest of Saturday to
Speaker 3: recover and Sunday and then start working on Monday, and
Speaker 3: you know, usually like the rest of Saturday was usually
Speaker 3: driven by pace our production designer, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: leading the parade into whatever kind of shenanigans Mexico City
Speaker 3: offered on a Saturday it's like really common, I think
Speaker 3: in Latin America tonight dinner until after ten pm or
Speaker 3: eleven pm. And I was talking to a friend of
Speaker 3: mine about they invited me over for brunch and the
Speaker 3: idea of like breakfast in the between breakfast and lunch
Speaker 3: is brunch, and there's lunch, and they had never heard
Speaker 3: of the term liner linar, which is lunch between lunch
Speaker 3: and dinner. Yeah, right, which then got us thinking about
Speaker 3: with then what's between dinner and breakfast? And then then
Speaker 3: it's just dick fist. And then we realized that the
Speaker 3: dick fist really was the two or three a am,
Speaker 3: you know, food you had after going out to a
Speaker 3: bar or a club or whatever. And now, you know,
Speaker 3: one year of lockdown, none of us could remember the
Speaker 3: last time we had dick fist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when did you have fist?
Speaker 3: Thus, I really don't think it's got to be at
Speaker 3: least three years now, because I was also just working
Speaker 3: so hard before before lockdown. But actually that's not true.
Speaker 3: On our night shoots to be at thick fist at
Speaker 3: four or five am meals. But in Mexico, what I
Speaker 3: loved was, you know, after a hard night out, you'd
Speaker 3: go there's a cold place you'd go. So either like
Speaker 3: if you're in Guadalajara, you'd go out and you'd have
Speaker 3: tacos made of a tongue, like two or three in
Speaker 3: the morning, which are just delicious, like really really tender meat,
Speaker 3: you know, in a great way to sort of like
Speaker 3: cap off, you know, whatever hangover you might have the
Speaker 3: next day. But in Mexico City, you'd go to this
Speaker 3: place it was like called the Blind Goat or something
Speaker 3: like that, and you'd have tacosa pastor that's that it's
Speaker 3: at Pastor to be the one that's sort of you'd
Speaker 3: probably equate it to the kind of schwarma you'd seen
Speaker 3: the Middle East, where the meats cooking on a vertical
Speaker 3: skewer slowly rotating as a pineapple on top. But I
Speaker 3: think what really makes it popular it's the sauce they
Speaker 3: put on top, and it's kind of like a brown
Speaker 3: sort of pepper driven chili pepper driven sauce, and it's
Speaker 3: just smoky and delicious and rich with that little bit
Speaker 3: of pineapple the meat and that sauce and the corn
Speaker 3: to teas. It was like the perfect time in the morning.
Speaker 3: Would that be anywhere from like two to five am,
Speaker 3: you know, until the sun was coming up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Do you go to restaurants when you're filming? Dude?
Speaker 2: Like not used to come to the Riverman cafes often could.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know we used to have a kind of
Speaker 3: like every now and then a kind of crew catch
Speaker 3: up dinner just to get all on the same page
Speaker 3: while having good pizzas and wine and yeah, do you.
Speaker 2: Work over food? Do you like have a beale out
Speaker 2: to just you would did that?
Speaker 3: But we ate in a lot. We had a lot
Speaker 3: of late dinners at Pinewood, you know on Bond where
Speaker 3: the producers and Daniel and I would be there working
Speaker 3: on the script and just trying to sort out all
Speaker 3: the kind of you know, dilemmas we had in front
Speaker 3: of us used to get through it.
Speaker 2: Are the dinner scenes in the movie? Are the food
Speaker 2: scenes in the movie.
Speaker 3: There is a food scene in the movie. It was
Speaker 3: an interrupted food scene because and.
Speaker 2: Two Detective my favorite of all time. There's a scene
Speaker 2: where he's with his wife with Matthew mcgonfy. He isn't
Speaker 2: he isn't a diner and there's no food and they're
Speaker 2: talking about something really personal about there.
Speaker 3: He's at a scene with Michelle on a hand kind
Speaker 3: of deeper in the diner. But early, I think in
Speaker 3: episode one, he comes over to dinner at Woody Harrelson's
Speaker 3: character's house. Yeah, he drinks a little too much, or
Speaker 3: he shows up I think a little bit drunk. But
Speaker 3: what was interesting about shooting that scene is Woody, for example,
Speaker 3: doesn't eat meat. In fact, he's vegan, and we were
Speaker 3: having spaghetti, and so we had to figure out a
Speaker 3: different set of noodles for him, and we ended up
Speaker 3: using these kind of spaghetti squash for his But I
Speaker 3: remember when we were shooting it and he was chewing
Speaker 3: and talking. You know, spaghetti squash has a distinct crunchy sound,
Speaker 3: you know when you're eating, and so in the scene
Speaker 3: you have this. Actually I find it's a really pleasing sound,
Speaker 3: you know, as wood he's eating his food, it's got
Speaker 3: a nice kind of like hearty, kind of like you know,
Speaker 3: jaw and cutting kind of sound to it. And everyone
Speaker 3: else's kind of that sloppy nowdlely sound, you know as
Speaker 3: they're eating.
Speaker 2: Did Jane I have a food food.
Speaker 3: Movies, the home economist who makes the food on a movie,
Speaker 3: And we had an amazing one on Jane Eyre, who
Speaker 3: made this ham, the sort of Christmas ham for a
Speaker 3: scene when Blanche Ingram arrives with this big party. So
Speaker 3: the house is sort of buzz preparing all the food,
Speaker 3: and they had this ham there and I was just
Speaker 3: we're prepping the scene. I just happened to take a
Speaker 3: little slice of it just to see how it tasted.
Speaker 3: And it was probably one of the best hams I've
Speaker 3: ever had, And over the course of the scene that
Speaker 3: I have got smaller and smaller eating and I liked
Speaker 3: this so much. I literally sought out the home economists
Speaker 3: after we're done, just to get the recipe to that ham,
Speaker 3: because it was she did, Yeah, oh, let's make it.
Speaker 3: I've never made it, but I want to know.
Speaker 2: Okay, if you have it somewhere, we could try make that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was trying to think about food in movies. I
Speaker 2: mean again, it goes back to the drama of the
Speaker 2: sea bass and salt, and the drama of feeding people
Speaker 2: and the drama of watching them respond. You know, your
Speaker 2: creativity is there forever, we can watch the first movie
Speaker 2: ever made and it lasts. And I also think that
Speaker 2: I make something I'm really proud of and then it's gone. No,
Speaker 2: it's over.
Speaker 3: It's very different.
Speaker 2: Cook and you cook, and then they eat it, and
Speaker 2: then it's it's over done. It's over.
Speaker 3: You know, there is something I think more meaningful in
Speaker 3: things that don't last, because you're forced to appreciate it
Speaker 3: in the brief moments it exists. And there's the immortality
Speaker 3: of film. So if you think about like Sunset Boulevard,
Speaker 3: Glorious Wanson walking down the stairwell saying I'm ready for
Speaker 3: my close up, she will always be that age for
Speaker 3: the people who watch that film. You know, even if
Speaker 3: she's long gone. There is something special about it existing forever.
Speaker 3: But then because it's it exists forever, sometimes people may
Speaker 3: not watch it because they can just keep pushing off
Speaker 3: till the at a time where it's a great meal.
Speaker 3: You can't delay that. You have to appreciate it while
Speaker 3: it exists.
Speaker 2: And also, it's memory, isn't it. I'm just when you
Speaker 2: were talking about your father or your mother or going
Speaker 2: to a restaurant. It's the memories. I was trying to
Speaker 2: think when we met and it was a dinner, it
Speaker 2: was very the river cafe was actually cooking the meat
Speaker 2: and it was a dinner for Jake, Jill and all,
Speaker 2: and it was given by Cartier Jewelry shop, and we
Speaker 2: were sitting there, yeah, in this fancy place, and I
Speaker 2: remember I was introduced to you, and I said, well,
Speaker 2: how long do I have to wait until I tell
Speaker 2: you that the first season of True Detective changed my
Speaker 2: life or whatever? But I think that it's nice that
Speaker 2: we met over food and we talk about food, and
Speaker 2: then I think the first text message that you sent
Speaker 2: me was a photograph of tomato sauce that.
Speaker 3: You've made, and the specifically the butter part of it,
Speaker 3: that's right, which I don't know if I could say
Speaker 3: that out loud, if that's a family secret. Well, the
Speaker 3: secret is dropping in that stick of butter right before
Speaker 3: it's being served in the Pomodoro sort of pasta mix
Speaker 3: in the pot, you know. And I don't know why
Speaker 3: it tastes better, but because butter probably be better taste it.
Speaker 2: But what did that jag? You made it when you
Speaker 2: used to cook.
Speaker 3: I've never used butter before. That was it. I walked
Speaker 3: away from that dinner we had, which is different dinner
Speaker 3: with like, oh, I'm going to use this. I knew
Speaker 3: I was going to use this again. I actually asked
Speaker 3: another common friend I have with Jake, which is Greta Cruso.
Speaker 3: I asked Greta for advice, like on a little napkin,
Speaker 3: we're at a also at a dinner, trying to figure
Speaker 3: out what's the best shape of the kitchen for someone
Speaker 3: like me who's not professional cook by any means that
Speaker 3: I like to cook and I like to have people
Speaker 3: over and cook for multiple people. I think during lockdown
Speaker 3: a lot of people experimented with different kinds of cooking
Speaker 3: and baking and whatever. And I remember, as lockdown was
Speaker 3: easying and people could come over to the house, I
Speaker 3: decided to make ramen like tom Kotsu ramen, which was
Speaker 3: like an eight day process to get that stock and everything,
Speaker 3: you know, done by scratch, and then when you actually
Speaker 3: serve the ram and you kind of have to do
Speaker 3: the noodles right before you're serving a bowl, and all
Speaker 3: these other sort of ingredients had to go and everything
Speaker 3: has to be timed pretty precisely. I'd never done it before,
Speaker 3: but I wanted to get it all right. So that
Speaker 3: was actually pretty stressful and like I'd just done bond
Speaker 3: and I don't think it ever felt that much stress
Speaker 3: as I was preparing that bowl of ramen and hoping that.
Speaker 2: It did you have? I was it for?
Speaker 3: I ended up making like eight balls of ramen. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: and then I still had enough like stock for about
Speaker 3: thirty more people. I think that kind of killed my
Speaker 3: cooking routine for lockdown, Like that was.
Speaker 2: Like the kind Yeah, it's like people making a lot
Speaker 2: of bread in lockdown too, weren't they. I think people
Speaker 2: made a lot of food that took a long time,
Speaker 2: that took the process, and certainly for the first lockdown here,
Speaker 2: you couldn't buy flour apparently anywhere because everybody was making bread.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because everyone was alone. You'd try to like do
Speaker 3: almost like virtual meals together, Like my dad and I
Speaker 3: did a virtual meal where we cooked the same thing,
Speaker 3: but like you know, I'm obviously ahead of his time zone,
Speaker 3: so it's my dinner, his lunch. And then like India
Speaker 3: and I did a pasta for my lunch, her dinner,
Speaker 3: you know, where we cooked the same things. So it
Speaker 3: feels like really's got to eat together.
Speaker 2: But what about your father and cooking? What was it
Speaker 2: like growing up? Did your father cook? See the cook in.
Speaker 3: He was the cook in the family, and like He
Speaker 3: was the one we talk about careers or jobs, right,
Speaker 3: He always had a job, never like a career that
Speaker 3: he loved. And I think he always dreamed about opening
Speaker 3: a restaurant one day, which never happened. But like enjoy
Speaker 3: cooking and cooking for lots of people. And one of
Speaker 3: our sort of like bonding things when I was a
Speaker 3: kid was like trying to guess the ingredients of a
Speaker 3: meal at a restaurant and so really to sit there
Speaker 3: and taste the food and to try to break down
Speaker 3: its particulars. There was this Cambodian restaurant we used to
Speaker 3: go to when I was a kid that had this
Speaker 3: one special kind of pork chop that had like the
Speaker 3: best glaze, and we're always trying to figure out, you know,
Speaker 3: what were the elements, you know, in the sauce that
Speaker 3: created that flavor. Do you still do that, try to
Speaker 3: guess the flavors? Yeah, definitely, yeah too, Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Because I think there's a real palette, you know, I
Speaker 2: think of how I mean, it's interesting even with wine,
Speaker 2: how people you know that thing. I used to go
Speaker 2: and wine tastings with my again with Rose, and she
Speaker 2: would say, you know this wine tastes of chocolate and cigarettes.
Speaker 2: But it is it's all to do with the you know,
Speaker 2: the memories and the associations and the taste of food.
Speaker 2: And so I think that when we're you know, talking
Speaker 2: about sort of being together and food and memories, there's
Speaker 2: also the sense of comfort of food, there's excitement. You're
Speaker 2: such a you're such an adventurous eater. I mean, I
Speaker 2: have to say that. You know, I think you're a
Speaker 2: pretty adventurous person, but you certainly are an adventurous eater.
Speaker 2: You know, spiders and you know.
Speaker 3: Whale blobber, whale blubber.
Speaker 2: No, we didn't have the horse.
Speaker 3: I don't horse.
Speaker 2: I'd like to beat your friend on the scale of adventure.
Speaker 2: He probably does with But you are, you are an
Speaker 2: adventurous eater, and that's really that's it's it's fun.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I don't know if I do it
Speaker 3: for the experience or the cloud is definitely from curiosity
Speaker 3: as well. I mean I can the whale in particular,
Speaker 3: I can. I'll never forget what whale tastes like?
Speaker 2: What did it taste like?
Speaker 3: Well, there's blubber, and then there's some kinds of fermented
Speaker 3: meats as well, you know, and one of them is
Speaker 3: you ferment, whether it's seal or whale. Me you can
Speaker 3: ferment it. And it's blood, and that's probably even funkier,
Speaker 3: Like the blubberer is kind of mellow compared to that.
Speaker 3: But that taste of whale blood, that iron heavy whale
Speaker 3: blood is so strong that when I went to Nantucket
Speaker 3: years later, when I went to the Whaling Museum in Nantucket,
Speaker 3: I could smell the blood on the presses in the
Speaker 3: museum that hadn't been used in one hundred and fifty years,
Speaker 3: just because there was enough residual. You know, if you've
Speaker 3: never had whale but I don't know if you could
Speaker 3: connect those sensations.
Speaker 2: But so it stays in your state. That's again back
Speaker 2: to the memory. Yeah, but did you like it? Did you?
Speaker 2: Did you like the taste? Is it's something that you thought, this.
Speaker 3: Is really probably not like it was one of those
Speaker 3: things where, oh man, I really wish I had some
Speaker 3: whale blubber right now. Yeah, I don't think that that
Speaker 3: would ever occur, but it really was. When we were
Speaker 3: out negative thirty, negative fifty degree environments, it kept you warm.
Speaker 3: It really you felt the heat coming from inside you.
Speaker 3: But I mean, yeah, I would still say, as adventurous
Speaker 3: as those things sound, my every day sort of cravings
Speaker 3: are quite normal. I think. I mean pasta I could
Speaker 3: eat almost every day, and I love slashimi and sushi.
Speaker 3: I think those two things are what I eat probably
Speaker 3: around you know, the course of a week, pretty often,
Speaker 3: probably too much pasta.
Speaker 2: And if you said for comfort for.
Speaker 3: Me, it would probably be fried rice. And it goes back.
Speaker 3: I think to you know, my dad for breakfast, as
Speaker 3: you know, watching cartoons or something when you're a kid
Speaker 3: and having a bowl of fried rice, and it was
Speaker 3: the most If I told you the recipe, it doesn't
Speaker 3: sound even Asian at all because it involves ketchup. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I found out much later. I mean, for me,
Speaker 3: that's just what it was, that's fried rice. But obviously
Speaker 3: later contextualizing where that came from. What it came from
Speaker 3: was so my grandparents were in the internment camps during
Speaker 3: World War Two, and my father was born in the
Speaker 3: internment camps as well as my uncles, and so you
Speaker 3: were given certain rations in the camps. In fact, my
Speaker 3: grandpa was a cook and one of them, and mayonnaise, ketchup,
Speaker 3: those kind of ingredients were quite common and so you
Speaker 3: make new recipes out of what you're given and you
Speaker 3: just make do. So my dad grew up on a
Speaker 3: fried rice that wasn't made of soy sauce. It was
Speaker 3: mede with ketchup, and it was really basically you use
Speaker 3: whatever vegetables or meats you had from night before the rice,
Speaker 3: put it all together and cook it up. And my
Speaker 3: favorite version was the simplest one, which was just bacon,
Speaker 3: onions and then put an egg with a yolk, you know,
Speaker 3: still running on top. And that to me is like
Speaker 3: the epitome of comfort food. What's strange that the legacy
Speaker 3: goes back to an internment camp?
Speaker 2: Would you make it now? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Make it pretty? Yeah? I just like yeah, Like even
Speaker 3: when my dad would use other vegetables in it, like
Speaker 3: you do, like the real proper way of doing fried rice,
Speaker 3: I still prefer just the onions and baked and the bacon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what you would it be? The rice? Just
Speaker 2: plain rice?
Speaker 3: So whatever you'd made from dinner night before, you keep
Speaker 3: that rice. And this is something else I just in
Speaker 3: my family, we just left the rice out, you didn't
Speaker 3: put it in the fridge and the next morning and yeah,
Speaker 3: someone told me later on You're not, So that's like
Speaker 3: a pick no no, because.
Speaker 2: Apparently it's they say the bacteria and rice is a
Speaker 2: most worse than anything.
Speaker 3: But I think if you grow up eating it does
Speaker 3: not affect you. So like, you know, I would leave
Speaker 3: my rice out all night and the next day, you know,
Speaker 3: you make the fried rice, and they usually someone.
Speaker 2: Start, so what do you do? Put oil in the pan,
Speaker 2: and then you take.
Speaker 3: That r I use the fat from the bacon, so
Speaker 3: I start off, you know, I cut the bacon in
Speaker 3: pieces first, and then I slow cook the bacon so
Speaker 3: that the oil doesn't evaporate too quickly, and then salt
Speaker 3: and pepper the bacon, and then then add the onions,
Speaker 3: and then I add the rice, which is usually in
Speaker 3: big chunky bits because it's been sitting. Then you squeeze
Speaker 3: a bunch of like farting ketchup on the top of it,
Speaker 3: and then you chop it up and get that going.
Speaker 3: And then once it's kind of mixed to a nice
Speaker 3: sort of light red pinkish color, blow it up. And
Speaker 3: then separately you can just cook some eggs to slap
Speaker 3: on top. It's really quick.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, now I've got some expectations of when I
Speaker 2: come and stay in your house and we're going to
Speaker 2: have some rice, I could have the wrong then we
Speaker 2: could do that. It sounds. You know, you're a great cook,
Speaker 2: you're a great director, and you're a great friend.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Carrie, Thank you Ruthy.
Speaker 2: To visit the online shop of the River Cafe, go
Speaker 2: to shop Therivercafe dot co dot uk.
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