Speaker 1: Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2: Food is key to life and to day. More than ever,
Speaker 2: journalism is also key to life. Our guests, Emily Maitlis
Speaker 2: and John Sopel, are too brilliant, inspiring journalists who bring
Speaker 2: us news, analyze news, present news, helping us determine our
Speaker 2: lives and the choices we make. They are smart, they
Speaker 2: are warm, they are funny, and they tell me they
Speaker 2: are always hungry. Emily was lead anchor for the BBC
Speaker 2: presenter of Newsnight and now produces documentaries. John spent four
Speaker 2: decades at the BBC as chief political correspondent and its
Speaker 2: North American editor. A year ago they launched The Newsagents,
Speaker 2: which is definitely my favorite podcast, well maybe my second favorite.
Speaker 2: These two journalists crave food. This chef craves journalism. They've
Speaker 2: just come from the River Cafe pastry kitchen, having made
Speaker 2: a prune and almond tart, and now we're going to
Speaker 2: sit down talk about food, memories and more.
Speaker 3: So lovely.
Speaker 4: My name's Bella Toobs.
Speaker 5: I'm the head pater chef at the River Cafe and
Speaker 5: I'm here with Emily Maitlist and John soapolk.
Speaker 1: Okay, so we're going to make a prune and almond tart.
Speaker 2: It's a bit of a how to blue Peter.
Speaker 5: That's a really useful, usually sad thing to do.
Speaker 2: Prune and almond tart, which.
Speaker 1: I had last Friday here and it was sensational. I mean,
Speaker 1: normally pair on the rare occasions I overcome here, but
Speaker 1: it was incredible.
Speaker 5: I think you've already given yourself away.
Speaker 2: Well so, so you've just made a prune and almond tart.
Speaker 2: But before we talk about that experience and what you did,
Speaker 2: would you like to read the recipe for it.
Speaker 5: Prune and almond tart serves fourteen sixteen prunes stoned, three
Speaker 5: hundred grams almonds, finally ground, one el grade tea bag,
Speaker 5: one hundred mills of brandy, three hundred grams of unsalted butter,
Speaker 5: three hundred grams cast a sugar, three large eggs, one
Speaker 5: preheated sweet pastry start shell. Pre Heat the oven to
Speaker 5: one hundred and fifty degrees.
Speaker 1: Pour enough boiling water over the prunes to cover, then
Speaker 1: add the tea bag.
Speaker 5: Leave for one hour. Remove the prunes from the tea,
Speaker 5: pour the brandy over them.
Speaker 1: Using an electric mixer. Beat the butter and sugar together
Speaker 1: until pale and light.
Speaker 5: Add the ground almonds, Then add the eggs one by one.
Speaker 1: Finally, add one hundred mills of the brandy prune juices.
Speaker 5: Pour this mixture into the tart shell. Push the prunes
Speaker 5: into the mixture, Bake in the preheated oven for forty minutes.
Speaker 4: Cool and remove from the tin.
Speaker 2: Brillier. Hi, how about that's a little do it? So
Speaker 2: tell me about Meggi and what was it like in
Speaker 2: the pastry kitchen.
Speaker 1: It was spotlessly clean, It was brilliantly well organized. And
Speaker 1: the smell when you walk in, of the baking of
Speaker 1: the breads of Christini, of everything else that's going on
Speaker 1: in there is just fabulous, and of course the almonds,
Speaker 1: which just smell so rich and sweet.
Speaker 5: I was shown a magic trick it actually blew my mind,
Speaker 5: which was instead of pushing the pastry into the tin,
Speaker 5: you grate it on a normal sort of greater and
Speaker 5: you take all the tiny bits and then push them
Speaker 5: sort of gradually around the back, which apparently makes it
Speaker 5: finer and shorter and more delicate. And so I'm going
Speaker 5: to take that away and say this is what I learned.
Speaker 3: At the river.
Speaker 1: As well as it being spotlessly clean, I have never
Speaker 1: seen a greater looking so totally knackered. It has been
Speaker 1: through so much and it looks absolutely oh my god.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't get a penny for that in a jungle sale.
Speaker 1: But it's obviously still doing its job.
Speaker 2: Much times are harder than we're saving up for a
Speaker 2: greater But actually you do get a kind of sentimental
Speaker 2: attachment to certain things that you use in the kitchen.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you do, but I'm a spatchelor
Speaker 5: girl here is so if somebody gives me the wrong
Speaker 5: kind of spatulor I have favorites in My favorite is
Speaker 5: the purple spatulate.
Speaker 2: Tell us about the Verbel spatu.
Speaker 5: It's just it just fits your hand right, It's that's
Speaker 5: the point. There's nothing special about it. It's it's not unique.
Speaker 5: It's just that it's it's become part of it's I
Speaker 5: feel like Edwards's hands, but with spatchul it's the extension
Speaker 5: of my arm.
Speaker 2: Now do you have kitchen equipment when you've inherited from
Speaker 2: your family?
Speaker 1: There was a kitchen knife that has been so sharpened
Speaker 1: that it bows because there's so little of it left.
Speaker 1: And that was my mother's favorite kitchen knife, and she
Speaker 1: had it since she was a girl.
Speaker 4: And I mean, unfortunately, it's kind of it met.
Speaker 1: Its end because there was just nothing left of it
Speaker 1: because it had been sharpened so many times over the
Speaker 1: years that it had been filed down.
Speaker 3: Have you got it above the fireplace.
Speaker 4: Exactly?
Speaker 2: Do you have one that was handed down?
Speaker 5: Not? Really, No. I think it's more the practices of
Speaker 5: my mum was my big is my big inspiration actually
Speaker 5: in terms of cooking. And it's more the way she
Speaker 5: does things and the way she talks to herself as
Speaker 5: she cooks that I do now and I think I
Speaker 5: pass on to my children.
Speaker 2: Did you cook with her always?
Speaker 1: Yea?
Speaker 2: And did she work or did she come home and cook?
Speaker 5: She worked a lot at home, so she did a
Speaker 5: lot of her work at home. And I remember the
Speaker 5: rituals actually of her cooking and just how.
Speaker 3: I mean, she was very funny. She was always ahead
Speaker 3: of the curve. I say she was.
Speaker 5: She's very much alive and we'll be listening to this,
Speaker 5: but she was. I think she was quite ahead of
Speaker 5: the curve and the kind of ingredients that she used
Speaker 5: and the kind of things that she made, and occasionally
Speaker 5: she'd go into obsessions. So she had an obsession about
Speaker 5: an Indian dessert called gullub Jarman, and she decided she
Speaker 5: had to perfect it, and instead of making it once,
Speaker 5: she made it like every day for about six weeks
Speaker 5: until we were just begging her to stop. But she
Speaker 5: also taught me my sort of Yeah, the recipes that
Speaker 5: I that I've passed down now that I've taken on she.
Speaker 2: Cooked, You have them in her writing? Did she write them?
Speaker 5: She has all her recipes still. And funny you say that,
Speaker 5: But I've just done a cookbook for my son. He
Speaker 5: went off to university last year, and I did that
Speaker 5: really embarrassing mother thing.
Speaker 3: Where I took pictures of all the dishes.
Speaker 5: That I thought he'd miss, and I wrote all the
Speaker 5: recipes out and I put it all together for him.
Speaker 5: And then I saw his room, and of course there's
Speaker 5: like one burner and a mini fridge, and he just
Speaker 5: looked at me and is like, I'm never ever going
Speaker 5: to cook any of that stuff in here.
Speaker 3: You know that, don't you know that he will? But
Speaker 3: one day he.
Speaker 2: Will a lot of grand This cook book with grandmother's recipes,
Speaker 2: a lot of people do people.
Speaker 5: It was always a roller decks a little That's what
Speaker 5: my mum keeps it. And every recipe is like do.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Like a little square thing and it's all in her rising.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very similar story. My mother worked and she'd had
Speaker 1: polio as a child and so was left pretty badly
Speaker 1: disabled by it. And I used to go and meet
Speaker 1: her from the tube station to carry the shopping home
Speaker 1: because she would bring the shopping home and then she
Speaker 1: would cook the dinner and I think, probably like Emily's mum,
Speaker 1: you know, presentation of it was kind of really important.
Speaker 1: She loved food to look appetizing as well as to
Speaker 1: taste appetizing. So it was fun just doing the pastry
Speaker 1: where I was having to put the prunes on the
Speaker 1: tart and to make it look neat, And that was
Speaker 1: the sort of thing that I did at home. And
Speaker 1: also my mother loved cooking and loved handing the recipes down,
Speaker 1: and funnily enough, she died about fifteen years ago. My
Speaker 1: second cousin sent me on WhatsApp a photo of a
Speaker 1: recipe that my mother had written out for her for passover,
Speaker 1: and there it was, you know, my mum's handwriting, and
Speaker 1: I suddenly got this whatsapped message and all those things
Speaker 1: bring back such memories of childhood and growing up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I found that. The other thing it's interesting is
Speaker 2: how many people talk almost more, maybe not the two
Speaker 2: of you, but more about their grandmother's cooking than their mothers.
Speaker 5: My grandmother was. She had certain key recipes that she
Speaker 5: would repeat. One was Locktion pudding. I haven't met anyone
Speaker 5: since then that does Locktion pudding, which is literally it's
Speaker 5: like noodles. It's a pasta dessert and it's kind of
Speaker 5: pasta and cream and raisins and more cream. I think
Speaker 5: it's probably the heaviest thing in the entire world, and
Speaker 5: it's got a crispy top. I've literally never seen on
Speaker 5: the menu, but it must just be the most.
Speaker 1: So my mother was, I mean, my mother had an
Speaker 1: extraordinary life story. She was illegitimate child in the Northeast
Speaker 1: to a Russian Jewish family and had to escape because
Speaker 1: of the shame that had been brought to the family.
Speaker 1: And she ends up in a farming community in East Anglia,
Speaker 1: which you know, which was Protestant, and so she kind
Speaker 1: of grew up making suet pudding and Yorkshire puddings and
Speaker 1: all the rest of the kind of English cookbook if
Speaker 1: you want. When I was going up until I was
Speaker 1: a sort of teenager, you had to be home Friday,
Speaker 1: even Friday night, Friday night, can the bread, the wine,
Speaker 1: all the rest of it, and then we'd eat non
Speaker 1: kashy food and we just thought that was perfectly normal.
Speaker 5: I mean, my mother would not dream of cooking pork,
Speaker 5: but would have plenty of palmer Ham.
Speaker 4: English rose.
Speaker 5: Pork wouldn't be anywhere near the table. I don't remember
Speaker 5: her ever doing that, but if it was palmham or prawn,
Speaker 5: so that would be fo.
Speaker 2: Food and tradition and memories and family and Friday nights.
Speaker 2: Did you reject having to stay home on a Friday
Speaker 2: night when you could be out partying.
Speaker 1: I think by the time I got to sixteen, it
Speaker 1: got a bit kind of I'm sorry, I'm going out
Speaker 1: and going to the pub, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I started to bell at that stage.
Speaker 1: But I love the idea of at least one night
Speaker 1: a week, the family coming together and everyone sitting around
Speaker 1: the table. Maybe not always getting on brilliantly, but there
Speaker 1: is a kind of sense that this is what we
Speaker 1: do as a fact do you do it?
Speaker 2: And now your generation, do you deal with your kids?
Speaker 2: Do you deal with yours?
Speaker 1: I mean might have grown up, but when we can, Yes,
Speaker 1: we do. I mean normally Sunday evenings actually because everyone's
Speaker 1: got it's either a school day or work day the
Speaker 1: next and you just kind of, you know, that's the
Speaker 1: I like.
Speaker 2: A Sunday nights. What about you? Yeah, you deal with
Speaker 2: your kids?
Speaker 5: We do Friday night. We like the candles, we say,
Speaker 5: if the kids are together, you know, And normally it
Speaker 5: involves me being about to cook and Sudday going, oh
Speaker 5: it's Friday.
Speaker 4: Quick.
Speaker 5: So we do that, not in a big demonstrative way,
Speaker 5: but just in a kind of recognition a few moments
Speaker 5: at the beginning of the evening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, growing up, did you always sit around the table?
Speaker 1: Yes, we did. I mean it was that was very much.
Speaker 1: It was no one had TV.
Speaker 4: Dinners, no grazing. It was kind of.
Speaker 1: You'd sit down at the table together, the four of you.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that was kind of pretty much on school
Speaker 1: nights every night.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Then and to the point where we all everyone had
Speaker 5: a set place. I mean that's how the pecking order
Speaker 5: is established. I was the youngest of three sisters.
Speaker 3: I had the least.
Speaker 5: Comfortable chair sort of squashed into the corner where you
Speaker 5: had to get between the sort of dresser and the
Speaker 5: and the and the edge of the table. And I
Speaker 5: sort of think of it like that. That was how
Speaker 5: you knew your plate, literally knowing your place right, And did.
Speaker 1: You get an easier time than your older sisters. And
Speaker 1: they were resentful because they thought Emily's come along and
Speaker 1: we had to do this, but she doesn't.
Speaker 5: No, My sisters worked out very early that they could
Speaker 5: make me run errands for them if they offered to
Speaker 5: time me doing something like can you post this letter,
Speaker 5: I'll time you, and I would run all the way
Speaker 5: down to the bottom of the road, run all the
Speaker 5: way back. My sister would have gone off and done
Speaker 5: something completely different that she'd suddenly look at her watch
Speaker 5: and go, oh, amazing forty five and I'd be like, wow.
Speaker 3: Was that better than last time? So that was how.
Speaker 5: But the seating was very much And then Sunday. Sunday
Speaker 5: was a big deal because we had it in the
Speaker 5: dining room and there is a bottle of Coca Cola
Speaker 5: in the table and it was the only time of
Speaker 5: the week we got fizzy drinks, and it was, you know,
Speaker 5: the real iconic Coca Cola bottle, and that was how
Speaker 5: you the.
Speaker 2: Other times you ate in the kitchen. The dining room
Speaker 2: is a lost. Do you have a dining room in
Speaker 2: your house?
Speaker 4: We do?
Speaker 2: Do you have one?
Speaker 5: We have a dining room that comes from the kitchen.
Speaker 5: So I don't know that I like the idea of
Speaker 5: a Yeah, I don't want a bright red dining room.
Speaker 5: That's kind of like right now, have a row about something.
Speaker 3: I like the sense of sudden.
Speaker 2: You can also be like regulated to the kitchen, you know,
Speaker 2: so everybody's becomes much more of a performance.
Speaker 1: Did you have Yeah, we had it in the kitchen.
Speaker 1: There was a little table, but Friday nights it was
Speaker 1: round the dining room table. It was the you know,
Speaker 1: because that was the posh dinner. And we also I
Speaker 1: remember as a kid the Corona man and Corona used
Speaker 1: to come around with bottles of fizzy drinks. It was
Speaker 1: like a milk delivery, and the Corona man would do
Speaker 1: deliveries and you could have cherry aid or lemonade or
Speaker 1: soda water. And I just loved the days when we
Speaker 1: could have some cherry aid because that seemed such an
Speaker 1: exotic thing. Well, I grew up in London, but I
Speaker 1: mean my parents were residential social workers, so we lived in.
Speaker 4: This huge commune kind of type place in the East Den.
Speaker 1: But where my mother grew up was in Essex and
Speaker 1: we had the house there and we used to go
Speaker 1: there at weekends and the Corona man would come to
Speaker 1: this house in East Anglia, near Colchester and deliver kind
Speaker 1: of off the back of the lorry these different bottles
Speaker 1: of Corona fizzy drinks.
Speaker 2: We had one of my grants that had this great
Speaker 2: idea when we were in a hotel in France. He said,
Speaker 2: I'd like to do like the cheese trolley, but ride
Speaker 2: it around Highbury and it's Lindn and just knock up
Speaker 2: people and they can say I have a bit of Camembert,
Speaker 2: I have a bet of every night.
Speaker 3: It's sort of six quite entrepreneurially idea.
Speaker 5: This is taking meals and wheels, very sophisticated level tally where.
Speaker 1: I think there's a huge change. I mean, both my
Speaker 1: parents have died now, but you know, so there was
Speaker 1: these silver tea sets which were seen I think in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties must have looked so impressive and proper
Speaker 1: on the table that who has a solid silver teapot
Speaker 1: or a solid silver hot for the hot water, and
Speaker 1: it just there's all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 4: Very formal Cuverry.
Speaker 5: I think it's hard. I can't live with and you,
Speaker 5: if you're not careful, you inherit. It's rather big, heavy
Speaker 5: sort of service. He ever calls it a dinner service anymore.
Speaker 5: I just want you, just want plates that make you happy.
Speaker 5: My plates make me so happy, right, And I don't
Speaker 5: look good, and you know, I got mine from this
Speaker 5: amazing potter in France, and it's just bright, beautiful colors
Speaker 5: and it just makes me happy to look at it.
Speaker 5: But I don't want anything that is like gold leaf
Speaker 5: or edging, or I don't want to intimidate myself or guests.
Speaker 2: Terrified if you break on. We did one with Nancy Pelosi,
Speaker 2: and guess what. She never has had a meal without
Speaker 2: a tablecloth. No, yes, her father, it was the mayor
Speaker 2: of Baltimore. They had a huge family, but she said
Speaker 2: they always had a tablecloth. And I was just thinking
Speaker 2: about that, about the laundry, the ironing, all that goes
Speaker 2: into having a tablecloth. It is nice to have a tablecloth.
Speaker 5: Well, we had no kind of you know which which
Speaker 5: nobody you know, we all had an actual napkin and
Speaker 5: a napkin ring ring with your thing. Mine was a
Speaker 5: little brown one.
Speaker 2: Guess what in Italy they like in hotels we used
Speaker 2: to go, They used to you had the during napkin.
Speaker 2: They can't wash them, don't think we every night, right,
Speaker 2: and then you put them back the door, and then
Speaker 2: you'd have but.
Speaker 4: One of them.
Speaker 5: That's the point of the ring, right. It's like a
Speaker 5: hanky that you don't change every day.
Speaker 1: My actual rebelliousness when I was a kid growing up,
Speaker 1: because I knew it would upset my mother, was to
Speaker 1: put a milk bottle on the table, because you yeah,
Speaker 1: from a juck. Goodness.
Speaker 3: Even now, when I've got a.
Speaker 4: Milk bottle on the table, I think.
Speaker 2: So many rules And what about restaurants. So now in
Speaker 2: the River Cafe, we see kids all the time. We
Speaker 2: see kids at Friday night dinners or Saturday lunches or
Speaker 2: Sunday lunches. We see people bring their children. And when
Speaker 2: I was a kid, we went out for a special occasion,
Speaker 2: you know, we went out for the birthdays or the anniversaries,
Speaker 2: and we were told to look at the right hand
Speaker 2: side of the menu, and I don't know, it's obviously
Speaker 2: so economic thing. What was going to restaurants like in
Speaker 2: your family when you were growing up, Emily.
Speaker 5: Yeah, much more, much more seldom. Actually, we grew up
Speaker 5: in Sheffield and there was amazing restaurant called Fishes, which
Speaker 5: is on the edge of Bakewell and it's beautiful. Everything
Speaker 5: about it is exquisite, you know, just the sense of
Speaker 5: arrival and destination and beautiful herbs in the garden. And
Speaker 5: I remember that was like very very special occasions. You
Speaker 5: had to basically be getting engaged, married or giving birth
Speaker 5: at Fishes, but it did have that sense of absolute occasion.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And do you go out now with your kids
Speaker 2: to restaurants? So is it also that way?
Speaker 5: Funny enough, we don't go out that often to restaurants
Speaker 5: with my kids because we do a lot of sort
Speaker 5: of cooking and just eating at home when they're home.
Speaker 5: And I feel like when your kids don't live at home,
Speaker 5: they're actually really happy. It's almost turned round. I think
Speaker 5: now that my kids have to fend for themselves. They live,
Speaker 5: you know, one lives at university ones away. They'll be
Speaker 5: doing a lot of kind of like cheap and cheerful
Speaker 5: takeaways or whatever. And so actually the treat now is
Speaker 5: to come home and to have home cooked food. Sort
Speaker 5: of turned around.
Speaker 1: I think we used to go out for special occasions
Speaker 1: and there would be about three or four restaurants in
Speaker 1: London that you know my parents love.
Speaker 2: Do you remember them?
Speaker 1: Well? One of them actually I now live around the
Speaker 1: corner too. I mean it became my mother's favorite restaurant,
Speaker 1: which was a Greek restaurant in Primrose Hill and Liamonia.
Speaker 1: So you know, we used to go there and meet
Speaker 1: my mother there, but they were kind of they weren't
Speaker 1: terribly grand, you know, there was nothing overly flash about them.
Speaker 1: They were just good places where good food was served.
Speaker 1: And somebody was saying, you know, the kind of food
Speaker 1: that we ate at home that was, you know, was
Speaker 1: much more continental, and so my mother would love. There
Speaker 1: was a delicatessen in Linton that she used to love
Speaker 1: going to on Liverpool Road, which kind of was full
Speaker 1: of it seems so exotic.
Speaker 5: So this is exactly what My dad would come down
Speaker 5: to London for work and we lived in Sheffield and
Speaker 5: he would visit Berwick Street. Next street was the first fresh.
Speaker 3: Ravioli and amazing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a delicatessant and he would bring them
Speaker 5: back to Sheffield and it was like this, Oh my god,
Speaker 5: what's dad got from London?
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, a big deal.
Speaker 2: As both of you have talked a lot about your mother's,
Speaker 2: did either of your father to cook?
Speaker 4: Fun enough?
Speaker 1: My dad? So, my dad was a lot older. My
Speaker 1: dad was born in nineteen ten, so my dad was
Speaker 1: a lot lot older than my mum. Had grown up
Speaker 1: in the East End of London and had never really
Speaker 1: left the East End of London. And there were two
Speaker 1: favorite dishes that he cooked and I both found both
Speaker 1: of them absolutely inedible. He would have he would make
Speaker 1: porridge for breakfast, but he would he would put salt
Speaker 1: in it. He didn't sweeten it. It was just kind
Speaker 1: of salt. And I just thought, this is really hard work.
Speaker 1: And he used to cook egg and onions, so he
Speaker 1: would do he would make scrambled eggs with spring onions
Speaker 1: at breakfast, and I just thought, who, so that didn't
Speaker 1: really do it? So fa The reason I've spoken about
Speaker 1: my mother's cooking more hers was more delicious.
Speaker 2: Did your dad cook?
Speaker 5: He was a real foodie. He didn't cook a lot
Speaker 5: but actually, looking back, he was a chemist, right, so
Speaker 5: he was very obsessed with the science of getting food right,
Speaker 5: getting cooking right, and so he'd be the one who'd say,
Speaker 5: never put meat onto a grill unless it's hotter than
Speaker 5: you dare you know, useful. He'd be the one who'd say,
Speaker 5: never put the spaghetti in until it's massively salted, massively boiling,
Speaker 5: and you never break it. And so I sort of
Speaker 5: think back, I was like, I listened to him very seriously,
Speaker 5: and I don't think I've ever broken his rules, you know,
Speaker 5: but it was more as a scientist probably than as
Speaker 5: a cook.
Speaker 2: So it stays with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, you like you've did for Milo.
Speaker 1: I mean for my mother when I was sixteen and
Speaker 1: I was going off. You know, I went off camping, right,
Speaker 1: you're going to learn to cook on one part, and
Speaker 1: you know, I learned how to make rattetuia, learned how
Speaker 1: to make speable and NAIs and then how to do
Speaker 1: stews and you know.
Speaker 2: Stuff like that she told you before you ran.
Speaker 4: Yeah, she taught me.
Speaker 1: And when lockdown came and the ghastlings of COVID, my
Speaker 1: wife had moved back from America because she's got a
Speaker 1: very elderly mother. I was in DC by myself, and
Speaker 1: suddenly the restaurants are shut.
Speaker 3: I am cooking every night.
Speaker 4: It was great because I found that I could still
Speaker 4: do it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and did you Yeah, of course, I mean I
Speaker 5: cooked right through lockdown. I didn't really mind it. I
Speaker 5: was still working at these night. My week was very
Speaker 5: much divided because I was out on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday's
Speaker 5: not coming back till midnight, you know, one o'clock in
Speaker 5: the morning.
Speaker 3: And so actually the rest of.
Speaker 5: The week felt like I sort of earned my lockdown yea,
Speaker 5: and earned my you know, time to cook.
Speaker 2: Living home, you know this this home with the food
Speaker 2: in the dining room and your mother's and gathering around
Speaker 2: the table. What happened? Did you go to university straight
Speaker 2: from home?
Speaker 1: I took a gap year, and so I sort of traveled.
Speaker 1: I went to the great picking harvest in the Bougelot region,
Speaker 1: and then I travel around Europe, and I spent some
Speaker 1: time on your books in Israel.
Speaker 2: What was food like in that yeard?
Speaker 3: You discover?
Speaker 1: I loved French food, I absolutely grew to love for
Speaker 1: and I thought France then was the most sophisticated kind
Speaker 1: of Wow, this food is just amazing. Actually, I spent
Speaker 1: four years in Paris as the Paris correspondent for the BBC,
Speaker 1: and I kind of thought, actually, it's very conservative. A
Speaker 1: lot of the cooking and some of it is really
Speaker 1: quite pedestrian. Whatever restaurant you went to, you got a
Speaker 1: version of the same menu every time. I just thought,
Speaker 1: you know, and everyone was like, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: bet you ate fantastically. Well, there were more interesting restaurants
Speaker 1: in London. So this was around two thousand, that's when
Speaker 1: we were there, and that London was just fantastic new
Speaker 1: rep you know, Peruvian food, food, you know, it was
Speaker 1: from all over the world. And you'd go, you can
Speaker 1: only eat French cheese because no other cheese exists in
Speaker 1: the world, and you can only drink French wine because
Speaker 1: no other wine exists in the one.
Speaker 4: And that was just there was a chauvinism I.
Speaker 1: Think that I found in France then that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: acknowledge that there was other ways of doing completely.
Speaker 2: You agree, did you likee You've ever lived in Paris
Speaker 2: or France.
Speaker 5: I've lived in France and I love it as a
Speaker 5: sort of this is what we do and this is
Speaker 5: the way you do it, but God forbidding if you
Speaker 5: break any rules.
Speaker 3: Actually, and I think it's at least the same.
Speaker 5: You know, a friend of mine who is the Roman correspondent,
Speaker 5: was saying, you know, if you if you try and
Speaker 5: open a sort of Thai restaurant or a sort of
Speaker 5: different culture, there's actually quite a lot of pushback because
Speaker 5: it's not how you know, sis, how we do things,
Speaker 5: you know. And so I think maybe because we were
Speaker 5: behind on our own cuisine, I do think Britain has
Speaker 5: been much more accepting and really good at accepting other
Speaker 5: cultures and other fusions, and just a bit more adventurous.
Speaker 3: Actually, I don't know.
Speaker 5: I don't know anyone who says I will not try
Speaker 5: you know that nationalities food, I will.
Speaker 1: Not eat that.
Speaker 2: Did you go to university?
Speaker 5: I went to university and then I went off to
Speaker 5: Hong Kong and that just completely opened my mind to
Speaker 5: Southeast Asian food in a very different way. And I
Speaker 5: would say, now, you know, anything that's got sort of
Speaker 5: prawns and lime and chili, lemon, grass, lemon, all this,
Speaker 5: I just love. I love Vietnamese flavors, I love coriander,
Speaker 5: I love mint. I love handfuls of herbs as almost salad.
Speaker 5: I am absolutely obsessed with herbs. I'm obsessed with you
Speaker 5: grow them. I grow so many, I've got a jungle.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it was a great time for me. In
Speaker 5: Sunday Nights on the Beach and Checko in Hong Kong.
Speaker 2: I said that when you go to a city and
Speaker 2: you go straight to the market, it tells you a
Speaker 2: lot about the city you're in, the culture you're in,
Speaker 2: whether there's you know, a lot of greens, whether people
Speaker 2: are shouting it's full. You know what's in season, don't
Speaker 2: you say?
Speaker 4: You know the journalistic lives that we've been lucky to leave.
Speaker 1: You have taken us all over the world, and so
Speaker 1: you suddenly immersed in Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: Or somewhere like that tells you a lot.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and you have no option but to eat
Speaker 1: what the kind of international food happens to be.
Speaker 4: And that's just been joyous.
Speaker 5: We were in Bulgaria last year, funny enough, and I
Speaker 5: always just took my son there for you know, three days,
Speaker 5: little break. A little kind of rented place was right
Speaker 5: next to the market, and I was I sound sort
Speaker 5: of like shocking, but I was so surprised by just
Speaker 5: how magnificent the sort of produce was, and the fruit
Speaker 5: and the vege. And I think I still have this
Speaker 5: very Soviet sort of thought in my head of everything
Speaker 5: being a bit sort of pale and gray and gristly,
Speaker 5: and you suddenly realize the richness.
Speaker 2: Of what they've actually, Yeah, probably very seasonal as well
Speaker 2: fantastic these places. They do fly raspberries and from New
Speaker 2: Zealand in the winter, or grapes some Souf Africa in
Speaker 2: the role season.
Speaker 1: And look, we live in a country in the UK
Speaker 1: where there is plenty and we are blessed that we
Speaker 1: live in it. But then you go to America and
Speaker 1: you go into one of the big supermarkets and you
Speaker 1: see this kind of rows of brightly colored vegetables. It
Speaker 1: all looks fabulous and just doesn't taste.
Speaker 5: It's when you learn that big strawberries are normally tasted
Speaker 5: of strawberries.
Speaker 1: Water, And that's sort of that realization that you've got everything,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't taste as good as in many places
Speaker 1: where if you went to the small local market you're
Speaker 1: going to get fabulous fresh fruit and vegetables.
Speaker 5: I also think they over chill everything like American restaurants
Speaker 5: serve everything too cold and so you can't taste it,
Speaker 5: and I think I must serve everything more or less
Speaker 5: like Ted.
Speaker 2: I say that in Italy the only thing that really
Speaker 2: they care about being hard is pasta because you can
Speaker 2: even have a blito misto and it's kind of room temperature,
Speaker 2: and a lot of soups are not hotright, And I
Speaker 2: agree with you. As Americans, I would say that things
Speaker 2: are really really.
Speaker 3: Do you think it's true that?
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing that struck me really when I
Speaker 1: was living there was that sweet things were over sweet,
Speaker 1: so that you would have bread and you could almost
Speaker 1: literally taste the taste it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can really taste it.
Speaker 1: And the savory things are over salted, so there's far
Speaker 1: too much, you know, like buying a packet of crisps
Speaker 1: or chips as they would call them in the US,
Speaker 1: and the salt levels in them would be on a
Speaker 1: different scale to what would be served here.
Speaker 2: No, I agree. I think as an American, I don't
Speaker 2: even want to leap to the defense because I think
Speaker 2: you're absolutely right. But if you go down to Union Square,
Speaker 2: you know there's a Union Square market and there's rocket
Speaker 2: from some County in Upstate New York, and there's broccoli
Speaker 2: that's been grown on Long Island, and I think certainly
Speaker 2: in California there's a whole movement of farm to table,
Speaker 2: and as a chef, I just know that there's a
Speaker 2: lot of that going on. But how you translate that
Speaker 2: into schools to you know, b city as we know
Speaker 2: you see that there I am getting political again, but
Speaker 2: you know it is food and politics and sustainability.
Speaker 4: And you've been in England too long. When you call
Speaker 4: it rocket and not a regular I mean I just
Speaker 4: oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well that was the other thing that was interesting is
Speaker 2: how when we Rose and I opened the River Cafe
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty seven, we'd put a Papa pomodor or
Speaker 2: a Rugela salad, and you know, people would say, I'm
Speaker 2: not paying those days, shockingly three pounds fifty for this soup.
Speaker 2: You know, it's just bread and tomatoes. And then you know,
Speaker 2: sometimes I give credit to Freddy Laker who all the
Speaker 2: cheap airlines which actually got people out of England and
Speaker 2: to Italy and to France and to Greece, and then
Speaker 2: you know, everybody started eating in these foreign countries, and
Speaker 2: then it came back and we're interested in eating here.
Speaker 5: But I do remember my mum in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 5: making a lasagnya for the neighbors that had just moved in,
Speaker 5: and nobody had heard of it. Yeah, it was just computing.
Speaker 5: She was ahead of a time, and she took them
Speaker 5: out and they were like, what do I do with him?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Now, you know, nobody would believe you'd made it yourself
Speaker 5: and just assume it of a packet. Ye, She's brought
Speaker 5: it around, and you know, she just thought that's a
Speaker 5: warming dish for a family that are moving in. But
Speaker 5: in the nineteen seventies, people hadn't even had past they
Speaker 5: haven't even heard a pastor.
Speaker 2: But you know, as you were saying, you did have
Speaker 2: Indian restaurants, you had Chinese takeaway. So it's just I
Speaker 2: was amazed, again coming from upstate New York, that there
Speaker 2: were all these people who know how to make a curry.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, everybody could make a curry. They
Speaker 2: might not be able to make a lasagna, or they
Speaker 2: might not be able to, you know, make a risotta,
Speaker 2: but there they were making some sort of amazing curry,
Speaker 2: you know. And so I think that that goes in
Speaker 2: and when you travel now for your work, would you
Speaker 2: check out the restaurants first? Would you think I'm going
Speaker 2: to Prague? Does anybody know where I should eat? Or
Speaker 2: I would going to Venice?
Speaker 4: You were I'm going to Venice in June. We've already
Speaker 4: booked restaurants.
Speaker 2: Oh good, where you go?
Speaker 1: I actually the friend that we're going with his booked restaurants,
Speaker 1: so I know that we're going to one absolutely sensational
Speaker 1: place on Saturday night.
Speaker 4: I could find out the name VI if.
Speaker 2: You were going or is this okay? That's all right?
Speaker 2: You'reing together very often in the office.
Speaker 3: In the office, I know that he likes you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: the press.
Speaker 2: Now you have to write it down.
Speaker 5: But this is not his favorite. I think that would
Speaker 5: be kind of slightly undermining.
Speaker 1: And it's not my favorite. It's convenient. She has it's
Speaker 1: too chicken soup noodles.
Speaker 5: I like that. Yeah, it's convenience, it's quick, it's not
Speaker 5: too unhealthy.
Speaker 2: Do you feel about eating at your desk? We were
Speaker 2: talking about it here.
Speaker 5: About the problem with the newsagents. I mean, there are
Speaker 5: very few problems, but I would say structurally, the big
Speaker 5: problem is that we tend to record between twelve and two.
Speaker 5: So you either have to have a very Spanish lunch.
Speaker 5: You have to have a brunch yeh, a sort of
Speaker 5: eleven eleven thirty brunch. And we're still working out with
Speaker 5: it's best to be sort of spilling soup on your
Speaker 5: nose at.
Speaker 4: Eleven thirty and laptop.
Speaker 3: Yeah, on your laptop.
Speaker 5: We have an office, an office editors who's managed to
Speaker 5: spill coffee on four people.
Speaker 3: Very smart.
Speaker 5: But if you wait till three, there's a chance you
Speaker 5: get quite tetchy when you're recording.
Speaker 4: And well that's me.
Speaker 1: And if you and if you get wait till three
Speaker 1: to have lunch, but then you've got a dinner in
Speaker 1: the evening at seven. I don't feel like dinner, but
Speaker 1: I need something between.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I suggest you reschedule the podcast or do
Speaker 2: you have to do it during people.
Speaker 1: We want to get it so that people receive it
Speaker 1: when they're on their journey home. And if the podcast
Speaker 1: goes up online, say an hour later, listening figures go
Speaker 1: down because we're doing a daily news.
Speaker 5: But if we were properly Italian about this, we would
Speaker 5: just basically lay out the table and all eat and record, you.
Speaker 3: Know, and just sort of make.
Speaker 5: Put the meal in the center of it and record
Speaker 5: the podcast around the edges, which you know, I always
Speaker 5: ask actors.
Speaker 2: You know, if you're doing a matinee or even you know,
Speaker 2: do you eat before or do you eat after? I
Speaker 2: mean most of the actors that I know play, they say,
Speaker 2: come meet me, you know, after the show, and we'll
Speaker 2: go out and have something to eat. But then do
Speaker 2: they snack before?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 2: Do they wait that.
Speaker 4: Long if you've just had a meal.
Speaker 5: Problems? Probably they are, they're our podcast timing, But it
Speaker 5: is would you talk about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's importantly, it is important. What do you think
Speaker 2: chances favorite dishes?
Speaker 5: I'm going to do? I think I've got mine really wrong.
Speaker 2: Okay, I feel like we asked I'm sure we ask
Speaker 2: you what is your favorite dish? Well, we're going to
Speaker 2: say what what did you guess is his favorite?
Speaker 1: So first, because I'm I'm going to say what you
Speaker 1: tell me what I think it would be something sea
Speaker 1: bassie prawns with a spicy kind of sauce.
Speaker 4: That would be yeah, kind of have a flavor of
Speaker 4: the Far East too.
Speaker 2: Very good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd go with that.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, And what have you got for me?
Speaker 5: Well, I think it's a bit too sort of matcho
Speaker 5: for you, because I don't think you're really matching your food.
Speaker 5: But I have gone for Philips, state mushrooms, fat chips,
Speaker 5: truffle butter or bonnets and green beans.
Speaker 4: Yeah there are.
Speaker 2: Okay, should we just talk for one minute about these agents?
Speaker 2: When I said it's my favorite, I do think it's
Speaker 2: a great program. Do you want to tell the world.
Speaker 5: What you do?
Speaker 1: We started, you know, as every podcast starts, with zero
Speaker 1: subscribers and zero listeners, and we were trying to create
Speaker 1: something that was not a million miles away from our
Speaker 1: BBC backgrounds, but was maybe just a tiny bit bolder,
Speaker 1: and you know, we would really call stories as we
Speaker 1: saw them. And I don't want this to sound pompous,
Speaker 1: because I don't think we feel pompous about it at all,
Speaker 1: but you know, almost try to reinvent, you know, the
Speaker 1: idea of public service broadcasting and that we are kind
Speaker 1: of giving people, hopefully something interesting that they hadn't thought
Speaker 1: about a story and maybe makes them think, ah, I
Speaker 1: get it now, I get why this issue is so
Speaker 1: important or I hadn't thought about that.
Speaker 4: That's what we're trying to do.
Speaker 5: Our editor would at this point kill us if we
Speaker 5: didn't say we are now the biggest daily podcast in
Speaker 5: the UK get so that he doesn't sort of, but
Speaker 5: that's a kind of a big a surprise to us,
Speaker 5: I think, as it would be to our listeners in
Speaker 5: the sense that it was a very tiny acorn, you know.
Speaker 5: It was sort of three of us just wanting to
Speaker 5: work with our mates and create something that we wanted
Speaker 5: to enjoy doing. And yeah, it's really lovely when people
Speaker 5: say it feels close to public service because we do
Speaker 5: things that we think actually are really worth discussing that
Speaker 5: you don't always get everywhere else. And we've been really
Speaker 5: lucky with our interviewees, fantastic people who've come on the newsagents,
Speaker 5: and I think we're still finding our way, you know,
Speaker 5: we want to sort of work out what the next
Speaker 5: step is in terms of who we're reaching now and
Speaker 5: who we're talking to.
Speaker 1: You know, we're recording this and it is the day
Speaker 1: before the coronation, and there is a certain tone and
Speaker 1: timbre to the coverage at the moment on a lot
Speaker 1: of the mainstream outlets, and I think we are asking
Speaker 1: different questions, not being anti monarchists, but just asking you know,
Speaker 1: more interesting questions maybe about some of this, which maybe
Speaker 1: the main broadcasters would be fearful.
Speaker 4: Of going to.
Speaker 1: The Other thing is that, you know, when I was
Speaker 1: in Washington and I'm doing the ten o'clock news, the
Speaker 1: audience on average would be over six years old. We're
Speaker 1: getting a lot of young people, and so this whole
Speaker 1: idea that young people aren't interested in news, I.
Speaker 3: Think is both.
Speaker 1: I think that we're getting a lot of people who
Speaker 1: but they just want it done differently, and that's what
Speaker 1: we're trying to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, my favorite line came yesterday from a friend who said,
Speaker 5: I'm a much much better kind of dog owner as
Speaker 5: a result, because he used to be really grumpy with
Speaker 5: his sweet whippet Wolf, and you know, if Wilf want
Speaker 5: to go out, it's kind of, oh, come on, then
Speaker 5: let's do it.
Speaker 3: And he said, now it's my time.
Speaker 5: You know, I get in with the newsagents and Wolf
Speaker 5: is happier, and I'm happier, and we get back.
Speaker 3: Exhausted and it goes really quickly.
Speaker 5: So if we've made dogs happier as a result of
Speaker 5: this podcast, that our work is done with, I think.
Speaker 2: It's you know, as I said, you know, it's about informing.
Speaker 2: It's about telling us. If we know about news, if
Speaker 2: we know about what is happening, it helps us make choices.
Speaker 2: It helps us plan our lives. Our day is what's happening.
Speaker 2: You know, That's why at some point, and that's what
Speaker 2: you do. And I don't want to compare food to
Speaker 2: information and you know what we're all doing, but it is.
Speaker 2: It gives us knowledge, gives us nourishment. It gets to
Speaker 2: nourishment and energy, like you know, food and news. And
Speaker 2: so at the end of this really great conversation, thank
Speaker 2: you for coming. It's so nice that you came on.
Speaker 2: Before you have lunch, maybe you can have your prune
Speaker 2: and almond tar. Just have one more question. What would
Speaker 2: be the food that you return to if you needed comfort?
Speaker 5: Well, I guess I'd say put aside your you know,
Speaker 5: the SeaBASS, prawns and the chili. My favorite food is
Speaker 5: fresh bread and butter and strawberry jam.
Speaker 3: And I don't.
Speaker 5: Indulge in that very often because it feels like, you know,
Speaker 5: if I started with bread, I would never stop.
Speaker 3: But I just love it.
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago, I was flying back from Australia.
Speaker 1: My son lives in Australia and I caught COVID being
Speaker 1: very on trend. I got back to London, tested positive,
Speaker 1: felt absolutely dreadful, and I realized the food I wanted
Speaker 1: I hadn't had since I was a child. And it's
Speaker 1: so such a cliche to say it. I wanted chicken
Speaker 1: soup and moncibles and it's the kind of almost it's
Speaker 1: the punchline of so many Jewish jokes. Give him some
Speaker 1: chicken soup. Yeah, And that's what I felt I wanted.
Speaker 1: And I suddenly realized I knew you were going to
Speaker 1: ask this question, so I kind of thought, what is
Speaker 1: the food that I think? Oh, and that was what
Speaker 1: I needed. Then we kind of found some chicken soup.
Speaker 1: Linda made some chicken soup and I was just oh,
Speaker 1: that was tasted so fabulous.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you very much. It was great to have
Speaker 2: you here. Let's go have munch. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
Speaker 2: please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. Thank you,