Speaker 1: Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adami's Studios. If you were in London in November twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: then you might have been as I was lucky to
Speaker 1: go to see Fly in League with the Night, an
Speaker 1: exhibition of paintings by Lynette Yadam Boochi, artist and writer,
Speaker 1: a retrospective of seventy of her works from two thousand
Speaker 1: and three to the present. It closed after two weeks
Speaker 1: due to the pandemic, but is now on again, the
Speaker 1: first time the Tate has shown an exhibition twice. Lynette
Speaker 1: is a writer, a painter and also a magical baker.
Speaker 1: Today we're sitting here in the River Cafe to talk
Speaker 1: about food, words, paint, in other words, all the ingredients
Speaker 1: to make something like Lynette beautiful, cell and ed are
Speaker 1: you going to read s? The recipe first, and the
Speaker 1: recipe of chosen is Polenta almond and lemon cake serves
Speaker 1: ten four hundred and fifty grams of unsalted butter, softened
Speaker 1: four hundred and fifty grams of granulated sugar, four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty grams ground almonds, two teaspoons vanilla extract, six eggs.
Speaker 1: The finely grated zest of four lemons, the juice of
Speaker 1: one lemon, two hundred and twenty five grams of polenta,
Speaker 1: one and a half teaspoons of baking powder. Preheat the
Speaker 1: oven to one hundred and sixty degrees centigrade. Butter and
Speaker 1: line a thirty centimeter round and seven point five centimeter
Speaker 1: deep cake pan with parchment paper. Beat the butter and
Speaker 1: sugar together until pale and light. Stir in the ground
Speaker 1: almonds and vanilla. Beat in the eggs one at a time.
Speaker 1: Fold in the lemon, zest and juice, the blenta, baking powder,
Speaker 1: and salt. Spoon into the prepared pan. Bake for forty
Speaker 1: five to fifty minutes, or until the cake is set
Speaker 1: and deep brown on top. Serve with crem fresh and berries.
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk about being an artist and how
Speaker 1: you eat. I think you're here a lot, which is
Speaker 1: really nice, A fair bit, yeah, but I find that
Speaker 1: I also I generally feel better if I don't eat
Speaker 1: out a lot, so I don't. I don't tend to
Speaker 1: eat out as much when I'm very, very busy when
Speaker 1: I'm working, because it's it's so much. I just just
Speaker 1: physically to regulate my own kind of sleep and everything
Speaker 1: when I'm trying to get stuff done, having a certain
Speaker 1: routine with what you're eating and the time you're eating
Speaker 1: at like I can't eat late. Like for example, the
Speaker 1: last couple of months, I've been working on a deadline
Speaker 1: and um, but there's a dead a show. I have
Speaker 1: a show. I have a show at the Googen Him
Speaker 1: and Bill Bao the end of my beautiful building. Um, difficult,
Speaker 1: complicated building, but wonderful. I like a lot of the
Speaker 1: contemporary architecture museums. They're great for architecture, not great for
Speaker 1: hanging stuff on the amazing building. Yeah and yeah. So
Speaker 1: I've been really busy with that, and I've found that
Speaker 1: by sticking with a with a kind of a bit
Speaker 1: of a routine in terms of meals and certain times,
Speaker 1: I'm just able to get more done and get to
Speaker 1: bet at a decent hour. It is solitary. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you have other people in the
Speaker 1: studio with you. You have a jadline now, but other
Speaker 1: days when you have a routine that is very structured,
Speaker 1: so you can quite try to call you up and
Speaker 1: say Lonett, let's go and have lunch. Would you say
Speaker 1: I can't, so I probably say yes, yes, but I should,
Speaker 1: I should really not answer the phone, but I I
Speaker 1: normally so three days of the week, I'll get up
Speaker 1: and train with a trainer online and like about sort
Speaker 1: of training normally around eight o'clock and then breakfast and
Speaker 1: then work. Yeah. Yeah, so and do you work straight
Speaker 1: through you I stopped for lunch. What mornings painting wise
Speaker 1: or studio wise tend to be a bit slow. I
Speaker 1: take a while to get warmed up. Do you find
Speaker 1: the solitude of the day something that you treasure and
Speaker 1: you liked or do you like nighttime? Are you ready
Speaker 1: to see It's funny by nighttime, I'm ready to see people,
Speaker 1: But I also feel like during the day it's solitary.
Speaker 1: But it's I'm so busy, I'm so in it, I
Speaker 1: don't even I kind of forget. I couldn't have anyone there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, too much work now. But yeah, And you
Speaker 1: know you're going to one of the great cities for
Speaker 1: food when you go to Bilbao because Sebastian is right
Speaker 1: next door. Yeah, and they're fantastic restaurants there. Yeah, great
Speaker 1: culture of food. Yeah. You travel, you find out about
Speaker 1: where you're going to look into it first and explore
Speaker 1: the food. Yeah, when I sent in the cities that
Speaker 1: you've really liked food, really liked, so I think. I
Speaker 1: mean I spent three months in Marseilla, three months on
Speaker 1: the residency many years ago. The pastries there were out
Speaker 1: of this world. I remember, the pastries were incredible there.
Speaker 1: That was one. So back and forth to France quite
Speaker 1: a lot for many years, and and many trips over
Speaker 1: the years to the South of Spain as well, which
Speaker 1: I can I have funny memories of eating there because
Speaker 1: we always ate so late. Yes, the food I almost
Speaker 1: don't remember it because I just remember feeling like we've
Speaker 1: eaten too late and I don't feel very well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so at midnight. Yeah nothing. I don't know how people
Speaker 1: do it. Indigestion, how you work the next day. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've really never understood it. Um. Yes, although a lot
Speaker 1: of trips to the to the US, which of course
Speaker 1: is just so much variety. But yeah, I do love
Speaker 1: soul food in New York as well, just like going
Speaker 1: to Harlem and having soul food and these really kind
Speaker 1: of very down to earth, very chill, very relaxed diners
Speaker 1: and eateries. There a lot of your friends are so yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I got yeah, artists, curators, writers, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Are you having any shows in New York? Not for
Speaker 1: the foreseeable. There will be a US tour that I
Speaker 1: can't really say much about yet. But a couple of
Speaker 1: years time. Yeah, I was Richard. My husband had got
Speaker 1: a prize in the University of Virginia and it's called
Speaker 1: the Jefferson Prize. And I was washing my hands in
Speaker 1: the bathroom and a woman came in and she was
Speaker 1: just awarded the prize as well as the first African
Speaker 1: American to graduate from law school. And I think it
Speaker 1: probably was the sixties. It was horrifically late, and I
Speaker 1: said to her. We started talking and I said, what
Speaker 1: was harder being a black woman or being a woman
Speaker 1: to get this prize? And she said, definitely a woman.
Speaker 1: At that time, she said there was racism of course
Speaker 1: in the South, that it was vile and it was strong,
Speaker 1: but the antagonist for her being a woman. And I
Speaker 1: was wondering about in the art world, what your experience,
Speaker 1: you know, just to deviate from from food, what was
Speaker 1: your experience of being a black woman in Britain as
Speaker 1: a painter. I mean to be completely honest, it was.
Speaker 1: It was very very odd in you know, because it
Speaker 1: wasn't that not that long ago. But when I think
Speaker 1: about when I first first was out of art school
Speaker 1: completely and working away and kind of oblivious to certain
Speaker 1: things because I never expected a career. I never went
Speaker 1: into this expecting any kind of success or anything, because
Speaker 1: you don't. It's it's a crazy path. It doesn't You're
Speaker 1: not guaranteed anything. But thinking back to then, the level
Speaker 1: of invisibility I had, like the fact that I remember
Speaker 1: being at events and in situations or openings where I
Speaker 1: would be completely invisible, like nobody would talk to me,
Speaker 1: someone might try and hand me their coat, someone might
Speaker 1: ask me to bring them a drink. That that was
Speaker 1: my abiding memory of say, the period from two thousand
Speaker 1: and three to maybe two twelve eleven, something like that.
Speaker 1: And because I wasn't I mean, nobody really knew who
Speaker 1: I was or I didn't really have a I mean,
Speaker 1: in some way, I couldn't. I couldn't get arrested for
Speaker 1: the first ten years of making work, which was actually
Speaker 1: really liberating. I don't complain about that because it was
Speaker 1: actually a really good time to get things done and
Speaker 1: I was working regardless, I didn't really care, and I
Speaker 1: had enough going on for me with different projects, really
Speaker 1: important shows and things that I was involved in during
Speaker 1: that time. That kept me very motivated, and I met
Speaker 1: a lot of wonderful people, mostly US who were and
Speaker 1: still are really big supporters of mine early on. But
Speaker 1: it was in the more general art well and certainly
Speaker 1: in the UK, that invisibility, that thing of being invisible,
Speaker 1: of people turning their backs on you at dinner, of
Speaker 1: not talking to you, of not being included in anything
Speaker 1: because not just because people saw you was an issues
Speaker 1: based artist or someone who was niche in a way
Speaker 1: that they didn't want to engage with. That at some
Speaker 1: points was difficult, that would that hurt in a certain way,
Speaker 1: But at the time I can't say I really cared,
Speaker 1: and that hasn't changed, If anything, it's increased. I really
Speaker 1: don't care now. And the same people who would turn
Speaker 1: their backs on me and asked me to take their
Speaker 1: coats or completely ignore me in the seven two thousand
Speaker 1: and six and now prostrating themselves on the floor to me,
Speaker 1: which I still don't care about. I still don't care,
Speaker 1: and I think that was that was That's been my
Speaker 1: abiding mantra is, particularly when things have been really were
Speaker 1: really difficult, or reached a crisis point in some way,
Speaker 1: I realized, actually, all of this stuff, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: That the thing that I've always really cared about was
Speaker 1: the work I was doing, the people that I think with,
Speaker 1: the people that I respect, the people that I work
Speaker 1: with and who have always been big supporters of mine,
Speaker 1: and I've been big supporters of theirs, and what we've
Speaker 1: done together and built together was That's what matters these
Speaker 1: kind of rather that a scene or a career on
Speaker 1: art World has never ever mattered, It doesn't matter. It's
Speaker 1: just it's it's ever been a concern of mine because
Speaker 1: it was never mine. It was never something I was
Speaker 1: a part of. So I kind of to answer your
Speaker 1: question a very long winded sort of right, I didn't, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't. Yeah, does it does it? If
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter to you, doesn't matter that it matters
Speaker 1: to other people experiencing it. So you know Edward's story
Speaker 1: about walking into Vogue and you know, being told to
Speaker 1: use the side entrance to deliver or something you know
Speaker 1: that matters, and yeah, you know, And so there's a
Speaker 1: sort of there is a political aspect to the invisibility
Speaker 1: that is wrong. It's wrong, and it could be wrong
Speaker 1: as a woman. You know, when you know we noticed,
Speaker 1: you know, we know that we go to parties and
Speaker 1: a certain kind of person or a young person that's ignored,
Speaker 1: or a quiet person that's ignored, or a black person
Speaker 1: that's ignored, or you know, somebody wearing the wrong dress.
Speaker 1: It and it's great to have the confidence that that
Speaker 1: is something that your work can see through. But then
Speaker 1: for other people, yeah, you know who are experience, who
Speaker 1: don't have that, it's yeah, no, it's really hard. And
Speaker 1: I think that's why the things that get you through
Speaker 1: when you're younger, or you're not as confident, or you
Speaker 1: don't have the kind of agency will be that circle
Speaker 1: of people or that circle of support that really even
Speaker 1: you know, if it was even if it's your family,
Speaker 1: even if it's your your partner or you know, you
Speaker 1: need someone to turn to who can say, yeah, I
Speaker 1: just saw that. Yeah I get it. I know. And
Speaker 1: I think because these things still happen, It's not like
Speaker 1: it doesn't happen to me anymore. It still does, you know. Still,
Speaker 1: it's that classic thing when people before people know who
Speaker 1: you are, they don't respect you. I have a problem
Speaker 1: with that. It shouldn't matter who I am. I don't
Speaker 1: I'm not someone who goes somewhere I don't believe in.
Speaker 1: I don't see myself any differently than I did twenty
Speaker 1: years ago. So I'm not going to go in somewhere
Speaker 1: and say do you know where I am? Because that's
Speaker 1: ridiculous to me. But I shouldn't have to anither anyone else.
Speaker 1: And it's it's having it's that sense. I mean a
Speaker 1: friend was telling me a story yesterday of something that
Speaker 1: happened to them very similar that this, you know, being
Speaker 1: followed around a store. I mean that that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't have to go in and prove anything in
Speaker 1: order to be respected, and that that's the difference. It's
Speaker 1: I think, was it Nina Simone? You said, you know,
Speaker 1: love us, will leave us alone. It's it's simple. What
Speaker 1: do you make when you make cakes? You know, wow, everything,
Speaker 1: But my favorite thing to bake is any type of
Speaker 1: sponge cake because that was really I learned to bake
Speaker 1: from my mum and she was she did a catering
Speaker 1: course in the seventies and yeah, she's nurse she's very
Speaker 1: busy work nights, as did my dad, both nurses, but
Speaker 1: baking for her was just such a joy. She loved
Speaker 1: doing it, and I used to love watching. So I
Speaker 1: would stand or sit and just watch her do it intensely,
Speaker 1: and I always wanted to help, and for many years
Speaker 1: she wouldn't let me because I'd messed it up. But
Speaker 1: just watching and watching and watching, and those little things
Speaker 1: that just stay with you forever, like that. Never ever
Speaker 1: ever opened the oven before a certain point, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: I could never wait. I was really I wanted to
Speaker 1: see it. I want to see it rise on what
Speaker 1: was happening. And I would always panic and open the
Speaker 1: oven and then it would sink. And it became a
Speaker 1: kind of running joke that my cakes would always sink
Speaker 1: because I was too impatient, and I'd always turn the
Speaker 1: oven up too high. Yeah. Yeah, but a sponge is
Speaker 1: really hard to make. Yeah, there's science, it's one of
Speaker 1: the easiest, you know, recipes, but actually to make a
Speaker 1: good sponge, as a town would your mother was she
Speaker 1: was born in Ghana. She was born in Ghana. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she like, oh, she's amazing, she's wonderful, she does it.
Speaker 1: She's she's my my hero. Did she come as a
Speaker 1: young child here? No? No, no, she came in her twenties,
Speaker 1: as did my dad. Well, my dad was a bit older,
Speaker 1: but they came in the nineteen sixty They met and
Speaker 1: Gharana married and Garner moved here to work as nurses
Speaker 1: settled down and we all came along in the seventies.
Speaker 1: There's three of us. I have two older brothers. So
Speaker 1: going back to the early days, what was it like
Speaker 1: growing up in your household if your parents were both
Speaker 1: nurses and they were working. Ye? Did they work nights
Speaker 1: and days or ships or did you nights? Yeah? So
Speaker 1: there was always one of them home. Would you have
Speaker 1: a family? Yeah? All around the table one thing I
Speaker 1: mean we did. We did at the weekends more I guess,
Speaker 1: and when they were both home than we'd all be
Speaker 1: around the table. But weekends, I remember, breakfasts on the
Speaker 1: Sunday were real everyone together. Oh omelets. My dad made
Speaker 1: a very good omelet, a kind of everything, but the
Speaker 1: kitchen sink over which was very good, very very good.
Speaker 1: He used to put baked beans into the open instress,
Speaker 1: which was bonkers, but yeah, it's really good. Would they
Speaker 1: have cooked in Ghana? Do you think or did they really?
Speaker 1: You know they both? I think they both always cooked
Speaker 1: my dad. I mean we we we ate a lot
Speaker 1: of gunny and food when I was a kid, like
Speaker 1: foo food which I can't eat now I don't. I
Speaker 1: don't like it anymore. I think the traditional way it's
Speaker 1: made in Ghanna is with pounded Um. I'm going to
Speaker 1: get this wrong. Cassava and plantain together and it's it's
Speaker 1: pounded until it becomes like a big sort of Doughey
Speaker 1: mass and you have it with with stew or soup
Speaker 1: with meat and fish. Um, it's very heavy. And did
Speaker 1: you grow up with other friends who were gunny and
Speaker 1: it was there a community? Yeah? I mean we had
Speaker 1: all of our my parents had a large sort of
Speaker 1: network circle of friends. And where where was this in London?
Speaker 1: South South? I remembered spending a lot of time in markets, supermarkets, shops.
Speaker 1: My my dad used to go and buy his meat
Speaker 1: like from the Hellal butchers, like because he was Muslim,
Speaker 1: so he would always we always ate Hellal meat. And
Speaker 1: one of my abiding memories was in Baalom before it gentrified,
Speaker 1: before it became posh, when Balam was still a market
Speaker 1: surrounded by some really odd shops here and there. Um,
Speaker 1: I love I love Old Ballom. Old Ballam was quite magical,
Speaker 1: but mostly because there was this my dad's favorite butcher
Speaker 1: was in Ballom, and he would go in and inspect
Speaker 1: all of the goats heads, like for the goat's head
Speaker 1: souperies to make, and so each he'd be there, the
Speaker 1: scull be picking up all these goats heads and it's
Speaker 1: like my dad was inspecting the teeth. He's just looking
Speaker 1: at the faces, looking at the eye. I just it
Speaker 1: was so bonkers, but it became so normal. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just were going in and inspecting goats heads with
Speaker 1: my dad. Was a main memory of shopping with my dad.
Speaker 1: And then we go to the market that was alongside
Speaker 1: that butcher's where where they had like the yams, the plantains, everything,
Speaker 1: And there was a little guinny and food shop there
Speaker 1: as well. I think it's long gone now. That sold
Speaker 1: all of the pepper sauce and the dubiously acquired dried
Speaker 1: fish that we were entirely short was legal. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very good though, it's delicious, but I'm not sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: it used to be very easy to bring a lot
Speaker 1: of things in from Ghana like people I have a
Speaker 1: you know, things like snails and you know, the dried
Speaker 1: fish and everything, all these things that you can't really
Speaker 1: get here. I think it's a lot harder. You know,
Speaker 1: there's there's dogs at the airport and stuff to stop
Speaker 1: your briefings. Really but yeah, but did you get to Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we went back a few times when I was when
Speaker 1: I was young, and it was yeah. I mean the
Speaker 1: markets there are extraordinary. I mean it's really um a
Speaker 1: lot of action, possibly too much action for me, but yeah,
Speaker 1: because my auntie actually worked and worked at one of
Speaker 1: the markets, and I remember going to visit her there
Speaker 1: and just yeah, it was extraordinary, really extraordinary. A lot
Speaker 1: of noise, a lot of chaos. Well you only cakes
Speaker 1: that you only made, were you allowed? When I was younger,
Speaker 1: only cakes? Really, I don't think anyone trusted my cooking.
Speaker 1: My my my dad was very particular. He's he passed
Speaker 1: away twenty sixteen, but he was very particular about what
Speaker 1: he would and wouldn't eat. So he could never get
Speaker 1: his head around white sauce. And I think this is
Speaker 1: kind of a guinny and male thing. White sauce is
Speaker 1: somehow not correct to him. So anything. If I put
Speaker 1: anything in front of him that had like a white
Speaker 1: sorce I'd seem to remember once trying to give him
Speaker 1: I'd made a fish pie or something, and my mom
Speaker 1: liked my fish pie. She could eat my fish pie.
Speaker 1: My dad just couldn't even look at something with a
Speaker 1: white It had to be red or brown. So yeah,
Speaker 1: but I did. I as I got older, I did
Speaker 1: used to do things. I'd come and deer the roast,
Speaker 1: like we'd have like roast lamb or roast chicken, and
Speaker 1: then if it burned, it was my fault. So I
Speaker 1: used to like watch it religiously, and you know, take
Speaker 1: it out and turn it and stuff. Did you paint
Speaker 1: as a as a teenager? What did you know that?
Speaker 1: I always made things. I always did things with my hands.
Speaker 1: I always was always trying to make something, usually out
Speaker 1: of cardboard or I mean drawing pictures. I did a
Speaker 1: lot of drawing as a teenager. I started painting when
Speaker 1: I was on my foundation course encouraged. They did not
Speaker 1: encourage it. I mean they could see what I was into.
Speaker 1: I think my dad was just baffled by the whole thing.
Speaker 1: My mom was far more tolerant in a way. She
Speaker 1: used to sit for me a lot. I wish you
Speaker 1: could find those paintings. Actually, I don't know. That must
Speaker 1: be buried in my parents' house somewhere. I did lots
Speaker 1: of paintings of my mum, Drawings of my mum um
Speaker 1: pretty accurate, actually, I think. I think at that point
Speaker 1: they thought maybe there was something in it, you know,
Speaker 1: because I could get a likeness, and school was like, um, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a I remember my high school, my secondary
Speaker 1: school had a very very good art and drama department.
Speaker 1: They had converted a whole building into just art drama,
Speaker 1: which I remember thinking it was amazing. It was brand
Speaker 1: new at the time, and it was the early late eighties,
Speaker 1: early nineties, but it was brand new and that was
Speaker 1: kind of unheard of around there. And so you went
Speaker 1: to Falmouth. I went to Falmouth and then to the
Speaker 1: Royal Academy, which was what was the difference was Foalnmouth
Speaker 1: was Foalnmouth was very very calm. It's quite far away,
Speaker 1: very far, very calm. I loved it. I had a
Speaker 1: really good time there. It's amazing to be by the
Speaker 1: water to study so in the somewhere that was just
Speaker 1: so different to anywhere I'd ever been, so I was
Speaker 1: born and raised in London, so it was I didn't
Speaker 1: want to go anywhere that was a city because I
Speaker 1: felt like I was in the city. You know, this
Speaker 1: is London was so important to me. Yeah, it's where
Speaker 1: it's kind of the end of the country in Cornwall,
Speaker 1: which is I think the most. They do say that
Speaker 1: it has more weather than anywhere else in the country.
Speaker 1: They have percentage wise, more more of everything, more more weather,
Speaker 1: they used to say that, but more weather in Cornwall
Speaker 1: than anywhere else in the country. And the climb it
Speaker 1: was quite insane, like it would rain, it could rain
Speaker 1: non stop for weeks on end, months on end, and
Speaker 1: then it could be really tropical as well. It was
Speaker 1: like the most tropical point. There were palm trees, sandy beaches.
Speaker 1: It really does, or at least it did back then,
Speaker 1: feel like paradise. It was still quite sort of cut
Speaker 1: off in the way that it felt because we didn't
Speaker 1: have mobile phones and stuff yet there wasn't. I mean
Speaker 1: a couple of people had one, but no one else did.
Speaker 1: I'd been going to pay phones and stuff to make calls,
Speaker 1: which seems odd now with one phone in the house. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it just had that nice feeling of being at
Speaker 1: the end of the of the earth. To me, it
Speaker 1: felt like I was in the middle of nowhere, which
Speaker 1: was so liberating. With the tradition of painters, you know, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and Nicholson, yeah, Yeatrick, Karen and York. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a community, yeah, tradition. Yeah. And we had very great
Speaker 1: We had great tutors, really good teachers who were who
Speaker 1: were you know, living down there, very different pace, and
Speaker 1: they'd all a lot of them had been in London
Speaker 1: and just study, you know, as artists in London and
Speaker 1: just thought, no this time to time together. Um a
Speaker 1: lot of pasties. They had no money, money, Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: So that the old version, the traditional version was you'd
Speaker 1: have this semicircle shaped pastry with a sort of woven
Speaker 1: edge that's quite thick, like a twisted edge that's thick
Speaker 1: that you could hold onto, and then inside traditionally you
Speaker 1: would have half sweet and half savory. And it was
Speaker 1: for the miners, I guess, to to be able to
Speaker 1: hold the edge, which is the crust that they wouldn't
Speaker 1: eat because it was dirty because they're holding it there,
Speaker 1: and then they would eat the savory part and then
Speaker 1: they would have dessert afterwards. Now, of course they don't
Speaker 1: really do them like that anymore, because yeah, it wasn't
Speaker 1: ideal to put the sweet and savory into the same
Speaker 1: thing and split it. But yeah, we had a little Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that. Um so that's further my step. Someone
Speaker 1: who was at the Royal College chargers design airline tableware
Speaker 1: that was like a pasty kind of eat the table.
Speaker 1: We used a lot of energy because we walked everywhere.
Speaker 1: On one level, I was the fittest I've ever been,
Speaker 1: probably also the most malnourished. Kind of malnourished, but very fat.
Speaker 1: I remember one time we scraped our pennies together to
Speaker 1: go for a fancy meal because we thought, well, I
Speaker 1: think we know, we didn't even scrape pennies. I think
Speaker 1: we We said we were going to use our credit
Speaker 1: cards that night, the emergency credit cards that were student
Speaker 1: credit cards, so there was a you know, you had
Speaker 1: about ten pounds to spend on it anyway, And we
Speaker 1: went to a fancy fish restaurant and took one look
Speaker 1: at the menu and we were horrified because everything cost
Speaker 1: more than ten pounds. And I ordered the prawns because
Speaker 1: I thought, oh, this will be you know, it's not
Speaker 1: often I get to have prawns too expensive, and they
Speaker 1: brought us. I had a plate and the plate it
Speaker 1: was twelve pounds. You know this there's a lot of money.
Speaker 1: And there were six prawns on it, and I remember
Speaker 1: being so upset. We were just so horrified because I
Speaker 1: think we all got the prawns and we were all
Speaker 1: just like, we're going to be hungry. We can be
Speaker 1: really hungry after it, and we can't have anything else.
Speaker 1: That's all of our money gone into these prawns. Were
Speaker 1: so angry, but we left and I think we had toast.
Speaker 1: Was still so hungry and we got back. That has
Speaker 1: a very dead strong identity a Cornish food. And so
Speaker 1: when you went back to London was it a big
Speaker 1: difference food? Did you live at home when you came back?
Speaker 1: I did. Yeah, I lived at home for the first
Speaker 1: year and a half at the R. So when did
Speaker 1: you have your first apartment? Okay, so I shared a
Speaker 1: flat with two friends. Yeah, And what did you cut
Speaker 1: when you had your own kitchen? What's that like? Well, they,
Speaker 1: as I recall, if I remember correctly, they were both vegetarian.
Speaker 1: So I kind of fell into step a little bit.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to. I felt a bit bad bringing animals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I couldn't deal with the horror in their eyes every
Speaker 1: time I get meat out, although I think I did
Speaker 1: used to cook chicken from time to time, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't remember. Actually, it's strange that period
Speaker 1: of time, that was it because we used to eat
Speaker 1: at the RA a lot. The RA canteen was amazing
Speaker 1: back then at the RA schools canteens incredible. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the same one, same, the same place under the
Speaker 1: in the dungeon under the building, and they had the
Speaker 1: most incredible canteen there. We have a common thread. We
Speaker 1: have many things in common, you and I, but one
Speaker 1: of them is our huge respect for James Baldwin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he was, you know, from me, a formidable character
Speaker 1: and absolutely history. What is it? What was your linked to?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, I I remember living in crouch End. I
Speaker 1: was coming to the end of my MFA at the
Speaker 1: R and I just I can't. I think I just
Speaker 1: stumbled on the fire next time, and I remember sitting
Speaker 1: down and reading it in an afternoon on the porch
Speaker 1: of the It's very strange flat we lived in and
Speaker 1: It was quite an odd design because we were our
Speaker 1: sort of porch area was the roof of the place
Speaker 1: underneath us, and we were surrounded by um, the backs
Speaker 1: of houses, and so he had the sky opening up
Speaker 1: above you, but then these backs of houses and then
Speaker 1: Alexandra Palace in the distance. It was kind of a
Speaker 1: really amazing view. But you're kind of in this amphitheater
Speaker 1: as well. So but and normally that bothered me having
Speaker 1: the feet that people were watching. But I was so
Speaker 1: I remember being so engrossed in this book over the
Speaker 1: course of an afternoon that I just sat there and
Speaker 1: read the whole thing. And Yeah, that that was really
Speaker 1: that stayed with me, That gave me, gave me a
Speaker 1: lot of strength. You went upstairs to the pastry kitchen,
Speaker 1: what was that like? It's incredible up there. It's huge now,
Speaker 1: it's extraordinary to see. It's it's such a simple, tidy,
Speaker 1: neat environment to see all these huge, exciting things coming
Speaker 1: out of and making others cakes because we're doing an
Speaker 1: event tonight. Yeah, they actually had the take so welcome
Speaker 1: to the pastry kitchen hidden lair upstairs. My name's Bella
Speaker 1: Tubs and I'm the head pastry chef at the River
Speaker 1: Cafe cooking and baking. The net is an amazing irons,
Speaker 1: but also there's a great baker, so she wanted to
Speaker 1: see the lenta, almond and lemon cake. So I'll leave
Speaker 1: it to you guys, how do I make a plent cake?
Speaker 1: So we cream the equal parts butter and sugar together,
Speaker 1: and we tend to add all of our lemon zest
Speaker 1: and lemon juice at that point, just to make sure
Speaker 1: it's like fully infused into the butter, make sure it's
Speaker 1: beautifully light and fluffy before our kitchen. He's over there,
Speaker 1: and we'd yeah, just leave the butter and sugar creaming
Speaker 1: for at least a good ten minutes before we then
Speaker 1: start adding our eggs and are all our dry ingredients.
Speaker 1: You can ground the almonds really finely into a beautiful
Speaker 1: flower with the plentyin, and then yeah, slowly but surely
Speaker 1: add the sort of dry stuff with the eggs. Right,
Speaker 1: And so is this because again I was always taught
Speaker 1: you fold, you fold the powder in, you fold the flower,
Speaker 1: you fold them. Does it make a difference with a
Speaker 1: plantiquet because the folding was to keep the air in
Speaker 1: or something to keep it. So we use a paddle
Speaker 1: in our mixer. So essentially that's the same sort of
Speaker 1: process as folding. I think if you were to do
Speaker 1: it my hand, sort of very romantic wast speed. Is
Speaker 1: it the essence in the oven straight away? So yeah,
Speaker 1: we use a paddle and then incorporate all the ingredients together,
Speaker 1: line a tin on the base and side, and then
Speaker 1: in the oven for an hour and a half at
Speaker 1: one fifty and a half one fifty and is that
Speaker 1: depending on size. So this is for us, this is it,
Speaker 1: And yeah, that will tend to serve about twenty portions
Speaker 1: in the restaurant, give or take. But it's lovely to
Speaker 1: have a breakfast. It's a really nice cake. You're feeling
Speaker 1: very tacative after tea or I'm trying to think of
Speaker 1: any other time of day. But yeah, and then we
Speaker 1: serve it with this gorgeous Taranos sauce over the blood
Speaker 1: oranges and a dollop of creme fresh. It sounds good.
Speaker 1: It's the most beautiful cake I think we serve on
Speaker 1: in this adulty side of the restaurant and school, just
Speaker 1: with the yellows and the sort of burnt oranges. And
Speaker 1: this is because a River cafe but up until about
Speaker 1: four years ago, we never had a pastry chef. You know,
Speaker 1: we never had a pastry kitchen. We just all made cakes.
Speaker 1: You know. It's the idea that every chef had to
Speaker 1: make a cake, you know, and had to make it
Speaker 1: a tart, and it was all part of the thing.
Speaker 1: And then, first of all, some of them, I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel like that, but some people are really good
Speaker 1: at cooking, you know, beef for lamb or fish or vegetables,
Speaker 1: and they don't like making cakes. And then some people
Speaker 1: or just love making cakes and don't like doing doing
Speaker 1: everything else. So yeah, we and then I guess we
Speaker 1: got bigger, and then we had that space. And then
Speaker 1: you used to come in the morning and somebody would
Speaker 1: be rolling out, you know, pizza dough or pasta filling
Speaker 1: and next to a nemesis and alarm to go off.
Speaker 1: I have to stop making the tomato sauce and go
Speaker 1: take something out of the oven. So we've got very
Speaker 1: grown up and very professional had a pastry kitchen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's all good, but it's a little bit far
Speaker 1: away because sometimes we don't go it up there. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's a dream, Yeah, it's a dream. To have
Speaker 1: that much space, Yeah, to bake it. And it's quite calm,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Yeah, when you go up there, they're making Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're making all those cakes. Durro so told me that
Speaker 1: you you cook with rigor that you when you bake
Speaker 1: your cakes, that there's a kind of discipline and a
Speaker 1: kind of organization and away. So maybe you were brought
Speaker 1: up that way or do you think it's something you've
Speaker 1: always Yeah, very much, so, very much so. My dad
Speaker 1: was My dad was a kind of cook who would
Speaker 1: stand over something and chick cook. And you can send
Speaker 1: anything else to be a dereliction of duty. Like you
Speaker 1: don't leave your post. You just stand there and stare
Speaker 1: at it. If it's boiling an egg, cooking a curry,
Speaker 1: you stand there and you don't leave it because it's
Speaker 1: going to burn. I've chilled out a bit with that.
Speaker 1: But there are certain things you make that you have
Speaker 1: you can't leave alone, like porridge, Like I had porridge
Speaker 1: this morning. When have you been in doing your painting
Speaker 1: all day? And then you do have friends, would you
Speaker 1: like to cook it? So the last I did cook
Speaker 1: dinner for a bunch of friends a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: and I'm very very indecisive and probably not not the
Speaker 1: most confident of cooks. So I cook. I always cook
Speaker 1: like five things and the hope that somebody will like
Speaker 1: one thing and eat it. So I don't do that.
Speaker 1: With your painting, I do pretty much. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: the same way. Paint really a lot. Just do a
Speaker 1: to figure out which one works. So I cooked a
Speaker 1: venison pie topped with like mash. So I did that, um,
Speaker 1: roast chicken. I forgot what the other thing? Vegetables do
Speaker 1: you like? I love cooking kale and carola narrow and
Speaker 1: things like that. I kind of almost dick thementt hot
Speaker 1: water to drag them out so they're almost raw, which
Speaker 1: drives my mom insane because she hates it. She's like,
Speaker 1: it's tough, it's just drewey. Why don't you cook? I
Speaker 1: was always saying that, Mom, you have to see them
Speaker 1: in the goodness. You need this, you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: you need you need all these vitamins, and you have
Speaker 1: to just get through it because it's good for you.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true, but I think it's
Speaker 1: always always. You know, in England they boil everything. They
Speaker 1: used to, Yeah, boil everything for hours. As a friend
Speaker 1: of mine used to say, you know when when suddenly
Speaker 1: people started working, they say, oh, we only you know, gosh,
Speaker 1: we don't have time to cook. So we're only going
Speaker 1: to be able to cook the vegetables for half an hour. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but then you know, then the Italians do cook them
Speaker 1: for a long time. They don't have anything authentic except
Speaker 1: for pasta the time. Vegetables are usually cooked for a
Speaker 1: long time, but they're usually stewed in olive oil, or
Speaker 1: if they're if they're boiled and they're boiled to they're
Speaker 1: quite soft, but then a lot of olive oil eleven
Speaker 1: after that. Yeah, we talked about food and growing up
Speaker 1: ban Ghana and painting and traveling and cooking, and so
Speaker 1: I think we also think how food does affect our memories.
Speaker 1: And it's been great learning about your life through through
Speaker 1: food and your memories. And I suppose the last question
Speaker 1: to you, and if you were to say that there
Speaker 1: was a food that you might turn to when you
Speaker 1: need comfort, So food that not necessarily when you're hungry,
Speaker 1: but when you feel that somehow eating something will make
Speaker 1: you feel better, Maybe you feel more loved, less tired,
Speaker 1: less lonely, less invisible whatever it is. Is there a
Speaker 1: food that you would go to for comfort? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there is actually, and it's it's hard to get right.
Speaker 1: So um, you have to buy the right ones and
Speaker 1: they have to be the right level of right. Spence
Speaker 1: is killing me. They can't be too right and they can't. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: give me quiz. It's something that looks like one thing
Speaker 1: but is actually another. It's like a large version of another. Ye,
Speaker 1: but did you say you got the outset it? They
Speaker 1: look like banana zad Rogers, so zad Rogers, our producers
Speaker 1: just tell my my it. Don't even let me get
Speaker 1: a story. I don't think so. So um. But the
Speaker 1: particularly the the the red what we call the red
Speaker 1: plantains to the ripe one because it's and I love
Speaker 1: it because it reminds me of my mom and my
Speaker 1: dad and being at home and it was always a
Speaker 1: real treat and my mom will still cook it when
Speaker 1: I go home. But you you, we tend to do
Speaker 1: it the lower cholesterol version. So cut them and roast
Speaker 1: them in the oven. But like I said, they have
Speaker 1: to be at the right point of right. Nothing I
Speaker 1: know out of the skin, no oil, nothing, just in
Speaker 1: a non stick, a really good non stick pan, because
Speaker 1: I'm the wise that you won't get them off, and
Speaker 1: then you serve them with peanuts. Oh yeah, peanuts and plantains.
Speaker 1: That's it. Okay, yeah, comfort, very comforting. Okay, Dad, tomorrow
Speaker 1: morning in the pain kitchen, show us how you do,
Speaker 1: and thank you so much for coming on. Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's pleasure, thank you, absolute pleasure. The River Cafe Lookbook
Speaker 1: is now available in bookshops and online. It has over
Speaker 1: one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs from the renowned
Speaker 1: photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty delicious and easy
Speaker 1: to prepare recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics
Speaker 1: that have been specially adapted for new cooks. The River
Speaker 1: Cafe Lookbook Recipes for cooks of all ages. Ruthie's Table
Speaker 1: four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios. For
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