Speaker 1: Welcome to Ruthie's Table for a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and adamize studios artists coming together in the restaurant.
Speaker 1: You know, Picasso drawn on the tablecloth and all that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. It's really known throughout history. But it
Speaker 1: is to do with the solitary nous of being in
Speaker 1: the studio and the solitariness of being an artist being
Speaker 1: very much alone. So this idea of coming together to
Speaker 1: eat is such a nice thing. Here we are and
Speaker 1: unseasonably wet and cold Saturday in London, but I feel warmed,
Speaker 1: as I always am, by being with my friend Tracy Emmon.
Speaker 1: She's a great friend and a great artist. Tracy, over
Speaker 1: to you, okay, so I'm My favorite thing to eat
Speaker 1: here is the grilled squid with shred, chili and rocket.
Speaker 1: Eight medium squid no bigger than your hand. Six large
Speaker 1: fresh red chilies, seeded and very finely chopped, a hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty meal, extra virgin oil, two DRAMs of rocket,
Speaker 1: four tablespoons of oil, and lemon dressing. One lemon cut
Speaker 1: into quarters to make the sauce. Put the chopped chilies
Speaker 1: in a bowl and cover with extra virgin olive oil,
Speaker 1: season heat a grill until very hot. Place the squid,
Speaker 1: including the tentacles, scored side down on the grill, season
Speaker 1: and grill for two minutes. Turn a squid pieces over.
Speaker 1: They will immediately curl up and by which time they
Speaker 1: will be cooked. Toss the rocket in the dressing. Arranged
Speaker 1: two squid bodies with tentacles on each plate with the rocket.
Speaker 1: Put a little of the chili sauce over the squid,
Speaker 1: and serve with lemon. I'm so happy that you chose
Speaker 1: such classic typically a representative of the River cafe recipe,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering why you chose squid chilian rocket.
Speaker 1: When I go to a restaurant, I always like to
Speaker 1: choose food that I wouldn't cook myself, but god, it's
Speaker 1: so easy to cook, so maybe I should do it.
Speaker 1: But then, and also I'm Mediterranean, so um squeeties such
Speaker 1: a Mediterranean food, And I always have this sort of
Speaker 1: light in a primal thing that if I can eat Mediterranean,
Speaker 1: eat part of my ancestral food as much as possible,
Speaker 1: it makes me feel really good when I eat it,
Speaker 1: So that's why I chose it. When you say that
Speaker 1: you're Mediterranean, tell me about being Mediterranean, because I thought
Speaker 1: you were a market. Well Margat is yeah, Margaret Mediterranean market.
Speaker 1: And well I'm Turkish Cypriot. My dad's Turkish Cypriot and
Speaker 1: my great grandfather was from this Dan and he was
Speaker 1: a slave in the Ottoman Empire and around eighteen, I
Speaker 1: don't know, about nineteen hundred he was given his freedom
Speaker 1: in Cyprus with fifty sheep. So we're known as the
Speaker 1: there's a thing called like the black Turks, and they
Speaker 1: actually came from the slaves from the Ottoman Empire, and
Speaker 1: my family on Mediterranean side is from that background, so um,
Speaker 1: there's your Mediterranean. My dad was really fantastic cook, like
Speaker 1: amazing cook. Grew all his own vegetables. We actually grew
Speaker 1: all our ound. Me and my dad grew all up
Speaker 1: all my vegetables on my studio roof back in the nineties.
Speaker 1: Everything everything from cucumbers, grigettes, ob jeans, potatoes, tomatoes, heritage tomatoes, beans,
Speaker 1: green beans, everything, and then my dad would cook so
Speaker 1: and my mom was a terrible cook. I hate saying it,
Speaker 1: both's true. And the kind of food I grew up
Speaker 1: on was a kind of strange mixture of this sort
Speaker 1: of really amazing food that my dad could cook. I'm
Speaker 1: this really terrible food that my mom could cook that
Speaker 1: I really loved, and what you loved mother's food, egg
Speaker 1: and chips. My mom was completely against me cooking, and
Speaker 1: when we were cooking at school, my mom would actually
Speaker 1: wrote me letters saying, my daughter will not learn to cook.
Speaker 1: My daughter is not going to be a slave to
Speaker 1: any man. But the truth was we didn't actually have
Speaker 1: the money for the cooking ingredients, so my mom. But
Speaker 1: even so it worked out kind of badly and kind
Speaker 1: of good. I didn't learn to cook at school. Cooking
Speaker 1: at school was pretty awful. And um, I only learned
Speaker 1: to cook when I was much older, when I was
Speaker 1: sort of a look around eighteen or nineteen, and even now,
Speaker 1: I'm not a very good cook, but I really like
Speaker 1: nice food. Yeah, and what I cook, I cook well. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's so interesting that she she didn't. I don't want
Speaker 1: you to be stuck in the kitchen as a slave
Speaker 1: or anyone to cook for her for a man, that's normal, yeah,
Speaker 1: but in a way for that time, back in the seventies,
Speaker 1: it was pretty radical as well. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: a strange psychotomy because there's my father being a good cook,
Speaker 1: and there's my mom being a bad cook, telling me
Speaker 1: not to be a slave to any man. Girl, she was.
Speaker 1: She ambitious for you and everywhere apart from keeping you
Speaker 1: from cookie did she have very strong ambitions for you.
Speaker 1: She put me on the pill when I was fourteen
Speaker 1: to make sure I didn't get pregnant. That's pretty ambitious.
Speaker 1: She's considered the idea of me having children to be
Speaker 1: a complete failure and not a positive thing. So she
Speaker 1: did everything to stop me from being a single mother
Speaker 1: and a young single mother. But that's right or wrong,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. It seemed to have worked in my
Speaker 1: favorite Yeah, and yeah, she's when I think about it,
Speaker 1: she was really not. My mom was very co the person,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't home based. Really wasn't her strong point.
Speaker 1: Do you think she wanted to do something else for herself? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: My mom was brilliant dancer and when she was sort
Speaker 1: of around fifteen, she had in an interview audition in
Speaker 1: a theater to for dancing, and her dad wouldn't let
Speaker 1: her go when you left her? And how old were
Speaker 1: we when you actually left your father's cooking? The deliciousness
Speaker 1: of growing vegetables and what how how old were you. Actually,
Speaker 1: my dad never lived at home. My dad only spent
Speaker 1: My dad left us when we were about seven, and
Speaker 1: my mom left us when we were twelve for quite
Speaker 1: long periods of time. So me and my twin brother
Speaker 1: when we grew up, it was very different from other
Speaker 1: people's backgrounds, and it was very impoverished. Were incredibly poor
Speaker 1: were It's strange we had it. We were very wealthy
Speaker 1: when we had that grow up until we were seven,
Speaker 1: and then my dad lost everything and my dad was married,
Speaker 1: so my dad spent three days with his wife, three
Speaker 1: days with my mom. We would say, one day somewhere else.
Speaker 1: So um, and so when my dad was around, the
Speaker 1: cooking or anything my dad did was like a big tree.
Speaker 1: My dad came here in on a ten pound ticket
Speaker 1: from Cyprus, and then my mom's a gypsy, so it's
Speaker 1: really quite exotic actually, you know. I was brought up
Speaker 1: on pomgranites and watermelon and with with my dad and well,
Speaker 1: my dad was at home, and then when I was older,
Speaker 1: I started traveling to Turkey with him as soon as
Speaker 1: we could go back to Cyprus. When I was I
Speaker 1: think I was twenty when the war finished, my dad
Speaker 1: took me to Cyprus and baby, we're going home. And
Speaker 1: that was the first trips Turkey site for since I
Speaker 1: was a baby. And and it was like amazing m
Speaker 1: to be with my dad, to be living with my dad.
Speaker 1: They're cooking everything, and and my mom was kind of
Speaker 1: a bit piste off because all that she'd done for me.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly I'm like, but I'm you know, on
Speaker 1: my my father's when you started out by saying you're Mediterranean,
Speaker 1: and so to actually probably go and see the Mediterraneans
Speaker 1: and have the food. But when we when we were
Speaker 1: up until we were about six, we would go to
Speaker 1: Turkey regularly once a year, and we spent when we
Speaker 1: were really tiny, we spent two periods of six months there.
Speaker 1: Once when I was about three or four, and then
Speaker 1: another time when I was six, we spent six months
Speaker 1: there and and all that time it would have been
Speaker 1: Mediterranean food and Mediterranean cooking. And we used to drive
Speaker 1: to Turkey, and this is really cool. We used to
Speaker 1: have in the back of the our car. We had
Speaker 1: a Zodiac. We had these little tiny wooden chairs, you know,
Speaker 1: with the rapportive seats, and my dad just with a
Speaker 1: brand new Zodio and my dad just stuck a hole
Speaker 1: through the roof through the you know the bits, and
Speaker 1: then got bongee plastic things around the chairs and then
Speaker 1: just sat us in the back of the car bouncing
Speaker 1: up and we're twins bouncing up and down on these
Speaker 1: chairs with those little knotty dogs, and we drive to Turkey,
Speaker 1: and we'd stop on the way all the time, and
Speaker 1: my dad would get the calor gas stove out and
Speaker 1: fry eggs and cook and everything, and we'd go go
Speaker 1: to fields and take watermelons and and things. So it
Speaker 1: was really exciting and like adventurous these drives. And I'm
Speaker 1: being I'm romanticizing about it now because it is romantic,
Speaker 1: and it was different and it was different from everybody
Speaker 1: else's upbringing that I knew. And so we went from
Speaker 1: that to this, like to squatting in a cottage and
Speaker 1: my mom working in a hotel as a waitress send
Speaker 1: a chamber maid, and so it was like from high
Speaker 1: to like really fast, a reversal of fortune when you
Speaker 1: were having to cook for yourself. Did you what did
Speaker 1: you read? What did you do? There was so my
Speaker 1: mom was out a lot most of the time, working
Speaker 1: leading and at weekends as well, she'd be out to
Speaker 1: three in the morning, so we were on our own
Speaker 1: and often my mom would leave our sandwiches and whatever.
Speaker 1: But my big thing was just like orange, just orange
Speaker 1: squash and just tons of orange squash and sitting up
Speaker 1: at night crocher and in bed and we and also
Speaker 1: for example, like Christmas, like you said about this, a
Speaker 1: lot of this podcast is about people sitting around the
Speaker 1: table and remembering it. Oh there was no sitting around
Speaker 1: the table for me. It was sitting and watching, to
Speaker 1: tell you, with a tray with egg and chips. You know,
Speaker 1: when my mom came home and Christmas was not Christmas.
Speaker 1: We didn't have Christmas because my mom was always working.
Speaker 1: Our Christmas was like a week after and kind of
Speaker 1: cobbled together, but it was never going to feel the
Speaker 1: same as the real Christmas. And one remember we had
Speaker 1: Salvation Army one year, you know, coming around with food
Speaker 1: and presents because we didn't have anything. My mom, if
Speaker 1: she didn't work, we had nothing. And that is a
Speaker 1: very different upbringing to a lot of people, I know,
Speaker 1: And it's not a thing to feel sorry for. I'm
Speaker 1: just staying the difference. And also it's pretty shocking to
Speaker 1: go from this wealthy thing of being quite spoiled as
Speaker 1: well in lots of ways up until I was seven
Speaker 1: and then nothing. Do you remember being hungry? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think my mom remembers asked, my mom's dead now?
Speaker 1: But you know, my mom this, this is one of
Speaker 1: the most shameful things that I have to say, But
Speaker 1: in a way, I'm sort of proud of her. When
Speaker 1: that the hotel was derelict behind, my mom went climbing
Speaker 1: on the roof and took lead off the roofs to
Speaker 1: sell it so we had something to eat. And that
Speaker 1: is on another level, complete different level. And so much
Speaker 1: of this is down to education and so much and
Speaker 1: it's like the cooking thing and education and food. There
Speaker 1: is really better ways to do this. But when you
Speaker 1: actually have nothing, and you're hear about these people women
Speaker 1: shoplifting to get their babies food, and it seems unimaginable,
Speaker 1: but it's not when you've been that poor, that's not.
Speaker 1: And it's happening now because we know that it's happening today,
Speaker 1: and we know that. You know, when children couldn't get
Speaker 1: to school because of the lockdown, they were missing the
Speaker 1: only meal they had for the whole day. You know,
Speaker 1: very many children only have lunch and that's it. I'm
Speaker 1: a big supporter of the Salvation Army or sort mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: And the Salvation Army feed sixty people a day a day,
Speaker 1: and it's more now and and all of these support
Speaker 1: of food banking, margate or whatever. It is a really
Speaker 1: really bad level. So um, yeah, And when you left,
Speaker 1: when you left? When did did you? Did you London
Speaker 1: at thirteen? Left school at thirteen, and I had to
Speaker 1: go back to school by law for lost four months
Speaker 1: from Christmas till May. Otherwise my mom social services would
Speaker 1: have been involved or whatever. And my mom my mom
Speaker 1: didn't mind if we didn't go to school. And I
Speaker 1: was brought up with absolutely no rules. And I guess
Speaker 1: this might be slightly the gypsy side and things no
Speaker 1: rules whatsoever. We made our own rules up. If I
Speaker 1: didn't want to go to school, I didn't go to school.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to bush my teeth, I didn't want
Speaker 1: to brush me. I wouldn't have sex, have sex as
Speaker 1: long as I was not going to get pregnant. All
Speaker 1: of these from the age of about thirteen fourteen, and
Speaker 1: and not going to school was because school was so depressing.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh my god, I'll get there and
Speaker 1: they chaut at me, or this would happen, all that
Speaker 1: would happen. I wasn't doing what I wanted to do,
Speaker 1: So the last few months when I went back, I
Speaker 1: just did art for four months more or less three
Speaker 1: days a week, and then left when I was fifteen,
Speaker 1: and then came to London the day I could leave school,
Speaker 1: that the first of May, I think it was. I
Speaker 1: just came straight to London with a bag to David
Speaker 1: Bowie albums and some clothes and stare. I stayed in
Speaker 1: all different places. I stayed in a school in Warren
Speaker 1: Street which was pretty educational, with quite a lot of
Speaker 1: well known they're quite well known people now, very successful
Speaker 1: people lived there, and I stayed with different friends different floors.
Speaker 1: Stayed in a cupboard in Clapham for quite some time.
Speaker 1: And and it's a real mystery how I never really
Speaker 1: got into trouble or but I was kind of sassy
Speaker 1: and sort of streetwise, so that saved me quite a bit.
Speaker 1: So I learned a lot and I grew up, but
Speaker 1: I was always a lot more mature from my age.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I just grew up very quickly.
Speaker 1: I had to, and but I don't really have such
Speaker 1: big regrets over that because it wasn't It wasn't my fault,
Speaker 1: it wasn't my doing. Do you have memories of food
Speaker 1: in that poverty at that time in London when you
Speaker 1: first came, it's okay. So this is my only Scott
Speaker 1: memory of food at Warren Street. I was only fifteen
Speaker 1: or sixteen and I turned up and they were in
Speaker 1: the basement cooking there. A lot of them went to
Speaker 1: St Martin's and the Royal College of Art whatever, so
Speaker 1: it was a good influence in lots ways. And I
Speaker 1: was so hungry and they said, you're hungry, traced us,
Speaker 1: So I probably haven't eaten for about two days, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: And then they told me they were cooking dog and
Speaker 1: I believe them, so I wouldn't eat it. And that
Speaker 1: was one of my And when I bring this up
Speaker 1: but in a STOTEP, when I see any of them,
Speaker 1: they always, yeah, it's not a good story. But that's
Speaker 1: my only real big story about food. I think Parvarty,
Speaker 1: you know, Parvarty and food youth and food lonely this
Speaker 1: and food being the first into world but you don't
Speaker 1: know where you're sleeping, what you're eating, you know, the
Speaker 1: lack of being taken care of is It's true because
Speaker 1: now I have this thing that I've work on, my
Speaker 1: war cupboard, and I have one in in France and
Speaker 1: my house there and one in London, and my war
Speaker 1: cover is just full of like literally, if there was
Speaker 1: like a war, I've got enough food to keep me
Speaker 1: going in tins and tins of sardines and all kinds
Speaker 1: of stuff and everything. And it just gives me a
Speaker 1: sense of security. And I really love going shopping for
Speaker 1: really nice food and putting it in the fridge and
Speaker 1: looking at it, and it makes me feel so safe
Speaker 1: and cozy and secure. And it's taken me a long
Speaker 1: time to realize that I had to hang up about it.
Speaker 1: I think probably only in the last few years that
Speaker 1: I realized how much it meant to me to that
Speaker 1: food makes you feel secure, uncomfortable. And for a long
Speaker 1: time I didn't eat. I used to be so thin
Speaker 1: and every day and whatnot. I didn't care about it.
Speaker 1: I didn't care about food at all. For years and
Speaker 1: years and years. I was very um, sort of not
Speaker 1: anti food, but it just wasn't on my list of
Speaker 1: things as a priority for living. But now now it
Speaker 1: really is because because I understand about my strange relationship
Speaker 1: with it and food and art and food and creating,
Speaker 1: and you know, the the solitariness. I was thinking of
Speaker 1: an artist, you know, in the studio working and then
Speaker 1: um going out at night and partying and having food, drinking,
Speaker 1: being together with other artists when you were in art school,
Speaker 1: was that something that you sort of where you exposed
Speaker 1: to the idea that you all were painting and working together.
Speaker 1: There was that whole What was it like being now?
Speaker 1: When I when I was at art school, i worked.
Speaker 1: I used to get in a ways, getting late in
Speaker 1: the morning, getting about quarter to eleven, which I was.
Speaker 1: I went to Maidstone College of Art and the Royal
Speaker 1: College of Art. Did painting at the Royal College of Art.
Speaker 1: When I was at Royal College of Art, I get
Speaker 1: in about quarter to eleven in the morning and I'd
Speaker 1: stayed at ten o'clock every night, and I'd work at
Speaker 1: the weekends as well. I had no social life when
Speaker 1: I was at the Royal College of Art, none at all.
Speaker 1: Just worked every single day. So and but the thing
Speaker 1: about artists and restaurants is brilliant because then after I
Speaker 1: left art school years later when when I m I
Speaker 1: think one of the first things I did as soon
Speaker 1: as I started having got money was oysters, and I
Speaker 1: just I love oysters, and I all of my excess
Speaker 1: income was spent on oysters. Absolutely. However, anywhere everywhere I'd go,
Speaker 1: well like, I actually liked I actually really like rock oysters.
Speaker 1: So that was quite easy in Witstable in those days,
Speaker 1: and you get you get free oysters for seventy five
Speaker 1: or something. It was using and um, I used to
Speaker 1: just try all different restaurants or different oysters, work out
Speaker 1: what I like, what I don't like. And I think
Speaker 1: my my biggest moment was I was on about a
Speaker 1: hundred a week oysters, hundred oysters, and I used to
Speaker 1: cycle everywhere, and I was so fit and I was
Speaker 1: just lean on, sort of like a ballerine. I just
Speaker 1: sind you muscle and just like oyster diet, I was
Speaker 1: just like on fire. It was fantastic. Do you have
Speaker 1: a house in the south of France? What is what
Speaker 1: is eating like there? Did you choose it? Also because
Speaker 1: it was on the Mediterranean, I chose it by default,
Speaker 1: but yes, it is on the Mediterranean and I'm on
Speaker 1: the top of a hill, on top of a hill
Speaker 1: looking at I have a sort of two hundred and
Speaker 1: maybe two hundred and sixty degree of the sea. It's
Speaker 1: just behind me that I can't see the sea, and
Speaker 1: it is really beautiful, and it's in the middle of
Speaker 1: the nature reserve. I don't have any neighbors, and it's
Speaker 1: a sort of twenty five minute drive to the little
Speaker 1: town to buy food and everything. So what I tend
Speaker 1: to do is do one shop in the week and
Speaker 1: that's it. And then I have my war cupboard. And
Speaker 1: my favorite cooking is when I get down and I've
Speaker 1: got a vegetable garden as well, really Britute vegetable garden,
Speaker 1: and I get down to the real nitty gritty and
Speaker 1: I have to be really inventive with what I cook.
Speaker 1: I really love it and it's exciting and it's funny
Speaker 1: with what I come up with everything. And and I
Speaker 1: just cook for myself there as well, because there's no
Speaker 1: there's no restaurants anywhere to eat near me, and I
Speaker 1: love to produce there. Do you go and you going
Speaker 1: around vegetables. I don't know if you if you do
Speaker 1: want to talk about this, but we've had quite a
Speaker 1: tumultuous time. But probably nobody, certainly in this room, certainly
Speaker 1: not mean more than you with your illness. And I
Speaker 1: think your illness must have affected the way you eat
Speaker 1: because it was to do with your digestive system, isn't it?
Speaker 1: And so did you did you have to start eating
Speaker 1: when you were ill? Or because actually it's not my
Speaker 1: digestive system, it's my bladder, okay, so different bag. And
Speaker 1: and yes, it has affected the way that I eat
Speaker 1: because I can't have I still can't couldn't have. I
Speaker 1: can't have a full bow. I can't be because it
Speaker 1: affects the stormer and everything. And my diets completely changed
Speaker 1: since I was ill, which is quite strange. It's like totally,
Speaker 1: I mean totally changed. To tell me, what do you
Speaker 1: I am vast amounts of fish, vast amounts of apples,
Speaker 1: vast amounts of fruit all day long. I am a
Speaker 1: lot of which is not supposed to be good for me.
Speaker 1: By eat a lot of cold food, and I don't
Speaker 1: know why, much more than hot food. I am a
Speaker 1: lot more lemon all the time because they alkaline. I
Speaker 1: am my diet and it's not conscious thing either. It's
Speaker 1: really subc I haven't even tried. I'm not even thinking
Speaker 1: about it. It's just what's happened. It's strange. So you
Speaker 1: haven't been directed by doctors of what you can. I
Speaker 1: eat quite healthily, So they when you're when you're coming
Speaker 1: out of hospitals that you see nutritions and they tell
Speaker 1: you this, and they tell you that. But I'm kind
Speaker 1: of quite forward thinking on good food. So when I
Speaker 1: eat something bad, it's because I really want to. And
Speaker 1: when you there are so many reasons we eat, isn't
Speaker 1: There are reasons we eat because we're hungry, eat because
Speaker 1: we're in a beautiful place and we want to celebrate,
Speaker 1: or we eat because we are feeling a certain way.
Speaker 1: We need comfort. If you needed food, if you needed
Speaker 1: it for comfort, is there a food that you might
Speaker 1: reach for and be totally apples? Apples, apples. I eat
Speaker 1: probably about six to eight apples a day a day. Apples.
Speaker 1: I couldn't live without apples. What kind I like? I've
Speaker 1: forgotten what they called it. Those pink ones and they're
Speaker 1: kind of sweet, pink lady. Yes, I absolutely love them.
Speaker 1: I washed them, put them on the bread board, and
Speaker 1: I get the knife and I don't cut them equally.
Speaker 1: I just slice all bits off until I get the course,
Speaker 1: so it's all different shapes. And maybe I take three
Speaker 1: of them and I'm like a big pile on a
Speaker 1: very beautiful blue Delf plate. And then I sit anywhere
Speaker 1: and just slowly eat three apples at a time that
Speaker 1: are all different bits, shapes and pieces, and it makes
Speaker 1: me feel so good. That's what we want you to feel, Dracy,
Speaker 1: we want you to feel good. Thank you, Frankie. To
Speaker 1: visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go to
Speaker 1: shop The River Cafe dot co dot uk. Ruthie's Table
Speaker 1: four is a production of I Heart Radio and Adam
Speaker 1: I Studios. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.