Speaker 1: You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: This is River Cafe Table four with me Ruthie Rogers.
Speaker 2: On River Cafe Table four, I talk to friends who
Speaker 2: know the River Cafe well about food, the food they cook,
Speaker 2: the food they eat, the food of their memories.
Speaker 1: Penne with zucchini and lemon zest Serve six.
Speaker 2: This week I have wonderful, beautiful, brilliant, few adjectives emily plant.
Speaker 1: One kilo medium zucchini, yellow green or ridged.
Speaker 2: In each episode, my guest reads a recipe they have
Speaker 2: chosen from one of our cookbooks.
Speaker 1: Two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: grams unsalted butter, one garlic clove, peeled and thinly sliced,
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty grams penne. One bunch of fresh
Speaker 1: mint leaves, roughly torn, two lemons, preferably a Malfi. Wash
Speaker 1: and trim the zucchini and cut into small pieces, and
Speaker 1: in a large saucepan, heat the olive oil with one
Speaker 1: hundred grams of the butter. Add the zucchini and stir
Speaker 1: season well, adding the garlic, cook gently, stirring from time
Speaker 1: to time for twenty minutes. Bring a pot of salted
Speaker 1: water to the boil, Add the penne to the water
Speaker 1: and cook ten minutes or until al dente. Drain and
Speaker 1: add to the zucchini. Add the remaining butter and the
Speaker 1: mint leaves. Mix thoroughly great, lemon zest on top.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Emily. Here we are in the River Cafe,
Speaker 2: late afternoon, looking at the restaurant, getting ready actually for
Speaker 2: the evening service.
Speaker 1: Can't wait.
Speaker 2: I'm so happy that you chose this recipe because it
Speaker 2: is one of my favorites. A shud I say that
Speaker 2: most times the recipe is my favorite, but.
Speaker 3: This one is. And I was wondering why this recipe
Speaker 3: do you cook it?
Speaker 1: Honestly, it just has three of my favorite things in it,
Speaker 1: so any I just wanted to pick one of your
Speaker 1: pasta dishes because it is my ultimate favorite thing and
Speaker 1: what I crave most.
Speaker 2: And did you grow up eating pasta? Yes, the food child, but.
Speaker 1: It was more like spaghetti, you know my mom. My
Speaker 1: mom did tell me, well, God bless her. She had
Speaker 1: four kids, and I'm sure we were all wanting different things,
Speaker 1: and she just had so many kids in so little
Speaker 1: time that very often she'd be like, you know, you
Speaker 1: get what you get and you don't get upset. But
Speaker 1: I do have this lasting memory of her spaghetti bolonnaise
Speaker 1: and then always wanting just pasta with butter and cheese
Speaker 1: as well. So she would always let us have the
Speaker 1: pasta with the butter and if we had the bolonese first.
Speaker 1: And I find myself doing it to my kids, I
Speaker 1: will bribe them. They've got to have the sauce pasta
Speaker 1: and then they can have just the butter and cheeses cheese.
Speaker 2: And when kids come to the River Cafe for lunch families,
Speaker 2: you know, two pasta, butter and cheese. But in fact
Speaker 2: it is really delici.
Speaker 1: It's actually delicious. No, I have to be careble not
Speaker 1: to shovel it into my mouth as I'm serving it
Speaker 1: to them. They love lasagna, they love I mean, I've
Speaker 1: always made them all kinds of pasta, sauces, and I'll
Speaker 1: sneak all kinds of things in there and try and
Speaker 1: get it past them. My oldest one will try most things, steak, chicken.
Speaker 1: Neither of them want the fish, apart from sushi fish.
Speaker 2: It's funny about yeah, I know, my stepson said fish.
Speaker 3: He was about thirty.
Speaker 1: I think it's so weird. I don't know why.
Speaker 3: Fish maybe where they look, or maybe.
Speaker 1: The b they look. To be honest, I think it
Speaker 1: is more the way they look. They kind of envision
Speaker 1: what they look and it kind of roastes them out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were once Increase. It was about four and
Speaker 2: it was fishing. It's stand there all day. We made
Speaker 2: this little fishing rod in the harbor, and in the end, Richard,
Speaker 2: my husband, actually went to the market and bought a
Speaker 2: fish and we all dove put the fish on the hook,
Speaker 2: and then I think he never ate a fish again
Speaker 2: for a long time.
Speaker 1: We had a fishing experience in Martha's Vineyard, where we
Speaker 1: like to go every summer because John's from Boston and
Speaker 1: his whole family is sort of around there, and it's
Speaker 1: a magical place. Mouth's been beautiful, absolutely love it's so
Speaker 1: bizarre and bohemian special. But we took the kids fishing
Speaker 1: and Hazel pulled in a fish and it flopped around
Speaker 1: on the deck and she screamed. She never recovered. She
Speaker 1: was like, it's pleading, like it was awful, It's very real.
Speaker 2: So did they cook with you? Did they come in there?
Speaker 3: They do?
Speaker 1: I make this chicken noodle soup that they really love.
Speaker 3: How do you make that? Well?
Speaker 1: I actually used ginger in it, and it has this
Speaker 1: kind of richness to it. Either I'll use leftover roast chicken,
Speaker 1: or I'll sort of sear her or some chicken thigh
Speaker 1: usually like using chicken thighs bonus skinless. They're like a
Speaker 1: dream on there. You can kind of put them in
Speaker 1: anything and it's got. It's some celery and onions and
Speaker 1: beautiful chicken stock, wine and those egg noodles, and they
Speaker 1: just love it.
Speaker 2: I always say you should always have chicken soup arow.
Speaker 2: I always have a part of chicken soup because there
Speaker 2: is something so sustaining about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very Moorish. It was one of the first
Speaker 1: things I made for John. I think the.
Speaker 2: Chicken soup, I think it's always interested the food we
Speaker 2: cook for an occasion.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was going to once to do a book
Speaker 2: called What to Cook When when you're depressed, when you're broke,
Speaker 2: when you want us to do somebody when you don't
Speaker 2: have somebody important coming to dinner? Did you think about
Speaker 2: that when you were cooking for him?
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny. I guess they just made that. I
Speaker 1: knew he would love, like I mean, a roast chicken.
Speaker 1: Who doesn't love roast chicken. And the roast chicken I
Speaker 1: love is Ina Garten's roast chicken. It's called it her
Speaker 1: engagement chicken because I think when people make it for people,
Speaker 1: they get engaged or something. Lemon, garlic, onions up the chicken, thyme,
Speaker 1: salt and pepper, all that, and you scatter onions around
Speaker 1: the chicken, but you pack them in really tight into
Speaker 1: the tray and then you roast them really high about
Speaker 1: an hour and twenty minutes and they're done and they're perfect.
Speaker 1: And then when you take the chickens out, you then
Speaker 1: kind of saute in some wine and some butter and
Speaker 1: into that onionique garlicy mixture. Oh my gods, divine, it's
Speaker 1: really sticky and yummy, and then they fell in love.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's it. That's all it took.
Speaker 2: But were you going out tell me more about your
Speaker 2: Did your mother work or she had four kids and
Speaker 2: so her cooking was well.
Speaker 1: So she was an actress when Fie and I were
Speaker 1: very little, and then she just had too many kids.
Speaker 1: She had two more after me and fee and then
Speaker 1: I think, you know, really felt she needed to be
Speaker 1: home with us. I don't know if she loved cooking
Speaker 1: because it was more of a chore for her with kids,
Speaker 1: being like, I don't like risotto. I don't you know.
Speaker 1: I think it's probably like a bit joyless at times.
Speaker 3: Did she teach you how to do her recipes?
Speaker 1: She did, but she sort of is a bit of
Speaker 1: a just bung it all in.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So was it very British?
Speaker 1: Yeah, very British and general and then definitely every Sunday
Speaker 1: was the religion of the Sunday roast.
Speaker 3: And what was that?
Speaker 2: As an American, I'm really intrigued by the whole British
Speaker 2: Sunday lunch.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like Christmas Dinner, Thanksgiving. Yeah, Sunday, every Sunday
Speaker 1: we would either have roast beef, roast lamb, roast chicken,
Speaker 1: or roast pork. It was one of those. Always a roast,
Speaker 1: always a roast, and then we would have roast potatoes
Speaker 1: with the beef. You'd have Yorkshire puddings, we'd have everything.
Speaker 1: We'd have the bread, sauce, we'd have vegetables, we'd have gravy.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just have this lasting memory in my
Speaker 1: dad's plate, just like swimming in Great swimming In.
Speaker 4: Emily talked about Sunday roast when she was a child.
Speaker 4: So when we're roasting meat here, we like to sear
Speaker 4: the meat and get a good color on all sides.
Speaker 4: And then often we'll put it into the wood oven
Speaker 4: and get a dry heat into it to start the
Speaker 4: cooking process. And then maybe after ten or fifteen minutes,
Speaker 4: we can go in with hard herbs, whether it's rosemary,
Speaker 4: age bay, and if it wants a splash of wine
Speaker 4: or water. Now this is the same weather we're making
Speaker 4: slow roasted veal, spatchcock chickens, pot roasted beef filet. This
Speaker 4: is the way that we like to do it.
Speaker 2: The River Cafe Cafe are all day space and just
Speaker 2: steps away from the restaurant. Is now open in the
Speaker 2: morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, ciambella and crostada from
Speaker 2: our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, ice creamed coups and River.
Speaker 3: Cafe classic desserts.
Speaker 2: We have sharing plates Alumi, misti, mozzarella, brusqueto, red and
Speaker 2: yellow peppers, fortello, tonato and more. Come in the evening
Speaker 2: for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar, No
Speaker 2: need to book, see you here. So when you're growing
Speaker 2: up with this, you know, really important food tradition in
Speaker 2: your house of sitting down to dinner that your mother goes.
Speaker 2: What age did you kind of leave, Did you go
Speaker 2: to university here and stay home or did you go abroad.
Speaker 1: Or so I am the only person in my family
Speaker 1: who didn't go to university because when I was about seventeen,
Speaker 1: I did this play with my school and an agent
Speaker 1: came to see the play and he said, I think
Speaker 1: you're really good. You should do this. And I really
Speaker 1: had a cavalier attitude towards because I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm not worrying. I wasn't really thinking about being an actress.
Speaker 1: I was sort of wanting to go to university and
Speaker 1: do languages like I always loved Spanish and French, and
Speaker 1: my mom's an amazing Languish Yeah, brilliant British speaks like
Speaker 1: three languages, and so I was sort of inspired by
Speaker 1: that and wanted to do that. And then he said, well,
Speaker 1: why didn't you give it a go? And I'd also
Speaker 1: seen from my mother how tough the industry was, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't have a rose t hinted gaze towards it.
Speaker 1: I'd seen how damaging it can be. It's so personal,
Speaker 1: you know, so I was like, Okay, we I'll give
Speaker 1: it a go, but I don't really know if I
Speaker 1: want to do it. I can't believe I was talking
Speaker 1: like that now, because I truly am madly in love
Speaker 1: with it. But anyway, I tried it. I auditioned. I
Speaker 1: got my first job when I was eighteen, once I
Speaker 1: was out of school, which was a play with Dame
Speaker 1: Judy Dench and she was just divine to me, and
Speaker 1: so Peter Hall directed it. I mean it was just mad.
Speaker 1: I was just such a luckless The royal family it's
Speaker 1: like twenty years. Yeah, it's based on the Barrymores. The
Speaker 1: fictional family is called the Cavendishes. And yeah, so quite
Speaker 1: soon after that, around eighteen nineteen, I got my own
Speaker 1: place and then just cut Yeah, I got my own
Speaker 1: place in Parsons Green and I was so green. I
Speaker 1: mean I just like went and looked at it and
Speaker 1: I just liked the look of the colors on the walls.
Speaker 1: So I just went with it. And my mom came
Speaker 1: over and she was like, is there any heating in here,
Speaker 1: and I realized there was no central heating in the apartment,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, I just got to were
Speaker 1: really cool because.
Speaker 2: I think that's a good criteria.
Speaker 1: It was a happy place.
Speaker 2: It just was freezing, and that's very young ETI yeah,
Speaker 2: it was young. And then did you cook at all?
Speaker 2: Did you still want to eat? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Cook?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I do remember before I did the play.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're going to be horrified to hear this
Speaker 1: because I haven't had one since I used to go
Speaker 1: every night to Burger King, Yeah and get a double
Speaker 1: cheeseburger before I went on stage. I don't know how
Speaker 1: I went on stage two hours after that.
Speaker 2: I was going to ask you, you know, because it
Speaker 2: is intriguing. You know, we all think about how we
Speaker 2: work and how we eat and when we when we work,
Speaker 2: and how we sort of fit all that in. And
Speaker 2: so if you are in the theater you weren't there,
Speaker 2: would you still do that now that you would eat
Speaker 2: before going on stage?
Speaker 1: Would like, I'm someone who needs to eat all day.
Speaker 1: I'm not someone who can have three meals a day.
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm usually hungry most of the time.
Speaker 1: And so I tried to do sort of four to
Speaker 1: five smaller meals throughout the day. But yeah, I couldn't
Speaker 1: eat a double cheeseburger with eyes now and not want
Speaker 1: to go and have a nap.
Speaker 3: But you would eat.
Speaker 1: He was eighteen, so I was like, it's fine. So
Speaker 1: I would get to the theater around I don't know,
Speaker 1: I guess we would go on at seven thirty, so
Speaker 1: I would eat at like six fifteen, and just discussing
Speaker 1: every night. Every night. I was obsessed with it. It
Speaker 1: was my favorite thing. I get the Tube Indy Circus,
Speaker 1: I go to Burger King straight to the theater.
Speaker 2: I probably stank of burgers, and Judy Dench noticed that
Speaker 2: you were smelling of a Burger King burger lovely love
Speaker 2: Like every.
Speaker 1: Night after the show she would bring me into her
Speaker 1: dressing room and there'd be so many like famous people
Speaker 1: in there, and I was like, what, Like I was
Speaker 1: a kid. I mean it was amazing. And Peter Bowles
Speaker 1: was in it. Do you know him?
Speaker 2: I remember?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And he took me to the.
Speaker 3: Ivy for the first day. Yeah, yeah, do you remember that?
Speaker 1: I do? I remember it. I mean I'd never been
Speaker 1: to a restaurant like that before. It was mad.
Speaker 3: Did you go to restaurant with your parents.
Speaker 1: If I remember, on a Friday night, we would go
Speaker 1: for a Chinese great let Roehampton and Crispy Duck pancakes,
Speaker 1: and so I remember just being obsessed with that kind
Speaker 1: of thing growing up. But I feel it's a more
Speaker 1: common thing for people to take their kids out to
Speaker 1: cafes and restaurants now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that you know, as you say,
Speaker 2: can be the penet, butter and cheese. But sometimes, you know,
Speaker 2: I was once amazed we had an eight year old
Speaker 2: who ordered a grouse.
Speaker 3: No they were Italian, but.
Speaker 1: Oh see that's incredible. Stanley and Fee like Stanley, who
Speaker 1: is you know, fisted of food. Even his little kids,
Speaker 1: like they have about five things they really love, and
Speaker 1: he's like, come on, like, I made a lasagna for
Speaker 1: my kids yesterday and Hazel loves it and everything. But Violet,
Speaker 1: my little one who's four, she was really like, no,
Speaker 1: I just want the plane lasagna. I just want blanket pasta,
Speaker 1: she calls it. But I said, come on, you got
Speaker 1: to try it, and then I'll give you the blanket pasta.
Speaker 1: And then she looks at it. She goes, it looks
Speaker 1: like a cake. I said, there you go, and then
Speaker 1: she loved it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what about when you leave them and you able
Speaker 3: to do a film?
Speaker 1: Well, normally they're with me when I work, but it's
Speaker 1: hard during school time. And now they're both in school.
Speaker 1: Like when they were little, like it kind of dragged
Speaker 1: them around anyway, but now they kind of have to
Speaker 1: be a bit more stable. So they're going to stay
Speaker 1: in London as school. And I'm doing this six part
Speaker 1: western which I'm completely thrilled by. It's heart racing piece.
Speaker 1: It's sort of as violent as it is witty.
Speaker 3: It's real.
Speaker 1: It's written by Hugo Blick and it was brought to
Speaker 1: me about two years ago. We got delayed because of COVID,
Speaker 1: but I truly read the first page and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be doing this.
Speaker 3: This is just about the first case.
Speaker 1: It's so dynamic and arresting and beautiful. You just know
Speaker 1: the writing. It's all about the writing for me. Now
Speaker 1: I'm just realizing you just cannot make a good movie
Speaker 1: out of a bad script. And there's conflict and intrigue
Speaker 1: and something different. I'm in.
Speaker 3: Are there other women?
Speaker 1: There's a couple of other really cool female parts. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of boys. It's like a very but it's
Speaker 1: partly because shears presented as this aristocratic woman is a
Speaker 1: real fish out of water in this it brother brute
Speaker 1: masculine world in eighteen ninety.
Speaker 3: Do you eat on the film set? They do good
Speaker 3: food or is it?
Speaker 1: It depends where you are, And I've been someplace it's
Speaker 1: not very good. But we're in Spain, so.
Speaker 3: Maybe they might. Yeah, they might do that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I just try and make my own thing, and
Speaker 1: I'll bring my crop part and whip something up during
Speaker 1: the days, so I've got something waiting for me when
Speaker 1: I get home. But I think when I'm working, I
Speaker 1: don't tend to eat sort of pasta and bread because
Speaker 1: it just makes me so sluggish. So I'm obsessed with
Speaker 1: rice right talking about rice? It is one of my
Speaker 1: favorite things on Yeah, what do you love about rice?
Speaker 1: I love the taste of it. I love that you
Speaker 1: can put anything with it. I love all kinds of rice.
Speaker 1: I love that you can soak it in stuff, like
Speaker 1: I have this miso soaked black rice that this chef
Speaker 1: I know does for me.
Speaker 4: I understand that Emily loves rice. So here at the restaurant,
Speaker 4: we use two different risotto rices. One is carnirole, the
Speaker 4: other is violona nano rice. The corn we generally use
Speaker 4: with chicken stock, and this can go with a variety
Speaker 4: of things mushrooms, artochokes, greens, and then the smaller fatter grain,
Speaker 4: which is the via lano nano rice we use with
Speaker 4: fish stocks.
Speaker 2: When I interviewed Michael Kane, he said that he'd never
Speaker 2: done a deal for a movie that was in any
Speaker 2: place other than a restaurant. Everything that was decided was
Speaker 2: decided in his day.
Speaker 3: You went to the.
Speaker 2: Ivy or to like with your agent, with your agent,
Speaker 2: with the producer. Somebody's trying to convince you to be
Speaker 2: in a movie, and it was done. And I always
Speaker 2: think it's interesting how people going back to restaurants, how
Speaker 2: people use restaurants.
Speaker 3: So some people use it.
Speaker 2: To announce that they want a divorce or they want
Speaker 2: to fire someone. You can do a very private thing
Speaker 2: in a public space.
Speaker 1: Do you know, I do see what you're saying about
Speaker 1: that people do use restaurants. I think for me in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: like everyone meets in restaurants, Like I've met cast members
Speaker 1: for the first time in a row restaurant. I've met
Speaker 1: producers directors. That's normally how I've met people. It's only
Speaker 1: recently sort of over zoom or a phone call that
Speaker 1: it's very new to me because I do need to
Speaker 1: sit with someone and get a sense of them and
Speaker 1: get a sense of the vibe and whether our energy
Speaker 1: is going to be good, whether it's going to be
Speaker 1: copa setic and a cool experience. And I'm always interested
Speaker 1: what people eat.
Speaker 5: And what they want or what they drink, Like if
Speaker 5: they'll have a glass of wine, yeah, they won't like
Speaker 5: so if it's an evening sit down, I'll definitely have
Speaker 5: a drink, you know, if it's someone I've never met before,
Speaker 5: because it's a.
Speaker 1: Bit nerve wracking as well. But a restaurant it is
Speaker 1: that safe, atmospheric, buzzy place where if there's a lull
Speaker 1: in conversation, it doesn't matter. There's always stuff around you
Speaker 1: that you can feed off. You know.
Speaker 2: There was somebody I was swimming to that said he
Speaker 2: absolutely did not like going into a quiet restaurant. No,
Speaker 2: that you need that safety, and I think that's why
Speaker 2: people do things. It might be like firing somebody or
Speaker 2: breaking up because you can't throw a frying pants the
Speaker 2: sentence you know, really there's a kind of behavior. But
Speaker 2: then also I think that a lot of people do
Speaker 2: go for a first date in the restaurant because it
Speaker 2: does tell you something, doesn't It how the person needs,
Speaker 2: how they treat the waiter, whether they say thank you
Speaker 2: when the something down.
Speaker 3: It's kind of does.
Speaker 1: It's very true. And I'm always aware of how people
Speaker 1: are with because I feel sometimes everyone's nice to me,
Speaker 1: but I always watch how people are with the pas
Speaker 1: on set and how are you with people working at
Speaker 1: a restaurant, Like I want to get a real sense
Speaker 1: of who people are is how they are with everybody.
Speaker 3: Did you ever work in a restaurant?
Speaker 1: No? But I did work in a catering company. This
Speaker 1: amazing friend of my mother's aurageous catering company that she does,
Speaker 1: and she would hire Fie and I to be her waitresses.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, it was fun actually because the food was
Speaker 1: so good. She'd feed us like an extraordinary food. And
Speaker 1: I have this lasting memory of a quail leg cannope
Speaker 1: with Hollandais over it and on this little krusty Christinia
Speaker 1: Fee and I used to just steal them. We used
Speaker 1: to like pop them like pale. I mean, we loved them,
Speaker 1: but I have that memory of the quail egg.
Speaker 2: It is interesting, you know, just this conversation is about memory.
Speaker 2: You know, you might now remember so many things about
Speaker 2: that experience, but the quails like comes right.
Speaker 1: Fact, I do remember turning up one time and I
Speaker 1: was wearing these really ugly sandals and I had a
Speaker 1: chipped blue nail polish. I was like sixteen, and she
Speaker 1: thought I looked so unpresentable. I had to wash dishes
Speaker 1: all night. She was like, the best place for you
Speaker 1: did that?
Speaker 2: And I was like, and what about the politics of food?
Speaker 2: You think about sustainability or about giving your kids organic
Speaker 2: food or ORMs. Martha's Vineyard has so many good farms.
Speaker 1: Farm They have the most beautiful produce and eggs and cheese,
Speaker 1: And in Brooklyn it's harder. I find the produce is
Speaker 1: so much better in the UK.
Speaker 3: Better here, Yes, it's so.
Speaker 1: Real, Like the carrots are all wonky, they taste right,
Speaker 1: like the strawberries, the berries. Everything is just doesn't taste menu.
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes it's not the same. Being in
Speaker 1: the UK has been a bit of a wake up
Speaker 1: call for me of how much better I feel the
Speaker 1: produce is here.
Speaker 2: And I think again, I think that seems to be
Speaker 2: something that we're all thinking about our kids, aren't we.
Speaker 2: I think, and I think that generation is really interested,
Speaker 2: especially as they.
Speaker 3: Get older, what they're eating.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean when I have dinner when my grandchildren
Speaker 2: are older. Once a vegan, one's a vegetarian.
Speaker 3: One's gluten free. It's like you know that.
Speaker 2: I think the politics of food are consistent with the
Speaker 2: politics of everything.
Speaker 1: Yes, do you feel at the restaurant you have to
Speaker 1: adapt for people in that way.
Speaker 2: We're really lucky to be a time because we are
Speaker 2: so focused on vegetables. Yes, so a vegan can't have
Speaker 2: the egg you know, tag it teley, but they can
Speaker 2: have a spaghetti with peas or we do something called farinata.
Speaker 3: Have you ever had the chickpea flower? Yes?
Speaker 2: And so they don't have to have gluten and you know,
Speaker 2: you can have a whole meal.
Speaker 1: And I get so excited to look at your menu
Speaker 1: and just see what's changed, and it changes all the time.
Speaker 1: It's just so exciting.
Speaker 2: So if you were thinking about comfort, do you have
Speaker 2: a comfort food that you would that this could be anything,
Speaker 2: It could be something that you reach for when you're
Speaker 2: feeling back to what to eat, when, what to cook?
Speaker 4: When?
Speaker 3: All right, I'll do comfort.
Speaker 1: Like for me, one of my favorite things is a
Speaker 1: toasted bagel with tons of butter and marmite. Oh, it's
Speaker 1: my favorite thing. That I really say, it's heaven. But
Speaker 1: I will say the other thing if I were to
Speaker 1: because it's pasta that I create is a couch with pepe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's so simple, and it's just one of my favorite things.
Speaker 1: And the first time I had it was in Rome.
Speaker 1: I was shooting a TV series in Rome that was
Speaker 1: not a very good and I was living alone in
Speaker 1: Rome and I was like twenty years old, lived there
Speaker 1: for three months. Bachie the armorer me Barchie. It was
Speaker 1: near Campbeldi Fiori, and I'd go to all of these
Speaker 1: little local places, and I noticed that don't go to
Speaker 1: the tourist places. And I remember this one Italian restaurhere,
Speaker 1: all the locals went. The vat of wine was just
Speaker 1: put on the table. I don't know what wine it was,
Speaker 1: it didn't matter, and you get what you get and
Speaker 1: they bring you a steak or pasta, whatever they have,
Speaker 1: and it was just heaven. To eat like that. There's
Speaker 1: simplicity of it, and I remember going and having couchy
Speaker 1: to pepe and people saying this. I think they called
Speaker 1: it like the peasant pasta or something. It was sort
Speaker 1: of known as being a really sort of low brow pasta.
Speaker 1: But I was like, but it's a passive.
Speaker 2: I think it's a brilliant food because it's the cheese
Speaker 2: actually pasta butter and cheese.
Speaker 1: It's just got a lot of tea, a little bit
Speaker 1: of you just want to eat like my children.
Speaker 3: Maybe maybe the food is food memories of childhood. And
Speaker 3: Tom for it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you so much, thank you, thank you, oh,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
Speaker 1: with Montclair