Speaker 1: Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2: There is nothing better than a friend you love, falling
Speaker 2: in love with someone you love. When my friend Salmon
Speaker 2: Rushdie brought Eliza Griffiths into our lives, we were happy
Speaker 2: for them and happy for us too. Eliza's smart, she's funny,
Speaker 2: and she's kind. She's a beautiful poet. A photographer whose
Speaker 2: black and white images evoked for me. Drothia Lang promises
Speaker 2: her work of fiction just published, the Story of a Family,
Speaker 2: the story of the Civil Rights movement, a story of
Speaker 2: food at the table and food in the kitchen. For
Speaker 2: food is important to Eliza, and today in the River Cafe,
Speaker 2: we will talk together about friendship, memory, writing and love.
Speaker 2: So thank you for being here, So.
Speaker 3: Good to see you, So.
Speaker 4: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2: And you've just been in the River Cafe kitchen and
Speaker 2: what were you making?
Speaker 5: I was making this wonderful dish with broad beans and
Speaker 5: pasto and garlic bread and it was heaven.
Speaker 4: It was so delicious.
Speaker 5: I just want to go back to the kitchen and eat.
Speaker 4: It looks so yummy right now. That's the color is so.
Speaker 3: Pretty, really bright.
Speaker 4: I love the green. It's good.
Speaker 3: That should be enough.
Speaker 6: Would you like to taste some at this point?
Speaker 7: Absolutely, I'm not shy about tasting anything.
Speaker 3: It's a dish that we make when the broadbeans are
Speaker 3: in season.
Speaker 2: You can't really do it when they're kind of older
Speaker 2: and more floury.
Speaker 4: I like cooking by season.
Speaker 5: There's something very special about what's available and what you
Speaker 5: get to look forward to.
Speaker 4: When the time comes.
Speaker 5: And I'm used to cooking for like six people or
Speaker 5: more in my family, so I love making, you know,
Speaker 5: large pots of things and a lot of food. And
Speaker 5: even now sometimes my husband is like, don't make so much.
Speaker 5: We're going to eat this for five or six days.
Speaker 6: Just cook for two.
Speaker 3: Is that true? Someone?
Speaker 8: Yeah, When when Eliza cooks dinner, when everybody's finished eating
Speaker 8: a lot, it looks it looks like it hasn't been touched,
Speaker 8: and then we have it for the next week.
Speaker 3: Do you ever do you ever cook together?
Speaker 8: I'm the eater.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the eater. Yeah, he's a good eater.
Speaker 2: God yeah, yeah, yeah, you need a good eater.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but yeah, she When when Eliza decides to cook,
Speaker 8: which isn't always, but when she decides to do it,
Speaker 8: it's always a treaty.
Speaker 3: I imagine, do you go to market?
Speaker 5: I used to go to markets more frequently. I used
Speaker 5: to walk down to Union Square and go to the market,
Speaker 5: and you know, walk to different places to get specific things.
Speaker 5: And growing up with my mother, she had you know,
Speaker 5: the butcher we went to, and then she went to
Speaker 5: a different place for her flowers. And sometimes we go
Speaker 5: as far as Philadelphia just for a certain spice sharp
Speaker 5: to get spices. I have a lot of very vivid
Speaker 5: memories of you know, you just don't go into one place.
Speaker 5: You know, she would have neighbors who would bake bread,
Speaker 5: and so she would put in her bread order or something.
Speaker 6: So where was this?
Speaker 3: Where did you grow up?
Speaker 5: I I grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, between Wilmington, Delaware
Speaker 5: and Washington, d C.
Speaker 4: So in Washington, d C.
Speaker 5: Of course, there's just so much culture and so many
Speaker 5: kinds of food. You know, Ethiopian food, and you know
Speaker 5: French and Italian. It's I mean, all of these different things.
Speaker 5: And you know my mother's kitchen, she would really experiment
Speaker 5: with cooking different types of food.
Speaker 3: So tell me about her. Was she born in the
Speaker 3: United States?
Speaker 4: She was born in Washington, d C.
Speaker 5: And she when she married my father, they moved to Wilmington,
Speaker 5: and my mother I think, you know, one of her
Speaker 5: her gifts as an artist was cooking.
Speaker 4: I mean she.
Speaker 5: You know, it was a classroom to be in her
Speaker 5: you know kitchen, that would be the place.
Speaker 4: Where so many things would happen.
Speaker 5: But she would experiment with food, she would find recipes.
Speaker 5: She actually did classes for cooking. She had a whole
Speaker 5: chef's uniform she would put on, and she had some
Speaker 5: really wonderful her bread pudding recipes.
Speaker 4: She won prizes for.
Speaker 3: You know what it was. What did she put in
Speaker 3: the bread pudding?
Speaker 5: She put a special ingredient that only myself and my
Speaker 5: three siblings can ever tell. So it was kind of lockdown.
Speaker 5: Although I can't bear to eat bread pudding now because
Speaker 5: in makes me think of her too much.
Speaker 4: I've been spoiled by her bread.
Speaker 5: Pudding, and so whenever I see it on the menu,
Speaker 5: I just immediately see her face the saying no one's
Speaker 5: bread pudding is as good as mine, and her pretty
Speaker 5: much being right about that.
Speaker 2: That's just so interesting that she had. I love the
Speaker 2: idea that she had a chef's outfitted home. She did
Speaker 2: because you know, when you put on a chef's out,
Speaker 2: when you change.
Speaker 3: We all change for work every day.
Speaker 2: We come in here in our clothes and before we
Speaker 2: write the menu, because we write the menu every day.
Speaker 3: Even just sitting down and writing the menu.
Speaker 2: You need to be wearing the clothes of cooking, you know,
Speaker 2: and puts you into that world.
Speaker 3: And she did that.
Speaker 5: She was very meticulous about it and her her equipment
Speaker 5: and materials and things that she began to acquire. Cooking
Speaker 5: was very serious business for her. And yet it was
Speaker 5: the place where, you know, you learned a lot of lessons,
Speaker 5: but your hands are always And I loved that. I mean,
Speaker 5: I felt like she was a real artist with color
Speaker 5: and how the dishes would look in the flowers, and
Speaker 5: it was just a whole kind of event, even if
Speaker 5: you were making like a grilled cheese, like how is
Speaker 5: this grilled cheese so amazing? You know?
Speaker 4: And did she entertain?
Speaker 3: Did you have?
Speaker 9: She?
Speaker 3: Did?
Speaker 6: She did?
Speaker 4: Growing up?
Speaker 5: I mean, our home was a place where people in
Speaker 5: our community, you know, if they knew that my mother
Speaker 5: was cooking, they were not declining that invitation. And it
Speaker 5: would just be a whole thing. And I remember I'd
Speaker 5: have to like iron and starch the tablecloths and help
Speaker 5: with the flowers and you know, polish the silver. And
Speaker 5: it was just this whole kind of stage that she set,
Speaker 5: even down to the music that might be on, and
Speaker 5: it just there was so much joy about it. She
Speaker 5: would keep, you know, trying different things, and she would
Speaker 5: have her tasting spoon, and she wouldn't give up on
Speaker 5: a recipe until she really got it, until she didn't
Speaker 5: have to look at the book anymore.
Speaker 4: And I think I think some of that.
Speaker 5: Is probably involved in my process as a writer, Like
Speaker 5: you can fail at your sentences, but you keep pushing
Speaker 5: language until it gives and you think I hear it,
Speaker 5: now I can see it. But my mother food is
Speaker 5: one of the greatest gifts that she gave our family,
Speaker 5: and certainly to me being the eldest daughter. You know,
Speaker 5: I would I would be sous chef quite a bit
Speaker 5: and it's made me a better person. And I love
Speaker 5: cooking for my friends and my husband and my family.
Speaker 3: Did you think that she was Did you have a career,
Speaker 3: Did you have a job.
Speaker 5: No, she mostly was at home. She had four children.
Speaker 5: I'm the eldest, and we were young, and so she
Speaker 5: was more of a homemaker. When she was older, she
Speaker 5: went back to school and got a degree. She did
Speaker 5: a lot of kind of things where I would kind
Speaker 5: of call her like a kind of business woman of
Speaker 5: her own, where she sometimes did real estate or she
Speaker 5: would you know, literally be selling things that she cooked
Speaker 5: to people in the community. Sometimes she actually would cater things.
Speaker 5: And growing up, maybe when I was eleven or twelve,
Speaker 5: she got diagnosed with kidney failure, and so her ability
Speaker 5: to work maybe a more traditional job changed because she
Speaker 5: was trying to raise for children, and then she had
Speaker 5: this kind of chronic illness. And one of the most
Speaker 5: beautiful things about her cooking was when she was in
Speaker 5: the kitchen, it was like that was the cure.
Speaker 4: Like she would kind of dance around.
Speaker 5: She put on like Smokey Robinson and Diana Ross and
Speaker 5: the Supremes, and she suddenly wasn't a sick mother. She
Speaker 5: was making things and being a creator, and you know,
Speaker 5: having to kind of balance the day being in bed
Speaker 5: on medications.
Speaker 4: But then she would she.
Speaker 5: Would rally and want to be in the kitchen and
Speaker 5: make things for her children and her family and for
Speaker 5: her friends.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that you draw the parallel of the artists,
Speaker 2: because there was a great film about Christo building a
Speaker 2: fence in California, and the whole objection by the ranchers
Speaker 2: was that it wasn't art because it was temporary. And
Speaker 2: a woman who actually was in favor of the fence
Speaker 2: got up and said, you know, I make a cake
Speaker 2: every night for my family, and I really think that
Speaker 2: that cake is a work of art.
Speaker 6: And then it gets heated.
Speaker 2: You know, you think about that it is temper and
Speaker 2: that your mother doing or you know, what she did,
Speaker 2: and creating, as you said, like an artist, and then
Speaker 2: feeding people she loved, is a part of the whole circle,
Speaker 2: isn't it.
Speaker 5: I think it feels so special because you know you
Speaker 5: have in that moment, whoever is there, whoever is present,
Speaker 5: they have this kind of feast and then you can't be.
Speaker 4: Precious about it. It's to be devoured.
Speaker 5: It's to be savored, it's memorized, and you know, then
Speaker 5: you go and boast and brag to other people. You
Speaker 5: need to taste this, but then it will never be
Speaker 5: the same, so you get a whole new experience. You know.
Speaker 2: It's also so if it's art, it's also a performance
Speaker 2: because absolutely, you know, we have an open kitchen in
Speaker 2: the River Cafe, and I have an open kitchen at home,
Speaker 2: and so you put the food down, and then you
Speaker 2: want to see people's response, you know, and you see
Speaker 2: I often look at the table and see if they're sharing,
Speaker 2: if they're tasting, if.
Speaker 6: They're shaking their head no, or shaking their.
Speaker 2: Head yes, because it's an immediate response to what you've
Speaker 2: just made, and you know they may be they may
Speaker 2: be right if it isn't.
Speaker 5: It isn't always of the open kitchen here, it's kind
Speaker 5: of like that's where the excitement is kind.
Speaker 3: Of look drama, and.
Speaker 5: Everyone's excited, everyone's pleased, because you know, there's just something
Speaker 5: about cooking. It's beyond the food. It's the whole kind
Speaker 5: of sensation and experience of it. You're there with the
Speaker 5: people you're with and whatever you might be talking about
Speaker 5: and sharing stories or just how you feel your moods,
Speaker 5: and then you're looking at the kitchen, you're watching the waiters,
Speaker 5: you're looking at all the details. And I think too,
Speaker 5: when you're on the page, it's different, but you as
Speaker 5: the writer, bring attention to the details for your readers
Speaker 5: of what you want them to look at in a
Speaker 5: way which is a little bit similar with also being
Speaker 5: a photographer. Here's what I want you to see, the light,
Speaker 5: the atmosphere. Can I draw you into this, you know,
Speaker 5: flat photograph, But in the kitchen everything's alive and it's
Speaker 5: all connected with people.
Speaker 2: When you left home, when you left this incredible home
Speaker 2: of food and your mother expressing her love through food
Speaker 2: and feeding her children and teaching her children and handing over,
Speaker 2: handing over the reins to her children. And then you left,
Speaker 2: you know what, eighteen years of every day having your
Speaker 2: mother do this.
Speaker 3: Where did you go?
Speaker 6: What was your next step?
Speaker 10: Well?
Speaker 5: After going to college, I moved in.
Speaker 3: Where did you go to college?
Speaker 5: I went to the University of Delaware, And for graduate school,
Speaker 5: I went to Sarah Lawrence College in New York.
Speaker 6: You did you cook when you were in college?
Speaker 3: What did you do?
Speaker 6: Did you go in college?
Speaker 5: I was the person doing the parties, big pots of
Speaker 5: pasta and garlic bread, and I would drape scarves over
Speaker 5: like the awful fluorescent academic you know, dorm dormitory lights.
Speaker 5: And I would have candles everywhere and people will kind
Speaker 5: of feel like, well, this is like home away from home.
Speaker 5: I do not like doing the dishes so people would
Speaker 5: volunteer that part.
Speaker 2: But where did you find this kitchen in college that
Speaker 2: you could cook and ever your own apartment or did
Speaker 2: you know?
Speaker 5: I was in the dormitory, but I would just take
Speaker 5: the kitchen.
Speaker 2: You cooked for everyone. And then when you graduated, did
Speaker 2: you live a domestic life where.
Speaker 4: You can you know?
Speaker 5: When I'm in two thousand and three, when I moved
Speaker 5: to New York, I kind of it was that moment.
Speaker 5: I think many writers have them and have many moments
Speaker 5: where I just thought, I need to live in New York.
Speaker 4: I'm a writer.
Speaker 5: I want to see what I'm made of. Can I
Speaker 5: make it? And you know, reading so many books about
Speaker 5: you know, the writers and the poets, and you know
Speaker 5: they're in the village and they're all over Manhattan, and
Speaker 5: I thought, well that that should be a good place
Speaker 5: for me to go and see if I'm like cut
Speaker 5: out for this life. And you know, I worked every
Speaker 5: kind of job and then I finally thought, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm going to go back to grad school and just
Speaker 5: so I'll be able to feed myself if the writing
Speaker 5: doesn't work out. And during those years I taught at college.
Speaker 4: I was a nanny.
Speaker 5: At one point I was a waitress for about an hour.
Speaker 3: Did you have to cook for the children?
Speaker 5: No, it was a very small baby, so you know,
Speaker 5: we spent a lot of time with me reading bad
Speaker 5: poetry to the baby in Central Park.
Speaker 4: But I got to.
Speaker 5: Kind of get into the rhythm of the city.
Speaker 3: Because you read out, you discover restaurants.
Speaker 5: Yes, I loved finding little places, and you know, New
Speaker 5: York is such a feast of little places and well
Speaker 5: known places, and it was just wonderful to kind of
Speaker 5: have these discoveries of things and also to go to
Speaker 5: restaurants that you'd read about. You know, as you're wanting
Speaker 5: to become a writer, suddenly you're going to.
Speaker 3: A restaurants where they do.
Speaker 5: You remember I loved Cafe Dante in the West Village
Speaker 5: and you know little places or the Romanian pastry shop
Speaker 5: up in Columbia that's just divine. And then you know,
Speaker 5: going to you know, No host Star or I feel
Speaker 5: like the diner situation was really great for me to
Speaker 5: just sit in a diner and write and write and write.
Speaker 3: So do you write?
Speaker 2: How do you combine working and writing and doing your
Speaker 2: work with food? Do you I often ask actors if
Speaker 2: they eat before the play or after the play, or
Speaker 2: artists who feel that, you know, they live such a
Speaker 2: solitary life that they only want to go out to parties,
Speaker 2: and film directors who basically don't want to stop for
Speaker 2: lunch because it ruins the rhythm.
Speaker 3: What is your writing and food day?
Speaker 5: Like, I won't really have that much food in the morning.
Speaker 5: I'm someone who with wellness things I'll have like my
Speaker 5: green Mucky drink, which is delicious, or I'll have just
Speaker 5: some poached eggs or something like that, which I like
Speaker 5: with a little spinach. And it depends what I'm doing.
Speaker 5: If I'm out in the field working on photographs, then
Speaker 5: I probably don't eat. I'll just have like some fresh
Speaker 5: squeeze juice and then I'm out because I need to.
Speaker 4: Follow the light very carefully.
Speaker 5: If I'm writing, I can write for long periods of
Speaker 5: time and a lot of tea. In New York, you know,
Speaker 5: going to friends homes to eat is a thing that
Speaker 5: we enjoy, and going out to really lovely restaurants. We
Speaker 5: both my husband and I both have an appreciation for
Speaker 5: wonderful cooking and food and kind of the imagination. So
Speaker 5: we'll kind of work all day and then perhaps we'll
Speaker 5: go out to a restaurant to meet a friend, or
Speaker 5: we'll just go together. These days were more inside. We
Speaker 5: love to have, you know, Indian food delivered.
Speaker 2: Have you thought, Eliza more about Indian food, because I
Speaker 2: know that you are passionate and grew up with it,
Speaker 2: and we talked about Indian food.
Speaker 8: Well, New York used to be not good at.
Speaker 3: Indian food, unlike Britain.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, it's getting much better. You know. They now
Speaker 8: are like half a dozen really good Indian places in
Speaker 8: New York. So that that feels great because it felt
Speaker 8: like a real you know, in this city which has
Speaker 8: every kind of cuisine. Indian food was a kind of absence.
Speaker 2: But now why do you think that is not many?
Speaker 8: I think Americans hadn't discovered India, yeah somehow, but now
Speaker 8: they have. And you know, my view about eating and
Speaker 8: working is that I've always thought work hungry.
Speaker 3: You work hungry, you do eat later.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Interesting?
Speaker 2: Are you as a writer, are you attempted to get
Speaker 2: to get up and down? You get up and go
Speaker 2: look in the fridge and then close the door.
Speaker 8: Will you go into the kitchen? I think one of
Speaker 8: the important things about writing is to stay. Sitting down.
Speaker 3: Helps New York. I always think that it is interesting.
Speaker 2: This is a diversion that Britain British food, which is
Speaker 2: so I could say, quite bland and you know, unadventurous, and.
Speaker 3: People cook the traditional food they grew up with.
Speaker 2: But except for when I came to London, I couldn't
Speaker 2: believe it how Indian culture had. You know, everybody can
Speaker 2: make a curry, you know, or you know whether it's
Speaker 2: a good curry or not. But then you'd go to
Speaker 2: a small town outside of Britain will be an Indian restaurant.
Speaker 2: You know, there would be people selling all sorts of
Speaker 2: chilis in the market.
Speaker 6: Now it's it's so interesting, but we.
Speaker 8: Know why to do with an empire?
Speaker 3: Just to do with an.
Speaker 2: Not a very hard question to answer, but it was
Speaker 2: to do with an empire. Then coming back I guess
Speaker 2: and saying this is I had this fabulous food and
Speaker 2: we have to learn.
Speaker 5: Things I love to do when we come to London
Speaker 5: is to sit at Salmon's sisters table Samine. Her cookbook
Speaker 5: is amazing, but it's such a treat that she usually
Speaker 5: cooks when we come to visit, and so everything she
Speaker 5: makes is so delicious, and she'll have the chutney, and
Speaker 5: she'll have the sauce and the somosas, or she's oh,
Speaker 5: I just put something together and it's like the best
Speaker 5: thing you've ever tasted, and it's so good. And so
Speaker 5: when I've kind of flipped through her her cookbook and
Speaker 5: I look at the spices and things, I kind of
Speaker 5: just feel so overwhelmed. But I know sooner or later
Speaker 5: I need to be able to kind of get a
Speaker 5: proper curry in my skill set.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel the same way.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then can we talk about the food in your
Speaker 2: book and how you integrated and brought food in to
Speaker 2: tell a story, a complex story?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 5: So, you know, one of the things I've always loved
Speaker 5: when reading novels is food and how it's kind of
Speaker 5: you know, how it's introduced to the reader and the
Speaker 5: presence of it, Or novels where no one's eating you
Speaker 5: kind of noticed, well, what were they eating? What exactly
Speaker 5: are they drinking? Where are they what's in season? I think,
Speaker 5: I promise the two Black sisters who are the central
Speaker 5: characters of the novel their coming of age in nineteen
Speaker 5: fifty seven in a remote sea village in Maine, and
Speaker 5: in that space which is very spare and bleak and
Speaker 5: suddenly kind of hostile to them. The shelter of their
Speaker 5: home and the relationship that their mother as a nurturer
Speaker 5: has provided for them one of the things that is
Speaker 5: most important, as you know, how to feed the children,
Speaker 5: what's available, what's in season, in a kind of place
Speaker 5: like that. And the kitchen is a kind of classroom too,
Speaker 5: as they're coming of age, and so, you know, to
Speaker 5: grow up to have a mother who has her rules
Speaker 5: and her recipes, and that in the space of the
Speaker 5: kitchen they're all safe, whereas elsewhere outside of their home
Speaker 5: things are beginning to become quite unsafe for them.
Speaker 4: And so there's something in the.
Speaker 11: Girls that they have their kind of authority and imagination
Speaker 11: and respect for their mother's stature in the kitchen and
Speaker 11: in the home.
Speaker 5: You know, their mother cooks them a kind of special
Speaker 5: the day, you know, before the first day of school meal,
Speaker 5: and that's almost as important as Christmas dinner for them,
Speaker 5: and that there are these different moments through the food
Speaker 5: that certain things about each character is revealed, and how
Speaker 5: they feel about the kitchen or what they're eating, and
Speaker 5: the kind of comfort that food offers them in a
Speaker 5: place that is really starting to shift as different things
Speaker 5: are happening elsewhere in America. So, you know, I think
Speaker 5: a lot of my own upbringing is transmitted into the
Speaker 5: space of food and thinking about food and just you know,
Speaker 5: if I were to expand outward and think about Black
Speaker 5: American families in America and the real trajectory and storylines
Speaker 5: and stories of food and recipes and things being handed,
Speaker 5: it's real kind of delicious lineage that is important to
Speaker 5: survival and to joy and to having a place where
Speaker 5: different family members live on through the foods they made,
Speaker 5: the foods they invented. You know, there were visions of
Speaker 5: a recipe, secret recipes. I find all of that really
Speaker 5: lovely and magical.
Speaker 2: Families can be victims of racism, or victims of poverty,
Speaker 2: or people who've just immigrated from another country. It's so
Speaker 2: interesting to me that many people who've emigrated from one
Speaker 2: country to another bring the food with them, or the
Speaker 2: grandmothers bring the food with them. They talk more about
Speaker 2: their grandmother's food than their mother's because the grandmothers actually
Speaker 2: bring the food. The mother might be trying to adapt
Speaker 2: and the children kind of throw it out, but they
Speaker 2: go back to the grandmother to experience what those memories
Speaker 2: she's brought with them, very often just being the food.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I've read many accounts were enslaved people,
Speaker 5: you know, will come over and have stitched into the
Speaker 5: hems of their clothes seeds from their country of origin,
Speaker 5: and that they would try to literally bring kind of
Speaker 5: pieces from the homeland or the motherland with them to
Speaker 5: try and grow it, you know, wherever they were being
Speaker 5: taken against their will.
Speaker 4: And so there's such a power in that.
Speaker 5: But also I love stories about, you know, one I'm
Speaker 5: thinking in African American families, you know, taking something that
Speaker 5: was the scrap and then making it into something that
Speaker 5: then finds itself in the mainstream of American culture, you know,
Speaker 5: and how things can you know, transform and become these
Speaker 5: other things even though they were supposed to be the
Speaker 5: food of the poor or this is all that was available,
Speaker 5: and then it becomes this thing that everyone's like, what
Speaker 5: is that. There's a politics to it. There's also this
Speaker 5: really wonderful humanity of like we all need to eat
Speaker 5: and how we eat as as important as what we eat,
Speaker 5: what we can afford to eat, what we can afford
Speaker 5: not to eat, and you know, for Promise, which takes
Speaker 5: place in nineteen fifty seven fifty eight, that would have
Speaker 5: been an issue of where black people could go to
Speaker 5: eat versus other places and what that means. And you know,
Speaker 5: it's it's so powerful to to really think about that.
Speaker 5: But in my research, you know, I would look at
Speaker 5: advertisements and read different things and watch films and you know,
Speaker 5: colors only or they can't see at this hotel, or
Speaker 5: they can't stop on the road to get gasoline at
Speaker 5: this place.
Speaker 4: It all is.
Speaker 2: So do you see those sized photographs of Gordon Parks.
Speaker 2: I love He's one of those favorite too, and those
Speaker 2: ones that particularly take place in the drinking fountains or
Speaker 2: the outside and a diner outside of a place of food,
Speaker 2: and you see the separation. It's they're they're painfully beautiful.
Speaker 5: Photography is just sounding. It's heartbreaking, but then it's also
Speaker 5: like beautiful the way that he shows the distance. And
Speaker 5: yet there's a beauty and a dignity. Dignity absolutely agree.
Speaker 8: Hi.
Speaker 10: My name is Sophia and I'm a cheh at the
Speaker 10: River Cafe. Today we're making brusquetta with smash broad beans
Speaker 10: and ball of Montsorella.
Speaker 4: So for the smash broad beans. Here we have some
Speaker 4: potted broad beans.
Speaker 10: You want to choose the smaller ones if you can
Speaker 10: get them, because they're not so starchy, so a bit sweeter.
Speaker 10: Put them in a food processor.
Speaker 7: Give that big clip.
Speaker 10: You don't want it, you know, to be blitzed too much.
Speaker 10: You want it the texture. And into that a little
Speaker 10: little bit of crush garlic, bit of roughly chopped.
Speaker 6: Basil and mint.
Speaker 3: It's fantastic. Give that another list.
Speaker 10: In with the herbs this point, a bit of salt,
Speaker 10: bit of pepper because people will be adding cheese.
Speaker 4: You don't want too much.
Speaker 10: And now it's a fun pot.
Speaker 3: We get to put quite a lot of the.
Speaker 6: Oil in it.
Speaker 2: We were talking about creating food and making food and
Speaker 2: your mother making food, and just before we came into
Speaker 2: this room, you were in the kitchen with a chef
Speaker 2: from the River Cafe. You made smash broad beans to
Speaker 2: serve with mozzarella.
Speaker 5: Yes, with mozzarella and warm tasty garlic bread.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So would you like to read the recipe.
Speaker 5: Smashed broad beans with mozzarella. We only make this when
Speaker 5: the first broad beans are in season and when they
Speaker 5: are small and sweet. Three hundred grams potted broad beans,
Speaker 5: extra virgin olive oil, and when we say extra, we
Speaker 5: mean extra one hundred and fifty grams of freshly grated parmesan,
Speaker 5: ten basil leaves, very very green, ten mint leaves, half
Speaker 5: a clove of garlic, the stinkiest garlic you can find,
Speaker 5: one large ball of mozzarella, and sour dough bread. Put
Speaker 5: the broad beans in a blender with the olive oil, parmesan, basil, mint,
Speaker 5: and half clove of garlic.
Speaker 4: Then roughly pure.
Speaker 5: Because you want to keep some of the texture. Don't
Speaker 5: over pure.
Speaker 4: Trust me. Season with salt and pepper.
Speaker 5: Lightly tear the mozzarella with your hands, which is fun,
Speaker 5: and place onto a plate. Place a spoonful of the
Speaker 5: pure next to the mozzarella. Grill the bread until browned.
Speaker 5: Rub the bruschetta generously with the remains garlic.
Speaker 4: Finish with a.
Speaker 5: Drizzle of extra extra extra virgin olive oil, and serve
Speaker 5: with delight.
Speaker 3: An extra extra extra happiness. What was it like seeing this? Smell?
Speaker 4: Sophia is wonderful.
Speaker 5: I mean when she was making this, the bright green
Speaker 5: and the smell of the garlic and the mint and
Speaker 5: the basil, it was like better nearly as good as
Speaker 5: having a really strong cup of coffee, because the smell
Speaker 5: suddenly brought you kind of into the world. And then
Speaker 5: of course the warm bread and the cheese. It's like
Speaker 5: everything you love. So I was very happy to be
Speaker 5: in the kitchen and to have a little taste.
Speaker 6: Maybe you'll make it, oh for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what did you think?
Speaker 8: I couldn't believe how much olive oil. That's a serious
Speaker 8: amount of olive oil.
Speaker 4: Really really go for it.
Speaker 3: It's a good thing. Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 10: Final blitz. And then you want to add the cheese
Speaker 10: at the end. You don't want it to become gummy
Speaker 10: in the mixture. Same with the broad beans. If you
Speaker 10: ever pure it. It's the texture isn't as nice.
Speaker 4: Texture is very important.
Speaker 3: M that is good.
Speaker 10: I think more oil still, it's quite a lot, you know.
Speaker 3: It's more herbs.
Speaker 8: Okay, I think.
Speaker 9: That that would be perfect.
Speaker 10: And then you put this mix on a brusqutter.
Speaker 9: Let's have garlic and salt on it, rubbed on onto
Speaker 9: the bread. A bit more oil, and then we've got
Speaker 9: a ball of mozzarella. You can either cut it in
Speaker 9: half or rip it on the plate with your brusqutter.
Speaker 9: A bit more oil.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, fantastic. That's beautiful. Thank you so much. Fun. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm very welcome. Thank you.
Speaker 2: We always ask one question of everyone, which is that
Speaker 2: if food is alleviates hunger, and if food expresses sharing,
Speaker 2: and the food expresses of course love, and it can
Speaker 2: be something that you turn to whenever you need to
Speaker 2: be fed because you're hungry, or you need to be loved.
Speaker 2: It's also comfort and so one of the questions that
Speaker 2: I'd like to ask you before we end this interview
Speaker 2: is if you have a food that you turn to
Speaker 2: for comfort, do you know what that would be?
Speaker 5: I think when I think of comfort and food, I'd
Speaker 5: probably make something my mother made for me. She had
Speaker 5: some wonderful soups that I met. I can make them,
Speaker 5: but there was nothing like coming into the house and
Speaker 5: having one of those days or things are you're blue,
Speaker 5: you're a little bit blue, and you could immediately smell
Speaker 5: that she was making a soup.
Speaker 4: And I love to read and have soup.
Speaker 2: So is there a soup that you particularly like or
Speaker 2: does it depend on the season.
Speaker 5: I think it depends on the season for me because
Speaker 5: I love chilled soups too, So you know, a soup
Speaker 5: that has meant, or a soup that is gospato, or
Speaker 5: you know a New England clum child, or they're all
Speaker 5: different seasons. And in the autumn, I love a squash soup.
Speaker 5: It's so nice and comforting carrot soups. So I think
Speaker 5: when I need comfort, I will I look at the
Speaker 5: kind of traditional, kind of really nice soup or stew.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, speaking of stew, would you like to read a
Speaker 2: section from your book?
Speaker 8: Sure?
Speaker 3: Because I'd love that.
Speaker 2: And there's a reference to the stew, and I thought
Speaker 2: you could perhaps tell us what that is.
Speaker 4: This is from promise.
Speaker 5: Miss Irene ask us to set the table with her
Speaker 5: special wooden dishes and spoons. She'd made a healing stew,
Speaker 5: she said, filled with nutrients to replenish and restore our
Speaker 5: self esteem. I'd been so afraid of what miss Irene
Speaker 5: was going to say to us. I hadn't noticed the
Speaker 5: rich scent of the stock simmering on the stove. This
Speaker 5: has potatoes and peaches in it, she said, having no
Speaker 5: idea really what she was talking about. We only nodded
Speaker 5: and went around the table, quickly arranging bowls and spoons
Speaker 5: and cups.
Speaker 4: Before our father would arrive. To take us home beautiful.
Speaker 2: I love many things about this paragraph. I love the
Speaker 2: idea that nutrients can give you self esteem. Yes, I
Speaker 2: like that would be saying that we hear, especially with
Speaker 2: this generation, that self esteem, self esteem and self esteem.
Speaker 6: But who knew that peaches and a healing stew could
Speaker 6: do that? So we have to.
Speaker 2: And I was also very intrigued by the idea of
Speaker 2: having a stew with peaches in it. That's almost Moroccan,
Speaker 2: isn't it, the way they do Tajeans with fruit.
Speaker 6: Did you have a stew with peaches or did?
Speaker 5: I think sometime in the past I probably had a
Speaker 5: stew that had fruit in it, but I don't know
Speaker 5: if it would necessarily have been peaches. I think, you know,
Speaker 5: thinking about in August and it's kind of end of
Speaker 5: summer and peaches and last chance peaches and all the
Speaker 5: different types of peaches and loving to have them grilled
Speaker 5: or loving to have them like cobbler or something like that. Like,
Speaker 5: I'm sure there must be a stew somewhere that has pea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm saying, you know that's I don't know if
Speaker 2: you've been to Morocco, but they do these Tajeans if
Speaker 2: you're somm would have maize and apricots and lamb and
Speaker 2: prunes and chicken and lemons, and it's really using everything
Speaker 2: in there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think miss Irene who is the mother and
Speaker 5: the family that they are very close to her people
Speaker 5: kind of come in my mind from like Caribbean or diaspora,
Speaker 5: and so they might have a different bit of a
Speaker 5: different palette than Cynthia and her sister. And so these
Speaker 5: kind of hardy stews where they're wondering where she gets
Speaker 5: these ingredients and things and puts them together, and that
Speaker 5: this is something their own mother can't make, but they
Speaker 5: get the motherhood of miss Irene. And so you know
Speaker 5: the certain things that you know, maybe you eat them
Speaker 5: to feel confident or strong or they make you feel good,
Speaker 5: and that there's a way of putting that love into
Speaker 5: a dish and telling the girls to kind of you know,
Speaker 5: be strong and be confident and keep their heads up high,
Speaker 5: and that they're beautiful young girls and that their appetites matter.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think this has been I have to say,
Speaker 2: one must be full. Interviews we've done, the talks, we've
Speaker 2: done in conversations because you know, we know that.
Speaker 6: Food is memory and is food is family.
Speaker 2: Food is an expression of comfort, time together and just
Speaker 2: having this time together for two of us with someone
Speaker 2: to talk about that is.
Speaker 6: Something that I'd love to do more of. And I
Speaker 6: feel so grateful to you for coming.
Speaker 4: I'm grateful for you too.
Speaker 5: It's lovely, it was lovely for all of us to
Speaker 5: talk about food.
Speaker 4: I can't stop smiling right now. I just want to
Speaker 4: go eat it. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: And as I said, you know, there's nothing better than someone.
Speaker 6: You love being with someone you love. Thank you good.
Speaker 1: The River Cafe Look Book is now available in bookshops
Speaker 1: and online. It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated
Speaker 1: with photographs from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book
Speaker 1: has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a
Speaker 1: host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted
Speaker 1: for new cooks. The River Cafe Lookbook Recipes for cooks
Speaker 1: of all ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
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