WEBVTT - Adam Gopnik 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:02.160 This episode is brought to you by Me and M, 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:05.880 the British modern luxury clothing label designed for busy women. 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:09.319 Founded and designed in London. Me and M is about 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:12.960 intelligence style. Much thought and care are put into the 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:16.640 design process, so every piece is flattering, functional and made 0:00:16.720 --> 0:00:19.520 to last forever. Me and M is well known for 0:00:19.560 --> 0:00:22.000 its trousers and how I got to know the brand. 0:00:22.520 --> 0:00:25.079 It's my go to for styles that are comfortable enough 0:00:25.120 --> 0:00:28.480 to wear in the kitchen or the restaurant, also polished 0:00:28.560 --> 0:00:32.000 enough for meetings. Me and M is available online and 0:00:32.080 --> 0:00:35.720 its stores across London, Edinburgh, New York. If you're in London, 0:00:35.760 --> 0:00:39.000 I'd really recommend heading to their beautiful, brand new flagship 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:42.440 store in Marlevin, which opens on the twenty ninth of October. 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:46.519 In the thirty four years at Adam Gopnik and I 0:00:46.560 --> 0:00:49.479 have been friends. We have lived in the same city, Paris, 0:00:49.560 --> 0:00:52.000 where he wrote his beautiful book Paris to the Moon. 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:55.080 We have loved and then lost our best friend, the 0:00:55.200 --> 0:00:59.360 art historian and curator Kirk Varnado. We've taken care of 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.440 each other's children as if they were our own, and 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:07.119 sung show tunes together from every Broadway musical Because we know. 0:01:07.200 --> 0:01:08.120 All the lyrics. 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:11.319 Most of all, we have never stopped cooking, eating, and 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:15.480 talking about our passion for food. We may be separated 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:18.200 by an ocean, but we are always minutes and inches 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:22.000 away all the while. Adam leads a terrific life in writing, 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:24.959 staff writer for The New Yorker and author of nine 0:01:25.000 --> 0:01:29.280 books of non fiction, fiction and memoir. Next year he 0:01:29.319 --> 0:01:32.480 will perform his one man show Talk Therapy in New 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:35.880 York City. Adam is here now with me in London. 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:39.880 In four days, He's eaten in the River Cafe four times. 0:01:40.280 --> 0:01:41.840 This morning we sang You've. 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:45.320 Got to be taught from South Pacific, Rainbow Connection, from 0:01:45.319 --> 0:01:48.640 the Muppets, and I've never been in love before from 0:01:48.680 --> 0:01:52.920 Guys and Dolls. Tonight, after seeing Giant at the Royal Court, 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:57.040 we will go home and cook to Btapasta my definition 0:01:57.240 --> 0:02:00.639 of a good friend. Thank you, sir Adam. You've chosen 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:03.560 the recipe and it was from the very first cookbook 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:06.240 we ever did, the River Cafe Cookbook, and the recipe 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:10.240 you chose was Penny with quick sausage sauce. 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:11.440 Would you like to read it? 0:02:11.720 --> 0:02:13.480 I would love to read it, and I should ad 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:16.639 that this is part of a diptick, as our historians 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:19.400 would say, with a penny with a slow sausage sauce, 0:02:19.440 --> 0:02:22.400 So that is why it's quick. Two hundred fifty grams 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:26.560 of penny regatta, two tablespoons of olive oil, two red onions, 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:31.519 peeled and chopped, five sausages, meat crumbled, half a tablespoon 0:02:31.800 --> 0:02:36.080 of fresh rosemary, two small dried chilis, eight hundred grams 0:02:36.120 --> 0:02:39.120 of peeled plum tomatoes, one hundred and fifty mili liters 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:42.200 of cream, and one hundred and twenty grams of parmesan, 0:02:42.639 --> 0:02:45.720 freshly grated. You heat the olive oil in the saucepan 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:50.600 and you fry the onion lightly. You add the sausage, rosemary, 0:02:50.639 --> 0:02:53.440 bay leaves and chili all together, frying them over a 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:57.320 high heat, stirring to mash the sausages. You remove all 0:02:57.360 --> 0:03:00.360 but one tablespoon of the fat and continue you to 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:04.399 cook for twenty minutes. Add the tomatoes, stir and return. 0:03:04.160 --> 0:03:04.680 To the boil. 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:08.240 Then remove from the heat. Cook the penne in boiling 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:11.640 salted water, then drain and add directly to the sauce. 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:14.680 Stir the cream into the sauce with the penny and 0:03:14.720 --> 0:03:18.560 half the parmesan, and then you serve the pustup with 0:03:18.720 --> 0:03:20.600 the remaining parmesan grated on top. 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:23.080 When I asked you for a recipe that you'd like 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:27.760 to read Ruthie's Table four, you immediately said, I know 0:03:27.840 --> 0:03:28.600 exactly what I. 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:29.040 Want to do. 0:03:29.480 --> 0:03:32.760 I want to do the penne with quick sausage sauce. 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:33.960 And I was wondering why. 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:37.080 Well, because it was nineteen ninety four, we had just 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:40.400 moved to Paris, my wife Martha and our little son 0:03:40.520 --> 0:03:44.280 Luke had just moved to Paris then, and we got 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:48.160 your book, and by the strangest kind of syncopated cooking beat, 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:52.040 I started cooking your food in our Parisian kitchen, although 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:55.280 I had been raised on French food, and there was 0:03:55.320 --> 0:03:59.000 something about the logic and grammar of this recipe that 0:03:59.840 --> 0:04:03.640 was inspiring and explained so much. In other words, you 0:04:03.680 --> 0:04:07.160 were taking the pungent things, the sweet onions, and then 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:10.520 the pungent sausages, and the hot pepper which I had 0:04:10.520 --> 0:04:14.680 never cooked with before, the dried parakeet peppers, and making 0:04:14.720 --> 0:04:17.440 all of that. Then you were reducing it with the 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:23.479 wine and then adding the tomatoes, and that basic pattern, right, 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:27.000 you have and it can be anchovies and. 0:04:27.160 --> 0:04:31.760 Garblic, get the flavor tomato right, then cook. 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.360 It down with wine until it's almost dry, and then 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:39.320 adding tomatoes, and then doing that. How many times in 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:42.599 a lifetime do we do that? And that basic grammar, 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:47.560 the savory flavors, the wine reduction, the addition of tomato 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:52.800 or cream or whatever it might be, is somehow so fundamental. 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:55.080 It was like this for me was a foundational recipe. 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:57.200 Once I knew how to do this, I felt that 0:04:57.240 --> 0:05:00.400 I could do almost anything. So that's why I love 0:05:00.440 --> 0:05:02.160 it so much, even though, to be honest with you, 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:04.919 I probably couldn't, so to speak, sell it at my 0:05:05.000 --> 0:05:08.320 dining table today because the ladies I cook for, Martha 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:10.760 and Olivia are both pescatarians at this point. 0:05:10.839 --> 0:05:12.800 Yeah, so I couldn't. But do you ever have it? 0:05:13.120 --> 0:05:13.960 Make it for yourself? 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:15.200 I always make it for myself. 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:18.560 When I'm alone, I either make this or the matriciana 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:19.240 as Mike. 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:21.680 Can you get the Lucunega sausages in New York? 0:05:21.920 --> 0:05:22.960 You can get good sausages. 0:05:23.400 --> 0:05:26.360 You get good Italian sausages in New York, But those 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:27.560 are when I'm home alone. 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:29.400 That's what I make for myself. 0:05:29.520 --> 0:05:33.400 So you've written just written a brilliant piece about the election. 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:36.880 You've written about the politics of our country. You've written 0:05:36.880 --> 0:05:41.719 about Paris, You've written and yet you are uniquely interested, 0:05:41.839 --> 0:05:45.760 I think, in writing and writing about food, and so 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:48.599 food comes into your musical. I mean, there aren't very 0:05:48.640 --> 0:05:52.799 many musicals about a restaurant. There aren't very many articles 0:05:52.839 --> 0:05:54.440 in the New Yorker. Well, now there are a few 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:57.920 more about food. Tell us about one of your books 0:05:57.920 --> 0:06:00.559 that you've written where food has come into your book. 0:06:00.800 --> 0:06:03.560 I wrote an entire book just about the philosophy of 0:06:03.600 --> 0:06:06.239 eating called The Table Comes First, which was the title 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:09.839 was given to me by our friend Burkus of Saint 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:13.640 John because we were having elevenses once and he said, 0:06:14.520 --> 0:06:17.000 genuine he was genuinely perturbed. He said, there is this 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:19.560 young couple I know, he said, and they just getting 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:21.920 married and they want to buy a bed. Said, don't 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:24.760 they know the table comes first. They're having a bed 0:06:24.800 --> 0:06:27.240 but no table. And I thought, oh, what a beautiful thought. 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:30.840 The table comes first. It's the altar in the raft 0:06:30.960 --> 0:06:34.799 of human existence. So for me, my fascination with food 0:06:34.800 --> 0:06:38.359 I think comes from two you know, sharply opposed places. 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:41.040 On the one end, just pure read I love to eat, 0:06:41.120 --> 0:06:41.440 and I. 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:45.640 See funny that greed comes into food. I have a 0:06:45.680 --> 0:06:48.640 friend who had a nanny and she overheard her child 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:51.599 who said, I'd want, you know, a biscuit. She'd eaten 0:06:51.720 --> 0:06:54.719 like five biscuits, and she heard the nanny saying, you know, 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:56.080 you're a greedy. 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:58.280 Little girl, and she fired her good. 0:06:58.320 --> 0:06:59.640 She fired it right on the spot. 0:06:59.680 --> 0:07:02.400 She said, you know what, I don't want somebody telling 0:07:02.480 --> 0:07:06.279 my child that because they want more food, that they're greedy. 0:07:06.320 --> 0:07:09.440 And for me, as an American and maybe that's something different, 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:12.800 is that greediness always meant that you want more money. 0:07:13.000 --> 0:07:15.640 So I think it's interesting the idea of sort of 0:07:15.720 --> 0:07:18.560 what greedy being involved in dispense. 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:21.440 One of the ways in which French culinary culture is 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:23.440 superior to any other is, you know, you use the 0:07:23.480 --> 0:07:28.200 word gourmand to mean greedy, and when you saymond, you mean, oh, 0:07:28.240 --> 0:07:30.840 he really loves to eat. And the French word gourmet, 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:33.800 which Americans and Brits have adapted, French folks don't really 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:37.240 use very much. You wouldn't say somebody's a gourmet unless. 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:37.840 They were an American. 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:41.280 But gourmand, yeah, though, it means greedy, and that sense 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:47.160 is a totally positive benediction. Tenon you know means really 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:51.760 loves food. So that's one part of my fascination with food. 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:55.680 I can't remember many musicals that I've seen they have 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:59.640 restaurants scenes. I've interviewed actors who actually had to cook 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:02.920 on or eat on stage, or food is a part 0:08:03.040 --> 0:08:07.160 of the drama. But you've actually created a musical about 0:08:07.440 --> 0:08:08.960 a restaurant called Our Table. 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:10.240 Can you tell me about it? 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:11.040 I'd love to. 0:08:11.440 --> 0:08:14.360 I wrote it with the great Broadway composer David Shire, 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:17.280 and it was inspired not so much by my book 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:20.360 about cooking, but out of a piece I wrote right 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:24.280 after nine to eleven about a cook's contest, and I 0:08:24.400 --> 0:08:27.720 was inspired by the two chefs, particularly Peter Hoffman, who 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:30.320 ran a beautiful little restaurant with his wife called Savoy, 0:08:30.400 --> 0:08:33.959 and David Waltuck, who also ran a beautiful, originally very 0:08:33.960 --> 0:08:37.560 small restaurant with his wife called Chanterrelle, and the way 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:42.160 that they poured themselves into these restaurants, that they poured 0:08:42.200 --> 0:08:44.679 all of their soul and their selves into these restaurants. 0:08:44.880 --> 0:08:48.840 But of course they were up against the inexorable constraints 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:51.160 of New York City real estate, which basically says, if 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:53.960 you've had a successful ten year run, we're going to 0:08:54.360 --> 0:08:57.360 quadruple your income. And so I got to thinking about 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:00.760 about that. And Peter had been at cooking school with 0:09:01.000 --> 0:09:05.520 Tony bourdain and they were dear friends, but they defined 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:10.800 totally opposite ends of the cooking experience. Peter an idealist 0:09:11.360 --> 0:09:15.520 making his perfect food every night for a small clientele, 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:18.679 Tony boordena on televisions. I wondered what would happen if 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:22.440 Tony Bourdena came back to rescue Peter's kitchen, And let's 0:09:22.480 --> 0:09:24.840 imagine that he had had an affair with Peter's wife 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:27.600 twenty years before and they didn't know about it. And 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:30.600 so that was the premise of our table. But what 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:32.760 I particularly wanted to do was write about the sort 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:36.839 of micro mechanics of a restaurant, which I observed from 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:40.600 watching you and from watching other friends. I think that 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:45.679 chefs are the last true artists of the old fashioned kind, right, 0:09:45.760 --> 0:09:50.760 because they're simultaneously trying to be inventive artistic. They have 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:53.400 a high standard, but at the same time they lived 0:09:53.400 --> 0:09:56.600 to please the way Shakespeare lived to please. You can't say, 0:09:56.600 --> 0:09:58.240 though a poet can say, well, if you don't like 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:02.760 it tough, right. Chefs are both artists and their inventiveness 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:05.960 and artisans in their commitment to a craft that has 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:09.600 to please. So I wanted to articulate that, but also 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:14.040 capture not the kind of the splendid and extravagant gestures 0:10:14.040 --> 0:10:16.640 of a kitchen which you often see on television, but 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:20.760 all the tiny little you said to me once, Ruthie. 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:23.240 It is one of my favorite sayings, and I put 0:10:23.240 --> 0:10:25.920 it into the show. Every table is a world, and 0:10:25.960 --> 0:10:29.720 that's what a true restaurantur understands. Every table is something 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:33.839 is going on and that a great host has to recognize. 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:37.760 So I wrote a song with David Shire called Chopping Onions, 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:42.480 Folding Napkins, in which the husband whose chef is in 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:44.959 the kitchen chopping onions and his wife, who runs the 0:10:44.960 --> 0:10:47.880 front of the house is in the dining room folding napkins, 0:10:48.120 --> 0:10:50.520 getting ready for the service, and at the same time 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:54.040 they're having a fight about her old boyfriend. And of 0:10:54.120 --> 0:10:58.199 all the things I've ever written, I love the microdrama 0:10:58.400 --> 0:11:00.640 of that because it struck me as it's true. 0:11:01.120 --> 0:11:02.640 We can listen to this on Spotify. 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:05.160 On Spotify our Table, I narrate it, and we have 0:11:05.200 --> 0:11:09.840 a wonderful cast Melissa Erico, Andy Taylor, Constantine Marulis, and 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:13.240 it's you know, it's it's a show about a restaurant 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:14.480 and infidelity. 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:16.360 Infidelity is probably more interesting. 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:19.040 I've been sulted by that. 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:21.960 I did nothing more interesting than a restaurant. 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:23.520 I just wanted to write about the restaurant, but the 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:26.480 director kept saying, no, no, no, we need lovers and we 0:11:26.520 --> 0:11:29.640 need all of you know, what about food is seduction. 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:34.800 I My wife seduced me with a bottle of champagne 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:37.200 when I was about nineteen. She chased me around the 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:40.360 Christmas tree with a bottle of Bum's Extra Dry. So 0:11:40.400 --> 0:11:43.000 we kind of got that done. Of course, it's it 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:44.160 is seduction always. 0:11:44.240 --> 0:11:46.480 You know I loved Do you remember the first Melia 0:11:46.559 --> 0:11:47.600 cooked from Martha? 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:50.760 Oh my gosh, yes, I cooked her. I was so 0:11:50.920 --> 0:11:55.400 such a pretentious kid, and probably still am. I cooked 0:11:55.400 --> 0:11:59.440 her a kish because I was learning to bake from 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:03.800 my mom mother's kitchen, in my mother's kitchen, her recipe. 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:06.760 But in the years since, Martha has one favorite meal 0:12:06.760 --> 0:12:09.880 which I cook her whenever I want to please her. 0:12:10.280 --> 0:12:13.680 Seduce more than please, and that is something I learned 0:12:13.720 --> 0:12:15.839 to do in France, which is a good roast chicken 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:21.359 pole depress in France with carrots with cumin and orange 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:27.040 potatoes roasted under the chicken and a broccoli puree and 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:30.679 then a caramelized garlic sauce. You know, and if I 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:33.360 know that that that will always work. 0:12:33.440 --> 0:12:42.320 Yeah. 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Sorry, okay, thanks. 0:13:30.440 --> 0:13:32.840 You said that you were raised on French food. 0:13:33.160 --> 0:13:34.839 Where are we born and what did you. 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:38.760 I was born in Philadelphia because my parents were graduate 0:13:38.760 --> 0:13:43.560 students at the University of Pennsylvania and my mother, who's 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:44.600 an extraordinary woman. 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:47.000 So they were young, they were young, and they came 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:48.880 from very simple backgrounds. 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:52.680 My grandparents were immigrants from the where on my father's 0:13:52.679 --> 0:13:54.960 side from Russia there were Russian Jews, and on my 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:56.239 mother's side from. 0:13:57.520 --> 0:13:59.360 The Levant they were Sephardic Jews. 0:14:00.240 --> 0:14:03.480 That side they had been all around from Hebron to 0:14:03.960 --> 0:14:08.840 Baghdad and beyond. The previous generation actually in Lisbon. My grandmother, 0:14:09.280 --> 0:14:11.440 who I knew very well, was born in Lisbon. In 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:16.920 any case, truly they were wandering Jews, and that's the background. 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:21.720 But my mom, who was an extraordinarily gifted woman in 0:14:21.760 --> 0:14:25.360 the manner of so many women of her generation, latched 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:28.760 onto French cooking and it was fascinating because she was 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:33.240 getting her PhD. She had six children. In linguistics, in linguistics, 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:36.960 in formal logic. She was one of the early students 0:14:37.000 --> 0:14:42.480 of or researchers in artificial languages and in computer translation, 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:44.760 the stuff that you get now on Google in a minute. 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:48.080 She spent a long time working on that side of 0:14:48.080 --> 0:14:51.160 things and then eventually became very well known for her 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:54.800 work in the genetics of language. She discovered one of 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:57.840 the first chromosomes that directly affect the way we form 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:01.200 sentences in any case. In a addition to that, she 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:04.360 was a passionate nightly cook, and like so many women 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:07.960 of her generation, she discovered Julia Child and French cooking 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:09.040 in the mid sixties. 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:11.560 Explained to Julia Child, I guess we should. 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:13.560 In fact, I did a little piece not long ago, 0:15:13.720 --> 0:15:16.840 long piece actually for the New Yorker about Judith Jones, 0:15:16.960 --> 0:15:21.160 who was a Julia Child's editor who discovered her really 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:23.480 out of a slush pile of a rejected book and 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:25.840 saw that it could be something great. Julia Child was 0:15:25.880 --> 0:15:29.680 the American doyenne of French cooking, wrote had a TV 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:33.200 series called The French Chef. Like all people who are 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:36.280 going to television, her great gift was complete un self consciousness. 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:40.040 She was sloppy and gray at had beautiful high boys. 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:42.840 Then she educated dropped a chicken famously. 0:15:43.080 --> 0:15:46.080 She was such a kind of total change to what 0:15:46.160 --> 0:15:49.400 the American cook, domestic cook, the. 0:15:49.440 --> 0:15:53.040 Benny Crocker cook. Yes, exactly too. Now you now chopped 0:15:53.040 --> 0:15:55.880 the ratit? Oh no, yes, the joe it's on the floor. 0:15:56.040 --> 0:15:57.040 Now we up. 0:15:57.760 --> 0:16:01.280 And it was wonderful and it liberates an entire generation. 0:16:01.760 --> 0:16:05.320 And my mom is a perfectionist, and she just became 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:07.920 a great French cook. And when I say, I mean 0:16:08.120 --> 0:16:10.200 all the things that we would never even do now, 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:14.560 like beef wellington, you know, or kleavaca of salmon, or 0:16:15.000 --> 0:16:17.440 turn itdo rossini, you know, all of those things that 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:19.960 belong to the to the past of French cooking. 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:20.800 Now she did. 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:25.200 And her great triumph was a grand Marniers soufle, which 0:16:25.280 --> 0:16:27.320 to this day I would still say is the single 0:16:27.840 --> 0:16:31.160 I will put a special golden border around the lemon 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:33.440 tart and chocolate nemesis here at the River Cafe. 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:38.000 But was spectacular. And during the pandemic, when Martha and. 0:16:38.040 --> 0:16:40.640 I were alone, as all of us were, I set 0:16:40.680 --> 0:16:42.960 myself the task of mastering my mother's gramarnies. 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:44.200 Do you have a recipe? 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:46.560 I have her recipe? Did she write it down for 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:47.760 She wrote it down for me. 0:16:47.880 --> 0:16:51.000 But it's a somewhat metaphysical recipe because the key moment 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:53.720 in it is she says, beat the egg whites until 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:57.280 they are not truly stiff and yet not entirely soft, 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:01.120 which is a metaphysical zone to try and arrive at. 0:17:01.280 --> 0:17:02.600 Right and over time. 0:17:02.640 --> 0:17:04.960 I just did it by trial and error, and she 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:08.520 had one very smart, you know, with the colin French 0:17:08.560 --> 0:17:12.879 and astus a hint, which is to have the oven 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:15.720 at four hundred degrees fahrenheit and then turn it down 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:18.600 once this siffley is in, and astonishingly it makes for 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:21.679 it makes for much better loft on it. But my 0:17:21.720 --> 0:17:25.080 mama cooked every night for her six children and husband, 0:17:25.480 --> 0:17:28.880 and she loved to shop down in Montreal. We moved 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:31.679 to Montreal when I was eleven because my parents got 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:36.440 jobs at McGill University. As I say, and she, you know, 0:17:36.760 --> 0:17:39.760 I have nothing but memories of her cooking all the time. 0:17:39.800 --> 0:17:43.479 And on my thirteenth birthday, she knew how much I 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:45.159 loved to eat, because I was the kid in the 0:17:45.200 --> 0:17:50.280 family who was always greediest of all. And she said, 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:52.480 what's your favorite thing for dinner? And I said beef 0:17:52.520 --> 0:17:54.480 struggle off, because it really was my favorite thing at 0:17:54.520 --> 0:17:56.479 that point, she said, you're going to make it for 0:17:56.520 --> 0:17:59.800 your own birthday dinner. And she showed me each step 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:02.840 along the way. Start taking the peppers and the onions, 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:06.479 and then the beef, then making the sauce with stock 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:11.320 and tomato paste and sour cream, and then the sheer 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:15.320 magic of that transformation the movement from raw to cooked 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:20.200 and then from raw to cooked to delicious was overwhelming 0:18:20.240 --> 0:18:20.440 for me. 0:18:20.680 --> 0:18:22.680 Was that a rare occasion? Then to bring her children 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:23.280 into the kitchen. 0:18:23.440 --> 0:18:25.360 No, we were in there all the time. 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:28.080 The only problem was my mother is, bless her, an 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:31.040 extremely impatient woman, which is one reason why she got 0:18:31.040 --> 0:18:35.320 those things done. And so she would always yell at you, 0:18:35.400 --> 0:18:39.119 not in an angry way, but you know how that is. 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:40.919 We all do it in the kitchen. I need the salt, No, 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:42.600 I need it now, I need you know. 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:46.359 And as a consequence, very few people could quite take 0:18:46.640 --> 0:18:50.320 the emotional heat in her kitchen, and I inherited all 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:53.439 of her impatience. And as a consequence, everyone of my 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:56.480 immediate family have tried to be my soux chef and 0:18:56.480 --> 0:18:58.120 they've all quit, all walked out. 0:18:58.720 --> 0:19:00.560 And what about your father? Did he cook? 0:19:00.680 --> 0:19:02.920 No, my dad didn't cook at all, but he loved 0:19:03.080 --> 0:19:03.919 my mother's cooking. 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:05.160 So when we grew up in. 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:09.960 This house of six children your parents is incredibly dynamic 0:19:10.040 --> 0:19:11.920 and interesting and meal times. 0:19:11.560 --> 0:19:14.080 Where all of you, eight of you, sat down every night. 0:19:14.280 --> 0:19:17.879 It was part of the beauty of my upbringing and 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:21.120 it's something I took with me and have been probably 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:25.240 unduly religious about. With my own family, we always had 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.960 dinner together, and dinner was always delicious, and it was 0:19:29.000 --> 0:19:32.600 always a debating society, and it was always a community, 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:36.880 and there were always politics being played out, older children, 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:41.920 younger children, middle children, the middle children. Now, I'll say 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.679 bitterly that the older children, my sister Allison, and myself 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:47.760 were competing for my father's attention. But whatever was going 0:19:47.840 --> 0:19:50.160 on to the table, it was always going on in 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:53.919 that sense that the dinner table is the altar and 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:57.199 sacrament of family life is something that I've taken forward 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:01.359 with me into my own existence. To my children's enormous frustration, 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:05.040 because they became accustomed at eight fifteen am, as they 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:09.000 were leaving for school, bleary eyed, exhausted, barely able to 0:20:09.080 --> 0:20:11.080 keep themselves together, I'd say, what would you like for 0:20:11.119 --> 0:20:11.600 dinner tonight? 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:13.520 Would you like the salmon with lentils? Or I can 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:17.520 do a roast chicken, but I just need to know 0:20:17.680 --> 0:20:21.760 so I can go shop for And then they said salmon. 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:27.560 It growing up in a family where meals were taken together, 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:31.359 or your mother may be willing to do. You remember 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:34.040 leaving the comfort of home when you went to McGill 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:38.119 and being exposed to a completely different world. 0:20:38.200 --> 0:20:41.639 What was that like McGill was was home, so it 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:43.840 stay home. 0:20:44.800 --> 0:20:47.399 Martha, my wife and I were both at McGill together, 0:20:47.640 --> 0:20:50.120 but we it's a Canadian thing. You don't go away 0:20:50.160 --> 0:20:52.879 to school, you go nearby. But when we moved to 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:55.879 New York, yes, in the summer of nineteen eighty, we 0:20:55.960 --> 0:20:58.240 had just graduated, and we got on a bus that 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:01.560 said New York City, like in a forties musical, and 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:03.320 my dad saw us off. 0:21:03.560 --> 0:21:05.240 He thought it was a mad adventure. We were going 0:21:05.320 --> 0:21:06.160 to go live in New York. 0:21:06.920 --> 0:21:09.440 And he said to me as I got on the bus, 0:21:09.520 --> 0:21:11.280 he said, just remember when you get to New York, 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.920 never underestimate the other person's insecurities. That as a general, 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:19.240 as a general piece of advice, and it's the best 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:20.600