Speaker 1: Next week is our hundredth episode of Ruthie's Table four,
Speaker 1: and to celebrate, we thought we would turn it over
Speaker 1: to you. If you have a question for me, a
Speaker 1: food memory you'd like to share, or a recipe you
Speaker 1: just need help with, Record a message and send it
Speaker 1: in the phone numbers in the text below. Ask me anything.
Speaker 1: Happy Birthday, Ruthie's Table four. I would like to think
Speaker 1: that Simon sebag Montefiori and I have much in common.
Speaker 1: We both had what he calls a loving and indulgent childhood.
Speaker 1: We believe in trust, and openness and flexibility. Our families
Speaker 1: fled the pogroms of Romanov Russia. We see food as
Speaker 1: one of the focuses of our life. Simon and I
Speaker 1: also love to tell and listen to stories, food and history,
Speaker 1: food and fiction, food and exploring.
Speaker 2: I love the stories.
Speaker 1: Simon has lived them his books and television programs. Katherine
Speaker 1: the Great Potempkin, Stalin the Court of the Red Star, Erusalem,
Speaker 1: The Biography Titans of History, the Romanovs sixteen thirteen to
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen, and most recently a fantastic book, The World
Speaker 1: of Family. History of Humanity, educates, informs, and inspires us
Speaker 1: who read, listen, and watch. Today we're here together on
Speaker 1: a beautiful autumn day in the River cafe to discuss
Speaker 1: this and more.
Speaker 3: Lucky me, lucky me, too great to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming. So Simon, you've chosen. You wrote
Speaker 1: to me, you called me, We spoke about it that
Speaker 1: of all the recipes in our twelve cookbooks, you wanted
Speaker 1: to do the Canelini bean.
Speaker 2: And jacorea soup.
Speaker 1: So you could read the recipe and then we could
Speaker 1: discuss why you chose this.
Speaker 4: Of course, chaquaura and canelini bean soup. So this serves
Speaker 4: six two hundred and fifty grams of cooked cannellini beans,
Speaker 4: two hundred grams of chacorea leaves, half a garlic bulb,
Speaker 4: fresh sagely, two garlic clothes chopped, three tablespoons olive oil,
Speaker 4: and parsley leaves chopped with extra virgin olive oil. This
Speaker 4: has been marked up by Ruthie herself. This is a
Speaker 4: proper This feels like an archival document. It reminds me
Speaker 4: of working in the archives. When you see Stalin or
Speaker 4: Kafine the Great, I think in the grate.
Speaker 2: Of restaurants, not to Stalin, you might ask the my stuff.
Speaker 2: They might say, I'm the style.
Speaker 3: I'm not asking that question, Ruthie, because I might not
Speaker 3: like the answer.
Speaker 1: I don't know enough about it, but I'm happy to
Speaker 1: take a woman over anybody over Starlin.
Speaker 4: I think that you're a stalin, but anyway to cook it?
Speaker 4: In a large salespan. Cook the garlic, then the olive
Speaker 4: oil until soft but not brown. Stir in the parsley,
Speaker 4: Add the checoria leads to the oil and braize until
Speaker 4: slightly soft before adding the beans. Put three quarters the
Speaker 4: beans into a food process so with some of the
Speaker 4: reserve cooking liquid, and the mixture should be thicker and thicker,
Speaker 4: and return to the saucepan and season. Reheat if too thick,
Speaker 4: add more cooking liquid, serve with a generous amount of
Speaker 4: extra virgin olive oil. And I've already tried it.
Speaker 3: God, am I going to be able to eat all
Speaker 3: that looks delicious?
Speaker 4: I think I'm going to switch plates now from the
Speaker 4: Sea Bass too. I'd say this is going to River Cafe,
Speaker 4: Georgian lobbyo Beans because people always compare Georgia, which is
Speaker 4: one of my favorite countries, to Italy, especially to Sicily
Speaker 4: and the food there is a real mixer of Lebanese, Ranium,
Speaker 4: Persian and Italian, and they're basically my two favorite countries
Speaker 4: in terms of food.
Speaker 3: So this soup is the ideal mix. Hi, I want
Speaker 3: to take it home with me? Can I take you home?
Speaker 4: Remind Joseph? It is absolutely delicious, absolute delicious. Cannot waste
Speaker 4: a single bead, it's so good, and I think you've
Speaker 4: got I'll take thank you.
Speaker 5: I'm here with Joseph. This is a River Cafe classic recipes.
Speaker 6: It really is. It's in the Yellow Books, in the
Speaker 6: book two of our first books, and it's a real
Speaker 6: classic that we make. Almost every portion of the suit
Speaker 6: that I've ever eaten. Ruthy's made herself, and it really
Speaker 6: reminds me of her and arriving here and learning how
Speaker 6: to cook.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: It's that is early days River Cafe for me. Anyway,
Speaker 6: it's more than maybe a bit more wintry. It's one
Speaker 6: of those recipes like many that it's just has few ingredients,
Speaker 6: you know. So it's has this chequoia, which is a
Speaker 6: wonderful green which gets labeled a kind of bitter green,
Speaker 6: but really, when it's well cooked, loses an awful lot
Speaker 6: of that bitterness and it's really rather sweet. And then
Speaker 6: Chile and then if you've got really lovely cannellini beans,
Speaker 6: and that's kind of all it is. But it's amazing
Speaker 6: how those combination of a few things can be tweaked
Speaker 6: in different ways and it can actually be rather different.
Speaker 6: But it's you know, it's one of those rather hearty,
Speaker 6: quite thick country suits.
Speaker 2: What do you think.
Speaker 4: I absolutely loved it. It's a delicious mixture. Italian hammer Smith.
Speaker 2: Would you say?
Speaker 4: Georgia your part, the River Cafe part? And I love
Speaker 4: the way you've marked this up. Okay, well to keep
Speaker 4: And because because I found out I liked it, say much,
Speaker 4: I found out that they had a bigger pot of it.
Speaker 4: So I'm taking that home with me if I'm allowed,
Speaker 4: rather calf from the grade of the River Cafe.
Speaker 2: So why did you choose it?
Speaker 4: I chose it because bean soup has played a big
Speaker 4: part in my life, because I started off in the
Speaker 4: very early nineties with the fall of the Soviet Union,
Speaker 4: and I was always in Georgia, and Georgia became my
Speaker 4: favorite home from home.
Speaker 3: I was there for all its.
Speaker 4: Wars, its coups, it's tragedies, but also I came to
Speaker 4: love it's food, food, and the heart of its food.
Speaker 4: At the heart of Georgian cuisine is the bean soup,
Speaker 4: and lobbyer bean soup is the national Georgian dish, one
Speaker 4: of them, along with satze, via, kadschapori and all these
Speaker 4: other delicious dishes. But in Georgia they have the Georgian Supra,
Speaker 4: which is a feast, and there's a tamada who's elected
Speaker 4: the toast master. By the way, Stalin was always, of
Speaker 4: course toast master at his feasts, but he was a Georgian.
Speaker 4: But of course normally the toast masters are a little
Speaker 4: bit more benign than that.
Speaker 2: What does a toastmaster do?
Speaker 4: He tells stories, He makes toasts quite often, he goes
Speaker 4: around the table and clinks glasses with different people. Basically,
Speaker 4: what's unique about the tamadam is that he's a storyteller
Speaker 4: as well, which brings us back, which is why I
Speaker 4: thought food and stories. But you know, I have many.
Speaker 4: When I was there, the Soviet Union was falling apart.
Speaker 2: This is nineteen ninety.
Speaker 4: Eighty nine, nineteen ninety, nineteen ninety one to sort of
Speaker 4: ninety four, and I was very lucky I've been an
Speaker 4: investment bank, I believe it or not. And I left
Speaker 4: investment banking and I went out there and I was in.
Speaker 3: All the wars of the former Soviet Union, but.
Speaker 4: Some of my favorite moments were in Georgia eating lobbyo
Speaker 4: beans once. I remember in the Assetian Wartias north of Tbilisi.
Speaker 4: It's a region that broke away from Georgia and was
Speaker 4: backed by Putin and is still backed by Putin.
Speaker 3: But I went up to the.
Speaker 4: War and I was with the Georgian side, and we
Speaker 4: were up at the top on this kind of amazingly
Speaker 4: beautiful mountain with these amazing Georgian churches on the mountaintops,
Speaker 4: and the fighters all lent their guns against the tree
Speaker 4: and a bit, so I was kind of imagining I
Speaker 4: was a a heming, you know, for whom the bell tolls.
Speaker 4: It was a little bit like that.
Speaker 3: And there was this huge table laid out for a Georgian.
Speaker 1: That's interesting that, during you know, the fighting, they had
Speaker 1: a table for a while.
Speaker 4: Three boys had been killed in the village, so this
Speaker 4: was their funeral supper. So we all sat down and
Speaker 4: the Tamada took control. We all made toasts and everyone
Speaker 4: got drunk and drunk, and the food, more and more
Speaker 4: food kept arriving. And then after a bit I said
Speaker 4: to them, you know, you're gonna imagine we're on the top
Speaker 4: of this mountain, the blue sky in the distance. And
Speaker 4: I said to them, you know that I guess in
Speaker 4: the funeral happened earlier, because you know the boys were
Speaker 4: buried earlier. I guess this is their funeral supper. And
Speaker 4: they said, no, they're with us, and they lifted up
Speaker 4: the table cloth and their bodies were under the table.
Speaker 4: So you can see why I have a visceral feeling
Speaker 4: for Georgian feasts.
Speaker 2: Would it be very regional the food?
Speaker 1: Did you find that Georgia is very different from Chechna,
Speaker 1: which is different from very.
Speaker 4: The Caucusus is fascinating because it's it's the sort of
Speaker 4: borderland of empires. So there's a huge Persian influence. They
Speaker 4: controlled it for a long time. There's a huge Ottoman
Speaker 4: Turkish influence. They controlled it for a long time, and
Speaker 4: then the Russians, and now of course it's three independent republics,
Speaker 4: and Chechnya tried to break away. I was in the
Speaker 4: Chechen War in nineteen ninety four, so I witnessed all
Speaker 4: this amazing stuff happening. There's nothing like Georgian food and
Speaker 4: Georgian food. It does have a touch of Lebanese food,
Speaker 4: touch the Persian food, Persian, Arab and Turkish, but it's
Speaker 4: not like any other because it's filled with coriander and
Speaker 4: tarragan and walnuts and a jeeka which is sort of
Speaker 4: chilli sauce. It's very original, it's not like anything else.
Speaker 4: I think you'd love it as it.
Speaker 2: Was with me.
Speaker 1: He has a brother in law based in Osborne and
Speaker 1: he's Georgian and he's actually doing the Georgian Film Festival.
Speaker 1: He called me this morning and has very very strong
Speaker 1: roots in Georgia and brought me a cookbook with a
Speaker 1: chef who had written it.
Speaker 2: And it was so interesting. It was beautifully done.
Speaker 1: First of all, it had a sense of the culture
Speaker 1: and that it had the cooking, the dumplings, a lot
Speaker 1: of dumplings too, which.
Speaker 3: I forgot the name of.
Speaker 4: But all the dishes have a sort of role, and
Speaker 4: in that way Geordian foot food. It's almost like the
Speaker 4: a story behind many of the dishes. It's not quite
Speaker 4: like a passover Sadan Knight, but the Georgian super That's
Speaker 4: the thing it's most similar to him is a pass
Speaker 4: over dinner because of the storytelling. Yeah, and of course
Speaker 4: Stalin used to sit up with his cronies and have
Speaker 4: these Georgians.
Speaker 1: I think you alluded to the fact that he was
Speaker 1: a good that he was interested.
Speaker 4: He loved Georgian food. His real name was Joseph Dugashphili.
Speaker 4: Many in Georgian names end in Adzi or Shwhili, which
Speaker 4: means son of and he came from Gorri, which is
Speaker 4: a small town in Georgia. Till it was about thirty
Speaker 4: or forty, he was completely Georgian. He spoke Georgian. But
Speaker 4: his mother was very ambitious for him and she wanted
Speaker 4: him to be a bishop or an archbishop.
Speaker 3: She was very religious.
Speaker 4: She got him into the seminary in Tibilisi, which is
Speaker 4: where he was trained to be a priest. There they
Speaker 4: were taught Russian, very good Russian, and if he hadn't
Speaker 4: been taught Russian, he could never rule the Russian Empire
Speaker 4: a Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: Do you speak yeah, I can tell, well, I can
Speaker 1: tell when you were naming the soups and the names.
Speaker 2: If you speak Georgian, you have to learn what it's
Speaker 2: nothing to do with, nothing to do with no.
Speaker 4: It's nothing even has a different alphabet, and they have
Speaker 4: an amazing history in the sort of twelve. In the eleventh, twelfth,
Speaker 4: thirteenth century, Georgia was a huge kingdom and at one
Speaker 4: point under the great Queen Tamara, who's another great female
Speaker 4: ruler who I write all about in the World Book.
Speaker 4: It ruled from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea
Speaker 4: and was one of the great powers of the Near
Speaker 4: East under a female ruler, which is quite something.
Speaker 1: So going back to Stalin and being a good eater,
Speaker 1: when you were writing your book about him, what did
Speaker 1: you find out about his food?
Speaker 4: He loved He loved lobbyo, and he loved kadjapori, and
Speaker 4: he loved all the soups. He loved loved chakapouli, which
Speaker 4: is the lamb stew, and he used to put Georgian
Speaker 4: bread in it, soak it and eat it. He was
Speaker 4: a great trenchman, one of his few winning features, I
Speaker 4: should say. But the interesting about Stalin was he reinvented
Speaker 4: himself several times. I mean, he became Stalin which means
Speaker 4: man of steel, in about nineteen twelve and before then
Speaker 4: he'd been basically Georgian and Stalin is a kind of
Speaker 4: Russian style name, and so he really infented himself. He
Speaker 4: was kind of always a Georgian in terms of kind
Speaker 4: of eating and drinking. He loved Georgian wine, for example,
Speaker 4: and the thing he really loved was Georgians singing. Because
Speaker 4: Stalin surprisingly was the star choir boy of the seminary.
Speaker 4: His full setto was supposed to be the most beautiful
Speaker 4: full settle, very high and very pure, and when his
Speaker 4: voice broke he became a tenor. And even when he
Speaker 4: was dictator, even during the terror.
Speaker 3: Just after the war.
Speaker 4: During the war, he liked to sing to piano and
Speaker 4: he used to sing that there's a very famous Georgian
Speaker 4: song called Suliko, which he was his speciality was singing there.
Speaker 4: So he was this rather sinister choir boy, a choir boy.
Speaker 1: Going back to the beginning and tell me about growing
Speaker 1: up in the Montafoury.
Speaker 4: Father was a doctor who was also a psychiatrist. He
Speaker 4: had a very fascinating practice, so we grew up in
Speaker 4: a very kind of strange household because the surgery was
Speaker 4: under the house in Kensington. He had all sorts of patients.
Speaker 4: He was the sort of person that saw lots of
Speaker 4: people for free. But also he had people like Peter
Speaker 4: Seller's and Dudley Moore and Peter Cook. And they actually
Speaker 4: did of sketch about him, did they. Yeah, because whatever
Speaker 4: you said to my father, whatever terrible thing you'd done
Speaker 4: as a child, he'd always say, don't worry, Simon, that's
Speaker 4: perfectly normal.
Speaker 2: That's what from a psychiatrist and a father.
Speaker 3: Five Yeah, and a father.
Speaker 4: So their sketches, there's there's a sketch where they where
Speaker 4: they go to a psychiatrist based on my father and
Speaker 4: everything they say to him.
Speaker 3: He says, don't worry. That's perfectly as it was the
Speaker 3: connection between the Montefori hospital and the Monterefori family.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go back, because I tried to do your family
Speaker 1: treat I would say to Michael Ignatief, who was a
Speaker 1: mutual friend of ours, that his family killed my family probably. Yes,
Speaker 1: they were very white Russians, and my family were the
Speaker 1: you know, the fiddle around the real family that came
Speaker 1: from me tour. No, but they don't have a hospital
Speaker 1: named after our so there might be a diversion somewhere.
Speaker 1: So just go back to the roots, because I think
Speaker 1: it goes into the eighteenth century, so maybe I can
Speaker 1: trace mine back to about nineteen o six, so I
Speaker 1: think it's quite different.
Speaker 4: But tell me, well, my mom's family are from Lithuania
Speaker 4: like yours, right, V are you from Kiev?
Speaker 6: So we were.
Speaker 4: We were lit Vas and some of them for Odessa
Speaker 4: and some of them from Galitzia and Galitzianas a notorious
Speaker 4: which were dusd from Galicia which is sort of southern
Speaker 4: Poland around and Levolv which is in Ukraine. And Galitzianas
Speaker 4: were famous playboys, notorious womanizes and boulevardiers and food and
Speaker 4: they loved food. They were set, they were, they were.
Speaker 2: They go together, don't they and you know, do you know.
Speaker 3: What they were? They were Epicureans.
Speaker 4: Yeah, nice, notorious and so that's my mother's family. But
Speaker 4: they were interesting because they got out when all the
Speaker 4: programs begun in three to four, just around the same
Speaker 4: time as we may have been on the same boat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but us got off in England and mine went
Speaker 1: to you know, Ellis Island.
Speaker 4: Well, mine were tricked. We bought tickets for Ellis Island.
Speaker 4: But when week after about two days at sea, they
Speaker 4: said I'm afraid that you're getting off here, and so
Speaker 4: my family said, but hang on. So we bought tickets
Speaker 4: for New York and we haven't seen the Statue of Liberty,
Speaker 4: and they said, sorry, look at your tickets. And they
Speaker 4: looked at the tickets and they said, that's.
Speaker 3: Not New York. It's New Cork. New Cork, Yeah, which
Speaker 3: is Ireland. So they got off there. But the Montafis
Speaker 3: have a longer story.
Speaker 2: So that's your father's family, Yeah.
Speaker 4: My father's family, and they would come the sea banks.
Speaker 4: Came from Morocco sebah Sebach, so that's an Arabic name.
Speaker 4: And the Montafiories were originally called, we think called Carvero,
Speaker 4: which was Spanish, and they were expelled from Spain in
Speaker 4: fourteen ninety two. They went to Portage and in Portugal
Speaker 4: they were expelled in fourteen ninety eight. So they went
Speaker 4: back to Spain and converted to Catholicism. But they were
Speaker 4: only pretending they were crypto Jews. And when Philip the
Speaker 4: second was trying to recruit governors to govern New Spain,
Speaker 4: which was Mexico, he gave them the job of governing
Speaker 4: a huge province. But there was a feud. They were
Speaker 4: denounced by their servants who spied on them, and they
Speaker 4: would announce for secretly being Jews, and most of the
Speaker 4: family were burnt alive in Mexico City. It's very sinister
Speaker 4: because when you read about these after Cortez, after this
Speaker 4: is about sixteen hundred and one son got away and
Speaker 4: went to Italy and adopted the name Montefiori because it ends.
Speaker 2: As sort of is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So you grew up in this household a
Speaker 1: mother from his families from Lithuania. Your father felt did
Speaker 1: he identify very strongly with being Jewish, and the.
Speaker 3: The family was the very Jewish family.
Speaker 4: But my father's family, monte Seabag Montefuries were sort of
Speaker 4: fox hunting Jews.
Speaker 3: They were very different.
Speaker 4: While my mother's family, she would kill me for saying this,
Speaker 4: but they were stettle Jews from Lithuania and Poland and
Speaker 4: so on.
Speaker 1: And and your mother's mother then she would have been
Speaker 1: born in Lithuania, and she took Lithuanian food.
Speaker 4: No, they didn't cook Lithanian, but they didn't really eat
Speaker 4: lat kids and that because bagels and chick but chicken
Speaker 4: soup was key. I remember when I was a child,
Speaker 4: my parents had a huge row once and my father
Speaker 4: was being impossible and my mother just got a thing
Speaker 4: of chicken soup and pored it over his head.
Speaker 2: Was it hot?
Speaker 4: It was not that hot, lucky, but then they started laughing.
Speaker 4: But it was a very good for a psychiatrist. Right,
Speaker 4: did this psychiatrist say that's not Do you say that's normal?
Speaker 3: I think he would.
Speaker 4: He would say that was perfectly normal kitchen behavior. I
Speaker 4: don't know if that happens in your kitchen, We don't know.
Speaker 1: We stopped short of boring super people. So your father
Speaker 1: would be downstairs with his patients. Would there be family meals?
Speaker 1: Would there be would you say, how many siblings do
Speaker 1: you have?
Speaker 4: I've got three brothers. I'm the youngest of the whole family.
Speaker 4: We were always aware that the surgery was going on downstairs,
Speaker 4: and we were always told never repeat anything that you
Speaker 4: see in this house because it would ruin your father.
Speaker 4: But they were very open us, so we knew all
Speaker 4: the stuff that was happening, and all sorts of crazy
Speaker 4: stuff happened. People will kind of arrive in the middle
Speaker 4: of the night with their sort of having had a
Speaker 4: row with their wife, or you know, somebody was giving
Speaker 4: birth to a baby or something.
Speaker 3: It was like growing up in a theater. It was
Speaker 3: very exciting.
Speaker 2: And then but she would have would he come up
Speaker 2: for dinner?
Speaker 3: And then you come up for dinner?
Speaker 2: And who did the cooking?
Speaker 4: My mother did the cooking, and there'd be there would
Speaker 4: always be delicious kind of food, but not really Jewish
Speaker 4: food but actually very English food, like roast chickens, roast lambs.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So she was born and she.
Speaker 4: Was born in h She was born and she was
Speaker 4: born in Nottingham or Newcastle. Our grandfather was the first
Speaker 4: Jewish Lord mayor elected in Newcastle and he ran for
Speaker 4: He ran for Lord Mayor and when he was painting,
Speaker 4: they used to say, we hear you you lie in
Speaker 4: bed all day and he replied, so would you if
Speaker 4: you were married to missus Wolfe, which was which was
Speaker 4: which worked.
Speaker 3: Very well, the one in the election.
Speaker 4: One on the election and I've got her picture in
Speaker 4: my room and she does look.
Speaker 2: Quite quite.
Speaker 3: Campaigning.
Speaker 1: It was food important, though, it was it the family
Speaker 1: meal that was important.
Speaker 3: Food, food was all important.
Speaker 4: We're absolutely epicurean ruth and we absolutely live for food
Speaker 4: and we love delicious food and hate bad food.
Speaker 2: Did your father.
Speaker 3: Cook no, you never cooked. You never cooked.
Speaker 2: Did your mother have help? So that she did have
Speaker 2: help domestic she.
Speaker 4: Did have help, And it was all about meals, and
Speaker 4: everything happened at meals, and I still live for eating.
Speaker 2: And then your boarding school was that a shock?
Speaker 3: There was a shock? Was a shock.
Speaker 4: Well, the food was appalling for a start, But on
Speaker 4: the other hand, my parents were so kind of over indulgent.
Speaker 4: And I think if I hadn't gone to boarding school,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure I've ever been able to function at
Speaker 4: all in the world. I mean, I was so close
Speaker 4: to my parents because I was eight years youngers and after.
Speaker 2: Mistake and then boarding school.
Speaker 4: And because I was Jewish, I had to have special food.
Speaker 4: I remember once go into the kitchen and there was
Speaker 4: a very old lady plucking a chicken, and they said,
Speaker 4: that's your food, because that's all you can eat.
Speaker 2: There are other Jewish.
Speaker 4: There were virtually no other Jewish children at my prep school,
Speaker 4: and then at Harrow there were quite a lot of
Speaker 4: Jewish children.
Speaker 1: If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
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Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Thank you you are now historian.
Speaker 1: But in the beginning, did you feel that sense that
Speaker 1: you had to not just write about what was happening
Speaker 1: but livett.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wrote long letters about describing everything I saw
Speaker 4: in the minds, the politics, and of course I worked
Speaker 4: in a kibbutz as well in Israel and that was
Speaker 4: also fascinating. And I saw amazing things now as well,
Speaker 4: because that was the beginning of the invasion of Lebanon,
Speaker 4: which was appalling mistake on the Israeli's part. So both
Speaker 4: of those things were good preparations. And the third adventure
Speaker 4: I went on was going to visit Jewish Refuseniks in
Speaker 4: Russia in the Soviet Union with my father.
Speaker 2: Was that the first time you worent yes.
Speaker 4: And that was the beginning of my relationship with Russia.
Speaker 4: And so all of these things kind of were good preparations.
Speaker 2: But year was that.
Speaker 1: Eighty four, As I say, I went with Richard to Moscow.
Speaker 1: He was chairman of the tape at the time, and
Speaker 1: the idea was to go with the director to try
Speaker 1: and get an exchange of turners that Britain would give
Speaker 1: them for the and I'm in the hermitage that was
Speaker 1: in Leningrad, and we ate nothing. I wanted to have
Speaker 1: the bors. I wanted to have the Russian.
Speaker 4: Food, but it was quite severe, it was it was miserable.
Speaker 2: Really, did you discover good Russian food?
Speaker 4: I didn't find any more food. I mean, I love
Speaker 4: stirle at fish.
Speaker 2: Sturgeon, surgeon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that is there's are fish that sort of
Speaker 4: mainly live in the Caspian and that they create caveat
Speaker 4: of course, but Prince Potemkin loved sturgeon. He was obsessed
Speaker 4: with sturgeon. He used to continually roast sturgeon wherever he went,
Speaker 4: and he had it brought for him packed in ice,
Speaker 4: of course, all for hundreds of miles. But we didn't
Speaker 4: have any of that when we were there. But when
Speaker 4: I went back later after farding school, I went to Cambridge.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about that for a moment.
Speaker 1: What was it?
Speaker 2: Did you live in rooms and did you eat? Again?
Speaker 4: I live in rooms in the dining room sometimes, but
Speaker 4: what I really loved doing was eating. But there was
Speaker 4: a great Turkish kid bab house there and we lived
Speaker 4: in there. It was called Omar and Ossy. Omar and
Speaker 4: Ossie are very key figures in my university year. So
Speaker 4: that was the sort of best food we had. We
Speaker 4: used to go there every night and we lived on
Speaker 4: that delicious food. And whenever I travel anywhere, I want
Speaker 4: to experience the food. And you know, one of the
Speaker 4: reasons why I've often written about family history.
Speaker 3: I mean, all of these books.
Speaker 4: Like the Romanovs All the World is just because family
Speaker 4: is a way of writing, conveying continuity but also depth
Speaker 4: and grit of life. And so I always wanted my
Speaker 4: books people to know what people were wearing, what music
Speaker 4: they listened to, and what food they were eating. Hopefully,
Speaker 4: if I could find out food is what families do together,
Speaker 4: even sort of families that barely hang together still eat
Speaker 4: together normally, don't they.
Speaker 2: Pre nineteen seventeen, that would be the Roman Macaractor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Romanovs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, was there a real sense of pleasure and food?
Speaker 1: And for wealthy people. I mean would the Romans, what
Speaker 1: would the aristocracy have eaten?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean they love French food. Of course, they
Speaker 4: all had French chefs who they brought over. What they
Speaker 4: would have eaten all these splendid proper Russian dishes borshed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's talk about the very garlicy with beetroot.
Speaker 2: Do you like it hot?
Speaker 3: Ginger? I like it hot? You how do you like?
Speaker 1: My experience of Russian food was there was none of
Speaker 1: none of that in our house. But my father is
Speaker 1: a treat would drive us maybe once every couple of
Speaker 1: months and we'd go down to New York City and
Speaker 1: we'd see the big ships and then we would go
Speaker 1: to the Russian tea room for love before seeing a musical.
Speaker 3: What would you eat that?
Speaker 1: And so we would have the bleanies and I think
Speaker 1: you could have the choice of cold or heart borsh.
Speaker 1: I prefer it hot as well. You can really feel
Speaker 1: the flavors.
Speaker 4: I think it's delicious. And also there's cinnamon and it
Speaker 4: isn't that ginger. And even in my time we used
Speaker 4: to have massive amounts of caveat and believing and it
Speaker 4: is huge and that is delicious when it's done properly.
Speaker 4: And that's course named after the Stroganov family, and they
Speaker 4: are fascinating family. They were the conquistadors of Russia. They
Speaker 4: were the they were the family that conquered Siberia because
Speaker 4: they were called the Cortes of Russia other Strogovs, and
Speaker 4: they were They rose from merchants who started off having
Speaker 4: sort of salt farms and doing mining and training, and
Speaker 4: then they i'ven the Terrible allowed them to expand into
Speaker 4: Siberia and in just a few decades fifty years or
Speaker 4: a little over fifty years, the Russians made it all
Speaker 4: the way to the Pacific and conquered. They had to
Speaker 4: just there was an amazing there was an amazing kingdom there
Speaker 4: called the Karnate of Sibia, which was a Genghist rule
Speaker 4: by Genghis Khans descendants, and they destroyed that, that Karnate,
Speaker 4: and then they went unconquered Siberia and the strong offs,
Speaker 4: of course became very rich and became counts and aristocracy.
Speaker 4: But they started off with their own private army of
Speaker 4: Cossacks conquering Siberia.
Speaker 3: So that's my struggle. And they were the ones who
Speaker 3: was invented. Be strong invent it.
Speaker 1: Because I always thought, how fabulous to have a have
Speaker 1: a dish named after you, you know. So we used
Speaker 1: to go to a restaurant in Paris that had the
Speaker 1: Grand before and there was a big treat and they
Speaker 1: would have a dish called pigeon, Prince Ranier whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought that would be quite bad. I didn't
Speaker 2: know that beef struggle. There's a dessert, isn't its?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's very I'd love to have a dish.
Speaker 2: Okay, we could we could name we can think of
Speaker 2: a name.
Speaker 3: Well, that would be exciting.
Speaker 1: You're interested in history and food and culture and family.
Speaker 1: Let's just take Prussia and you know, growing up in
Speaker 1: Russia at a different period of the twentieth century or
Speaker 1: the twenty first century, how would food explain some of
Speaker 1: what you're seeing the wealth of the nation, the poverty
Speaker 1: of the nation, the Gorbachev period, the Oligarch period, the
Speaker 1: Putin period. Do you see that kind of.
Speaker 4: Reiving food was Food was a hugely important part of
Speaker 4: world history and Russian history. And it's interesting because until
Speaker 4: about two hundred, one hundred and fifty years ago, it
Speaker 4: was still massive famines of the time around the world.
Speaker 4: But scientific improvements in fertilizer and medical advances were the
Speaker 4: two things that really enabled the explosion of world population
Speaker 4: and the reason why most of the famines in the
Speaker 4: twentieth century were actually man made famines. They weren't the
Speaker 4: sort of famines that used to happen in the eighteen
Speaker 4: forties or in India, and most of them were failures
Speaker 4: of supply rather that or man made political policies. And
Speaker 4: an example of that is that you know, is the
Speaker 4: other famines in the eighteen eighties and eighteen nineties were
Speaker 4: there was a huge famine in Russia which the Tsar
Speaker 4: Alexander the Third denied existed. Then, of course, after the
Speaker 4: Russian Civil War, there was another huge famine in Russia.
Speaker 4: Then in the late twenty stalin the civil war do
Speaker 4: you mean nineteen eighty nineteen eighteen.
Speaker 2: To twenty one, do you call it a civil war?
Speaker 3: Called the Russian Civil War?
Speaker 4: There were two revolutions, one in February seventeen, one in
Speaker 4: October seventeen, and for a while the Bolsheviks looked like
Speaker 4: they'd keep power but lose most of the Russian Empire.
Speaker 4: And then they launched a series of wars from the center,
Speaker 4: basing themselves in Moscow again not Petersburg, and they reconquered.
Speaker 4: They defeated the divided white powers who were trying to
Speaker 4: stop them, and then they started to retake all the
Speaker 4: provinces and the ethnic groups that had been part of
Speaker 4: the Tsarist Empire, so that included Georgia we were talking
Speaker 4: about in Armenia.
Speaker 3: Central Asia.
Speaker 4: They failed to take Poland, but they succeeded in taking Ukraine,
Speaker 4: which was very decisive because Ukraine was the bread basket
Speaker 4: of the Russian Empire and traditionally Ukrainian grames exported out
Speaker 4: of Odessa and Nikolaiath to the world. But when Stalin
Speaker 4: started to collectivize the farms in the late twenties, he
Speaker 4: specially victimized the Ukrainians and other minority peoples to the Kazakhs,
Speaker 4: like a million and a half Kazakhs also died during collectivization,
Speaker 4: so there was a huge famine while selling food abroad.
Speaker 4: So the creation of the Soviet Union, the creation of
Speaker 4: the Stalin dictatorship, all really was based around shortage of food.
Speaker 4: And that was how Stalin broke the peasantry and broke
Speaker 4: the Ukrainians was by starving them.
Speaker 6: Do you think one of the reasons why Putin still
Speaker 6: gets so much support is that he has managed to
Speaker 6: create a sort of secure food environment, unlike his processors.
Speaker 4: Of course, Putin has a special connection to food because
Speaker 4: his grandfather was a chef. I didn't know as a cook,
Speaker 4: and he cooked at the store. He was the chef
Speaker 4: at the Astoria Hotel which is now owned by Rocco Forte.
Speaker 2: Story Hotel Moscow in St.
Speaker 4: Petersburg, in St. Peter and he was the chef. The
Speaker 4: grandfather was the chef, was one of the chefs there.
Speaker 4: And while he was there, of course he cooked for everybody,
Speaker 4: but he cooked for a Spoutin and then when there's
Speaker 4: where evolution happened.
Speaker 3: Strap father grandfather and he joined.
Speaker 4: He then joined the secret police the nkv D as
Speaker 4: chef and cooked for Lenin and Stalin was one of
Speaker 4: Stalin's chefs. So he's one of the most world historic
Speaker 4: chefs in all of history because he cooked for us
Speaker 4: boot In all sorts of grand dukes of course in
Speaker 4: the Astoria Hotel. But then Lenin and Stalin, of course
Speaker 4: Stalin chefs were all in this all secret police. They
Speaker 4: were called the service staff and they were within the
Speaker 4: n k v D.
Speaker 2: I wonder if I have any in my kitchen put
Speaker 2: is interested in food. Did you say, do you know
Speaker 2: is he a good eater?
Speaker 3: I don't think. I don't think he's an epicurean at all.
Speaker 3: To be a very very.
Speaker 4: Unsympathetic, harsh somewhat joyless man. I would have I would
Speaker 4: have said, not very interested in culture. So he does
Speaker 4: readly never you've never met I've never met him.
Speaker 2: Why not? Did you before? He was before?
Speaker 4: I'd like to like to have met him. But then
Speaker 4: I'd like to have met everybody. Yeah, you know, as
Speaker 4: a historian, you want to I'd like to have liked
Speaker 4: to have met everybody.
Speaker 1: And I've We all have our fans and are not fans,
Speaker 1: and our detractors. But I know that Putin is a
Speaker 1: fan of your work. Hey, how do you know that?
Speaker 1: And also what's it like?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, the bizarre thing about Putin was that,
Speaker 4: as I said earlier, kaf from the Grade and Potemkin
Speaker 4: and the Romanovs like Peter the Great were the people
Speaker 4: who got Ukraine for Russia. And so when I wrote
Speaker 4: my first book, Ka from the Grade and Petemkin, you know,
Speaker 4: I was approached by the Minister of Culture and also
Speaker 4: people in the President's office. They said to me, could
Speaker 4: you write a little essay because the book isn't translated
Speaker 4: into into Russian, could you write a little essay about
Speaker 4: this subject?
Speaker 3: Which I did.
Speaker 4: They said to me, like, we're very interested a certain
Speaker 4: important person is very interesting in reading your book and
Speaker 4: finding out about the Crimea and how Patenkin took Ukraine
Speaker 4: and the Crimea. This is in nineteen ninety nine and
Speaker 4: two thousands, twenty three years ago. We were all filled
Speaker 4: with hope about dad Emir Putin and that he was
Speaker 4: a liberal, and Tony Blair raved about him. And you
Speaker 4: may wonder why Russians don't have their own books on
Speaker 4: this subject, but the reason is because under Stalin and
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union, Catherine the Great and Patenkin were very
Speaker 4: out of fashion and weren't studied very much. Anyway, I
Speaker 4: did that, and then afterwards, when the book was translated
Speaker 4: into Russian, I was approached again by the Minister of
Speaker 4: Culture who said, a certain personage has loved your book
Speaker 4: and he would like to give you a present. So,
Speaker 4: of course, with Vladimir Putin was always a little worried
Speaker 4: about what the present's going to be. But the present
Speaker 4: was we're opening Stalin's archives. Would you like to be
Speaker 4: the first to study to have access to them. So
Speaker 4: that was the book Stalin The Call of the Redsar
Speaker 4: but jumped twenty two years and when Putin wrote his
Speaker 4: essay about how Ukraine didn't exist as a state and
Speaker 4: as a people, and started quoting stuff from the history
Speaker 4: books like mine. I realized that he was going to
Speaker 4: invade Ukraine. And it's fascinating because when he took Kierson,
Speaker 4: the city of Khison, one of Potemkin's cities, that's where
Speaker 4: Petemkin is buried. And when he withdrew, which was just
Speaker 4: over six months ago, he stole Patmkin's body.
Speaker 3: So the history, well, we don't know where it is.
Speaker 4: But what I think he's going to do is create
Speaker 4: a sort of big tomb in mausoleum in Moscow for
Speaker 4: Prince Potemkin. But Prince Potemkin and ca from the Great
Speaker 4: were children of the Enlightenment. They'd have hated Putin and
Speaker 4: his Russia today. But the full story is in my
Speaker 4: books the Romanovs and Caa from the Great and Potemkin.
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Speaker 2: Dot co dot UK.
Speaker 1: When you described Ukraine as the bread basket and the grain,
Speaker 1: I mean that is something we read really since the
Speaker 1: war started. What is happening with the food now? In
Speaker 1: the war is the grain going that?
Speaker 4: This has really made Africa sotham more than anywhere right now.
Speaker 3: Right now.
Speaker 4: Many African states like South Africa for example, had very
Speaker 4: good relations with the Soviet Union and their liberation movements
Speaker 4: were backed by the Soviet Union. They blamed the West
Speaker 4: and the hypocrisy and in of the West, even though
Speaker 4: it's the war of the Russian War and Russian invasion
Speaker 4: of Ukraine that has actually caused the food shortages. But
Speaker 4: such as human affairs, it doesn't always it is not
Speaker 4: always based on reason. But you know, Ukraine became independent
Speaker 4: when the Soviet Union broke up, and in some ways
Speaker 4: Ukrainian sense of nation has intensified thanks to Putin's viciousness.
Speaker 2: And food in Ukraine. Have you been during the what
Speaker 2: have you been to Ukraine?
Speaker 4: I haven't been since the war, but I was there
Speaker 4: when I was in the late nineties and I traveled
Speaker 4: to a death I loved. Odessa Do Desa is one
Speaker 4: of the great cities in the world. One of my favorites.
Speaker 4: And everyone there eats caviat and of course and sturgeon,
Speaker 4: and sturgeon steak is the best food you have there.
Speaker 2: And that's a piece of sturgeon which you've grilled.
Speaker 1: You grill.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can have it with some sort of spicy
Speaker 4: Caucasian sauce like Adjiki sauce.
Speaker 3: It's delicious.
Speaker 1: Tell me, so you are a writer, you have of
Speaker 1: you work at home. I know that your studies in
Speaker 1: your house and your wife, Santa also is a So
Speaker 1: tell us about food in your house. Now, we've been
Speaker 1: at your parents' house and boarding school and college and
Speaker 1: traveling as an historian.
Speaker 4: We're very pescatarian. We eat a lot of fish, and
Speaker 4: we love tuna. We love swordfish, and we grill a
Speaker 4: lot of sortfish. We love fresh kind of Mediterranean style food.
Speaker 4: But I also have various specialties. I do some of
Speaker 4: the cooking. And my favorite dish is an amazing sort
Speaker 4: of pasta filled with fresh tomatoes, fresh onions, fresh chili, garlic,
Speaker 4: and fish. I often put sardines in it, or sea bass,
Speaker 4: and it's quite spicy.
Speaker 2: I put a lot of chili, a Sicilian sardines.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting about you because the Italians had this
Speaker 1: rule of you never have an egg pasta with fish,
Speaker 1: but we do crab an egg pasta and then and
Speaker 1: you would never have all these kind of rules. You
Speaker 1: won't have cheese with fish in a pasta, and we
Speaker 1: put we do a langustine with peccorina and Parmesant's like
Speaker 1: a fish that I actually ate in Verona, and so
Speaker 1: I think, you know, fish pastas are.
Speaker 4: Really Another thing I think is Italian rules are made
Speaker 4: to be broken, Yeah, some of them, because they're quite
Speaker 4: augmatic about what you can do with their food, and
Speaker 4: sometimes you know, one has.
Speaker 3: To break rules. Even though this is heresy.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's also a regional you know that somebody
Speaker 1: in one town will do something and then the next
Speaker 1: town they won't.
Speaker 4: Well, it's the same even in small even in Georgia,
Speaker 4: which we started off talking about. You know, there's that
Speaker 4: they put eggs in everything in a Jaria, which is
Speaker 4: on the coast a Jarian Akazi, which is the Black
Speaker 4: Sea coast where Stalin had all his houses, by the way,
Speaker 4: but they always put an egg on everything there, while
Speaker 4: you know in land in that in the most of
Speaker 4: Georgia they don't.
Speaker 2: As true writers. Do you have a routine for your writing?
Speaker 2: Do you know that you started a certain time?
Speaker 4: It's total chaos, is it. I mean, when I'm not writing,
Speaker 4: I don't. I just don't do anything. And I spend
Speaker 4: the whole time sitting in cafes, phony people and texting
Speaker 4: people and reading the paper, which is the best thing.
Speaker 4: But when I am I'm writing, I live like a
Speaker 4: Kohener bite, like a monk. I live in a very
Speaker 4: sort of very disciplined way, and get up it really early.
Speaker 3: In the morning, like at six in the morning.
Speaker 4: And I mean, writing The World, this is my Natus
Speaker 4: book was definitely the hardest thing I've ever done. It
Speaker 4: almost killed me. I mean, obviously it's an insanely ambitious project.
Speaker 7: You tell us what it is, well, it's called it's
Speaker 7: called The World a Family History, and it tells the
Speaker 7: whole of world history from the Stone Age to the
Speaker 7: Drone Age through families in a single narrative.
Speaker 4: Some of the families you'd have heard of, you know,
Speaker 4: the Robinovs, or the Habsburgs, the Rothchilds, the Kennedy's, and
Speaker 4: many of them are quite unpleasant families like the Kim family,
Speaker 4: of North Korea as a big family, we follow them
Speaker 4: over five generations, or the Herold family of Judea who
Speaker 4: built the temple, all the Ptolemys of Egypt. They are
Speaker 4: some of the most vicious families. But another families you
Speaker 4: won't have heard of. Some of them are enslaved families,
Speaker 4: some are families of doctors. They're not all rulers in
Speaker 4: other words, And the great thing about covering family is
Speaker 4: that in terms of diversity, it's a great way you
Speaker 4: can cover everywhere the same. And so this book is
Speaker 4: probably the most diverse world history ever written. It covers
Speaker 4: Europe is in its rightful place, but also there's Africa,
Speaker 4: there's Asia, the South and North America in immense detail.
Speaker 4: And of course the other great thing about family histories
Speaker 4: it includes women. And we were talking Ruthie about about,
Speaker 4: you know, the great women that are covered in this book.
Speaker 3: And again some of them.
Speaker 4: Will be familiar Cleopatra Kafrom, the Great Margaret Thatcher, and
Speaker 4: some of them you won't have heard of, but are
Speaker 4: astonishing characters that we should have heard of, like Queen
Speaker 4: Tamara of Georgia. But you know, as the spectator said,
Speaker 4: it's succession meets Game of Thrones. They has how the
Speaker 4: review described it, So I.
Speaker 1: Hope that it's I read this and I thought it
Speaker 1: was a beautiful ending to this book and kind of
Speaker 1: leading us to the end of our really great conversation.
Speaker 1: In this book, I've written of the fall of noble cities,
Speaker 1: the vanishing of kingdoms, the rise and fall of dynasties,
Speaker 1: cruelty and cruelty, folly upon folly, eruptions, massacres, famines, pandemics,
Speaker 1: and pollutions. Yet again and again in these pages, the
Speaker 1: high spirits and elevated thoughts, the capacity for joy and kindness,
Speaker 1: the variety and eccentricity of humanity, the faces of love
Speaker 1: and the devotion of family run through it all and
Speaker 1: remind me why I started to write. And I thought,
Speaker 1: you know, the optimism and the joy using the word
Speaker 1: joy and life. And that is a very moving piece
Speaker 1: to read by a writer whose work, as I said,
Speaker 1: informs tell stories, takes us places. And so before we
Speaker 1: do say goodbye, what food would you go to for comfort?
Speaker 4: Or what I love is tar tatar, but sugar burnt,
Speaker 4: so that there's it's burnt with a with a sort
Speaker 4: of flat with a fire on top. And I love
Speaker 4: eating sugar burns.
Speaker 3: Tartta and you make it. I have made it, but
Speaker 3: I prefer I prefer I prefer I'm eating it in
Speaker 3: delicious restaurants.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much for today, and thank you
Speaker 2: for coming.
Speaker 3: And thanks for having that. So lovely to be lucky me,
Speaker 3: lucky me to thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thanks.
Speaker 5: Ruthie's Table four is produced by Atami Studios for iHeartRadio.
Speaker 5: It's hosted by Ruthie Rogers. It's produced by williem Lensky.
Speaker 5: Our executive producers are Zad Rodgers and Fay Stewart. Our
Speaker 5: production coordinator is Bella Selini. Special thanks to everyone at
Speaker 5: The River Cafe.