Speaker 1: Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adami's Studios.
Speaker 2: A few months ago, my good friend Lorne Michaels texted
Speaker 2: me to say that Tina Fay was coming to London
Speaker 2: to star in the New Barrow movie. He knew I
Speaker 2: would love her from the first meeting. It became a
Speaker 2: friendship formed with food. Tina arrived at our house with
Speaker 2: a beautiful box of chocolates for me, as brought up
Speaker 2: to do by her mother, and I brought home a
Speaker 2: River Cafe lemon tart for her. The first dinner, I
Speaker 2: made slow cooked tomato pasta. She ate two portions, and.
Speaker 3: Then we played cards. Dare you are dipped?
Speaker 2: I think if baby, it was three, I'm actually, you know,
Speaker 2: being polite. Tina was there for the Rogers family traditional
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving Italian style with Puntarell New olive oil and cavalonero
Speaker 2: and turkey. There was a tea time visit when four
Speaker 2: of us ate pretty much a whole panetoni and wrote
Speaker 2: a song for the River Cafe Christmas party. Best of
Speaker 2: all was a dinner in the River Cafe when her family, Jeff,
Speaker 2: Alice and Penelope came for the holidays, and we ordered
Speaker 2: every dessert on the menu. Of course, millions of us
Speaker 2: have shared food with Tina Fey in thirty Rock, which
Speaker 2: he wrote and starred in, and even her name Liz Lemon,
Speaker 2: was food related. Sandwich is never to be shared, hard
Speaker 2: cheese eaten at midnight. Advice given to John McEnroe on
Speaker 2: where to buy the best cupcakes in New York City.
Speaker 2: Her obsession with hot dogs resulting in a food warning
Speaker 2: from the street vendor on SNL. A brandy husband devouring
Speaker 2: a cake while discussing Bryant's and weekend update, and who
Speaker 2: could forget the cafeteria scene in the movie. She wrote,
Speaker 2: mean girls.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm Sean Winowen and I'm the executed chef at
Speaker 4: the River Cafe. Today we're making tomato tellier renni with
Speaker 4: Tina Fey. So we're going to make a tegler renni
Speaker 4: with the slow cup tomato, sauce and butter, which is
Speaker 4: probably one of Ruthie's secret is adding the butter to it.
Speaker 4: It's gonna cook the master. In boiling salted water, they
Speaker 4: always say that you should cook past there in water.
Speaker 4: That's the saltiest sea salt.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was just gonna say that's true. The thing
Speaker 5: that you taste like you sea. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think having the competent to see.
Speaker 5: Some water that march is the men a bit bold.
Speaker 5: I'm not afraid of spots. You know, I have low
Speaker 5: blood pressure, so I can have as much stuff as
Speaker 5: I want. You're one of the luckiest, I tell myself.
Speaker 5: I shuld I had this giant past the boiling station
Speaker 5: in my head.
Speaker 2: Say this is what you want?
Speaker 5: I mean, aha, now we know that's about a half
Speaker 5: pop of butter, you know, one person portion. Oh, it's
Speaker 5: not good. It's not a play Yeah, only because we
Speaker 5: can't pour it right into my mouth here at the station.
Speaker 5: This being an audio format is not doing this fastive justice.
Speaker 4: Have it in a nice high pile.
Speaker 5: And yeah, gorgeously, Mike, wuld marry a non human entity.
Speaker 5: I would marry this past.
Speaker 4: This is like one of griefy house classics.
Speaker 5: Yes, I had this. I had the deep privilege of
Speaker 5: I went to Ruthie's house onceoever, and she served us
Speaker 5: at her house. And then then somehow we figured out
Speaker 5: that we could be jerks and come here in order
Speaker 5: it off anywhere.
Speaker 4: Exactly all you always have it.
Speaker 5: We can just have it for yeah, any days the
Speaker 5: special occasion of you try hard and I'm thank you much, tell,
Speaker 5: thank you yah.
Speaker 2: Tina is leaving London tomorrow. Words I can hardly bear
Speaker 2: to say. And her last day in London is here
Speaker 2: in the River Cafe. She's made of tomatoes sauce in
Speaker 2: the kitchen with Sean and the chefs, and is now
Speaker 2: in the recording studio with me, and she's.
Speaker 5: Already told us what she wants to eat for lunch.
Speaker 2: A friendship formed of food indeed, And Lauren was right.
Speaker 3: I do love her.
Speaker 5: Oh thank you, that's such a nice introduction.
Speaker 2: Good well, you've just been in the River Cafe kitchen.
Speaker 3: What was it like?
Speaker 5: Oh my god, it's the most beautiful dance happening in
Speaker 5: the kitchen, everyone working so perfectly together. And also Sean
Speaker 5: was saying, today's the first day back after Christmas break,
Speaker 5: and so everyone you would never know it. Things are
Speaker 5: flowing perfectly and everything looks delicious.
Speaker 3: And what was it like making the pasta? What did
Speaker 3: you do?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 5: I did learn that one secret to the pasta because
Speaker 5: I was wondering what was so extra about this beautiful,
Speaker 5: simple tomato pasta? And I think The answer is that
Speaker 5: it's a buffalo milk butter, A sizeable A sizable portion
Speaker 5: gets dropped on this pasta right at the end and
Speaker 5: melt it into it, and it's very good.
Speaker 2: That's time when people come to our house and I'm
Speaker 2: making it, I often say would you would you like
Speaker 2: to go? Because it's an open kitchen, I would like
Speaker 2: to go sit down to That feels such a trader
Speaker 2: for using butter in the pasta when everybody thinks that
Speaker 2: tom apasta is olive oil and pasta and tomato and
Speaker 2: that's delicious. You know, tomato pasta without butter is delicious,
Speaker 2: But there's something about the butter which kind of holds
Speaker 2: it together and makes it.
Speaker 5: It's devery good. And I have to say I did
Speaker 5: I think I gasped out loud when I saw she
Speaker 5: showed me how much she drops on top, and I was.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, I know, it's that money reaching it. How
Speaker 3: is it?
Speaker 5: It's wonderful.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about your life in comedy for a second.
Speaker 2: It all started in Chicago.
Speaker 3: What were you doing there?
Speaker 5: I went there to study improv and comedy and worked
Speaker 5: at a place called the Second City and another place
Speaker 5: called the Improve Olympic, and that's where I met my husband.
Speaker 5: Where I met Jeff was the piano player for the
Speaker 5: impro Olympic and also worked at the Second City eventually,
Speaker 5: and that's where I met my dear friend Amy Poehler,
Speaker 5: so many of my good friends.
Speaker 2: So in those days, would you do improvo day and
Speaker 2: then say let's go and eat?
Speaker 5: We would again. It was a diner culture. We would
Speaker 5: go to this Oh gosh, no, what was the name
Speaker 5: of that y? There actually was an NPR piece about
Speaker 5: this amazing waitress who worked at that diner. Oh my god,
Speaker 5: what was the name of the diner. I'll have to
Speaker 5: think about it and give them okay. But we would
Speaker 5: go because we would go. It's crazy that I can't
Speaker 5: mamember because we would go at least once a day,
Speaker 5: oftentimes twice a day. We'd go, you know, have something
Speaker 5: before the show and then go back at one am.
Speaker 2: Do you like to eat before you perform again?
Speaker 5: At the time, I was not treating my body like
Speaker 5: the beautiful instrument that so yeah.
Speaker 2: I would eat before.
Speaker 5: I would eat like like Boston Market before and then
Speaker 5: and then in the middle of the show, I'm going
Speaker 5: to get sick. The Boston Market was a god willing
Speaker 5: now defunct chain that sold like rotisserie, chickens and turkey.
Speaker 5: I used to say, I would get I would get
Speaker 5: food at Boston Market, and you'd start to get sick
Speaker 5: before you left, right, So then it was like you
Speaker 5: never even ate.
Speaker 3: It was perfect.
Speaker 5: But then we'd go and have usually after the shows
Speaker 5: we'd do two shirt shows on a Friday and Saturday
Speaker 5: and go and have like a giant breakfast of like
Speaker 5: eggs and a waffle.
Speaker 6: At breakfast one am to so the show fish then you, yeah,
Speaker 6: there is with friends of mine who are often in plays,
Speaker 6: that there is a thing of we'll go out to
Speaker 6: eat after.
Speaker 5: Yes, because you're adrenaline so high, it's too it's yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a bit like in the chef world as well.
Speaker 2: There's a whole not so much anymore now that everybody's
Speaker 2: you know, stopped doing and all that stuff. But when
Speaker 2: after after a performance in a way and what you
Speaker 2: described for chalet or having an audience there the curtain
Speaker 2: going up, there's a lot of I always think the
Speaker 2: reason probably a lot of actors like to work in
Speaker 2: restaurants is there is a similarity. You know, there's a
Speaker 2: drama that takes place and everything else. But in the
Speaker 2: old days, when Rose and I first started, and I
Speaker 2: don't know what happens now, I don't think so much.
Speaker 2: People would go out after a service. I'd go out
Speaker 2: at ten, go clubbing or to eat something, because you know,
Speaker 2: I know that adrenaline that hits.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and at the end of your theater, yes it is.
Speaker 5: It's the end of your work day, so you want
Speaker 5: to go out and have your evening, and your evening
Speaker 5: just happens to be at one o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The one thing I used to love with it's Saturdaynight Live.
Speaker 5: Saturday was the most fun day because it's the day
Speaker 5: where it's finally all happening and you can spend a
Speaker 5: lot of time being worried, and then Saturday you just
Speaker 5: have to kind of go down the slide, you know.
Speaker 5: And we would have these crew lunch dinner I guess
Speaker 5: we'd sort of rehearse from one pm till about five
Speaker 5: thirty pm, and you'd go down to the NBC cafeteria
Speaker 5: and have lunch with everybody or dinner with everybody. That's
Speaker 5: one of my favorite memories of working there. Actually on
Speaker 5: a film set or on television. It seems there are
Speaker 5: different attitudes. I had a conversation for with miss.
Speaker 2: Anderson, who really his dream would be not to have
Speaker 2: any lunch, to shoot off, just to shoot a day
Speaker 2: and not stop because in another director said the same
Speaker 2: that they just found having to stop and then go
Speaker 2: back and then do that. But the crew it wasn't
Speaker 2: so happy with that. You know. His idea was, he
Speaker 2: said to try and have a soup and then everybody
Speaker 2: just go back and then have a big meal at
Speaker 2: the end of the day. But the crew wanted wanted
Speaker 2: to They want a break. Yeah, and you need that
Speaker 2: break and need that. When you're producing a film or
Speaker 2: a theater, do you think about what people are going
Speaker 2: to eat?
Speaker 5: I mean I always if I'm producing something, I want
Speaker 5: the food to be good and to be ample. And oftentimes,
Speaker 5: if you want to reward the cast and crew, you
Speaker 5: send more food. We send like food trucks, like pizza truck,
Speaker 5: coffee truck. Yeah, the food is in my I believe
Speaker 5: food is the only reward in life. In life good
Speaker 5: I like that, sure money, sure food. Yeah. We still
Speaker 5: have a wonderful lady who's no longer with us. From
Speaker 5: an angel who was in charge of what's called craft
Speaker 5: services on thirty Rock, which is you have your meals,
Speaker 5: you get in like there's a truck, there's catering does
Speaker 5: breakfast and lunch, but all the food that you just
Speaker 5: eat in between that all day there would just be
Speaker 5: a table in the hallway with food. And Angel had
Speaker 5: so much passion about her job, and she was Italian
Speaker 5: American from Staten Island and she would show up with
Speaker 5: these things. Would be like, Angel, what is this what?
Speaker 5: And Alec Baldwin, who loves to eat, he was in
Speaker 5: love with her and everything about her because she would
Speaker 5: just bring him these beautiful like whatever, like balls of matsarell,
Speaker 5: these crazy breads. What was that like? Rolled up art
Speaker 5: of choke bread and all this stuff. It was so
Speaker 5: much more than what you would normally get, like a
Speaker 5: bowl of apples and some candy. And this episode of
Speaker 5: thirty Rock, there's a whole storyline about the perfect sandwich.
Speaker 5: And there's this thing where I'm chasing a guy that
Speaker 5: I love through the airport but.
Speaker 2: They want.
Speaker 5: You don't go through, they want me to take my
Speaker 5: sandwich on it take no way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But the first you have to describe that scene
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do it because I think it
Speaker 2: is one of the great scenes and food.
Speaker 5: Thank you, I will say. I think as an actor,
Speaker 5: perhaps my only specialty is on camera eating. I commit
Speaker 5: to it. I'm looking great at it. And so this
Speaker 5: is a scene where Liz lemon Is, she's chasing her
Speaker 5: love interest, who is played by Jason Sadaikis, who you
Speaker 5: all may know is Ted Lasso, and I'm chasing through
Speaker 5: the airport and I've been also the other part of
Speaker 5: the stories. I've been trying to get the team stirs,
Speaker 5: the union drivers to tell me where they get these
Speaker 5: great sandwiches. So I've got my special sandwich and the
Speaker 5: security guard at the airport says, you have to leave
Speaker 5: the sandwich behind, you can't take it through, and I
Speaker 5: say no, I believe women can have it all. And
Speaker 5: I'm going to eat this sandwich in one bite before
Speaker 5: I go through security. And I'm still going to catch
Speaker 5: the man. And so it came down to Angel, this
Speaker 5: woman who did our craft service us at Angel, this
Speaker 5: is a special assignment for you. I need you to
Speaker 5: make me the perfect sandwich. Normally it would have been
Speaker 5: the props department, but I said, Angel, you're going to
Speaker 5: make the sandwich, and I need it to be I
Speaker 5: need to be able to eat it in one bite.
Speaker 5: So she went to these bakers that she knew in
Speaker 5: Staten Island and had them custom make. I don't know
Speaker 5: what was the softest bread when I tell you that sandwich.
Speaker 5: I can remember to this day. That sandwich was so delicious.
Speaker 5: It was an Italian sub so it had like some
Speaker 5: salami and some what I would call gabagoul some cheese.
Speaker 5: It wasn't a fake sandwich. And I ate it in
Speaker 5: one take. And I remember saying they were like, we
Speaker 5: got it, and I was like, did we? Because if
Speaker 5: you need me to do it again, I am will
Speaker 5: because it was so good. But the credit goes to
Speaker 5: Angel because the bread like melted in my mouth.
Speaker 3: I love that scene.
Speaker 2: I just love that scene because it was like, what's
Speaker 2: important here right now? And also you have left out
Speaker 2: one thing about that sandwich was there was a dipping sauce.
Speaker 5: There was a dipping sauce too that I had to
Speaker 5: dip it in. Yeah, to lubricate.
Speaker 2: That's righting not only eat the sandwich security, but I'm
Speaker 2: gonna dip it. Doesn't She say something about this is
Speaker 2: a cliche.
Speaker 5: Or yeah that I think it was that Johnny May.
Speaker 2: The actresses, I think I might bet she's so funny,
Speaker 2: she's like really yeah, So eating on camera is yes,
Speaker 2: Is it hard to do?
Speaker 5: Yeah? It can be because you when you film something,
Speaker 5: you film it a million times. And so if you
Speaker 5: this is something fun you can look at. When you
Speaker 5: watch movies now, you will notice that the actors and
Speaker 5: dinner scenes almost never put food in their mouth because
Speaker 5: if you were to do it, you would do it,
Speaker 5: the camera would be far away, you would do it,
Speaker 5: and then they now that you'd have to eat like
Speaker 5: ten plates of food, and so actors are usually pretty
Speaker 5: adept at not doing it. Not me, I get in there.
Speaker 3: Yeah right the only time.
Speaker 2: Also the one on Son Now when you're eating the cake,
Speaker 2: when you're talking about I mean it is it is
Speaker 2: a work of art to see the way you I
Speaker 2: didn't mint it.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: I thought I was going to be sick. Did you
Speaker 3: just do? But you did that one?
Speaker 5: I did it well. I did it twice because we
Speaker 5: have a dress rehearsal, and I thought to myself, you
Speaker 5: know what, I better really do it in dress rehearsal.
Speaker 5: Because it was live TV. And I was a little
Speaker 5: worried that I would choke, and I thought, I was
Speaker 5: worried you were going to choke it. I was worried
Speaker 5: I was going to choke. And that cake, I will say,
Speaker 5: the only disappointment with that one was that I love
Speaker 5: them dearly. But that was the SNL Props apartment and
Speaker 5: that cake was not tasty. I was trying to run
Speaker 5: a scam. I was like, can you get this cake
Speaker 5: from my favorite bakery and they were like no. I
Speaker 5: wanted them to get it from a place called make
Speaker 5: My Cake and Harlem that makes the best cake.
Speaker 3: What do they think?
Speaker 5: They make all kinds of cakes, but I just get
Speaker 5: like yellow cake, white white.
Speaker 3: Yeah, come on, I get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. We once we were in Mexico once.
Speaker 2: It was a friend of mine's birthday and we went
Speaker 2: to we just couldn't find any cake. We were in
Speaker 2: the beach and we went to that place where they
Speaker 2: put them in the fridges and you see them. We thought, okay,
Speaker 2: and we apologized for it, and we said this is
Speaker 2: all we could get and then we you know, lit
Speaker 2: the candle, blow it out and literally it was one
Speaker 2: of the.
Speaker 5: Great great cakes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I should say that as a river because it
Speaker 2: probably but there's something about that kind of white cake.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, yellow us day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, going back to the beginning, what was food like
Speaker 2: in your household when you were growing up as a kid.
Speaker 5: I grew up outside Philadelphia in a very Greek neighborhood.
Speaker 5: I'm half Greek, and where I first lived, it was
Speaker 5: the neighborhood was very Greek.
Speaker 3: You my mom's Greek.
Speaker 5: Yeah, my mom's Greek, and so we had a mix
Speaker 5: of Philly food and sort of seventies food and American
Speaker 5: food and Greek food. But you know, I grew up
Speaker 5: watching her make Spana coopita and we'd go every year
Speaker 5: to like the church festival down the street was the
Speaker 5: only time you could get Lucu Mathese St. Demetrius Greek Church,
Speaker 5: which when I came to live here, they're like, you're
Speaker 5: staying on Saint Dioni's road. I was like, oh, that
Speaker 5: seems right to me. You'd get Luca Matha's you know
Speaker 5: what those are? They're Oh my gosh, they're the like
Speaker 5: fried deep fried dough balls that get you get hot
Speaker 5: honey and cinnamon port on them. They're like kind of
Speaker 5: the best.
Speaker 3: They puff up, they puff up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're like puffy hot balls of dough with yeah
Speaker 5: and you only they're a real pain in the butt
Speaker 5: to make.
Speaker 3: Did your mother make them?
Speaker 5: No? You only get them at like the church festival
Speaker 5: once a year. And anytime I've ever gone into a
Speaker 5: Greek restaurant in New York that sometimes there's a place
Speaker 5: in New York that I won't name her, they often
Speaker 5: have them on the menu and if you order them,
Speaker 5: they're like, we don't have them tonight because they're a
Speaker 5: real pain. I think they're pain and yeah, so we
Speaker 5: grew up eating that kind of stuff.
Speaker 7: Was your mother born in Greece or was she born
Speaker 7: My mother was, I believe conceived in the US, born
Speaker 7: in Greece and brought back as an infant, like I
Speaker 7: think her mom went to be around her mother when
Speaker 7: she delivered and then came back.
Speaker 2: And did your grandmother come back too, Yes? Did she
Speaker 2: cook more Greek food for you than perhaps your mother?
Speaker 5: Well, my grandmother had passed away when I was still
Speaker 5: quite small. So my brother's eight years older than me,
Speaker 5: he probably remembers my grandmother. I don't have first hand
Speaker 5: memories of any of my grandparents, but for sure certain
Speaker 5: foods like the Avgo lemono soup, which is the Greek
Speaker 5: chicken soup with lemon and with orzo instead of rice.
Speaker 5: I think it's probably similar to the way Italian food
Speaker 5: versus sort of Italian American food, Like it's the real
Speaker 5: stuff is lighter and fresher than that you might know.
Speaker 5: You know, it's not like some heavy, cheese laden mussakaua.
Speaker 5: The other thing my mom would always make for us
Speaker 5: on special occasions is like for our birthday or some things.
Speaker 5: She would make bastiicio. That was our favorite. That's kind
Speaker 5: of their version of lasagna. It's just like a beccamel
Speaker 5: brown beef and tomato. We pasta with a beccamel baked
Speaker 5: on top. And as a kid, you know, it's like
Speaker 5: all you ever want.
Speaker 2: I think that the image is you were saying going
Speaker 2: back to that of food when you're in America, same
Speaker 2: as you say with Italian.
Speaker 3: I grew up in.
Speaker 2: Upstate New York. The idea that was that, you know,
Speaker 2: Italian food was egg plant, parmesan or meat balls and
Speaker 2: spaghetti and very.
Speaker 3: Kind of heavy food.
Speaker 2: And then you go to Italy and this piece of
Speaker 2: grilled fish with herbs and olive oil or you know,
Speaker 2: very light pasta.
Speaker 3: I went to Greece.
Speaker 2: As you can see, I don't know much about Greek food,
Speaker 2: and I haven't spent enough time in Greece. But when
Speaker 2: we went there, we went to Hedra, and the food
Speaker 2: was so gorgeous.
Speaker 5: And so well. I mentioned, it's a little bit like,
Speaker 5: I know, you love Mexico and it's sort of the
Speaker 5: same thing. You're like, well, here we're by the sea,
Speaker 5: cook what we caught today. Like that kind of life
Speaker 5: is interesting how that translates them. Why is it that
Speaker 5: when you know immigrants then came to the United.
Speaker 2: States that they guess I guess it was just the
Speaker 2: idea of giving abundance or giving a lot of food,
Speaker 2: or making people feel that, you know.
Speaker 5: Right, feed and things that need to be that keep
Speaker 5: them a refrigerator. And it's not the same.
Speaker 2: I think for you saying first generation still cooks the
Speaker 2: food from the country, doesn't it from the home country,
Speaker 2: and the second generation is trying to adapt, and then
Speaker 2: the third generation is probably completely forgotten about it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Apparently my grandmother who's from Hungary, never went anywhere without
Speaker 2: her rolling pin. Oh wow, Yeah, she just didn't trust
Speaker 2: anybody to roll out the strudle or whatever she was making,
Speaker 2: you know, But then my mother never cared and made
Speaker 2: anything like that. Did your father cook?
Speaker 5: No, My mom did the cooking, and I think she was,
Speaker 5: you know, cooked by just the virtue of the fact
Speaker 5: that that was what was expected of her. I don't
Speaker 5: think she she did well. She had worked for like
Speaker 5: a brokerage firm in her youth, and I think she
Speaker 5: definitely once I was in high school she went back
Speaker 5: to work. I think she was a woman who liked
Speaker 5: to work, and sort of the norm at the time
Speaker 5: was you don't work when you have kids, So she
Speaker 5: didn't work until I was She didn't work until I
Speaker 5: was a little bit older. She cooked in that kind
Speaker 5: of seventies rotation of like okay, one night is hot
Speaker 5: dogs and beans, and that it's shrimp peeloft. And I
Speaker 5: do remember it was that part of the seventies where
Speaker 5: like the American economy was not great, and I remember
Speaker 5: that there were certain things. It'd be like every two
Speaker 5: weeks there'd be like a steak that we all shared,
Speaker 5: and then you'd take the like grocery store white bread
Speaker 5: and get to soak up all the like a one
Speaker 5: sauce on the plate, you know, and then we'd go
Speaker 5: to have hamburgers on Payday once a month. So it
Speaker 5: was that very like nineteen seventy seven seventy eight. There
Speaker 5: wasn't a lot of money to go to restaurants.
Speaker 2: It was, but it still feels like there was a
Speaker 2: focus on food.
Speaker 5: For sure, and events were all very you know, if
Speaker 5: it was Christmas time or birthday part like back when
Speaker 5: we were kids, especially like so many kind of Greek specialties.
Speaker 5: It'd be like getting ready for the holiyes to'd be
Speaker 5: like making.
Speaker 8: Back lava and she made she would make baklava, she
Speaker 8: would make gurulaikya, and her friends would come over and
Speaker 8: it was like, okay, we got a hustle on this
Speaker 8: because all those things with the puff pastriore, they're labor intensive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a lot I love that. That's sweet. It
Speaker 3: was ultra sweet, so spy.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah. And then the kurulaikya are the ones that
Speaker 5: are like little twists. They look like the aids ribbon
Speaker 5: and they're not very sweet. They're like closest to like
Speaker 5: a not a biscottie, but that you would have them
Speaker 5: with coffee, and.
Speaker 2: That's interesting We grew up with such a culture of
Speaker 2: food that you did as part of your identity would
Speaker 2: be that eating Greek food, but you were in the
Speaker 2: community of people eat Greek food.
Speaker 5: Oh for sure, for sure. I still love to cook.
Speaker 5: In the spring in New York, I love to cook
Speaker 5: dandelion grease. And my mom's aunt came to visit from
Speaker 5: Greece and she kept saying to my mom, like in Greek,
Speaker 5: which I can't speak, but like she wanted to pick
Speaker 5: the dandelion greens out of like the cracked sidewalk where
Speaker 5: she lived. And my Mom's like, no, no, no, you
Speaker 5: can't eat those. Like she'd be like cats pee on
Speaker 5: those get because in her mind like, oh there's there's dandelions,
Speaker 5: we should cook them.
Speaker 2: That again goes back to the culture of Yeah, Richardsville,
Speaker 2: Ships and Florence used to go out in the fields
Speaker 2: and you know, it wasn't even cold forging, it wasn't
Speaker 2: called something very special. You just pick it, and especially
Speaker 2: things like as you say, dandelion.
Speaker 5: My husband Jeff, when he was originally from West Virginia
Speaker 5: and then his family moved to Ohio, they would go
Speaker 5: out into the woods behind their house and pick ramps
Speaker 5: in the spring, which are these very garlic eats, some
Speaker 5: across between strong garlic and a scallion, and use them
Speaker 5: to just cook potatoes. And he was blown away. One
Speaker 5: day a couple years ago, we were at some New
Speaker 5: York City spring farmer's market and there was a bundle
Speaker 5: of ramps for like sixteen dollars for a bunch, and
Speaker 5: he took a picture and send it to his mother
Speaker 5: and she was like, couldn't stop laughing. Yeah, this po folks.
Speaker 2: They were remember I was supposed to do to dinner
Speaker 2: with Alice Walters and I Rose and I were doing
Speaker 2: it for an Edible school Yard, which is a foundation,
Speaker 2: and I said, let's call it Alice. As we were
Speaker 2: thinking can we get the fish from Maine? And can
Speaker 2: we get this from here? And what are you going
Speaker 2: to get? And I said, what are you going to
Speaker 2: do Alice?
Speaker 3: For food?
Speaker 2: She went, Oh, We're going to forge in Central Park
Speaker 2: And I was like.
Speaker 3: How do you compete with that?
Speaker 9: Wow?
Speaker 2: You know she was going to go and find her greed.
Speaker 5: She found a complete sandwich in a trash can.
Speaker 2: Maybe speaking of sandwiches, we'll get onto that. But what
Speaker 2: about did you go to restaurants?
Speaker 5: A lot of times we would go to restaurants that
Speaker 5: either Greek family friends owned, like little kind of coffee
Speaker 5: shop dinery restaurants. I also had my godparents their son
Speaker 5: owned for a long time a huge diner in Wildwood,
Speaker 5: New Jersey, called the Vegas Diner. I don't know if
Speaker 5: you know that Jersey Shore area, but it's these gorgeous
Speaker 5: nineteen fifties diners. There's a lot of them are landmark now.
Speaker 5: It was those kind of places where the menu is
Speaker 5: like fourteen pages long and you can either get like
Speaker 5: shrimp scampy or an omelet or whatever. But when those
Speaker 5: places are good, they're so good.
Speaker 2: I grew up with diners, not so much in upstate
Speaker 2: New York is maybe on the New Jersey Shore. And
Speaker 2: then when I married an Italian, I loved really good
Speaker 2: food and we lived in Paris. People would always say
Speaker 2: to me, where did you eat New York And I'd say, oh,
Speaker 2: we've got that diner. Because Richard all he wanted to
Speaker 2: eat was either pastrami sandwiches or diner food. And actually,
Speaker 2: if you analyze it, probably diner food is when it's
Speaker 2: good because it's all cooked fresh, is it.
Speaker 5: Then there's a diner in my neighborhood in New York
Speaker 5: that does they just roast guests. I don't know how many,
Speaker 5: but they roast turkeys every day. So when you get
Speaker 5: a turkey sandwich from the diner, it's like, yeah, it's
Speaker 5: the day after Thanksgiving. It's the most delicious fresh turkey.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Are they still around diners? And are they Are
Speaker 2: they thriving?
Speaker 5: Do you think they are in New York? I think
Speaker 5: they've managed to survive the pandemic. I think one thing
Speaker 5: that the city did that was probably smart was when
Speaker 5: everyone could only do delivery during the pandemic, they allowed
Speaker 5: people to deliver alcohol also, so every delivery menu would
Speaker 5: they would lead on the app. They'd be like, do
Speaker 5: you want it's four glasses of wine? Do you want
Speaker 5: a cosmo? Also grilled cheese also, so I think that
Speaker 5: helped them stay afloat financially. The other thing that I
Speaker 5: have a really fond memory of was Saturdays, and I
Speaker 5: think this is kind of a Philadelphia thing. Would get up,
Speaker 5: I'd go run the morning Saturday morning errands with my dad,
Speaker 5: which always included going to the good Italian deli near
Speaker 5: our house and getting like fresh We would call it
Speaker 5: lunch meat. But really it was pretty legit stuff because
Speaker 5: it was like slice provolone mortadella in Philly what they
Speaker 5: would call gaba ghoul, which I think is like capri cola,
Speaker 5: like we would call it gaba goola, but like all
Speaker 5: these proper Italian lunch meats and really fresh rolls and stuff,
Speaker 5: and come home and then that would be like the
Speaker 5: reward would be you'd make a big ass sandwich.
Speaker 3: With that stuff.
Speaker 5: That's just so so good. And that's growing up with
Speaker 5: that real Italian stuff. I can't when I went to
Speaker 5: college in Virginia and it was like regular, like Bolognians,
Speaker 5: This is felvida, is not it?
Speaker 2: Growing up in this house that were you nurtured and exposed,
Speaker 2: wonderful you did. Then go to the University of Virginia.
Speaker 2: Was that traumatic not to have that anymore?
Speaker 5: I remember being at the University of Virginia. Within the
Speaker 5: first couple of weeks I was there, going to the
Speaker 5: cafeteria and picking up what I thought was a breaded
Speaker 5: chicken cutlet and biting into a chicken fried steak and
Speaker 5: being like, what the hell is this?
Speaker 3: I don't know what it is.
Speaker 5: In the ground, they take a steak and bread it
Speaker 5: and deep fried like chicken, and it is gross. But
Speaker 5: then you know, believe me, wherever you put me, I
Speaker 5: will find what there is to eat with the other
Speaker 5: I forget, I'm.
Speaker 3: Like, okay.
Speaker 5: The way to play it in Virginia was to go
Speaker 5: to a chain called Morrison's Cafeteria and just get the
Speaker 5: vegetarian plate, which was like biscuits, black eyed peas, collared greens. Yeah,
Speaker 5: grits with butter and salt. These were all foods I
Speaker 5: had never had before.
Speaker 2: Did you ever have yourn apartment when you were at Uva?
Speaker 5: I did eventually, But I'll tell you exactly what I
Speaker 5: used to eat. I know you can imagine what I
Speaker 5: look like from that. I didn't cook properly. I used
Speaker 5: to get a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese and
Speaker 5: make it and then add to it a drained can
Speaker 5: of tuna fish and some lightly cooked frozen peas. Stir
Speaker 5: that together and eat all of it, and then eat
Speaker 5: a pine of ice cream.
Speaker 3: Did that cause you to gain weight?
Speaker 5: I mean I was. I was, honestly, like, it's a
Speaker 5: it's a miracle. I didn't gain more weight because I
Speaker 5: would do that often. Yeah, yeah, but also probably I
Speaker 5: probably also had a side of apple sauce for nutrition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, did your mom ever teach you to cook? Did
Speaker 3: she ever try to teach?
Speaker 5: She has taught me. I've since gotten her to show
Speaker 5: me how to do this the spanic copita. She yeah, No,
Speaker 5: I think the few things I've learned to cook, I've
Speaker 5: learned some moves more, I would say more. I've learned
Speaker 5: more in the last five years than I did growing up.
Speaker 2: When you when you're in college and you're doing that,
Speaker 2: probably food. There was somebody and who did. I talk
Speaker 2: to a friend and Brian Chesky, and he said that
Speaker 2: when he was at the Rhode Island School of Design,
Speaker 2: it was almost was an arts school and it was
Speaker 2: almost competitive as well.
Speaker 3: You could cook in.
Speaker 2: This interesting expression, go and eat and and then every
Speaker 2: night somebody had to make a different dish and they
Speaker 2: were all involved in cooking. But I think it's more unusual.
Speaker 2: I think most people when they go to college have
Speaker 2: left home and then they're just you know, on the
Speaker 2: male plant or whatever.
Speaker 3: And also economically.
Speaker 2: But the macaroni cheese, is that the last time you
Speaker 2: had that tuna macaroni cheese?
Speaker 3: What was the other ingredient.
Speaker 5: Piece, O piece. I've tried to convince I tried to make.
Speaker 2: A actually to deconstruct that.
Speaker 3: No, come like.
Speaker 5: I assembled that. Oh I see, Okay, I think I've
Speaker 5: tried to sell my kids on just old seventies tuna
Speaker 5: castle because that was like and they were like, no,
Speaker 5: this is.
Speaker 9: Terrible created these monsters? I know, can we have yellowtail sish?
Speaker 9: And what about when you became domestic, when you did
Speaker 9: start having kids? And yes, I did have a husband.
Speaker 9: And Jeff Cooks is a natural cook. My husband is
Speaker 9: a fantastic cook. He is someone who did learn from
Speaker 9: his grandmother. His grandma Perlein taught him all these things.
Speaker 9: His previous generations of his family were coal miners in
Speaker 9: West Virginia, and in the coal camps they were kind
Speaker 9: of Irish, e englishy families, and then there were a
Speaker 9: lot of Italians and they would cook together. The women
Speaker 9: of the col camps would all go and cook together.
Speaker 9: And so Jeff's grandma would make what she referred to
Speaker 9: as two fingers. She's like, well, we're gonna make two
Speaker 9: fingers and it's nilki and they just called the yeah,
Speaker 9: so they called too.
Speaker 5: So he knew how to cook and he some people
Speaker 5: are just natural, right, Like I'm the kind of person
Speaker 5: if I cook and have to read it a hundred
Speaker 5: times and I measure and then and whenever there's anything
Speaker 5: that's instinct related, like is the steak done? Like, my
Speaker 5: instincts are terrible, so and his instincts are good. I'm
Speaker 5: getting better. I can cook a steak from myself, but
Speaker 5: I had to really learn. And he's just a natural.
Speaker 5: He can kind of cook anything. He does most of
Speaker 5: the cooking in our house. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And what's that like? Are you able to have
Speaker 2: dinner with your kids on the weekday?
Speaker 5: Yeah, we try to, and we try to. We've really
Speaker 5: been committed to doing a big Sunday dinner with some
Speaker 5: friends every week.
Speaker 3: Over the sun. Then I didners are nice, aren't they?
Speaker 5: It's really nice.
Speaker 3: We had one together that night.
Speaker 2: We played It's the kind of day where you're getting
Speaker 2: ready for Monday and say goodbye to the weekend.
Speaker 3: It's nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So you have lunch with your kids or Sunday
Speaker 2: night dinner.
Speaker 5: We have Sunday dinner with your friends with us friends,
Speaker 5: different friends come over and Jeff cooks that and it's
Speaker 5: usually like roast chicken or you know, cut a beef
Speaker 5: or sometimes it's sometimes we'll do pasta.
Speaker 2: And how often do you go out as a family.
Speaker 5: Well, it's interesting, you know, we're just in New York.
Speaker 5: I think we were just starting to go back to
Speaker 5: places in person in the last six months, so we
Speaker 5: were ordering in a lot before then because I didn't
Speaker 5: want the restaurants to close. And then, you know, when
Speaker 5: Jeff is busy, then I get excited to be like, oh,
Speaker 5: I'll do the family weeknight dinner. And I'm always trying things.
Speaker 5: And I don't know if your family was the same way,
Speaker 5: but when kids are younger, I can never find something
Speaker 5: that both of them like. I know, so I'll be like,
Speaker 5: let's try chicken vinegar. One likes it, Well, let's try.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: I see with my grandchildren that there's just a very
Speaker 2: different way of approaching food, which is basically, you know
Speaker 2: what one will have like this, and like you say, chicken,
Speaker 2: and one doesn't. One's vegetarian and one's not eating gluten,
Speaker 2: and one doesn't like fish at all. Nobody likes fish.
Speaker 2: I guess there was a time in life maybe if
Speaker 2: we're all sitting here when you ate what you were
Speaker 2: maybe given.
Speaker 5: Yes, which we've tried to sort of explain to them.
Speaker 5: But you know, Lauren said this to me once, and
Speaker 5: I think is smart and like, you can't make them
Speaker 5: have your childhood. You can't explain to like you they
Speaker 5: don't have your.
Speaker 3: Child and now it's done.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's over. So there is a and maybe having
Speaker 2: all that choice makes for a happier not for the
Speaker 2: person who's cooking it. I had a friend who had
Speaker 2: a girlfriend of one of my sons had the best,
Speaker 2: most amazing pasture.
Speaker 3: She was French.
Speaker 2: She just was amazing and we all said, Vernie, how
Speaker 2: did you get that? She said, well, every time we
Speaker 2: sat down to dinner, my father would just make sure
Speaker 2: that we sat up straight and we just sat like that,
Speaker 2: you know, and we all have fantastic pasture, but we
Speaker 2: hate family dinners. Oh interesting, she said, I might have
Speaker 2: this posture, but you know, never do I want to
Speaker 2: sit down to a meal with family because they were tortured,
Speaker 2: because that's all it's too rigid. That's probably a heavy medium.
Speaker 5: And you do go out, but you now go out, Yes,
Speaker 5: we're back to going out.
Speaker 3: And where do they eat?
Speaker 5: Well? Now, my older daughter likes to go meet up
Speaker 5: with her friends and they just go to like a
Speaker 5: Mexican place in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: But Penelope is she's quite smart about food. Help is
Speaker 2: a good eater. And also both of them were I
Speaker 2: have to say that night we had dinner at the
Speaker 2: River Cafe. They were really sophisticated in a choice.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Milby has the bomber of she has a treenut allergy,
Speaker 5: so that's like, but beyond that, she's the one. She'll
Speaker 5: eat vegetables, she'll eat. Yeah, she'll eat like a braized
Speaker 5: cavalon narrow She'll sit there and eat it. She'll eat
Speaker 5: She and Jeff do I think that Timmy is insane
Speaker 5: where the two of them both like to take sardines
Speaker 5: and put them on like a saltine cracker with a
Speaker 5: yellow mustard and eat it. I can relate to that,
Speaker 5: which I will not eat that, but I love it
Speaker 5: when she eats it because it's not the healthiest thing
Speaker 5: you could eat. Is that pure fish oil?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: And then Alice is a bit more picky, but.
Speaker 2: They were good eaters. I was talking to again, Ivy,
Speaker 2: one of my granddaughters. We're talking about loving food. She said,
Speaker 2: she goes to bed at night and thinks what she's
Speaker 2: going to have breakfast the next day, and then she
Speaker 2: gets up in the morning and she thinks, oh, now
Speaker 2: that she's working in this way, she has early lunch
Speaker 2: at twelve, but she likes that because it means she
Speaker 2: could have another lunch at three. And if you were
Speaker 2: asking some of the chefs here, they when they're biking
Speaker 2: to work, they're thinking about what they're going to cook,
Speaker 2: and they're thinking and talking to you. The character that
Speaker 2: we see is very you know, you love food. I'm
Speaker 2: thirty rock and you're queuing up for the hot dogs
Speaker 2: and you're getting throwing something because they ate your sandwich
Speaker 2: and everything. But it is a certain kind of food.
Speaker 2: It isn't the foodie food, is it? Because we don't
Speaker 2: want to watch somebody eating us who flay Grandmagnier every.
Speaker 3: Morning, you know that?
Speaker 2: So what is that?
Speaker 3: What is the food you dream of?
Speaker 5: You really do the food I do efect, I do think.
Speaker 5: I do like simpler food. I don't like anything with
Speaker 5: two sort of saucy or you know, like like French food.
Speaker 5: I don't really I think, I just I think. And
Speaker 5: also the like that growing up with that Greek food
Speaker 5: where everything's just like olive oil and some lemon and salt.
Speaker 5: You know, I think when I'm here by myself, which
Speaker 5: I've been here for myself, I'm almost a vegetarian, you know.
Speaker 5: I want to cook just like vegetables and pasta yea,
Speaker 5: and bread and cheese.
Speaker 2: You're here doing.
Speaker 5: Acting in a movie called a Haunting in Venice, directed
Speaker 5: by Sir Kenneth Branna. It's when Agatha Christie inspired murder mystery.
Speaker 5: And it's been very fun to be here shooting in
Speaker 5: an ensemble with some really great actors Michelle Yoh and
Speaker 5: Jamie Dornan and Kamilka Tan and Kelly Riley. And it's
Speaker 5: just been fun to be basically on the Haunted Mansion
Speaker 5: ride at Disney World. I've just been inside that ride
Speaker 5: for three months because we're on this set that's like
Speaker 5: a spooky old Venetian palazzo in the dark all day
Speaker 5: every day for three months.
Speaker 2: Is the culture of filming in Britain in Europe in
Speaker 2: London very different? And back to food, is it a
Speaker 2: different food culture that is a little different.
Speaker 5: Our lunch is, our hours are very civilized here. We
Speaker 5: stopped every day at six on the dot, which at home,
Speaker 5: depending on who you're working for, you could drift into
Speaker 5: eight o'clock, ten o'clock, one am, you could work really late. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we s done. Our lunch is very short. It's only
Speaker 5: half an hour, which was sort of we weren't used
Speaker 5: to it at first, but none I grew to really
Speaker 5: like it because then you don't kind of lose momentum.
Speaker 5: Usually you come back from Americans that you come back
Speaker 5: from lunch a little sleepy and you have to get
Speaker 5: a coffee. But this was a half hour lunch and
Speaker 5: then back in and just everyone offering you tea, constantly
Speaker 5: drinking so much tea, which is nice tea and digestive.
Speaker 3: Is there a food scene in it?
Speaker 5: I didn't get to do any on camera eating.
Speaker 2: Oh that's shame.
Speaker 5: There was a nice thing on set, which was again
Speaker 5: because food is the only way to communicate with people.
Speaker 5: Because the cast were all from different places, we started
Speaker 5: kind of sharing our favorite unique snacks from our countries,
Speaker 5: which started because somehow it was Halloween when I first
Speaker 5: got here, and I was talking about candy corn, and
Speaker 5: of course no one here knew what that was, and
Speaker 5: so I had a friend bring me a couple bags
Speaker 5: of candy corn to share and we started taking a poll.
Speaker 5: We'd give it to the Brits and film their reactions,
Speaker 5: and people thought it was disgusting, which I respect. I
Speaker 5: love it, but it was a great conversation starter when
Speaker 5: we were all new to each other and we were
Speaker 5: like kind of an icebreaker. And then other people started
Speaker 5: bringing in. A woman, Wakana Yoshihara is head of our
Speaker 5: hair and makeup department and she's Japanese and so she
Speaker 5: sort of bringing in Japanese candy and we were trying
Speaker 5: like and some were great, some were disgusting. So she
Speaker 5: had these plump candy that looked like a children's vitamin.
Speaker 5: I apologize to anyone loves these, but she was so
Speaker 5: amused to film each of us trying them. It's so
Speaker 5: funny that something could be a complete comfort treat to
Speaker 5: her that to my palette was horrible, and same with
Speaker 5: the candy corn. And then some of the Brits started
Speaker 5: bringing It was getting closer to Christmas and Kelly Riley
Speaker 5: brought in She said, this is the cheap chocolate that
Speaker 5: we grew up with, was quality street mix of chocolates.
Speaker 5: And then Emma Laird was bringing different kinds of crisps,
Speaker 5: and then we kept asking Camille Catan, who's French, like
Speaker 5: you know what's unique? What kind of weird candy can
Speaker 5: you bring? And she was like I don't know what
Speaker 5: I can bring. And then she brought by the way,
Speaker 5: why might imitating her like she's saw my hyap like
Speaker 5: and uh. And then she Camille showed up with gorgeous
Speaker 5: cheese from France for the whole crew. She's like, we
Speaker 5: don't eat garbage. Yeah, so she brought this like gorgeous,
Speaker 5: gorgeous cheese.
Speaker 3: What is a movie called?
Speaker 5: It's called A Haunting in Venice.
Speaker 2: A Haunting in Venice. So you actually are going to
Speaker 2: go to Venice. Now we go to Venice tomorrow.
Speaker 3: Have you been there before?
Speaker 5: I have never been there.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what are you thinking about Venice and food?
Speaker 2: Friend of mine took their kid to Venice. I'll just
Speaker 2: tell you and the kids. It was a big big
Speaker 2: deal for them to go. They didn't have much money.
Speaker 2: They flew from New York. They went to Venice and
Speaker 2: they said, how do you like Venice? After three days
Speaker 2: he said, I thought there would be more canals.
Speaker 3: Canals. There are a lot of canals. Wanted more. When
Speaker 3: you're thinking about Venice.
Speaker 5: Weirdly, the one thing I'm most excited for about Venice
Speaker 5: is not a food thing, which is I'm excited to
Speaker 5: film outside. I'm excited to a little bit of chaos
Speaker 5: because I am used to shooting outside in New York
Speaker 5: City and we've been on this lovely contained set for
Speaker 5: a while, and I kind of like the idea that,
Speaker 5: like something could go a little wrong. I'm a little
Speaker 5: bit convinced that I'm going to fall in the canal,
Speaker 5: but I don't think I will, but maybe it will.
Speaker 3: If you do.
Speaker 2: It's okay because the water is put cleaner than it
Speaker 2: was and it used to be because of the pandemic.
Speaker 3: There are no cruise ships.
Speaker 5: Oh that's probab Yeah, those Christians are too big together.
Speaker 5: So and I haven't even had a chance to really
Speaker 5: think about what we're going to eat or where, So
Speaker 5: I need you to tell me where to.
Speaker 2: Eat this great food in Venice. You know, there's the Cepionaro.
Speaker 2: They have these black squid with the ink. And a
Speaker 2: friend of mine who grew up outside event It said
Speaker 2: that she only really had pasta when she was thirteen.
Speaker 2: Because everybody ate risotto. Oh you're gonna have a wonderful time.
Speaker 2: I'm exciting as you now in this podcast as we
Speaker 2: ask the guest to read a recipe. And so you
Speaker 2: did say to me when I tried to persuade you
Speaker 2: to do various other recipes that you really wanted to
Speaker 2: do so cooked tomato sauce, And how could I possibly
Speaker 2: ever say no to teamay? And the only other person
Speaker 2: who really bagged it was Jake chillin all and he said,
Speaker 2: I'm only doing this, Ruthie, if I can read tomato pasta.
Speaker 2: So we said yesterday, but that was not with so
Speaker 2: much butter, and it was a year and a half ago.
Speaker 2: So here you go, here's okay, recipe that you could
Speaker 2: read for tomato.
Speaker 5: Poskay, I'm going to say tomato though, tomato.
Speaker 2: I know I've been here, you know how many years?
Speaker 3: Forty years?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I think you come say tomato.
Speaker 2: I say tomato.
Speaker 5: Okay, okay, slow cooked tomato sauce. It serves six to
Speaker 5: eight or in my case, two three tablespoons olive oil,
Speaker 5: two garlic clothes peeled and cut into slivers, two one
Speaker 5: kilogram jars peeled plum tomatoes drained of their juices. One
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty grams on salted butter cut into cubes,
Speaker 5: which I would say visually to me was about a
Speaker 5: third to a half a cup of butter. Heat the
Speaker 5: olive oil in a large sauce pan. Fry the garlic
Speaker 5: until lightly browned. Now add the tomatoes and stir to
Speaker 5: break them up. Season with sea salt and black pepper.
Speaker 5: Cooked slowly, stirring occasionally for at least an hour. When
Speaker 5: the sauce is ready, it will be extremely thick, no
Speaker 5: juice at all. Cook taglerini in boiling salted water for
Speaker 5: two minutes, Drain and add to tomato sauce, Stir in
Speaker 5: the butter, Toss well and serve.
Speaker 9: There you go.
Speaker 2: So when you go back to New York, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: I need this's your dish. So if we were talking
Speaker 2: about comfort, you're talking about comfort, and you're talking about snacks,
Speaker 2: and you're talking about you know, nationalities, what their views
Speaker 2: are of comfort. And we think about cooking as being
Speaker 2: a way of expressing love and something that alleviates hunger
Speaker 2: and something that we want to share or keep to ourselves.
Speaker 2: We also think of food as comfort. And so my
Speaker 2: last question to you in this January day, the first
Speaker 2: day back in the river cafe after Christmas, and as
Speaker 2: I said, tragically for me the day that you and
Speaker 2: George are leaving as sad. What Tina fe is your
Speaker 2: comfort food?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 5: I have so many, Well you can name a few.
Speaker 3: You don't have to have.
Speaker 5: Two come top of list, but there are so a
Speaker 5: pasta like this. Obviously this tomato pasta would be top
Speaker 5: of the list. I also think back to New York
Speaker 5: diner food, sort of a grilled cheese with tomato with
Speaker 5: the big sort of steak fries that you get at
Speaker 5: a diner and then open the grilled cheese and put
Speaker 5: a few fries into the sandwich with a fountain coke,
Speaker 5: not pepsi. Okay, that would be one.
Speaker 3: Is there another one?
Speaker 5: And the other one would be yellow cake with white eyes?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: So these both comfort you. So when I come to
Speaker 2: New York in February March, can we have that together?
Speaker 2: I'll make you know. Oh no, I'll get the cake
Speaker 2: from Make my Cake.
Speaker 5: Okay, and we'll get them and then we'll go to
Speaker 5: the Vande Diner.
Speaker 2: Okay. I can't wait.
Speaker 3: Thank you too, Thank you for the book.
Speaker 1: The River Cafe Lookbook is now available in bookshops and online.
Speaker 1: It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs
Speaker 1: from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty
Speaker 1: delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of
Speaker 1: River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks.
Speaker 1: The River Cafe Lookbook recipes for cooks of all ages.