Speaker 1: You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 1: Do you have all your pasta? Very idente?
Speaker 2: And yes, I found this amazing pasta called Mancini, which
Speaker 2: is from Pulia. I'm a friend with few great chefs,
Speaker 2: one in particular Nicromito. I don't know if you know
Speaker 2: Nico Nikos. He creates all the menus for the Bulgary
Speaker 2: hotel in the world, but also he has his own restaurant,
Speaker 2: which is three star mish Land in Abruzzo. And we
Speaker 2: know each other since ever like twenty years now, and
Speaker 2: he gave me this tip, get pasta mancini. It's so good.
Speaker 1: Is it in a blue packet?
Speaker 2: No white, an orange?
Speaker 1: Look it up.
Speaker 2: I'll send you some.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, very good. So you going back to the
Speaker 1: recipe you talk about you tell us talk about it well.
Speaker 2: I mean, there is this famous recipe of Taierne that
Speaker 2: there is a woman chef in Pimonte made thirty or
Speaker 2: forty years ago by using one kilo of white flower
Speaker 2: and forty yolks. And I tried one.
Speaker 1: How is it?
Speaker 2: And I thought it was a disaster, and in fact
Speaker 2: was amazing because it gets very dry almost crumbly. You
Speaker 2: don't have a soft dough. You have a very dry dog.
Speaker 2: And then when you pass the door through.
Speaker 1: The did you use the machine or do you no?
Speaker 2: No, in this case, you cannot. You need the machine
Speaker 2: because the machine helps the pasta to become one. The
Speaker 2: pasta was amazing, amazing.
Speaker 1: Well, when we do it with truffles, we put you know,
Speaker 1: if we do child green with tartufi, then we use
Speaker 1: a lot more eggs. But if we do it with
Speaker 1: tomato or with then let's let's sechi. Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2: But pasta you do every week a lot?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we sell every night. We sell probably sixty portions
Speaker 1: fifty a lot. You know, everybody says, oh, I don't carbs,
Speaker 1: I don't include, and they all are. Everyone does right
Speaker 1: all the time, and it's evolved, you know. So we
Speaker 1: make if you're cooking in the restaurant, it's easier to
Speaker 1: have fresh pasta because you know, if you're cooking quickly,
Speaker 1: it cooks quickly you added to the sauce. A hard
Speaker 1: pasta takes a bit longer. But I always love a
Speaker 1: hard pasta as well. So we often do three fresh
Speaker 1: pastas in one hard, or we do a risotto and
Speaker 1: two pastas and jaki.
Speaker 2: You know, how are the habits of the clients changed
Speaker 2: throughout time.
Speaker 1: That's an interesting question. I think when we first opened
Speaker 1: the River Cafe in eighty seven, we served Papa poal
Speaker 1: Medoro right because I was my husband was from Tuscany.
Speaker 1: We cooked in Tuscany and we wanted to make the
Speaker 1: kind of food that you ate not in restaurants in
Speaker 1: Italy but at homes. And people said, I am not
Speaker 1: paying at that time, like eight pounds six pounds for
Speaker 1: a bit of bread and some tomatoes and you know basil,
Speaker 1: And you'll think this is surprising. But there was a
Speaker 1: man here called Freddy Laker, and what he did is
Speaker 1: he operated cheap airlines, like you could buy a ticket
Speaker 1: tow for ten pounds. Remember. So what it meant, I
Speaker 1: think is that a lot of British people traveled to
Speaker 1: the source. They went to Italy, they went to Rome,
Speaker 1: they went to Pulliad and I think it kind of
Speaker 1: changed the way people could them maybe more. And I
Speaker 1: think people now are so curious. You know, we have
Speaker 1: an open kitchen. People come up to the past and say,
Speaker 1: how did you make that? What's in that? And they
Speaker 1: ask questions.
Speaker 2: Do you like to divulge?
Speaker 1: Always?
Speaker 2: You do, right?
Speaker 1: Always. That's why we did thirteen books. You know that
Speaker 1: we've thirteen books, because why not? You know, would you
Speaker 1: ever write a book?
Speaker 2: I don't know, a foot book? Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean I On the one hand, I would say, yeah,
Speaker 2: it would be it would be amazing. On the other hand,
Speaker 2: I like to do things that I know how to
Speaker 2: do them. And you know, like I love food and
Speaker 2: I love to cook. But it's more like personal than
Speaker 2: something that I could be, like I have an authority
Speaker 2: about maybe I could do a book about the art
Speaker 2: of the table that I can do. That I can
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: But what do you mean by art of the table?
Speaker 2: The art of the table means how you set up
Speaker 2: a table. The many fashions in which you can create
Speaker 2: a table setting for a meal, whether it's a two
Speaker 2: people meal or a large important dinner.
Speaker 1: Describe it one for me. If I came to dinner,
Speaker 1: what would bla tables setting?
Speaker 2: Well, if you came to dinner to my house in
Speaker 2: Pimonte right now, I think we would and it was
Speaker 2: a funny day. We would eat outside on a simple
Speaker 2: garden iron table and chairs and we would have probably
Speaker 2: a pasta with tomato on a ceramics. I have a
Speaker 2: blue ceramics set that I bought from a beautiful artisan
Speaker 2: in Wales. I would use that for.
Speaker 1: You, red and blue like your eyes. It's interesting that
Speaker 1: you say tomato pasta because I always tell the story
Speaker 1: that we were in Verona and we met someone from
Speaker 1: al greenie To and she said that when she was
Speaker 1: growing up that she never until she was sixteen growing
Speaker 1: up in Verona, had never had a pasta with.
Speaker 2: Tomato, because that's part of data.
Speaker 1: She went down to Naples, and she came back from
Speaker 1: Naples for the summer, and they called her Piccolo pomodoro whatever,
Speaker 1: because she's experienced. And I love that about Italy is
Speaker 1: the regional.
Speaker 2: Italy is so elongated and so fractured that you don't
Speaker 2: have what could be considered Italian food even now. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: I think you have many myriad you say myriad, myriad,
Speaker 2: myriad of possibilities coming from not a single region, but
Speaker 2: a part of the region. So what you can get
Speaker 2: in the Verona area you would not get maybe from
Speaker 2: the Treviso area, And that is something that it's very
Speaker 2: important to learn about Italian Heritaga would say, and that's
Speaker 2: what makes our food canon very wide and important. One
Speaker 2: other thing that I love is I like to read books,
Speaker 2: recipe books from the past, you know, Peligrine or Tuzi
Speaker 2: or at a Bonnie. You can see the Verie.
Speaker 1: It was a big influence on me. She's great. I
Speaker 1: think she's great. Yeah, talents man, remember that. Yeah I
Speaker 1: have it. Yeah, so have I hope I have a
Speaker 1: line downstairs. But she there was so simple, right, so
Speaker 1: short these recipes. Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table
Speaker 1: for in partnership with Montclair