Speaker 1: Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, and welcome to an evening with Ruthie Rogers
Speaker 2: and Martha Stewart on the River Cafe. Look book for
Speaker 2: Ruthie's Table four podcast. Award winning chef and best selling
Speaker 2: cookbook author Ruthie Rogers launched The River Cafe in London
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: A week ago today, I was in New York with
Speaker 3: Martha Stewart doing a live podcast.
Speaker 2: Marta Stewart is the founder of the first multi channel
Speaker 2: lifestyle Come.
Speaker 4: About Cooking, About Magazines, about.
Speaker 3: Author of books about each other and our careers and food.
Speaker 2: Reaching more than one hundred million devoted fans on a
Speaker 2: monthly basis through her magazines, television shows, books and products
Speaker 2: for the home, Martha is a go to source for
Speaker 2: the homemaker. Please join me in welcoming Ruthie and Martha.
Speaker 3: Imagine for a moment you are Martha Stuart. It is
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two, and you're the most important woman in.
Speaker 4: The world of food.
Speaker 3: You are beautiful, you're funny, and you say yourself that
Speaker 3: your best quality is your curiosity. So maybe it was
Speaker 3: that curiosity which made you drive twenty five minutes from
Speaker 3: your hotel in London to a small restaurant in a
Speaker 3: warehouse on the Thames, which had opened just a few
Speaker 3: years before, run by two women whose only culinary experience
Speaker 3: was cooking for their families. Now imagine how these women
Speaker 3: Rose Gray and Ruthie Rogers felt when Martha Stuart booked
Speaker 3: a table for lunch. They were anxious, excited, and probably
Speaker 3: a bit overwhelmed. To day, being here together on this
Speaker 3: autumn day in New York means more to me than
Speaker 3: I can possibly say.
Speaker 5: This is a long time ago. Nineteen wouldn't I first?
Speaker 5: Nineteen ninety two? That's it seems like yesterday, But it's
Speaker 5: actually was a long time ago. And I was a
Speaker 5: divorce a and my first big trip to London after
Speaker 5: I got divorced and started my own company, I met men,
Speaker 5: really nice men, and I read and I read in
Speaker 5: your book. I read in your book you who You're
Speaker 5: and some of them are in that list, and it's
Speaker 5: really fun to see that well or all I looked online,
Speaker 5: you know, but yeah, people you're grateful to. But like
Speaker 5: I did, I did not have an affair with Michael Caine.
Speaker 5: But I did have affair. But I did have an
Speaker 5: affair with one of his best friends, and Terry Donovan,
Speaker 5: No Neil the photographer, remember him. He was great and
Speaker 5: he sort of introduced me to the nice crowd in London. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and we had.
Speaker 3: That Michael Is said, Michael's amazing.
Speaker 5: Oh. I went to Michael Kaine's house for the weekend.
Speaker 5: I had so much fun. It was a big house party,
Speaker 5: you know. And when I think about those days, I
Speaker 5: can't even believe that was me, because it was. It was,
Speaker 5: but it was so much fun. But we but we
Speaker 5: ate at that We ate at this restaurant that was
Speaker 5: so exquisite because there's two ladies dressed in their stiff
Speaker 5: white chef's jackets and they looked really great and they
Speaker 5: spoke really nicely to everyone, and the food was just
Speaker 5: delicious and really well presented. I just loved it. I
Speaker 5: loved it for the first moment that I walked into
Speaker 5: the restaurant.
Speaker 1: On TV.
Speaker 5: Yes I did. We must post that segment tomorrow. Okay,
Speaker 5: you have it still, of course, that's it said, it's film,
Speaker 5: you film.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm still looking for the baby.
Speaker 5: We have a big library.
Speaker 4: I tried to find that.
Speaker 5: It's so funny because I'm working in my hundreds book
Speaker 5: and I get this book in the mail called The
Speaker 5: River Cafe Look Book, and I open it up and
Speaker 5: I say, oh shit, she beat me to it. And
Speaker 5: what I had already discussed with my editor what I
Speaker 5: wanted to do, and I wanted to I wanted to
Speaker 5: make the food in the book it's my hundred favorite recipes.
Speaker 5: I wanted to make the food look like art. And
Speaker 5: You've done it, so I can't do it now. I
Speaker 5: have to think of a whole new idea for the photographer. No,
Speaker 5: but I really love the picture so much.
Speaker 3: We took all the photographs of the finished dishes, and
Speaker 3: trying to do it step by step was patronizing, boring,
Speaker 3: and we just weren't very good at it. So we thought,
Speaker 3: you know, what would be a book that might inspire
Speaker 3: people to cook, and not necessarily just children, without intimidating them,
Speaker 3: but inspiring them to cook. And it has a kind
Speaker 3: of backstory, this book, which is to do with someone
Speaker 3: bought me these books for people who have had brain
Speaker 3: damage or autism or anything connected with neurology. And I'll
Speaker 3: just show you very quickly. It's about pairing images. And
Speaker 3: so we thought what we would do is do a
Speaker 3: book in which you just had images next to each other. So,
Speaker 3: why is looking at a vase of wilting tulips something
Speaker 3: that connects you with spaghetti? Vongelais with red chilis? And
Speaker 3: why would have you know burnt matches somehow mean something
Speaker 3: to you? With lamb chops, there's something that stops you.
Speaker 3: And so what we did was we had the photographer
Speaker 3: do all the food photographs, Matthew Donaldson, and then we
Speaker 3: didn't commission these photographs. We went through his archives and
Speaker 3: so we went through the archives and we found photographs
Speaker 3: that we thought we could possibly match with the cooked food.
Speaker 3: And then we put the recipes at the back and
Speaker 3: with kind of very Martha Stewart like instructions, which is advice,
Speaker 3: which is to begin by reading a recipe twice, ending
Speaker 3: by now put on your apron and wash your hands. Anyway,
Speaker 3: this is what we did and this is our book.
Speaker 5: It was very nice production.
Speaker 3: I said to someone who helps me, I said, can
Speaker 3: you go and get a book by Martha? Not one
Speaker 3: of the new ones, but just go and try and
Speaker 3: find a book. And they came back with Housekeeping six
Speaker 3: things to do when.
Speaker 4: You wake up in the morning. Do you know what
Speaker 4: they are?
Speaker 3: I know, wake your bed, get rid of the clutter.
Speaker 3: This is this dates it because it says sort your mail,
Speaker 3: which I thought just.
Speaker 5: I disorted my mail this afternoon email letter. Really had
Speaker 5: a letter mail every day, thank you.
Speaker 4: I haven't had a letter.
Speaker 3: If anybody wants to write here fan mail, I'd love
Speaker 3: to sort it. Then I could have something to sort.
Speaker 5: And I have to sort through all that mail I
Speaker 5: have saw it to. Stephanie gets all the like the
Speaker 5: fan mail. We get a lot of fan mail. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's it's amazing where they where it comes from. And
Speaker 5: then and then the guy who pays all the bills,
Speaker 5: he gets all the bills. Don't you get bills? No,
Speaker 5: oh geez, you're lucky.
Speaker 4: I think that Housekeeping have eye. You've seen it. It
Speaker 4: is when we've been reading it every night wherevery bak
Speaker 4: comes to the house.
Speaker 5: It's about that homekeeping handbook.
Speaker 3: I love it is the best tells you there's you know,
Speaker 3: And I thought you know. And I was talking to
Speaker 3: a yet very young friend of mine and I was
Speaker 3: telling him that that a lot of us whose mother's
Speaker 3: perhaps really became involved in feminism. Right, so in the
Speaker 3: maybe the sixties, really didn't want to teach us how
Speaker 3: to sew a button, you know, or clean a spill
Speaker 3: when it's fresh.
Speaker 4: Well, we know that, you know, it's easier.
Speaker 3: But I think that what Martha really did teach us
Speaker 3: that it's okay to do what we want to do,
Speaker 3: but also know how to do something domestic.
Speaker 4: And I think it's very important.
Speaker 5: It's a huge Like my friends don't know to use
Speaker 5: a squeegee in their showers.
Speaker 4: What's a squeechee?
Speaker 5: They don't know that, And then you get into their
Speaker 5: shower and it's all grungy, you know, and the glass
Speaker 5: looks all cloudy if only you use a squeegee. My
Speaker 5: grandchildren use squeegees just to see them, and they're beautiful showers.
Speaker 5: They're cleaning them everything. You know, since they were one,
Speaker 5: they were using squeegees. But that book is great. The
Speaker 5: Home Heaping hand Book is great. And decorators, I'm Michael Smith,
Speaker 5: who's the fanciest fanciest decorator on earth. He gives that
Speaker 5: book to his clients and they sit down and they
Speaker 5: read it so they can learn how to take care
Speaker 5: of those fancy houses that he designs for them. I
Speaker 5: wish I could read my first Twitter recipes because I
Speaker 5: was a really big fan of Twitter when it came out.
Speaker 5: I still have the original stock. I think I've gotten
Speaker 5: paid fifty four dollars a share, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 5: I haven't gotten any money yet from Elon. Let's let's
Speaker 5: see if he pays, if he pays those debts. But
Speaker 5: I had so much fun writing those recipes. Try to
Speaker 5: do a recipe in eighty characters, It was really hard.
Speaker 3: So Martha, can you tell me about your family? Can
Speaker 3: you tell me about growing up in a household?
Speaker 5: Did you well? I grew up with mom and dad
Speaker 5: both in Nutley, New Jersey. Mother was a school teacher.
Speaker 5: She taught sixth grade at the Washington School in Nutley,
Speaker 5: New Jersey, and she went back to teaching when she
Speaker 5: had her sixth child. Right when that sixth child, Laura
Speaker 5: was old enough to go to kindergarten, my mother started
Speaker 5: teaching again. She took off, like I think eighteen years
Speaker 5: to have six kids, but she substituted during that time
Speaker 5: because she didn't like staying home that much. Right father,
Speaker 5: Dad was a pharmaceutical salesman, like I said once, he
Speaker 5: was a drug salesman. And it's not exactly the right thing, missay.
Speaker 5: But but mother cooked every meal?
Speaker 4: How did she do that?
Speaker 5: She she was organized. And Martha I was the oldest daughter,
Speaker 5: so I was. There was a brother, a daughter, and
Speaker 5: a boy girl, boy girl all the way down. And
Speaker 5: I learned how to cook at her side, and I
Speaker 5: would help, of course. But the kitchen was the hub
Speaker 5: of our home, and it was a really ugly kitchen.
Speaker 5: My father he renovated the kitchen himself, and and he
Speaker 5: put down pink linoleum squares on the floor pink. And
Speaker 5: he put a bathroom, a little sink and toilet right
Speaker 5: off the breakfast nook. We had a nook where we
Speaker 5: all sat with a big picture window looking out at
Speaker 5: the garden. And then he put birch cabinets which were
Speaker 5: they were okay, except that he put very ugly hardware
Speaker 5: on them, and then pink for micah countertops, which which
Speaker 5: was not nice, and and on that's all one side
Speaker 5: of the kitchen and one little oven one with a
Speaker 5: broil or in it. You know, this is for eight
Speaker 5: people right here. That that well, I guess that was
Speaker 5: the nineteen fifties. That was the renovation of fifties kitchen.
Speaker 5: It looked like a oh, we had it, and it's
Speaker 5: still there. Have been I haven't been inside the house.
Speaker 5: I've gone to visit the house since my mother sold it,
Speaker 5: but I'm sure it's still there. It was, it was
Speaker 5: well built, but they must have put new counters in
Speaker 5: because that pink was heart was hideous.
Speaker 3: But but you know, it's just before we go back
Speaker 3: to your mom is. I did a podcast with Alfonso
Speaker 3: cur On, the film director did Roma, and it's very
Speaker 3: interesting because he talked about the difference between the American
Speaker 3: culture of the kind of middle class wealth or growth,
Speaker 3: and the Mexican and it also reminded me of Italy
Speaker 3: that he said that in America, if you had more money,
Speaker 3: you had bigger kitchens, you had a huge fridge, you
Speaker 3: have two ovens, you'd have walk in this and you know,
Speaker 3: that's how you showed your wealth. In Mexico, and I
Speaker 3: think probably in Italy you could go to quite grand
Speaker 3: houses and have a very simple kitchen, really really small,
Speaker 3: but you had more help.
Speaker 4: That was the way help. You just had more domestics.
Speaker 3: So his whole well if you've seen Roma, it is about,
Speaker 3: you know the life of the domestic where we had.
Speaker 4: You had no your mother had no help. So when
Speaker 4: was she shop? How did she work?
Speaker 5: Well, we went shopping. It was Friday morning. Friday morning
Speaker 5: with mister Mouse from next door, this German baker from
Speaker 5: next door, and he had a big buick a mouse
Speaker 5: and he was he and his wife would take us,
Speaker 5: would drive us because we only had one car and
Speaker 5: dad took the car to work. So they would take
Speaker 5: us to the co op that's where we shopped and
Speaker 5: uh and load up the car with a week's supply
Speaker 5: of groceries. And we also had a large garden and
Speaker 5: so that that was only you know, during the warm
Speaker 5: weather though, it was the garden and my mother did
Speaker 5: a lot of canning and preserving. We had a large
Speaker 5: freezer in the basement, a great big freezer, and we
Speaker 5: also had a large refrigerator in the basement where overflow
Speaker 5: was kept. Yeah. And when my brother wasn't skinning muskrats
Speaker 5: in the in the laundry sink, he was a trapper.
Speaker 5: He put himself through college on his on the fur,
Speaker 5: the fur that he trapped, can you imagine. And I
Speaker 5: was the best skinner, So I did a lot of
Speaker 5: this skinning. I imagine that I skinned muskrats. They were
Speaker 5: dead by the time I got them. Thank god I didn't.
Speaker 4: Have to get You learned how to skin a muskrats?
Speaker 4: Do you learn that for life?
Speaker 5: Is that something you never forget. I'm really good. I'm
Speaker 5: really good at killing the chickens and the geese and
Speaker 5: all of that stuff.
Speaker 3: So you grew up in this house, so it's not
Speaker 3: a surprise that you taught everybody how to change your
Speaker 3: light bulb and how to make it.
Speaker 5: I did all that stuff. I did all that stuff.
Speaker 5: I'm still not very good at plumbing, and I'm not
Speaker 5: very good at electricity, but I can do all the
Speaker 5: other stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so tell me more about growing up in them.
Speaker 5: Well, the house was, it was. It was a fun house,
Speaker 5: you know, because you you like the old Polish joke
Speaker 5: where what's a what's a Polish vacation? Do you know
Speaker 5: what that is? And please don't take this badly. I'm
Speaker 5: not big at hit. I have polish one. It's sitting
Speaker 5: on your neighbor's stoop, and that's a vacation. And that's
Speaker 5: what we We sat next door on the Italian Stoop
Speaker 5: where we sat next door on the Irish Stoop, and
Speaker 5: we had we ate everybody's food. We were. It was
Speaker 5: a very nice neighborhood. And I learned a lot. I
Speaker 5: learned how to roast the potato the best way you know.
Speaker 5: That was that was important to know how to do that.
Speaker 5: And I also learned how to make beautiful, beautiful yeast
Speaker 5: spreads from mister Mouse and his basement. He had a
Speaker 5: big bakery down in his basement. And I still have
Speaker 5: his bread making bowl, the big yellow ware bowl in
Speaker 5: which I which I made all my dough. And for Thanksgiving,
Speaker 5: I'm giving my whole staff, I'm giving them all panatoni,
Speaker 5: which is which is a recipe that I learned from
Speaker 5: mister Mouse a long time ago, and it's good.
Speaker 3: So if you had all that background, which does really
Speaker 3: explain a lot, I didn't know that because there were
Speaker 3: a lot of people grew up without any of that knowledge.
Speaker 5: We fished. We went fishing and would bring home one
Speaker 5: hundred bluefish and we would freeze those bluefish and we
Speaker 5: could eat bluefish for a lot, a lot of bluefish.
Speaker 5: I like bluefish actually, And we would also we had
Speaker 5: farmer relatives in southern New Jersey that had cows and
Speaker 5: grew corn, really good corn. Being a Polish background, you
Speaker 5: learn a lot about agriculture, and you learn a lot
Speaker 5: about cooking and preserving. And every night, all of us, yes,
Speaker 5: dinner was important, and conversation at the dinner was important. Oh,
Speaker 5: everything from current events to what was on the Shadow
Speaker 5: Nose to this radio program. We had a radio, but
Speaker 5: not a television. We were the last family on the
Speaker 5: street to get a television. We would have to sneak
Speaker 5: out and visit our neighbors to watch TV.
Speaker 3: When I interviewed Nancy Pelosi, she said she'd never sat
Speaker 3: down to a meal without a Oh.
Speaker 5: Well, we sat down to a pink for mica table
Speaker 5: in the nook of the of the kitchen nook. It
Speaker 5: was called the breakfast nook, but it was a large
Speaker 5: enough table for eight people.
Speaker 4: And did the dishes afternoon, And.
Speaker 5: Yes, I did the dishes, and the homework was at
Speaker 5: the kitchen table, and Mom would sit there with her
Speaker 5: one cigarette. She was so sexy. She sat there and
Speaker 5: after dinner, after everybody was in bed except for Martha
Speaker 5: who was cleaning up. And I was also sewing a
Speaker 5: lot too, because I've made my own clothes. Mom would see,
Speaker 5: asked my sisters, and my mother would sit there with
Speaker 5: one cigarette, her Chesterfield cigarette in her fingers, and I
Speaker 5: loved how she looked. I thought it was the greatest.
Speaker 5: I never smoked, no, no, but that was only one
Speaker 5: a day.
Speaker 4: Did your father cook?
Speaker 5: Dad made breakfasts, but you would you know. He would
Speaker 5: make eggs with smiley faces made out of Marachine cherries
Speaker 5: and green pepper, some lips, you know, to Laura's down
Speaker 5: to the kitchen. And he had an intercom in the house.
Speaker 5: If you ever read Cheaper by the Dozen, it was
Speaker 5: a fabulous book about a father who had twelve children,
Speaker 5: and it was written in like Montclair, New Jersey. Dad
Speaker 5: would would make believe he was that father.
Speaker 4: And uh, well, what about the intercom.
Speaker 5: The intercondess rise and shine. I still remember that. I'm
Speaker 5: not allowed to say that in my house at all,
Speaker 5: So that the early years, I'm getting silly. This is
Speaker 5: very silly, because it is, but it is a childhood
Speaker 5: based on real good I mean, we were brought up
Speaker 5: on fresh good food. Yes, this is life in the
Speaker 5: house in the suburbs and the what was your name for?
Speaker 5: What was Martha? Casteira, Castira.
Speaker 4: What do you think they were? Did you have a grandmother?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I had two grandmothers.
Speaker 4: Just one of the other things. Was she important?
Speaker 5: Well, Grandma Grandma Helen lived down the street, so she
Speaker 5: and she made the best gaffilter fish. She would bring
Speaker 5: home the giant carp that would sit in the bath.
Speaker 5: Of course, the most delicious moose. The moose of carp
Speaker 5: that was the turned out to be the gaffilter fish
Speaker 5: with a wonderful sauce. She was. She was great. And
Speaker 5: the other grandmother, grandmother, Grandma Raskowski, lived in Buffalo, New York,
Speaker 5: and she lived next door to a slaughterhouse, so I
Speaker 5: got to see how animals were slaughtered. Early on. We
Speaker 5: would peek through the wooden fence and see the cows
Speaker 5: coming in and all of that. But I learned. I
Speaker 5: learned a lot about how to treat animals and how
Speaker 5: not to treat animals. And also she was She would
Speaker 5: go to the farms up in New York State near
Speaker 5: Buffalo and and bring home the most beautiful golden cherries.
Speaker 5: And she would do all canning because they didn't have freezers,
Speaker 5: but they did. She did amazing. Oh yeah, It was incredible.
Speaker 5: I learned how to be a good cannor from her.
Speaker 4: How do you be a good canna?
Speaker 5: Well, the preparation on the sterilization of the jars and
Speaker 5: making sure everything is impeccable and so that we won't
Speaker 5: get sick eating you know, tainted food, And that was
Speaker 5: impressed on us a lot.
Speaker 3: About how your grandparents born in Poland, yes, all of them,
Speaker 3: so they brought that with them. So that was what
Speaker 3: it was growing up in that household. And then when
Speaker 3: you left, did you miss that? Was that not at all?
Speaker 5: Not at all, Because I got married when I was nineteen.
Speaker 5: I fell in love at eighteen and got married as
Speaker 5: quickly as I could possibly get married and get out
Speaker 5: of the house and start my own house. It was fun.
Speaker 5: It was a lot of fun. And I cooked everything
Speaker 5: all the time, did you oh yeah? And dinner parties cool?
Speaker 4: Did your husband cook?
Speaker 5: No, no, he didn't, but he liked to eat.
Speaker 3: With a large family and the kind of life you had,
Speaker 3: I think I might know the answer to this question.
Speaker 4: But did you go to restaurants?
Speaker 5: No? No, no, he had no money to go to restaurants.
Speaker 5: Six kids, all preparing to go to college. There was
Speaker 5: no time. My big treat for my dad. My dad
Speaker 5: loved good food, and he went to restaurants because he
Speaker 5: would take his doctors out that he was selling drugs
Speaker 5: to whatever. So he got to experiment and visit restaurants
Speaker 5: in New York City. But he would bring me home
Speaker 5: like a pomegranate from Chinatown.
Speaker 4: And so when did you start going to restaurants day?
Speaker 5: Well, as soon as I could get to work, I
Speaker 5: went to work seriously. Probably when I was around thirteen.
Speaker 5: I started to model in New York City. A girl
Speaker 5: across the street was a model and a ballerina in
Speaker 5: New York and she said, Martha, you should really come
Speaker 5: see my agent. She'd love you. So I went to
Speaker 5: see this lady. I lean forward and she accepted me
Speaker 5: as a as a kind of a point yeah, part
Speaker 5: time model. So I would I would work after school
Speaker 5: and on Saturdays, I would work maybe modeling live at Bond.
Speaker 5: Would tell her it was fun, and you know it
Speaker 5: was like instead of fifty cents an hour, I was
Speaker 5: making more like twenty dollars an hour in New York
Speaker 5: and that's that was a lot of money. And then
Speaker 5: I got some TV commercials, and that's what really paid.
Speaker 5: It paid for my entire college education. The residuals. In
Speaker 5: those days, it was very lucrative. So I did that
Speaker 5: until I went to Barnard College. When you started eating out,
Speaker 5: oh yes, and boyfriends you know, would take me out
Speaker 5: to dinner. We would have nice dinners different places. I
Speaker 5: remember going, oh like New York. Well, one of my boyfriends,
Speaker 5: the guy I actually married, lived in the Ritz Tower.
Speaker 5: And the Ritz Tower on Park Avenue in fifty seventh
Speaker 5: Street had the pavion downstairs. That was his lunch room
Speaker 5: and afast was sent up to his apartment and dinner
Speaker 5: if you wanted to. But we ate in the pavion.
Speaker 5: That was very nice, and there were other lovely French
Speaker 5: restaurants to eat at. There was only one Japanese restaurant
Speaker 5: that I remember downtown on like fifty sixth Street, but
Speaker 5: I ate it. A Japanese restaurant uptown on one hundred
Speaker 5: and twentieth Street in Amsterdam called Aki that was very good.
Speaker 5: So I started to experiment with all different cuisines early on.
Speaker 5: As soon as I could, I started to eat unusual foods.
Speaker 3: I think that that also is when you can pay
Speaker 3: for your own meal, when you can go out to
Speaker 3: a restaurant. Is it kind of almost a measure of
Speaker 3: your success. Isn't it that you know that you you know,
Speaker 3: wad paid? But it was, But it is very different now, right,
Speaker 3: What do you take your children out to restaurants?
Speaker 5: Oh, they love to go out restaurants. Yeah, they love.
Speaker 4: Fine food, two grandchildren.
Speaker 5: Yes, especially Japanese food. They have very very good taste.
Speaker 4: Do you ever order in?
Speaker 5: I have never ordered never. I just don't do that.
Speaker 5: And I think it's during COVID. I think there was
Speaker 5: a pizza one night that somebody ordered in. But I
Speaker 5: cooked for the first hundred days of COVID, I cooked
Speaker 5: for I kept three people in my house with me.
Speaker 5: I kept my head gardener Ryan, he's not bad to
Speaker 5: have around, and I kept my driver, Carlos, and I
Speaker 5: kept my housekeeper, Elvira, and I cooked. I cooked for
Speaker 5: them all meals and we actually had a lovely time.
Speaker 4: And I don't think it's.
Speaker 3: Bad when I say I don't order in, I don't
Speaker 3: so judge it because I see my kids.
Speaker 4: Do my kids do.
Speaker 5: When I go into a restaurant to take out that's
Speaker 5: lined up on the counter. Yeah, maybe it's just not
Speaker 5: my habit to order it.
Speaker 3: But I think that your mother probably hasn't. Has she
Speaker 3: have any of your mothers? Do you think it might
Speaker 3: be really generational? Because it is, but it goes back
Speaker 3: to your mother. It is really hard to work cold
Speaker 3: day or as many people you know work the night
Speaker 3: shift or have to go to work. You know, the
Speaker 3: image that we all have that everybody should sit down
Speaker 3: and eat a home cooked meal.
Speaker 4: It's really hard.
Speaker 3: It is really hard, and I think judge who don't
Speaker 3: do it isn't fair the.
Speaker 5: People who do go home and put a good meal
Speaker 5: on the.
Speaker 3: Table, and also respect the ones who can. I do
Speaker 3: you know, because I think maybe you'd prefer to do
Speaker 3: homework with your kid and cook a meal, or maybe,
Speaker 3: as I said, you have to leave at five to
Speaker 3: go work at Amazon, or you know that it's a
Speaker 3: tough world outbout going back, And so you went to Barnard,
Speaker 3: you get married, and then when did the thought of
Speaker 3: actually all the knowledge that you had from your mother
Speaker 3: and from your past and your experience, when did that
Speaker 3: come into the idea of actually you do that full time?
Speaker 5: Oh that took a while because I took some detours,
Speaker 5: like to Wall Street, I learned how to learn how
Speaker 5: to be a common stockbroker. And I traveled a lot
Speaker 5: and tasted foods all over the world and fell in
Speaker 5: love with different cuisines and tried to learn how to
Speaker 5: how to make those things. That was all more hobby
Speaker 5: than profession. And then I then I guess. Let me see,
Speaker 5: I was already forty when I wrote my first book,
Speaker 5: So yeah, I was old by the time I wrote
Speaker 5: my first book. I was.
Speaker 4: I was thirty eight when I started really Cafe.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, so we're late bloomers. We're going to colleges
Speaker 5: would call you a late bloomer, late bloom I think
Speaker 5: they called me a late blueber.
Speaker 4: Probably when I was eighteen. Anyways, it was like fourteen.
Speaker 3: But I think that it is interesting how the two
Speaker 3: of us, you know, we didn't go I didn't go
Speaker 3: to cooking school, and I certainly didn't have the background
Speaker 3: that you had.
Speaker 5: And I had been maligned for not having gone to
Speaker 5: cooking school. And I had been maligned for not knowing
Speaker 5: how to do this or do that. But my best
Speaker 5: team have you been mindlind like crazy, but well, you know,
Speaker 5: getting advice to not having Yeah, just because I didn't
Speaker 5: have an I didn't have a culinary education.
Speaker 4: I didn't so very male at that time.
Speaker 5: Oh it was very male. But I don't want to
Speaker 5: get into that stuff because that I don't hold any
Speaker 5: grudges and it's a fact, except yes, it is a fact. Yeah.
Speaker 5: It was kind of crazy because I learned from watching.
Speaker 5: I'm a really good observer and I have had the
Speaker 5: opportunity in my career with the TV shows to have
Speaker 5: the finest chefs in the world cooking with me. And
Speaker 5: Nobu even gave me a sushi jacket because he thought
Speaker 5: I did very well with a sushi knife and the fish.
Speaker 5: He let me cut sushi behind his bar on fifty
Speaker 5: seventh Street. That's pretty high praise. But that's the kind
Speaker 5: of thing I like to learn from watching and learning
Speaker 5: with the finest of the you know, the finest chefs
Speaker 5: in the world.
Speaker 4: So what happened when you were forty? What was the act?
Speaker 5: Well, I decided I would write a book, and I
Speaker 5: wrote I was catering. I was doing a lot of catering.
Speaker 4: Catering, Yes, oh yeah, when did that start?
Speaker 5: That started in my mid thirties.
Speaker 4: You just had that start that I.
Speaker 5: Retired from Wall Street and I had to do something.
Speaker 5: So I started a catering business, which probably I should
Speaker 5: have stayed in Wall Street and you know, run General
Speaker 5: Electric or something, but just just in retrospect it would
Speaker 5: be sort of fun. But moved to Silicon Valle. Catering
Speaker 5: is the worst job on earth, and it's sort of
Speaker 5: like being a stockbroker. All you're doing is paying attention
Speaker 5: to an individual at a specific time and and it's
Speaker 5: all it's all about money and getting the stuff done
Speaker 5: on time. And it was it was a pretty horrible business.
Speaker 5: But you're building a restaurant every night and tearing it
Speaker 5: down at the end of the evening and loading it
Speaker 5: into the car. And I knew my marriage was over
Speaker 5: the night I drove back into the driveway on Turkey
Speaker 5: Hill Road and nobody came out to help. That was
Speaker 5: I knew it was over. But that's what That's what
Speaker 5: happened because I was devoted to the work. And then
Speaker 5: that's when I started thinking, what can I do to
Speaker 5: make something that my children, my grandchildren and grandchildren might
Speaker 5: know their grandma for And that was to write a
Speaker 5: book Entertaining.
Speaker 4: Entertaining that nice book is a really nice book.
Speaker 5: So that was published in nineteen eighty two. It's forty
Speaker 5: years old this year, forty years old.
Speaker 3: Food is alleviating hunger, food is political. It's also comfort.
Speaker 3: And so my last question to you, my darling woman,
Speaker 3: is when you need comfort, is there food you turn to?
Speaker 5: Probably the bowl of eggs in my kitchen.
Speaker 4: How would they?
Speaker 5: Well? I raised my own chickens, and I raise my
Speaker 5: own eggs, and the eggs are so delicious and no
Speaker 5: matter how you cook them, they're good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll see you today as a comfort. Martha Stewart, Thank.
Speaker 5: You, so great to see you too after.
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.
Speaker 1: Ruthie's Table four is a production of iHeart Radio and
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