Speaker 1: You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 1: Whenever I'm with Bella Freud, which isn't often enough, I
Speaker 1: always wish I could see more of her. She's in
Speaker 1: fashion and I'm in food. A meal is a moment,
Speaker 1: and an outfit changes daily. Right now, I'm wearing Bella's
Speaker 1: iconic nineteen seventy sweater. A few years ago she created
Speaker 1: an Nemesis sweater for the River Cafe, and one of
Speaker 1: my most treasured possessions is a Bella sweater, saying Bella, this,
Speaker 1: Bella that. In our early years, Bella's father, Lucien Freud,
Speaker 1: came almost every day to the River Cafe. When with Bella,
Speaker 1: we were told never to interrupt, as this was their
Speaker 1: precious time. Now, when Bella comes with her friends.
Speaker 2: I always wish I could whisk her.
Speaker 1: Away and have her all to myself. Today, on Table four,
Speaker 1: I finally am.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Ruthie. It's so nice to have you here.
Speaker 2: And it is true you did come with your dad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and sometimes he do risk me away when I'm
Speaker 3: here and I don't know. I love it. You beckon
Speaker 3: to me and say come here, and then we stand
Speaker 3: behind a corner. Are they talking?
Speaker 2: What are they doing? In this world?
Speaker 1: We have to talk or just talk about each other.
Speaker 1: What are your memories of your dad coming here?
Speaker 3: I remember we came here when it first started. We
Speaker 3: jump in the car, and then he drove very fast,
Speaker 3: terribly terrifyingly. I'm very good at kind of masquerading a calmness,
Speaker 3: and some of it's learnt from sitting next to him
Speaker 3: while he drove in this petrifying way. He'd drive very
Speaker 3: fast towards something and then swerve suddenly, so then we'd
Speaker 3: arrive and.
Speaker 2: Lived another moment. Great food.
Speaker 3: And I remember he also used to come here with Lee.
Speaker 3: Barry and Lee used to learn all about food from
Speaker 3: eating out with Dad and coming here. And I always
Speaker 3: remember this moment him saying, yes, the poach pears are
Speaker 3: very good. It was so lovely.
Speaker 1: I remember one day he came and we had a
Speaker 1: sign on the door because we were painting the restaurant.
Speaker 1: We closed for lunch. We only opened for lunch, and
Speaker 1: I said, listen, I'm really really sorry that you know
Speaker 1: we're closed today, but I'll cook you something and he said,
Speaker 1: I have a better idea. I'm going to take you
Speaker 1: out to lunch, and yeah, he took me to Kensington
Speaker 1: Place and we had lunch. He was just fantastic, you know,
Speaker 1: spontaneous and kind and just caring and talking to me
Speaker 1: and asking me about me, you know, and it was
Speaker 1: very It was one of the great moments in my life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was fun.
Speaker 3: He was such a good company and he made you
Speaker 3: feel so special.
Speaker 1: I used to come in those trousers with Peter all
Speaker 1: over them, and you know, he was great.
Speaker 3: It was exciting.
Speaker 1: It's very interesting you were saying that a lot of
Speaker 1: your experience of eating with him was in restaurants.
Speaker 3: I remember going because I lived in the country and
Speaker 3: i'd camp to London and all my sort of encounters
Speaker 3: with him as I got to know him when I
Speaker 3: was little were we used to go to marine IC's
Speaker 3: when I was very small, and then he would take
Speaker 3: us to this Greek restaurant in notting Hill. But it
Speaker 3: was always a meeting to do with being in a
Speaker 3: restaurant and the food. I would be quite nervous, so
Speaker 3: the food was probably secondary, but that was the context.
Speaker 3: And then you know, when i'd sit for him. When
Speaker 3: I moved to London when I was sixteen, we'd work
Speaker 3: and have this break and zoom out, go somewhere very
Speaker 3: fast and come back. But then sometimes he would cook,
Speaker 3: and he was a very good cook, and it was
Speaker 3: very different from how my mother cooked. It was well,
Speaker 3: I mean, we just didn't have very much food. And
Speaker 3: when you asked me to be on this podcast, I
Speaker 3: was like, oh my god, I didn't. In the sixties
Speaker 3: and seventies, there wasn't much food around, and then my
Speaker 3: mother she didn't have There was no food abundance. And
Speaker 3: my overriding memory was the food we did have took
Speaker 3: about a day or two, like it was lentils, it
Speaker 3: was hippie food. There were no snacks, there was no
Speaker 3: nothing to eat, and I was hungry quite a lot
Speaker 3: of the time. So I have a kind of strange
Speaker 3: attitude to I think. So let's go about your mum
Speaker 3: in the sixties.
Speaker 2: She would have been hold.
Speaker 3: She was eighteen when I was born, so very young,
Speaker 3: and she wasn't married and her parents didn't even know
Speaker 3: she had children until me and my sister esther were
Speaker 3: about I think I was four, and someone saw us
Speaker 3: walking down the street and told her parents, who lived
Speaker 3: in Ireland, and so it was very you know, she
Speaker 3: had a that's tough, yeah, having to be have two children.
Speaker 2: But your father was an art involved it was.
Speaker 3: They lit up when I was two, and he wasn't
Speaker 3: at all hands on or she made an effort to
Speaker 3: make sure that we saw him. And he was always
Speaker 3: very responsive as a father and very affectionate, and that was,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of a lifeline, even though I don't
Speaker 3: you know, she had to sort of take care of
Speaker 3: us without his help or very little help. When I
Speaker 3: was six, my mother decided that we would go and
Speaker 3: live in Morocco. I think a lot of people were
Speaker 3: going there and she thought, oh, my money will go
Speaker 3: further there, we can have an interesting time. She was
Speaker 3: interested in Soufiism and music and she was an amazing
Speaker 3: person and very sound. Yeah, she was very courageous. So
Speaker 3: we drove there.
Speaker 1: We drove from from from Tunbridge Wells to Mary care
Speaker 1: or did she have another partner.
Speaker 3: There was this couple, this man and his wife. I
Speaker 3: think anyway, she was sat in the back of this
Speaker 3: van going crazy. Literally she didn't speak and he drove
Speaker 3: and he was he was kind of really bad tempered
Speaker 3: and stuff. I didn't really like. I was six when
Speaker 3: we left, so she was four, and we drove and
Speaker 3: the van kept breaking down. It was kind of.
Speaker 2: She took you out of school age six.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I must have been at nursery so I'd
Speaker 3: learned to read, so I had a few books and stuff,
Speaker 3: and that was always a big thing for me. There
Speaker 3: was a boat that you took and you landed in Morocco,
Speaker 3: and I remember us throwing peach stones into the sea
Speaker 3: and watching all these fish come and eat.
Speaker 2: All the fruit.
Speaker 1: And then when we arrived there, we moved around a lot.
Speaker 3: But the food was.
Speaker 1: Interesting because in the square in Marrakesh there were these
Speaker 1: these men who would sell little tin cups of spicy
Speaker 1: broth with snails, and they were great. Threw you into
Speaker 1: an advent. You must have been hungry. Yeah, what you
Speaker 1: were eating, I mean not very many six year olds.
Speaker 3: I know, they were really good. I mean that's there
Speaker 3: wasn't much going, you know. I loved those snails.
Speaker 2: But I love the food of Morocco.
Speaker 1: But as a six year olds had come from London
Speaker 1: in a car that Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was talking to my sister esther before saying, do
Speaker 3: you remember what we ate? You know, we didn't, and
Speaker 3: then she remembered there used to be these stalls in
Speaker 3: the main square and they sold this soup called bisara,
Speaker 3: and it was most delicious thing. I just remember. It
Speaker 3: was just incredible, this beige soup with a they'd pour
Speaker 3: a tiny bit of olive oil and have a bit
Speaker 3: of paprika, and it was it was just like it
Speaker 3: was just like a kind of blood transfuture. It was,
Speaker 3: and we loved it.
Speaker 1: It ap probably was, you know, because Ramadan you don't
Speaker 1: eat at all, and then you just see when the
Speaker 1: sun sets everybody, you know, because you've been fasting all day,
Speaker 1: and it is the soups, isn't it. Yeah. I have
Speaker 1: a very strong association with being in Marrakesh and Morocco
Speaker 1: and soups.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were really good. And then there would be
Speaker 3: this kind of European breakfast, so my mother would sit
Speaker 3: in a cafe and maybe with some friends and they'd
Speaker 3: have this milky coffee and then croissants, I think, and
Speaker 3: it was very dreamy those moments. And then I remember
Speaker 3: something that I got a gum infection where I couldn't
Speaker 3: eat anything and it was so agonizing. They also used
Speaker 3: to sell in the square these little bottles of yogurt,
Speaker 3: and one was white and one was fluorescent pink, and
Speaker 3: that was the only thing I could eat because if
Speaker 3: I even tasted a tiny bit of sponge cake, it
Speaker 3: was like broken glass. And did you go to a dentist?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time in Marrifsh, but they
Speaker 1: used to have a dentists and square that you could
Speaker 1: actually sit on a blanket too.
Speaker 2: Bold or whatever.
Speaker 1: And then you know that the vine with the storytellers
Speaker 1: and fortune tellers.
Speaker 3: And I remember walking past sometimes and you'd see a
Speaker 3: dentist place and there was no door and you'd just
Speaker 3: hear people screaming. So I was quite keen to not go,
Speaker 3: and I kind of developed a pain management where I
Speaker 3: would just I would just internalize and go silent. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that sort of stayed my whole life, really, but I
Speaker 3: and so I remember this moment where I had my
Speaker 3: first bite of toast with marmalade, and it was just
Speaker 3: my mother used to eat toast with marmalade at breakfast,
Speaker 3: and it was just like it was the most It
Speaker 3: was just like a king's meal, I remember, And I've
Speaker 3: been obsessed with toasts and marmalade my whole life. And
Speaker 3: then you know a lot of the some of the
Speaker 3: time we didn't have any food, and I remember we
Speaker 3: went encamped by this lake in the country and there
Speaker 3: was we had no food, and then this fisherman gave
Speaker 3: us some fish and cooking it over a fire. And
Speaker 3: so there would be periods where we just didn't really
Speaker 3: have things, but somehow we always got something in the end.
Speaker 1: And do you think your mother did she herself not
Speaker 1: care whether she ate or not, or do you think
Speaker 1: she also wasn't aware or was she I think she
Speaker 1: thought this would be okay, you know.
Speaker 3: I think you know, it wasn't very often that that happened,
Speaker 3: that we literally there wasn't anything, and I remember there
Speaker 3: was a lot of worry about God, we really haven't
Speaker 3: got a single thing to eat. And then suddenly it
Speaker 3: was like Jesus and the fish, you know, this fisherman
Speaker 3: and we had this huge meal and it was all
Speaker 3: really exciting. And people were very very kind in Morocco
Speaker 3: as well, and they were kind to us, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, the museum tells you about culture, and
Speaker 1: architecture tells you about culture, but that is also the
Speaker 1: way people respond to food and sharing.
Speaker 2: And yeah, a generosity is to do I think.
Speaker 3: With culture, I know, it really is sort of strange
Speaker 3: how you remember those moments to do with people, you know.
Speaker 3: I remember this one time that we were traveling and
Speaker 3: we were we'd got a lift on a donkey cart
Speaker 3: and it was starting to get dark. The only thing
Speaker 3: we had was someone had given us these fresh eggs,
Speaker 3: and so we made a fire and then we put
Speaker 3: these hot stones in the fire and tried to fry
Speaker 3: eggs on them, and it was really exciting. But then
Speaker 3: the eggs just slithered off immediately, and then it was
Speaker 3: kind of worrying. It was getting dark. And then the
Speaker 3: man who dropped us off came back and said, come
Speaker 3: to our house. And we went to his house and
Speaker 3: they had this wonderful food and we sat in the
Speaker 3: garden and then we stayed and we I remember we
Speaker 3: rolled up in carpets. They gave us carpets, and we
Speaker 3: slept outside in the orchard and it was it was incredible.
Speaker 3: It was so long ago, and I'll never forget.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, can you smell the food.
Speaker 3: There's a certain smell of Morocco that is like the
Speaker 3: smell of sun touching the grass.
Speaker 2: And this is a kind of nomadic life. That you heard.
Speaker 2: How long did it last?
Speaker 3: I think we were there for two years.
Speaker 2: Two years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your sister wrote a book. Yeah, she wrote it
Speaker 1: Hideous Kinkyou they made a.
Speaker 2: Film of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they made a really good film. It was wonderful.
Speaker 3: And yeah, Esthera wrote her first novel called Hideous Kinky
Speaker 3: because we would get sort of quite bored, and hideous
Speaker 3: kinky were our favorite words, and we just used to
Speaker 3: charm them. So the adults, these young people sort of
Speaker 3: in their early twenties, would be sitting around in the
Speaker 3: cafes and me and Esta would just be chanting hideous kinky,
Speaker 3: hideous kinky, and then we'd go faster and faster and
Speaker 3: then slower and just.
Speaker 2: Was your father in touch at all? Did yeah? Send
Speaker 2: us things?
Speaker 3: And I remember we'd get a care package. Sometimes I'd
Speaker 3: go to the post office for like a couple of
Speaker 3: weeks before it would arrive, and then there might be
Speaker 3: a mass bow. I remember there was a bar of
Speaker 3: chocolate that I just ate before I got home. I
Speaker 3: felt rather guilty about that.
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Speaker 1: really care for them with the gift. Visit our website
Speaker 1: shop the Rivercafe dot co uk to place your order. Now,
Speaker 1: when did you come home?
Speaker 3: So? Then we came home in nineteen sixty nine and
Speaker 3: we moved to Sussex, and Mum wanted us to go
Speaker 3: to this Stiner school. I became obsessed with food, and
Speaker 3: I would my friends would have all these cute lunches
Speaker 3: and in like sandwiches and like special things. One girl
Speaker 3: had tinned fruit in a little container, and I used
Speaker 3: to just stare at them like a dog, and just
Speaker 3: stare like and the first until they gave me some
Speaker 3: of their food. And then I'd go and visit them,
Speaker 3: and the first thing I'd say is.
Speaker 1: Got any food? And then I would just eat anything.
Speaker 1: Everything I could get. I would just and then I'd
Speaker 1: have started having these terrible stomach aches. I'd lie under
Speaker 1: the table just like me some pudding, so I'd be
Speaker 1: in terrible pain, but I didn't want to miss any food,
Speaker 1: but my mother would. I was talking to I was
Speaker 1: remembering with esta the things that she made, and she
Speaker 1: used to make these tuna fish souflet, which sounds awful,
Speaker 1: but it was so good, sort of creamy.
Speaker 3: It was tasty. And my mother was perfectly sort of
Speaker 3: adequate cook, but things didn't taste much like. She was
Speaker 3: interested in health food, you know, beans that took like
Speaker 3: a week.
Speaker 2: To silk them.
Speaker 1: And then Yea was Lucy in a success. It was
Speaker 1: he the recognized painter at that time.
Speaker 3: That not really, I mean he there was very very
Speaker 3: little anything, and it wasn't really until much later that
Speaker 3: he became suddenly more known. And he was extremely private.
Speaker 3: So we had these two years of moving and then
Speaker 3: we moved in to this quite nice house and shared
Speaker 3: where we were the lodge of this family, a father
Speaker 3: with three daughters who then my mother and he started
Speaker 3: a relationship and I really didn't like him. I got
Speaker 3: on really badly with him, but he was a very
Speaker 3: good cook. And we had this kind of nice place,
Speaker 3: you know, we had our own rooms and it knew
Speaker 3: about what age, so I was eleven. Yeah, they had
Speaker 3: an arga and they had this argur cookbook, and I
Speaker 3: started cooking and making things, and he would make really
Speaker 3: delicious food and lasagna we'd never had lazagne, you know,
Speaker 3: and hornbread, and so I got interested in other things,
Speaker 3: and I learned how to cook stuff as well, and
Speaker 3: I learned about taste and how much that mattered more
Speaker 3: than anything, really, the sort of difference in food with
Speaker 3: my mother, and then going to my father's I remember
Speaker 3: he was very keen on oysters. When I was fourteen,
Speaker 3: he took me to Wheelers and I thought, well, I'd
Speaker 3: better have these oysters, and I hope I like them,
Speaker 3: because if I don't like the oysters, maybe he will
Speaker 3: be really disappointed in me. And then I loved the oysters,
Speaker 3: and I was so happy.
Speaker 1: If you had snails and rocco, yeah, oysters, and you
Speaker 1: were starting to cook, then food must have been a
Speaker 1: part of your curiosity about life. Yeah, what, you were
Speaker 1: ready to go on that adventure when you finished school?
Speaker 2: Did you finish school?
Speaker 3: No? I didn't. I left home when I was sixteen
Speaker 3: and I moved to London and I shared a My
Speaker 3: dad got me a flat that I shared with my
Speaker 3: half sister Rose. I went to do my A levels
Speaker 3: but I only I just dropped out and then I
Speaker 3: started sitting for dads and that was the order in
Speaker 3: my life. So everything revolved around that, and even though
Speaker 3: my life was very chaotic and unmanageable, I would always
Speaker 3: be there for him. He was thank God, you know
Speaker 3: he It was like this reason I had to be,
Speaker 3: you know, have some semblance of order and keep going
Speaker 3: and not drop off the face of the earth in
Speaker 3: a way.
Speaker 1: You began working in fashion. Was it when you started
Speaker 1: thinking that clothes mattered?
Speaker 2: Do you think the.
Speaker 3: Earlier? I remember as a child thinking how much clothes mattered,
Speaker 3: because people really sort of noticed you if you weren't
Speaker 3: wearing normal clothes. And my mother, she dressed in a
Speaker 3: sort of hippie where she was incredibly beautiful, but we
Speaker 3: were looked down, and so I was conscious that we
Speaker 3: were different and people like noticed us in a way
Speaker 3: that sometimes just exhausting. And so I was aware that
Speaker 3: certain clothes made me feel really great, Like what I'm
Speaker 3: wearing today, this shirt tie and of v neck jumper.
Speaker 3: That's really what I wanted. And we didn't have a
Speaker 3: school uniform, so I longed for this order. I didn't
Speaker 3: mind being turbulent within but I wanted some sort of
Speaker 3: encasement so I didn't feel like I was going to well.
Speaker 1: Fashion as a shield itself. Yeah, it's a shield, it
Speaker 1: can be. I mean, it is a bit like food,
Speaker 1: and there is a relationship of how you identify yourself.
Speaker 1: You know, we all need to wear clothes to keep
Speaker 1: us warm, and we all need to eat to keep
Speaker 1: us healthy. And yes, choices though involve a lot of
Speaker 1: other decisions, because you can who you.
Speaker 2: Want to be exactly.
Speaker 3: Because I started to notice that if I had clothes
Speaker 3: on that I liked, I could feel much less self conscious.
Speaker 3: I always remember this moment. I had this scoop neck
Speaker 3: top on. I must have been eleven or ten the
Speaker 3: mom had made with balloon sleeves, and I looked in
Speaker 3: the mirror and thought, I really don't like this. I
Speaker 3: want to shut up with a collar. And I'd go
Speaker 3: to jumble cells and buy boys clothes and wear those.
Speaker 3: And I really liked to be contained to feel safe.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, as a designer, it's like you have someone's back.
Speaker 3: Literally you're dressing them when you're protecting them with your clothes,
Speaker 3: and you're imbuing them with all everything to bring out
Speaker 3: their best qualities and.
Speaker 2: Sort of care for them.
Speaker 3: And then I would always notice the difference, especially like
Speaker 3: with my father. He would when here working, sometimes we'd
Speaker 3: go out and he'd just be in his painting clothes
Speaker 3: and taxis wouldn't stop because they think he was a tramp.
Speaker 3: And then he would if we went somewhere like Annabel's,
Speaker 3: he'd put on a Huntsman suit and it was just
Speaker 3: you know, Cinderellas, we'll go to the wall, you know.
Speaker 1: He he looked so good, and he looked I loved
Speaker 1: the change.
Speaker 3: And so I've always been interested in that sort of
Speaker 3: thing where you have one piece, like you have walking
Speaker 3: down Portobello and the guys who'd have shops down there
Speaker 3: or just hanging out in track suits with a tailored jacket,
Speaker 3: and they just look so cool. And I love this
Speaker 3: thing that a tailored jacket could give you this magic,
Speaker 3: this fairy dust sprinkle. And I've always been kind of
Speaker 3: obsessed with suits and uniforms, like how bus conductors dress
Speaker 3: and used to dress information a uniform. When did you
Speaker 3: actually start to brand?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I started in nineteen ninety and I started
Speaker 1: working from home, and because I didn't really have money
Speaker 1: to pay anyone much.
Speaker 3: We would have lunch in the kitchen every day and
Speaker 3: someone would cook. Sometimes I'd cook, because when I was
Speaker 3: working for Vivian Westward, and I'd been living in Italy
Speaker 3: before then and I moved back to London started working
Speaker 3: for her, and I'd cook her lunch.
Speaker 2: Do you know her? Had you know her before?
Speaker 3: I worked in her shop when I was a teen.
Speaker 2: About Vivian Westward, so that we know who.
Speaker 3: So, Vivian Westwood was an incredibly influential avant garde designer.
Speaker 3: She was very much the designer of punk. She created
Speaker 3: fashion from punk and designed things that people had never
Speaker 3: seen before. And she had a shop in King's Road
Speaker 3: and with her her partner Malcolm McLaren, who was the
Speaker 3: manager of the Sex Pistoles, and she designed all the
Speaker 3: clothes they wore, and they had these amazing clothes and
Speaker 3: it was the first time I had experienced any sort
Speaker 3: of agency as a person through wearing these clothes that
Speaker 3: she designed. And suddenly people were like slightly intimidated and
Speaker 3: it was really exciting.
Speaker 2: And what did you do with her?
Speaker 3: So I, first of all, I worked in her shop
Speaker 3: when I was seventeen, and when I lived in Italy.
Speaker 3: She was also working in Italy and she would come
Speaker 3: stay with me in Rome sometimes and we became friends.
Speaker 3: And then when I left Rome, i was studying fashion there.
Speaker 3: I came back to London and then I worked as
Speaker 3: her assistant and at that time we just worked from her.
Speaker 1: She teach you that she taught you that you and
Speaker 1: her fashion is. Does it still influence you. It's different,
Speaker 1: it's very different. But what she taught me was to
Speaker 1: go beyond yourself whenever you possibly can, never give up really,
Speaker 1: and it's that's what I learned from watching my father
Speaker 1: work as well. If something goes wrong, you can't let
Speaker 1: that stop. You have to work through something.
Speaker 3: When I work for Vivian, I learned everything I did,
Speaker 3: all the different jobs, so production press, sort of working
Speaker 3: on ideas and.
Speaker 1: What is the skill of being a fashion designed that
Speaker 1: you have to We have chefs that have never been
Speaker 1: to cooking school and we teach them life skills they learn.
Speaker 1: You know, I was never taught Rose, my partner was
Speaker 1: never taught. And I look in one on some of
Speaker 1: the young people with their what they can do and
Speaker 1: sometimes what they can't, and how when we have a
Speaker 1: skill as a profession then you hell.
Speaker 3: Because Vivian she was self to and I think that
Speaker 3: the real skill of a designer, the sort of kitchen
Speaker 3: as it were, is to fit. Because Vivian didn't learn
Speaker 3: how to make patterns, but she would make something work
Speaker 3: through instinct and fitting and you know, I know what
Speaker 3: to pull up the suppression where it will result in
Speaker 3: the change of how it fits on a body. And
Speaker 3: I think that's the most important thing. That you can
Speaker 3: shape something literally and then it doesn't really matter what
Speaker 3: it's made of or but if you have that kind
Speaker 3: of recognizable way of editing something, people are drawn to that.
Speaker 3: And then I sometimes it's so circumstantial because when I
Speaker 3: was living in Rome, I met this woman who had
Speaker 3: a knitting machine in her flat in a tower block.
Speaker 3: So I used to go and visit her and started
Speaker 3: designing knitwear just because that was something. And then I
Speaker 3: was always interested in record covers and what people water
Speaker 3: on protest marches, this kind of how one thing could
Speaker 3: mean so much and say so much, and language was
Speaker 3: always really important. I think as being a girl, you
Speaker 3: don't have physical power, so you have to use your words.
Speaker 3: And I was very keen to express my contempt for
Speaker 3: a lot of things, and I honed it as much
Speaker 3: as I could.
Speaker 1: The River Cafe Winter Said Lunch is now running from
Speaker 1: Monday to Thursday. Reserve a booking at www. River cafet
Speaker 1: co uk or give us a call. Would you like
Speaker 1: to read the recipe for sea bass? Do you want
Speaker 1: to tell me why you chose this recipe? But I
Speaker 1: quite often cook dinner for myself just me. I sort
Speaker 1: of prefer cooking just for myself. And it's sea bass
Speaker 1: over potatoes, and I sort of mess about with it
Speaker 1: a bit, but essentially feel free filets of sea bass,
Speaker 1: cherry tomatoes, and I do as you say in the
Speaker 1: recipe and squeeze out the juice, and then five hundred
Speaker 1: grams of potatoes, some ba leaves and a lemon, and
Speaker 1: then sometimes I put some olives in as well.
Speaker 3: So I love the.
Speaker 1: Thing that you say to do, which is bring the
Speaker 1: potatoes to the boil till they're almost perfectly cooked but
Speaker 1: not quite, and then slice them in thick slices, and
Speaker 1: then drizzle a roasting.
Speaker 3: Tray with olive oil and cover the sliced potatoes and
Speaker 3: tomato halves, and put the bas leaves on top. And
Speaker 3: sometimes I put rosemary, because I love rosemary. Put the
Speaker 3: sea bass filets on top and drizzle with olive oil
Speaker 3: and roast for six minutes, and then pull it out
Speaker 3: and put the lemon juice over and roast for another
Speaker 3: six minutes. If there's some white wine, I'll put some
Speaker 3: of that on. I mean, what I love about this
Speaker 3: recipe is that it's there aren't too many ingredients, because
Speaker 3: if I see too many, I just panic and then
Speaker 3: I think, oh, I'll just have some toast. But this
Speaker 3: is wonderful and it's nurtured me many a time.
Speaker 1: When you started out in the introduction about talking about
Speaker 1: your podcast, well.
Speaker 3: It's call fashion Neurosis, and my guest like, in a way,
Speaker 3: the way you talk about food, and it's a kind
Speaker 3: of clue to someone's internal life. Fashion neurosis is someone's
Speaker 3: clothing is their clue. It's the gateway. And some people
Speaker 3: we talk a lot about clothes, and some people we
Speaker 3: talk hardly at all. But also I've always been interested
Speaker 3: in the stories in the fashion world that people never
Speaker 3: hear about. I think it's very badly seen or it's
Speaker 3: not really seen at all in the media. It's always
Speaker 3: a certain way camp bitchy competitive, fairly facile, whereas the
Speaker 3: people I've met in the fashion world are so resourceful
Speaker 3: and remarkable, and there's a lot of real friendship and
Speaker 3: you know, looking out for each other. It's so difficult
Speaker 3: being criticized in the way that the cycle of fashion
Speaker 3: sort of is just normal to do that. So my
Speaker 3: guest lies on the couch, well, I thought, well, when
Speaker 3: I was first figuring out how it would look, I
Speaker 3: thought I need a prop and then I thought, Okay,
Speaker 3: if they lie on the couch and I sit in
Speaker 3: this chair, everyone will know it's this and then I
Speaker 3: can have a kind of cheeky nod to Sigmund Freud,
Speaker 3: who's my great grandfather, kind of tongue in cheek.
Speaker 1: Well, food and fashion there are very interesting parallels, just
Speaker 1: saying it gives you a sense of adventure what you're wearing,
Speaker 1: it gives you a sense of safety, and it gives
Speaker 1: you a sense very often of comfort. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: do seek food for comfort, is there something you would
Speaker 1: go for?
Speaker 3: I've got two things. One is, when I'm really tired,
Speaker 3: I often crave something very salty and very hot. And
Speaker 3: not that I get this almost ever, but I crave
Speaker 3: boiling hot consumme and caviat because I feel like it
Speaker 3: will charge me up. But then when I think about
Speaker 3: what is real emotional comfort, it's bread and cheese, and
Speaker 3: it's still well. In an ideal world, I'd have bread
Speaker 3: with some fruit in like you know that kind of
Speaker 3: French bread, that heavy bread, slightly toasted, and then some
Speaker 3: slices of something like manchego that just starts to soften
Speaker 3: on it. And then I can feel my whole nervous
Speaker 3: system relaxing at the thought of that. I don't eat
Speaker 3: that very often because it doesn't particularly agree with me,
Speaker 3: but that I feel my whole body melting at the
Speaker 3: thought of bread and cheese. And in my childhood, bread
Speaker 3: and cheese was just so wonderful.
Speaker 2: It was just great.
Speaker 3: And Mum used to make cheese on toast for breakfast
Speaker 3: sometimes and it just made our family feel complete. It
Speaker 3: was a really important thing.
Speaker 1: Let's go have some bread and cheese in the river,
Speaker 1: pasta and cheese or soothed and cheese.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Thank you
Speaker 1: Rudy, Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in
Speaker 1: partnership with Montclair