From the Archive: Emily Blunt

You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.

This is River Cafe Table four with me Ruthie Rogers. On River Cafe Table four, I talk to friends who know the River Cafe well about food, the food they cook, the food they eat, the food of their memories.

Penne with zucchini and lemon zest Serve six.

This week I have wonderful, beautiful, brilliant, few adjectives emily plant.

One kilo medium zucchini, yellow green or ridged.

In each episode, my guest reads a recipe they have chosen from one of our cookbooks.

Two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, two hundred and fifty grams unsalted butter, one garlic clove, peeled and thinly sliced, three hundred and fifty grams penne. One bunch of fresh mint leaves, roughly torn, two lemons, preferably a Malfi. Wash and trim the zucchini and cut into small pieces, and in a large saucepan, heat the olive oil with one hundred grams of the butter. Add the zucchini and stir season well, adding the garlic, cook gently, stirring from time

Thank you, Emily. Here we are in the River Cafe, late afternoon, looking at the restaurant, getting ready actually for the evening service.

Can't wait.

I'm so happy that you chose this recipe because it is one of my favorites. A shud I say that most times the recipe is my favorite, but.

This one is. And I was wondering why this recipe do you cook it?

Honestly, it just has three of my favorite things in it, so any I just wanted to pick one of your pasta dishes because it is my ultimate favorite thing and what I crave most.

And did you grow up eating pasta? Yes, the food child, but.

It was more like spaghetti, you know my mom. My mom did tell me, well, God bless her. She had four kids, and I'm sure we were all wanting different things, and she just had so many kids in so little time that very often she'd be like, you know, you get what you get and you don't get upset. But I do have this lasting memory of her spaghetti bolonnaise and then always wanting just pasta with butter and cheese

And when kids come to the River Cafe for lunch families, you know, two pasta, butter and cheese. But in fact it is really delici.

It's actually delicious. No, I have to be careble not to shovel it into my mouth as I'm serving it to them. They love lasagna, they love I mean, I've always made them all kinds of pasta, sauces, and I'll sneak all kinds of things in there and try and get it past them. My oldest one will try most things, steak, chicken. Neither of them want the fish, apart from sushi fish.

It's funny about yeah, I know, my stepson said fish.

He was about thirty.

I think it's so weird. I don't know why.

Fish maybe where they look, or maybe.

The b they look. To be honest, I think it is more the way they look. They kind of envision what they look and it kind of roastes them out.

Yeah, we were once Increase. It was about four and it was fishing. It's stand there all day. We made this little fishing rod in the harbor, and in the end, Richard, my husband, actually went to the market and bought a fish and we all dove put the fish on the hook, and then I think he never ate a fish again for a long time.

We had a fishing experience in Martha's Vineyard, where we like to go every summer because John's from Boston and his whole family is sort of around there, and it's a magical place. Mouth's been beautiful, absolutely love it's so bizarre and bohemian special. But we took the kids fishing and Hazel pulled in a fish and it flopped around on the deck and she screamed. She never recovered. She was like, it's pleading, like it was awful, It's very real.

So did they cook with you? Did they come in there?

They do?

I make this chicken noodle soup that they really love.

How do you make that? Well?

I actually used ginger in it, and it has this kind of richness to it. Either I'll use leftover roast chicken, or I'll sort of sear her or some chicken thigh usually like using chicken thighs bonus skinless. They're like a dream on there. You can kind of put them in anything and it's got. It's some celery and onions and beautiful chicken stock, wine and those egg noodles, and they just love it.

I always say you should always have chicken soup arow. I always have a part of chicken soup because there is something so sustaining about it.

Yeah, it's very Moorish. It was one of the first things I made for John. I think the.

Chicken soup, I think it's always interested the food we cook for an occasion.

You know.

Yes, I was going to once to do a book called What to Cook When when you're depressed, when you're broke, when you want us to do somebody when you don't have somebody important coming to dinner? Did you think about that when you were cooking for him?

Well, it's funny. I guess they just made that. I knew he would love, like I mean, a roast chicken. Who doesn't love roast chicken. And the roast chicken I love is Ina Garten's roast chicken. It's called it her engagement chicken because I think when people make it for people,

But were you going out tell me more about your Did your mother work or she had four kids and so her cooking was well.

So she was an actress when Fie and I were very little, and then she just had too many kids. She had two more after me and fee and then I think, you know, really felt she needed to be home with us. I don't know if she loved cooking because it was more of a chore for her with kids, being like, I don't like risotto. I don't you know. I think it's probably like a bit joyless at times.

Did she teach you how to do her recipes?

She did, but she sort of is a bit of a just bung it all in.

Yeah. So was it very British?

Yeah, very British and general and then definitely every Sunday was the religion of the Sunday roast.

And what was that?

As an American, I'm really intrigued by the whole British Sunday lunch.

Well, it's like Christmas Dinner, Thanksgiving. Yeah, Sunday, every Sunday we would either have roast beef, roast lamb, roast chicken, or roast pork. It was one of those. Always a roast, always a roast, and then we would have roast potatoes with the beef. You'd have Yorkshire puddings, we'd have everything. We'd have the bread, sauce, we'd have vegetables, we'd have gravy. I mean, I just have this lasting memory in my dad's plate, just like swimming in Great swimming In.

Emily talked about Sunday roast when she was a child. So when we're roasting meat here, we like to sear the meat and get a good color on all sides. And then often we'll put it into the wood oven and get a dry heat into it to start the cooking process. And then maybe after ten or fifteen minutes, we can go in with hard herbs, whether it's rosemary, age bay, and if it wants a splash of wine or water. Now this is the same weather we're making

The River Cafe Cafe are all day space and just steps away from the restaurant. Is now open in the morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, ciambella and crostada from our pastry kitchen. In the afternoon, ice creamed coups and River.

Cafe classic desserts.

We have sharing plates Alumi, misti, mozzarella, brusqueto, red and yellow peppers, fortello, tonato and more. Come in the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar, No need to book, see you here. So when you're growing up with this, you know, really important food tradition in your house of sitting down to dinner that your mother goes. What age did you kind of leave, Did you go to university here and stay home or did you go abroad.

Or so I am the only person in my family who didn't go to university because when I was about seventeen, I did this play with my school and an agent came to see the play and he said, I think you're really good. You should do this. And I really had a cavalier attitude towards because I was like, oh, okay, I'm not worrying. I wasn't really thinking about being an actress.

I think that's a good criteria.

It was a happy place.

It just was freezing, and that's very young ETI yeah, it was young. And then did you cook at all? Did you still want to eat? Yeah?

Cook?

Yeah, I mean I do remember before I did the play. I mean, you're going to be horrified to hear this because I haven't had one since I used to go every night to Burger King, Yeah and get a double cheeseburger before I went on stage. I don't know how I went on stage two hours after that.

I was going to ask you, you know, because it is intriguing. You know, we all think about how we work and how we eat and when we when we work, and how we sort of fit all that in. And so if you are in the theater you weren't there, would you still do that now that you would eat before going on stage?

Would like, I'm someone who needs to eat all day. I'm not someone who can have three meals a day. I feel like I'm usually hungry most of the time. And so I tried to do sort of four to five smaller meals throughout the day. But yeah, I couldn't eat a double cheeseburger with eyes now and not want to go and have a nap.

But you would eat.

He was eighteen, so I was like, it's fine. So I would get to the theater around I don't know, I guess we would go on at seven thirty, so I would eat at like six fifteen, and just discussing every night. Every night. I was obsessed with it. It was my favorite thing. I get the Tube Indy Circus, I go to Burger King straight to the theater.

I probably stank of burgers, and Judy Dench noticed that you were smelling of a Burger King burger lovely love Like every.

Night after the show she would bring me into her dressing room and there'd be so many like famous people in there, and I was like, what, Like I was a kid. I mean it was amazing. And Peter Bowles was in it. Do you know him?

I remember?

Yeah?

And he took me to the.

Ivy for the first day. Yeah, yeah, do you remember that?

I do? I remember it. I mean I'd never been to a restaurant like that before. It was mad.

Did you go to restaurant with your parents.

If I remember, on a Friday night, we would go for a Chinese great let Roehampton and Crispy Duck pancakes, and so I remember just being obsessed with that kind of thing growing up. But I feel it's a more common thing for people to take their kids out to cafes and restaurants now.

Yeah, and I think that you know, as you say, can be the penet, butter and cheese. But sometimes, you know, I was once amazed we had an eight year old who ordered a grouse.

No they were Italian, but.

Oh see that's incredible. Stanley and Fee like Stanley, who is you know, fisted of food. Even his little kids, like they have about five things they really love, and he's like, come on, like, I made a lasagna for my kids yesterday and Hazel loves it and everything. But Violet, my little one who's four, she was really like, no, I just want the plane lasagna. I just want blanket pasta, she calls it. But I said, come on, you got to try it, and then I'll give you the blanket pasta.

Yeah, what about when you leave them and you able to do a film?

Well, normally they're with me when I work, but it's hard during school time. And now they're both in school. Like when they were little, like it kind of dragged them around anyway, but now they kind of have to be a bit more stable. So they're going to stay in London as school. And I'm doing this six part western which I'm completely thrilled by. It's heart racing piece. It's sort of as violent as it is witty.

It's real.

It's written by Hugo Blick and it was brought to me about two years ago. We got delayed because of COVID, but I truly read the first page and I was like, I'm going to be doing this.

This is just about the first case.

It's so dynamic and arresting and beautiful. You just know the writing. It's all about the writing for me. Now I'm just realizing you just cannot make a good movie out of a bad script. And there's conflict and intrigue and something different. I'm in.

Are there other women?

There's a couple of other really cool female parts. There's a lot of boys. It's like a very but it's partly because shears presented as this aristocratic woman is a real fish out of water in this it brother brute masculine world in eighteen ninety.

Do you eat on the film set? They do good food or is it?

It depends where you are, And I've been someplace it's not very good. But we're in Spain, so.

Maybe they might. Yeah, they might do that.

Sometimes I just try and make my own thing, and I'll bring my crop part and whip something up during the days, so I've got something waiting for me when I get home. But I think when I'm working, I don't tend to eat sort of pasta and bread because it just makes me so sluggish. So I'm obsessed with rice right talking about rice? It is one of my favorite things on Yeah, what do you love about rice? I love the taste of it. I love that you can put anything with it. I love all kinds of rice.

I understand that Emily loves rice. So here at the restaurant, we use two different risotto rices. One is carnirole, the other is violona nano rice. The corn we generally use with chicken stock, and this can go with a variety of things mushrooms, artochokes, greens, and then the smaller fatter grain, which is the via lano nano rice we use with fish stocks.

When I interviewed Michael Kane, he said that he'd never done a deal for a movie that was in any place other than a restaurant. Everything that was decided was decided in his day.

You went to the.

Ivy or to like with your agent, with your agent, with the producer. Somebody's trying to convince you to be in a movie, and it was done. And I always think it's interesting how people going back to restaurants, how people use restaurants.

So some people use it.

To announce that they want a divorce or they want to fire someone. You can do a very private thing in a public space.

Do you know, I do see what you're saying about that people do use restaurants. I think for me in Hollywood, like everyone meets in restaurants, Like I've met cast members for the first time in a row restaurant. I've met

And what they want or what they drink, Like if they'll have a glass of wine, yeah, they won't like so if it's an evening sit down, I'll definitely have a drink, you know, if it's someone I've never met before, because it's a.

Bit nerve wracking as well. But a restaurant it is that safe, atmospheric, buzzy place where if there's a lull in conversation, it doesn't matter. There's always stuff around you that you can feed off. You know.

There was somebody I was swimming to that said he absolutely did not like going into a quiet restaurant. No, that you need that safety, and I think that's why people do things. It might be like firing somebody or breaking up because you can't throw a frying pants the

It's kind of does.

It's very true. And I'm always aware of how people are with because I feel sometimes everyone's nice to me, but I always watch how people are with the pas on set and how are you with people working at a restaurant, Like I want to get a real sense of who people are is how they are with everybody.

Did you ever work in a restaurant?

No? But I did work in a catering company. This amazing friend of my mother's aurageous catering company that she does, and she would hire Fie and I to be her waitresses. Really yeah, it was fun actually because the food was so good. She'd feed us like an extraordinary food. And I have this lasting memory of a quail leg cannope with Hollandais over it and on this little krusty Christinia Fee and I used to just steal them. We used

It is interesting, you know, just this conversation is about memory. You know, you might now remember so many things about that experience, but the quails like comes right.

Fact, I do remember turning up one time and I was wearing these really ugly sandals and I had a chipped blue nail polish. I was like sixteen, and she thought I looked so unpresentable. I had to wash dishes all night. She was like, the best place for you did that?

And I was like, and what about the politics of food? You think about sustainability or about giving your kids organic food or ORMs. Martha's Vineyard has so many good farms.

Farm They have the most beautiful produce and eggs and cheese, And in Brooklyn it's harder. I find the produce is so much better in the UK.

Better here, Yes, it's so.

Real, Like the carrots are all wonky, they taste right, like the strawberries, the berries. Everything is just doesn't taste menu. And I think sometimes it's not the same. Being in the UK has been a bit of a wake up call for me of how much better I feel the produce is here.

And I think again, I think that seems to be something that we're all thinking about our kids, aren't we. I think, and I think that generation is really interested, especially as they.

Get older, what they're eating.

Yes, I mean when I have dinner when my grandchildren are older. Once a vegan, one's a vegetarian.

One's gluten free. It's like you know that.

I think the politics of food are consistent with the politics of everything.

Yes, do you feel at the restaurant you have to adapt for people in that way.

We're really lucky to be a time because we are so focused on vegetables. Yes, so a vegan can't have the egg you know, tag it teley, but they can have a spaghetti with peas or we do something called farinata.

Have you ever had the chickpea flower? Yes?

And so they don't have to have gluten and you know, you can have a whole meal.

And I get so excited to look at your menu and just see what's changed, and it changes all the time. It's just so exciting.

So if you were thinking about comfort, do you have a comfort food that you would that this could be anything, It could be something that you reach for when you're feeling back to what to eat, when, what to cook?

When?

All right, I'll do comfort.

Like for me, one of my favorite things is a toasted bagel with tons of butter and marmite. Oh, it's my favorite thing. That I really say, it's heaven. But I will say the other thing if I were to because it's pasta that I create is a couch with pepe. Yeah. It's so simple, and it's just one of my favorite things. And the first time I had it was in Rome. I was shooting a TV series in Rome that was not a very good and I was living alone in Rome and I was like twenty years old, lived there

I think it's a brilliant food because it's the cheese actually pasta butter and cheese.

It's just got a lot of tea, a little bit of you just want to eat like my children.

Maybe maybe the food is food memories of childhood. And Tom for it.

Thank you, thank you so much, thank you, thank you, oh, thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair