Johnny, I've pulled me over at a dinner recently in London. Ruthie, come and meet my great friend Linda Evangelista. Well, I thought there'd be lots of topics to discuss, what it's like to be in her profession, what it's like to have worked with the world's greatest photographers, and to have done so much work in fashion. But Linda greeted me with so much enthusiasm. Ruthie Rogers the River Cafe. Wow. All she really wanted to do was talk about food, where to eat, what she cooks for her son, how
a restaurant kitchen works. Linda's the opposite of cool. She's warm, She's engaging and curious. I realize we're pretty much the same. She loves being home, I love being home. She adores her son, I adore mine. I'm not a model, she's not a chef. But we shared an immediate intimacy, so we thought, let's continue this conversation on table four. And here we are today in New York with my newest and loveliest, warmest, most wonderful friend, Linda Evangelista.
Thank you so much.
So it is true that's how we met, You know, we met over food. We then saw each other again over food, and here we are. I love podcasts, which is really talking about memories and how we cook and what we grew up with. So we have heard one of the things we love to eat is nyoki, and so we have a recipe for you to read, which is knochi with slow cooked tomato sauce. You would like to read the recipe, and when you read it, you can change it, you can question it, you can add
to it or take away. But that's the recipe that was in our most recent cookbook. It's a book for children, so it's quite a kind of simplification of how to make yaki. But we can talk more about that after you read the recipe.
Okay, this is great to see something in writing, because I learned to make yocchi with my grandmother, but it was never written down. And it was a little bit of this and this, many eggs depending how big they are, and some potatoes.
Yeah, and some potatoes. That's how we learned to I mean, that's a beautiful way to learn. She did she ever write anything down?
She couldn't write. Yeah, she didn't know how to write.
She didn't know how to write. English. She didn't write all.
She didn't know how to write it. Also as a peasant. She was born in Italy, as was my father and my mother and all my grandparents.
And do you speak Italian?
Very badly? I speak it, and my family speaks dialect. I know you're friend and proper Italian, but at home they speak dialect. My parents spoke English to us growing up, and only when they were arguing did they speak to each other in Italian. So I can tell you where to go in Italian, but I can't ask you are you having a nice day?
Or kind words? It's been Richard Dad's father had Italian parents and he had the same thing that he heard Italian spoken again, a very similar story when there was an argument, I think, and then when he did learn Italian, a lot of it came back because he had kind of grown up for it. Right.
So this grandmother, she never did learn him to speak English. And in our neighborhood it was quite Polish, some Ukrainians and Italians.
Where was it?
Where was the name Saint Catharine's, Ontario, Canada, across the lake from Toronto in Niagara Region, right near the border of the United States, And my grandmother went to Italian mass, shopped at the Italian store, worked picking fruit on the farm with the Italian ladies, so she didn't really need to speak English. I remember how excited they all got that generation when Canada went metric. I was about ten years old or so, I approximately, and then they ender stood, oh,
this is how many grams of meat I'm buying? And so they were very happy when that happened.
When did they leave. The family comes from between Naples and Rome.
Yes, it's a town called Pinatado Interamna, which is near Casino and Monte Casino, where the big battle of World War two took place. And my father would have come over, and he was born in nineteen forty and I think he came over nineteen fifty six. And my mother was born in forty three inch came over in nineteen fifty.
And the grandmother that you were describing was that your mother's mother.
That was my father's mother, but my mother's mother's kind of the same.
And they all came, they all eventually, they were all yes.
And they came with the few belongings that they had. And I have the two handmade hammered copper pop that my one grandmother came over with and she would make her Sunday you know, tomato sauce in and I have them. They're like there are precious belongings. There's no painting, there's no paintings.
Yes, sauce fam is a memory and it is what she cooked with, so bring that with her was part of her. Why did they leave?
You know, they left in search of a better life. They had lost everything. Well, they didn't have anything much. They worked their land, so it's not like they had vocations and they just went in search of a better life for their children.
In Canada rather than the United States.
Well, they were heading to the United States, but at the time they closed their doors and then they were not receiving any more immigrants. And somebody in the United States found a sponsor for my grandfather in Canada, and the other one similar story. So, yeah, one grandfather was a prisoner of war. They were both in the war. My grandfathers My mom was born during the war forty.
Three and she spoke Italian.
She speaks proper and dialect. She speaks both.
When you say dialect, do you mean the dialect of that region between Yeah, and.
It gets even worse because then you know, it takes on a life of its own in Canada, not quite like the way the Americans. They like totally butchered the language. And I don't like the way they cut off the ends of the words when they say mozzarella.
When they say mozzarell, I know that's Tony Soprano. Do you remember Tony's in watching the Sopranos, they would always call it mozzarell. Yeah. Yeahs. And so your mother also, your mother had both her mother and her mother in law correct with her. Yeah. And did they all cook together? Yeah?
I think early on they did. And you know my mother is because she came over quite young, she got quite americanized, and you know she she you know, she has an education and she cooks with recipes she but she also has all the recipes in her head, like what she grew up making.
Who is the best cook of all of them? Do you think me? You good? Okay, we're gonna get to that. I like your answer. Okay, So do you want to read the recipe TOI with Tomato sauce Ganaki?
I'm joking, okay. Yaki with tomato sauce served six in my family, three one yeah, okay, two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Two clothes of garlic finally sliced. I would say a little, you can add more?
Yeah, okay, good?
Eight hundred grams of ten peeled plum tomatoes. One kilogram of white floury potatoes.
Your grandma will be happy that this is in grams.
Wouldn't yet she would one hundred and thirty grams of double zero flour, one large egg, lightly beaten, and ten basal leaves interesting. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the garlic and cook until soft. Add the tomatoes, breaking them up, season well, and cook for thirty minutes on low heat. Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil and add the potatoes and cook until they are easily pierced with a fork. Drain and peel when they are cool enough
to handle. Immediately. Put the potatoes through a food milk and then sift the flour over them, making a well in the center. Add the beaten egg, using your hands, quickly mixed to form a smooth, soft dough. Do not overwork the dough or you will make the nyoki too heavy. Divide the dough into four using your hands. Roll the dough into a sausage and then cut into pieces. Cook the yoki until they rise to the surface. Remove the yaki with a slotted spoon, and then stir into the
tomato sauce. Add the basil, and if you like, grated partamigiano. Now we ran our yoki along a fork toge to get the ridges.
You can do that. We sometimes do ridges and sometimes we don't. I prefer without, Yeah, you prefer without. We were also talking today about yaki. I was talking to
Joseph Trevelli, one of my chefs. He was saying, do you remember Ruthie, how the cook in our house in Italy called Giovanna made yaki and she said to us, when you form them, the was like you're doing a book, Like you're making a book of the flower and the mixture, because if you it is really true that if you handle them too much, they do get tough, and so you want to touch the flower gets it gets overdeveloped, and the idea that you want to make them as
light and actually I also used to say that what we do is we make the potatoes and add a little bit of flour and then put one in and then they'd fall apart. And then you would add a little bit of flour, and you would do it so gradually that then you would know that you need that amount of flour for them not to fall apart, but the least amount makes them as light as you can.
And then once you've done them so many times, you just.
Know, yeah, and do you do them?
You know. I have to tell you the one thing in the kitchen that intimidates me, well, there's two things, is flower like pizza does and pasta does, and pastry I don't even I get so intimidated by it, and I make a mess and I'm never successful with it.
And we should do it when you come. When you come to London next time, we'll go into the cafe because you heard her say it, because actually the young chef we teach how to make it. And I really relate to what you're saying. I'm not a pastry chef person. You know. I'm never good with it. I can do the science of cakes, but i'd always the measuring.
The measuring is it has to be so precise, and I like to venture off.
A little bit.
I have to tell you about a recipe of yours that I tried to venture off with.
Oh what was that?
You're olive oil cake with polenta? The polenta cake, I tried to do it with olive oil, and then I tried I tried to do it with a little ricota.
Yeah that's okay, yeah matter.
And then I would love to get to the olive oil, almond flour and ricotta.
Yeah, we could do that. Pastry chefs really enjoyed cooking with olive oil now as opposed to butter. But I do think butter is so good and butter and cakes so delicious. And there's something about that polenta cake which is, you know, there's just polenta, there's almonds, there's butter and sugar and you put it all in that.
But yeah, once I've made it a couple of times, though I want it just you know, change things. But this was during the pandemic and I had plenty of time to you know, like play with it. But it didn't.
You never made bread though, right If you don't like that, I'm not a bread nose.
You can buy beautiful bread from great artisans and bakeries, and I did with my friend a couple of times. But I made such a mess in the kitchen, and yeah, I get it, it just wasn't worth it. What what what did you do in the pandemic? What did you cook?
Oh?
I lived in the same house as my brother, but on different floors in New York. In Canada. I wanted to be able to go outside, and I'm very immunocompromised. I have a disease that affects my lungs, and living in New York you have to you know, in a tall building. It's difficult. But I wanted to be with my family. So we did a lot of barbecuing and smoking and cooked a lot outside. Even made pizzas outside.
Did make pizzas? Did your brother make the dough? No?
I had a friend come over to re teach me a dough. But it's like a three day ordeal, and I'm like, I'm not I guess, like really sour dough. You know, I did different doughs, but I'm not good at dough.
I don't know what it doesn't have to be.
It baffles me because I'm really good at other things.
So what do you mostly liked? But what if you if I come for dinner or lunch, what would you What would you want to make.
Depends what I would find out the market.
Good answer. Yeah. We always say, don't go to the market with a shopping list in your head. No that thing. Do you remember when I started cooking, I would be running all over London trying to find the ingredient, some ingredient, and then you realize it's just when I lived in Paris for four years. That was one of the lessons I took away, which was it we lived over market and you go downstairs and then you see what's there and then you cook. And that's what we do in
the River Cafe. You know, we change the menu for every meal because we come in like a domestic cook and see what's in the fridge, see what's been ordered, see what we have, and then we start to cook.
That is the hardest menu to choose from.
Oh really wait, it's not a very long menu.
No, but you want everything. It's like really difficult to choose from that menu.
I love being there that night. I love we were at separate tables, which Johnny just said that was annoying. It was just to see your enthusiasm and your happiness for being there. Do go out to restaurants a lot, I do, I do. What do you look for in a restaurant?
It can't I don't want like inferior food. If I'm going to eat pasta, that's like an indulgence for me.
It has to be because it's cars well, because I.
Just try and watch my weight and healthy and I always have. But if I'm going to eat pasta, it has to be great pasta. If I'm going to eat a steak, I mean I eat everything. I don't want to eat a crappy steak. It has to be like the best steak. Otherwise I'll eat at home, you know. So I can get disappointed sometimes at certain restaurants.
Do you go back to the saved on silver? And I again, I do. Does the mood of the restaurant matter to you? How the waiters are, how the absolutely when you walk in, you want to feel welcome and taken care of. And yeah, you live downtown.
My place is in Chelsea.
Yeah, oh that's a good areas. That good air for food you've got, No, it's okay. Shopping art galleries, art galleries, art galleries. That's good to have, isn't it. My son lived on Nineteenth Street, you know the building by Jean Novelle. Its opposite that Frank Carey building. Yeah right there, Yeah, that is beautiful. It's around the corner. Yeah. The River Cafe is excited to announce the return of our Italian
Christmas gift boxes, our alternative to the traditional hamper. We bring you all of our favorites from the River Cafe, kitchen, vineyards and the designers from all over Italy. They're available to pre order now on shop the River Cafe dot co dot uk. So let's go back to the beginning. You grew up with an Italian grandmothers two two, two grandfathers two your parents. What was food like growing up in the Evangelista household?
Well, I complained a lot because we always ate homemade food and I wanted to have TV dinners or frozen meals or something out of a can.
I wanted to close from Cyr's roebook. I was really Oh, my clothes were from Cyrus. I didn't think to my mother, not that we had money, but why can't we buy clothes out of a catalog?
That sounds so my clothes were from CERs and Woolworth. So yeah, So it was a lot of homemade food and I appreciate that now, but like growing up, you know, I wanted the TV dinners with the compartments, you know, and the little apple pie in the corner. And but yeah, my father took us out for dinner every Friday because my mother worked late. She was where in retail. But my father let us choose the restaurant. And by restaurant, I mean McDonald's or Denny's or the pizzeria or A
and W, you know, fast food. And so that was a big deal because we were very spoiled with that.
Yeah, and fresh.
We had homemade pasta Wednesdays and Sundays. We had roast beef once a week. We would have steak or barbecue once a week. My father really spent a lot of money, I think on food because he didn't have much growing up. They ate like a chicken or a rabbit once a week.
This is what until he was sixteen, until came to America. Yeah, until he got.
A good job at General Motors. And the food went on the table family style.
How many of you were there, you me.
And two brothers, two brothers, and he would serve us and he would put like this mound on your plate and you had to eat it all. And for him, the most important thing was you weren't hungry, that you were nourished, that you ate. He also didn't want a lot to talk at the table because where he worked was so noisy, so there wasn't a lot of conversation. It was sort of like dive into your food and finish it because you're not leaving the table too.
Did you dread dinners or did you No?
I didn't dread it. A couple times I did. I wouldn't eat the liver.
And what would he do? And you say, you have to do it? Would you understand if you really couldn't.
They gave up trying to make me the liver.
I have a friend who had an amazing posture. She would just sit. I once said, you had, you know, very new. How is it that you sit so well? She said, well, because at the meal at the table, my father and mother said we had to always sit straight. It was just the thing. And she said, as a result, I hated every meal. She said, I just couldn't bear going. You know, she had great pasture, but it came from, you know, just this feeling of just dreading a family dinner.
And it's interesting about not having to finish your plate when you don't want to.
No, in general, I was like, OK food, Yeah, And maybe because we had to eat what was put in front of us, we weren't there weren't cooking different meals for us, like we all ate the same. And it's crazy because like today, I love dandelion and I used to go with my father in the country where no person or dog had walked. There was lots of farmlands and we would pick the little baby tender. Yeah, like I grew up on broccoli rub. Everybody had a garden
and what they produced in these gardens was unbelievable. Tell me about everything like tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and different like ridico and and then there were the fruit trees and then there was like basil, all the earth, you name it, onions and it was just all there.
And so you had your own garden full of.
Everybody had the whole backyard was a garden, but shared what the other one didn't have. And it's not like we had a swimming pool or we didn't play in our backyards. We played on the street or parking lot.
Did they bring the seeds? Do you think for Italy? I get the seeds are a whole thing.
The seeds was like a network and whoever had like the best tomatoes that year would do the seeds and hand them out. And it's so funny. Now you see all these heirloom tomatoes and I'm like, but those are the tomatoes I grew up with, Like none of them were nice little round tomatoes. And then the fruit trees and my father he had a green thumb and he
would graft. He would do these sensational things like the apricot tree had plums on it and the red apple tree had a branch with yellow apples, and he would graft and it would be it would just be incredible, and then he would make his gropas.
So do you think that then he would go work at general motives? Do you think that in his real passion would have been to have been a farmer or to have done this whole day? Absolutely? Yeah.
Well, he grew up. He didn't get an education because he had to work the land. And I know he had a donkey and whenever he referred to Italy he referred to it as the good old days. I think that would have been what he would have loved to have done because he was so good at it. We also had it was so embarrassing at the time. We had some chickens and some rabbits, but we didn't live in zoning that allowed those in the roosters when they would go off at five height.
So this was a suburban. It was a suburban suburb and you were all This community was Italian, was it? Everybody had the gardens that you're Polish, and then you grew up with this culture, with this food, with these gardens, and.
Then and then you had to pickle it, yeah, or put it in a jar or cure it for the winter. So we would make sausages and they would buy the animal. Don't ask me how it got divided up and who did what. And then they would make pro chutto and capricolo, and we made our own tomato sauce. But they would have to buy more tomatoes because we would make enough to get you through the winter. And that would be like a pasata. And everything got pickled like egg plants.
And did you have olive oil?
No funny you say that, but they do buy We don't have olives in Canada, but they would get somehow from I don't know which dealer some olives and maybe make some jars of olives, but they didn't make olive oil. They bought that.
It sounds it just is a description of life in an Italian hilltown. You know, well it was, It absolutely was. It continue it does continue.
We still make the tomato sauce every year.
When you say we, who would that be?
The whole family. My father took a motor off of a washing machine for clothing and he rigged it up to the machine that pureds you know, and separates the seeds and peels with the passata, so you know, you wouldn't have to do it by hands. This thing grows. That makes a lot of noise, but I don't know how many bushels we do at it per day, like bushels and bushels and bushels of tomatoes.
They say that now in Italy because everyone is, you know, younger generation are leaving these hill towns. They're kind of empty. They're they're going. But you can't understand also why younger generation of women might not want to peel tomatoes for the next season, you know, or to do that through the winter. But it is a tradition and it's a beautiful tradition of it would be sad it is.
It's one of it's like you come together that day to do it because it's too much work to do. You know, you need multiple people doing it because the tomatoes have to get dropped in boiling water. You know, they have the jars. The sausage is a lot of work too, you know, the casings. That's the one thing I didn't like, washing the casing.
I know. Did you see the movie nineteen hundred Pertulucies movie and there's a very graphic part of it which shows making up the sausages.
I did not.
It's a great movie. You should see it. It takes place in Parma, much more further north. But when you left, because you went to work quite at an early age, I was eighteen, almost nice, Oh you were What was that like, leaving this culture of food? What did you do? How did you eat?
I think I ate really simple. I was in New York for about a month or so, and then they shipped me off to Paris, who shipped you off the agency because I wasn't doing so well in New York. They said, maybe you'll be more successful At nineteen and I was first in the Hotel sant Andre DA's art, but I got bad bugs there, so I went to the Hotel La Louisia.
And my mom Louisiana.
My mom found out our.
Hotel, our hotel room in the Louisiana was being used during the day. I'm not kidding what ye many once came home and they would rent it out during the day. Oh my god. Yeah, So we left the Louisa.
That was an upgrade for me. It was ten dollars more a night, and my mom had to approve that. And so I would go to the market on Rula Boussie and I would like, get it, but get and a piece of breeze and a piece of fruit, and that's how I would eat on a budget.
Yeah, we moved into the hotel Descend. You remember that one that was next door to a big step up. Yeah, what year was that, Well, it was in seventy twenty three, maybe seventy two.
They're in like eighty forty.
Yeah, so that was later, so I'm sure, but I remember my sid it was a pretty rough the vestory about the hotel we stayed in. Renzo Piano came to visit me. Richard and his partner. They were doing the Pompany Center. I was sick, so I was in bed. Sorenza came up and talked to me until Richard came back. He was at dinner and we were just talking and you know, was sneezing, and then the phone rang and it was a concierge and he said, madam, your husband is on the way up. And I thought that was
so cool. At the hotel, they were mourning me because they thought that I was in bed with my lover.
That's good.
I thought that was in a cheap hotel. That was a pretty good service if I needed.
It, very good service.
So I know, we don't want to talk about things that everybody else talks about. But you were working as a model. We can recognize that you were doing that in Paris. And what were the restrictions and food because for your professional life, did you have to be in the day in the day eat and so you had a metabolism that crazy crazy.
I think it started to slow down close to thirty. I started working out like when I was twenty seven twenty eight, because I was like, oh, I think things are a little different. And back then, if you overindulge for too long. If you cut back on everything for three days, you would drop.
Five pounds, you know.
And now it's very easy to gain five pounds in a weekend.
Now being your age now, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, But the tyranny of the stories we hear of models having to starve. And I went to a show in London even now, and we had Edward NFL you know, I love Edwards and he spent so much time talking about body image and what that means and how fashion has to adapt women's sizes rather than women adapt to fashion.
Well, there were years. Maybe that's today, and that's great because Edward is a crusader and he cares about humanity and he cares about women, and he has done an amazing job with diversity. We have to be so grateful for Edward and the Edwards of this world. But in the nineties a model had to adapt.
And adapt to to fit the clothes. Yeah, correct. I think it's still now because I went to see a show in London and for me, it was kind of painful to watch.
I don't want to see that.
It was really painful. They were so so sid you know, and he just thought, what did you do to you know? Maybe as you said, a lot of them. Maybe they had a huge pape of food by fild up.
Some probably did there, maybe not all. I know that when I was you know, flying every other day and working and running around and jet setting and globe trotting, I had to work on keeping the weight on, keeping it on, keeping it on. Yeah, And then there became a period where I had to really watch and I started doing cleanses all the time. And I loved doing these cleanses, but I think they were very harmful to me.
What were they?
Well, I did the Master Cleanse quite a few times, but I would do like medicinal cleanses where it's like a powdered drink, like the rice based like Metagenics. There's different brands that do them. Or I would go to Weak Care once or twice a year for a week, you know, we Care. It's out in the desert near
Palm Springs, Palm Desert, and you just do liquids. It's mostly you know, waters with lemon and mint and teas and you get a glass of juice a day and then you get a very diluted, watered down vegetable on a day called a soup. But it's basically a liquid us. It's a starvation, but it's amazing. Yeah, it's been like quite the journey. And I will never do the deprivation. I won't do that again.
I won't try it again.
No, but there's something to be said for like a nice twenty four hour fast with celery ches. I mean, I do still enjoy like doing something like that. I find it refreshing and you kickstart your head in your mind into like a new place of like, Okay, I'm going to get on this like healthy track, and eating healthy can be very very delicious.
Of course.
I just happen to love vegetables.
Your son. Tell me what you cook for your son, and what does he like to eat?
Well, he loves meat and chicken, and he loves protein. He loves my soups.
Tell me about your soups.
Like the other day, I made parade and I even passed it through the sieve to make it super super smooth mixed vegetable soup. I make lots of minas tons and I made my first one last week and he went, oh, it's that season again, and that's good. He's happy if I give him crunchy bagat or crunchy sour dough bread or something to dip in there. Yeah, with some parmesan. He's happy as can. He just turned seventeen.
Apetite. Do you have a place where you can grow it?
No, I don't have a place. I will, I will. I'm getting there when he's going to go off to school in two years, and then I'm gonna You know, does your father still love?
No, he passed, but you would you know how to graft an apricut onto a prune.
Or I mean I've seen him do it, but probably not, but you could kind of green thumb. And the stuff he used to do, like his basil leaves were like bigger than the size of my hand. I tell you the groppa. He made it for years and it was just awful, and then suddenly it kicked in and he would make it from pairs from plums, I think, peaches. And then they would do homemade wine, which all the Italians do. It's totally illegal, you know, they would make in their basements.
And did they go back? Did they go back to Italy?
Yeah?
I took my father back. He hadn't been there for forty years when I took him back. I think it was forty years. I go back every few years, we visit.
To the town Yea where they came from.
And then we are so grateful and thankful that we grew up in Canada because it would have been a completely different life had we, you know, grown up there, but we appreciate it.
I'm glad to different out there because I might have had you in our lives, and it's it's important to have you in them. So, as I started out by saying, we often talk about food, and we know that you've described it as part of your culture and the garden and your parents and your family. And if you had a food that would give you comfort that you look to when you need comfort, is there one food that you might go to now, Linda Evangelista.
Oh, my mom's egg plant part of Mejiona. She made it for me for Thanksgiving in Canada. It's the first Monday of October, so it was just home for that.
It's a different Thanksgiving.
I remember that it is, and we make regular Thanksgiving food, all the traditional things. But if you're Italian, the Italian food makes its way.
Also.
It didn't make any sense, it was not cohesive. But my stepfather farms with his son, and there were beats and Swiss chart which are not Thanksgiving foods, but they were on the table. It was a mishmash. It was delicious eggplant farm. Jena is good. That's a good comfort food. I should bring her to London. She sounds great, she is great. Well, you're great to thank you for coming. Thank you wonderful, No, thank you, We'll see. I do
mean what I said about the River Cafe. Do I need to bring an apron or I think we'll.
Give you one? Yeah, thank you, thank you very much. Beautiful, really nice, really nice so far.
I was like, I know, if you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you please make sure to rate and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, o, wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you.
Ruthie's Table four is produced by Atami Studios for iHeartRadio. It was hosted by Ruthie Rogers.
It's produced by William Lensky.
Our executive producers are Sad Rogers and Fay Stewart.
Our production manager is Caitline Paramount.
Special thanks to everyone at the River Cafe.