Hello, Brion and welcome to Repertorio Felix. I'd like to introduce today's event. For more than thirty years, the River Cafe in London has been the home from home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers and politicians. On River Cafe Table four, chef and owner of the River Cafe, Ruth Rogers sits down with her customers to talk about food memories and today we're excited to welcome our guests Masimo Bateura and Lara Gilmour
for this very special live recording of the podcast. Massimo Bitura is the chef patron of Osteria Francescana, a globally celebrated three Michelin star restaurant based in Modern Italy, where he grew up. Lara Gilmour is a fine art major, restauranteur, author and hotelier. Their new book, Slow Food, Fast Cars tells the story and shares recipes from the dylic eighty eighth century guest house Casa Maria Lujia.
Welcome, It's so good to be here.
There are twenty regions in Italy, from Piedmonte in the north to Sicily.
In the south.
This is a fact but let me tell you about twenty first region. The region next to Amelia Romana is warm, it's welcoming, and it's inclusive. The food has its roots in tradition. The views are stunning. A love of the arts is everywhere. Ethics and social justice a priority. When you're there, you'll never want to leave, though if you do,
there's no speed limit for fast cars. The region I'm describing is not a place but two people, Massimo Guitour and Lara Gilmore, of course, known about this region for years, but only since last Thursday, when a table was booked in the River Cafe.
Did I experience them.
The excitement of Massimo and Laura, creative director and three star Michelin four star mission the chef coming to the restaurant was huge, and I have to admit that I canceled a theater date to pick up the shift so to be there for this momentous occasion. The chefs in the kitchen stopped on my behalf to organize a competition guessing what they would order girld squid tag itatelli with porcini,
wood rose to turbot and no dessert. A few days later, we went to hear Masimo and Lara tell Apack Lecture Theater in the Victorian Albert Museum. Their story of starting Osteria Francescana and Klaza Luigi, their ambitions, their values, their love for hospitality, and their love for each each other. It was an astonishing hour. Today we're here for a live podcast of Ruthie's Table four to talk with Massimo and Laura, co authors of the just published and fantastic
book Slow Food, Fast Charge. They are heroes to chefs everywhere. They are my new friends, and they are the twenty first region of Italy.
Wow, can't can't no.
I would never say no to you. Of course you can.
Oh my god, it's amazing. It's amazing.
It was written from the heart.
And I think that in the regions of Italy are so important. But for me, having lived there, having worked there, having a family, I'd say that it's not region to region. It's city to city, it's town to town, village to village, and in our case, family to family, and even another case, sister to sister, brother the brother. And I remember once this is I want you to carry on that I was in our house in the Valdorca and we were
going to do a poor ketta. And I went to the butcher and he said, how are you going to cook it? And I said, you think you're talking to anybody, you know, I am a chef. And so I said, oh, I'm going to take sea salt and fennel seed and I'm going to do to do And he went, oh no, no, no, no no, that's what they do in Sienna. Now Sienna was forty miles away, you know, And so I think that close. Is that pride and that interest in where you're from over to here?
When I'm here, you know, I got like, I'm like, I'm not cooking the I'm from moderna. Yeah, we won against and we keep winning. So is there a modernes? Almost? Not everything hand chop the right piece is very here. There you have like some pork, some cuts, some beef, bone marrow, very complicated Bolognese. It's just pork. Come on.
It's so much about identity from one table to the next.
Even in a town like Modna.
The Tourtelini are different, The talia tel are different, thinner, thicker, cut in a different way.
The ragou you're filling in the tordelini.
And as an American coming over to Italy thirty years ago. This is my thirtieth anniversary in Moderna. I arrived in the fall of nineteen ninety three for Masima's birthday. I fell in love with that making everything personal. A meal is a personal tribute to your mother, your grandmother, what you learned, what was passed on, and then.
You've mixed it all together.
I think those traditions are so important to keep alive. What you said about the twenty first region, Masthewon and I creating this not only a property we invite people into, not only the restaurants, but our imagination has been added to the landscape, to the ingredients, to the artisans to.
Create something that is unique.
And when we have our guests come in, we want them to have that feeling that they're in a very special place, a moment in time, passing it with us.
And do you think back though, because you grew up in Amelia, Ramona, you grew up in New York. Are you constantly referring to both of your backgrounds?
Of course I grew up in Moderna, and of course it's like this to me, I'm acting a very local. You know, we built a relationship with our farmer's, fisherman, cheesemaker, our artisans, everyone around in the area. But we are acting very global, very open mind, you know, as I learned since I was in New York and I met Lara first time and she introduced me to contemporary art and she was saying, I said, no, my art is over after the champ and I said, no, you have
to look much deeper. You have to look do you have to understand when it's done this, when it was done that, why the artist is And since then everything changed. We are acting in a very low but imagine in the last tasting menu in auster reference as Kana, we have the Tortellini, you know, like I opened the kitchen and the creative process for all our sixty five chefs.
They are working there, sixty five for thirty covers to express and rebuild our history of forty years in auster reference as Kana, but filtered by a contemporary mind and the culture biodiversity of each one of them. And the first course that Korean chef came out with the idea was the Tortellini are walking on the broth. I was like, wow, this is gonna be They're gonna still crucify me.
Walking moor, you know, walking out, swimming, you know.
But the tortellini, the tort you know, instead of being tortellini, they're like dumpling. They wants to be tortellini.
You know.
Imagine, imagine the locals eating dumpling up up there, like walking in the middle of the broth, standing there with Korean toasted nori, creamy sauce, cured eggs in the middle.
But what I keep saying to all the locals they come, imagine, you know, the Asians, the people they travel, they try the dumpling better than any dumpling because the mixture and the tortellini is made with the best product of emilie romania, like parmigiano but also proshutto but also mortadella, but also the balance between veal and pork, but also some bone marrow but also some nutmeg. You know, extremely complicated, but
extremely balance. And you go there and you feel these little dumplings that come up like that and they stand there in the middle of the broad is going to be an incredible message for everyone. Yeah, but the tortelliniar buttery. Yeah that sound okay.
To give it some context, the new menu and Oscar of Franciscana, Massimo challenged the whole team to look at our most iconic dishes, the ones that are in never trust the skinny Italian chef, and each individual on the team was given the opportunity to reinterpret them, choosing whatever they wanted. Choi, this Korean chef chose to reinterpret the tortellini.
And so for us, it has been such an amazing year because all of a sudden, we're seeing the dishes that we know and love, have written about and talked about through someone else's eyes. And so it's very interesting after all these years twenty eight and Aster of Franciscana, that we're still up to being playful and to taking risks and to trying to see something from a different.
Point of view. Well, a different point of view.
We can also talk about, and we have much to talk about, is seasonality. And as you know, in this little podcast that we do, we ask chefs to read their own recipes. Most everybody else reads a recipe from one of our books, but we asked you to choose a recipe, and the recipe that you chose to read is a recipe for pairs.
As a North American who moved thirty years ago to Italy. Our head chef, Jessica Roosevelt, who wrote the recipes for Slow Food Festcars, is another North American. She's from Montreal, and she and I definitely had a bonding over this project because I kept asking jess who is in Austria, Franciscana working in a three star Misison restaurant in her free time, if she could come by to Cosmi Luigia helped design the kitchen, help me do interviews to find
a head chef. The more time she spent at Cosmer Luigia, I had already planted a vegetable garden and so we had some Brussels sprouts coming up, and she wanted to learn how to use our wood fired oven, and so day by day, as she spent more time there, I realized she was never going to find a head chef because she wanted of the job herself. And it's been an extraordinary collaboration because both of us fell in love
with moderna. We've tried to look at the ingredients, the traditions from a distance from our completely different cultural upbringing and sometimes seeing them in a way that the Modernese don't see them like cootequino. We serve for breakfast, and it is so delicious cooked under the wood burning oven. So this comes from our breakfast recipes, but of course they can be served any time of the day. We cook these pears in an iron cast skillet and finish
them off in the woodburning oven. If you don't have a woodburnning oven, you can also just do it over.
You can do it, you can. It just might not taste the same.
So it's a good way to sell books right you get out.
This recipe is from the cookbook Slow Food Fastcars. Pears serve six three pairs one hundred and twenty grams cane sugar, six tablespoons of saba, four sprigs of rosemary, pinch of flaky sea salt. Preheat a wood oven to two hundred and twenty degrees. Cut each pear into eight wedges, remove the cores and seeds. Place them in a twelve inch cast iron skillet, cut sides up. Sprinkle the sugar and the four tablespoons of saba on top. Add one tablespoon
of water to prevent the fruit from drying out. Insert the rosemary between the pear slices. Cook until golden about twelve minutes, take the pears off the oven, drizzle with the remaining saba, Sprinkle with salt, and serve warm.
I always say a recipe is part poetry and part science, isn't it? It is poetry and that's beautifully red. Can you tell us about saba?
Yeah, of course, but first I have to talk about breakfast. Christ to me, we did this, I.
Said, can I just tell you that I really did think when I heard them at the VNA, that I could ask one question and come and join you.
You know, we did. We did that. You know, we were like, we were like we were recording a masterclus.
I am kind of the boss, I know.
I know, but now listen, listen to this. We were talking about that we were recording master class, me and Taka, you know, and Jessica behind the scene. I prepare everything, and the director was keep asking questions now because you know, I get lost into my ideas. So at one point we were playing something with Parmijano, so he said from behind the scene, but can you tell us about how many grams of Parmigano regiano you're putting in the recipe?
And I was looking at him, and you didn't understand anything, you know, because it's not about how many grams of parmichano, it's about your mental palette. And I start talking and explaining how to pick the right parmichano for forty minutes and they were still recording, and it was like, I just ask how many grums.
I think it was the first time that I heard a chef a masterclass say you have to tune your mental palette. I mean, it's like your little jimminy cricket there. But mass talking about it forever since I first met him. I think when we met in Cafe Diinona in nineteen ninety three, when we kind of ran into each other in this little restaurant, he started talking about the mental palette, and I thought, who is this skuydam.
But it's so easy because it's like, if you get a parmigenero regiana, it's not the same permigano from autumn or winter or spring, because it's aging a different way, because the animals they eat the different food, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's completely different. So how can you say thirty grams of parmigen regiana just listen to your palette? Your palette is telling you how many grams of parmigener reigiana you have to put. Okay, back to saba.
Saba is the must. Actually, since we are in Maria Luigia, we make our own mast with our own vineyard of trebiano dspana. It's very important, like the white grape full of sugar, but also vanilia, but also back taste that reminds you of cricots and peaches. We harvest, we go, we press very softly to get in fiore the little soft press. Let him sit for a while to get extremely clean. At this point we boil very very mild, like sixty nine seventy degrees and once is reduced in
the right way. Because it's all about tasting. It depends of the year, it depends on the harvest, it depends the water, and everything could be between thirty and fifty percent. You have the saba, and that's the best thing ever. I still remember one Christmas we were stealing the key from the pocket of my grandmother because she was the only one who had the key to go upstairs and open the door where all the vinegar and the saba was sinning. On Christmas time, during a very big snow storm.
We stolen a little bit of saba. We went downstairs. We put the snow in the in the in the in a in a in a glass, poor the saba, mixing and eating slow a saba.
So this is memory is a delinquent child, right, This is this is a new form of rebellion that we see is in in an Italian house where this is what two naughty children get up to. You know, they take the saba, they take the snow and they enjoy it. Did your grandmother find out that you had done it?
Yes?
And so I think that brings up a kind of cultural idea of what food is about, growing up taking the saba, of having your grandmother's cooking.
Did you grow up with an American version of that?
So I did not grow up with a grandmother doing much cooking. But in the early years my parents met in Washington, d c. My dad was an editor for a newspaper and got invited to a lot of embassy dinners. And my mother was a very curious cook. Not only was she number one fan of Julia Child, but she would always sneak behind the kitchen of the embassy dinners, whether it was the Chinese embassy, Japanese embassy.
Indian embassy, and she'd get the recipe.
So later she became a host many different dinner parties at home. That's when I began my culinary career in the kitchen, serving as a ten year old, making sure the rice pealof didn't burn, cleaning the dishes. But she was always an adventurous cook, and so I think that my sister and I really got this sense of food is a way that you can travel.
You don't have to get on an airplane.
You can start cooking, you can start smelling how different spices fill up a kitchen, and in your imagination, you can go anywhere through food. And so she gave us that curiosity. She also taught me that my first job, I should work as a waitress, and I worked in a friendly is This ice Cream diner when I rand was sixteen years old, and ever since then, it was just she just set.
Me up to meet my and you actually missus Gilmore. She's amazing. She's an amazing and.
Was your grandmother or your mother or both of them great cooks?
Who was My grandmother was really bad cook because she had to cook for the old family. My mom. She was an amazing cook because she loved to cook. That's a very important difference, because cooking is an act of love. As I always right to remind all the young chefs that I met, it's all about love. It's all about what you serve, you know, I keep saying to everyone in Australia, in Marie Louise and Franciscan and got to where the you know, serving good food is one thing,
Serving emotion is another thing. It's gonna stay with you forever, and that's a very important part. But the breakfast was inspired by my grandmother, by her choice. She was cooking one day here with lots of love. Was Christmas Day. She was waking up very early, woodburn oven, cooking everything. We are preparing and serving the breakfast for everyone for
the old family. Same we are serving now at Maria Luisa's breakfast fried though with mortadella, some frite tatine in the woodburn oven, with a very slow cooking onion, finished with some balsamic vinegar on top, some cotecino under the ashes, with zabai on top, erbasone or other different kishe you know whatever, you know, all these kind of savory and sweet, because Emilia cuisine has always been about savory and sweetness and this is what was like this, and we challenge
zz to repeat this kind of breakfast every day because, as we said in Maria Luisa, we want an experience that is different from any other hotel in the world. We want the kitchen always open with parmigiano and lambrusco on top of the counter, so you can go there and eat parmigana and musca and you understand you are in Moderna, but also breakfast has to be an experience like we want Christmas every day in Moderna for our guests,
and our guests enjoy so much they stay. They spend a couple of hours there having a cappuccino and then batsona and another cappuccino and some cotechino and uh and s brizilona, you know this kind of stuff.
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.
Did you grow up with breakfast?
So I grew up with typical pancakes, bacon, eggs. However, when I go back my mother's in Colorado now, when I go to visit her at Christmas time, the one meal that I look forward to the most is we recreate this Sunday brunch kind of like your breakfast that you had at Christmas time, and we'll make creps and salmon and eggs, and so there's that sort of celebration in that breakfast. I didn't grow up with an everyday breakfast like that, but Sundays were always a special moment.
My dad, who worked a lot, was the pancake maker. So I have this very fond nostalgic feeling every time I eat a pancake because he was the.
One who did the flipping.
So there you are, your father, and the memories did he cook other than.
Just I'll tell this story about it, Doug, tell the story.
About the.
No you tell them.
One of the things you know. One of the things that you know in moderna you eat is bollito missa. Of course, blitto misto, and the things that I love the most in Bolitto misto is a real tongue, you know, and these.
Are things that Americans do not grow up well.
And mister Gilmore, no, never, never, you know. So my sister's wedding I cooked for my sister wedding, the only wedding I cooked for. At the end of the meal, I was serving like everything like tortellini, lasagne, crunchy part or whatever, A little bit of avant garde, a little bit classic, but bolitto misto. I picked the tongue and testina and I was served with all these different sauces.
And at the end of the meal, I went to the table of mister and missus Gilmore and I was asking, so, mister Gilmore, did you like the the you know, the bolitto misto massimo. I love it. I love that. And I said, wow, I'm very happy. You know what mean was that? I said, uh, veal tongue. You look at me, you look at me with the face. What did the answer? You know, make sure you don't invite me. And you more more when you when you cook that kind.
Of stuff, you know, never invite me again.
That's why I keep saying to everyone, listen to your palette, because your palette is telling you the things and give a chance. It's very important to try to try and understand that how do you.
Feel when you go to other regions of Italy if you go to Pulia, if you go to Tuscany, if you go to Naples, how do you feel about the other regional food of your country.
For me, it's an amazing discover and I love to I get really curious how they treat the same vegetable. Do their peppers completely differently, their potatoes completely differently?
They use different herbs and.
Spices, and we love to bring a lot of that also into the kitchen of Cousin Luigion, we make a traponese, which is a sacily kind of pesto and completely different from the Genova pasto. And that makes you understand also that a pesto is an idea. It's not a recipe. It's a way of putting together whatever you have that could be your mint and your almonds, or you know, your basil. So I learned so much by going to other regions. And I've been in Italy for thirty years and I still feel like.
I get in my car and drive.
I have so much to discover. Did you travel when you were a child, did your parents take you to.
Yeah, all over, all over from my point of view, like look at Italy and the regions. I got three regions that are extremely important for me. Sicily, it's very very south almost Africa, you know, like in the middle of Mediterrano, with incredible, incredible tasty things like the capers from Pantelleria. They're lightly sold by the wind Costierra Marfitana sun and wind with you know, these lemons, these all these flavors from Costilla and Pimonte, completely different one from
the other. And I got so many inspirations, so many ingredients that I use in a million cuisine and introduce in a million cuisine because they are so tasty and important. Urtiness like nuts, you know, hazel as nuts, or like the almond from Notto. They are both incredible. Like imagine, oops, I dropped the lemontade. It's all about those ingredients.
You know about Oops, I dropped the lemon tar. Yeah.
We do a really bush raw version of this, which is that we make a lemon custard and then we put it in the pastry, and then we put it in the wood oven, and then we read about no, no, no, this is you know, this is really bush raw, and so what we want to know is, oops, I dropped the.
Lemon ta Oops, I dropped the lemontarde. There is a line of flavor that you can pick and mix with the lemon, the smashed lemon tarde. They're like the range of flavor of south of Italy. You have the oregano from Pulia, the spicy pepper from Basilicata, the almond from Notto, capers from Pantelleria, sweet and salty, the bergamods from Calabria, the lemon from Sorrento. All these flavors are the range
of flavor of south of Italy. So to me, when it was so natural when I saw Taka smashing the lemontage, can you tell.
The story what happened.
It's a good story, tell all right. So it was a lunch, last service. Two seats. You know, we were like ready to serve these two gastas. One of them was a journalist in the middle of the room. At one point, the old kitchen was already there, like cleaning. The radio was not you know, pushing, but music was there, and Taka was ready. Taka is my Japanese. You know, the Japanese are incredible, but they don't manage their rational Okay,
they imagined their everyday life, but not their rational. So he was there to serve the two lemon tard that they already break the border between sweet and savory. I was in the kitchen, look at the guys and the cleaning, and everyone froze. You know, it was like WHOA. I turned left and I saw Taka like this there was completely frozen with one end with the other tart in
his hand. He had some kitchen tools in the left, you know, And I lookt at the bottom on the counter and one of the two lemon tards was smashed in the plate and it couldn't it couldn't move, you know, And everyone was looking at Taka because Taka is Taka. It never made a mistake. Is a Japanese you know, it cannot make mistake and it's not allowed to make mistakes. And you know he made one. It made a mistake, and you know, I was like, Taca, you are a genius.
You found the perfect way to express the imperfection, because you know, south of Italy, it's all about South of Italy. South of Italy is the most imperfect place in the world, you know. But depends on what kind of ice you use to look at South of Italy. And everyone in the kitchen was looking at me and they said, what did he smoke? You know, you know, I was like when I went crazy because I had to solve the problem, because we had to serve the two tart. I said, okay, okay, okay, guys,
let's do exactly the same thing. Taca smashed the tart exactly in the same way you smashed the first one. I couldnot why because I don't know the idea. So take the tart and smash it exactly as that. So what we have done, you know, like we we rebuilt the second tart exactly the first one because the flavor they were there was the static part that was completely
fucked up. And so at that point we finished with the with the little ice cream there being an ice cream you know, on the side, and we saved and we said, okay, time to go with the service. And the service was there, and no one wants to go out with that broken le mortage. No one, no one. So I said, okay, I'm going by myself, and and you know, I said, okay, you too, come get the two tart and I'm coming and explain. So I went out.
The old room was full, the two server they were there, and you know, I said, you know, to good, I have to really get be aggressive, you know, And they serve the two tart to these two journalists and I start, you know, with a lot of emphasis. You know, what is Italy Italy? Italy is about the imagine the other tables. Italy is about poetry. And what is Thoseteria Francis Kanda The Secret of Austeria Frances Kanda, The Secret of Austeriferences Kanda.
It's about keep always the door open for the unexpected. It's about walking to the unexpected and create something unique. But always drive driven by poetry, because poetry can make visible the invisible. And you know, imagine these two people. They were looking at me talking like this and all the other they were like. But I was very focused on the tart and not thinking about it nothing else. So I said, and this is the lemon Arde and these two beautiful tart are built in a perfect way,
but in the imperfect. So what we are doing, we are serving and rebuilding in a perfect way the imperfection. Because it's the expression of South of Italy, because South of Italy is like, yeah, you're late for Capri, but when you're in Capri you swim in the Grotta Zura and is the most amazing place in the world. So the point is what kind of eyes you look at things you have? You have poetry or you don't have poetry. If you have poetry, you imagine an amazing lemon t Ard.
If you don't have poetry, is a broken lemont Ard for an Italian restaurant like this in a tree mish Land Star. What is about poetry serving a broken lemont Ard?
They buy that.
Silence, silence, no one. No one was saying one word in the room. And at that point one of the two start clapping Bravo, Bravo, bravo, and the room start clapping. From that moment, that was the oops, I dropped a la montage.
I think that round of the cloth.
You know, you talked about Julia Child and your mother, and I always say that in England, everybody read Elizabeth David, which was take a tomato and throw it in the pan and make sure it's ripe, and make sure that the basil is strong. Whereas Julia Child said, take a tomato of a diameter of three inches and make sure the basil leaf is four leaves. And but there was a precision about Julia Child. I think that taught you.
If you followed her recipes, you didn't make a mistake, and that gave you the confidence then to make a mistake because.
You had the grounding. It's like being able to write poetry.
You know, if you know automati pier first and then you can break away. And I think that you know that story comes from a history of rigor and discipline ability then to drop something and put it on a plate.
Exactly when you can't start breaking hors, you have to start making them. As Massimo often says, know everything and then forget everything, and that's the moment that creativity can happen. But you got to know everything first, You have to study. You can't improvise in the kitchen. But great chefs can take realization and bring it to another level. You know.
One of the secret of our success after six seven years of struggling was to show the locals we can cook better than their grandmothers. So one of the key point was like making taya ragu. But Picasso was alys saying that Pikauso was saying, I was thirteen and I was drawing as a Raphaello, so it learned how to draw as Rafaelo and it took the old life to pain like a kid. That's the point, you know.
And in a way it brings us full circle to the slow food, fast cars and the recipes, because this book is not the three star Mischlin provocateur chef trying to change the way you see the world, but saying I have all this experience and I want to share the recipes that are close to me.
I want to share the breakfast that I had growing up.
What I share, what we share with our guests coming to Cosmo Luigia, taking something seasonal, simple like pairs and making it delicious and having this other layer of flavor.
You could serve it for breakfast, for.
Lunch, for tea, and that kind of inviting people in to participate and be part of our world.
When I was describing the twenty first region of Italy, I also describe values and the ethics, the way that you give back to the people who are there who may not be able to partake of the kind of restaurants that I do, that you do, and I think it's very moving story about how what you see the place that we're in right now, and how that relates to what you see in your values of being an owner and a chef and a creative director of a
very beautiful restaurant. How does the Refertorio sell into this story.
Today we're in this beautiful space called Refertorio Felix and it's located in Earl's Court. It's a project that we opened in twenty seventeen, but everything began many years before that. I'd like to think that it began when we got our third Michelin Star. We've been working so hard for almost seventeen years to finally get that third Michelin Star.
And when they give it to you that there's.
A jacket and it's been embroidered on it the three stars, and Massimo had to hang it in our bedroom just to believe when he woke up in the morning we went to bed at night, that he had actually accomplished that,
you know, incredible challenge and mission and dream. But it was probably, you know, the third or the fourth morning that we woke up with the chef jacket hanging in our bedroom that we looked at that jacket and I don't remember who started the conversation, But we came to the conclusion that those stars really only had value if we did something with them, if we use the voice that we had worked so hard to get to fight
for our artisans, our fishmongers and cheesemakers. But more than that, what could we do to make more of good food for more people? And I think what we tried to do with our Food for Soul project, which started in twenty fifteen with Expo. There was the earthquake that same year, so we've been on a kind of a mission of our own just to make people sensitive that everyone deserves good food.
How can we do that?
Fighting food waste is so important. There's so much food that's coming surplus food from supermarkets, and many times it's being thrown away or even worse burned, creating more emissions. And if we can salvage that and create a delicious and healthy meal for people in need, it doesn't fill their bellies, but it's also a way of bringing people around the table, and we know that around the table the most incredible things happen. Healing begins when you sit down at a table with others.
So that's food for soul in a Google research. They found out that we produce foods for twelve billion people. We are seven point five on Earth, eight hundred and sixty million people. They don't have anything to eat. We waste thirty three percent of what we produce, So that means it's just insane because we use water, electricity, human capital to produce food and after that we waste it, we burn it, and we become the second cause of climate change. That's insane. So it's like, it's not normal.
We just have to step back and think about what you can do with that. So that's what it is. And I thought, and we thought since the beginning, let's do it, and let's share with everyone and what we need. We need the best architects because dream big doesn't cost anything, you know, to create beautiful places, because beauty, as Camus was always saying and reminds us, with beauty, you don't do the revolution, but one day when you're when you
have to rebuild, you need beauty to rebuild. And beauty can rebuild that and give the second chance in life to people to fragile souls. This is the difference between a classic soup kitchen and our refertorio.
Absolutely, and if I were to ask you if food is giving back to people, food is giving happiness, the food is alleviating hunger. Food is also comfort. It is comfort. And so my last question both of you not be what is your last meal that you would have, because we don't like that question, but we would say if you need and I hope we don't need comfort very much, but if you need comfort, if you seek comfort, is there food that you would reach for to make you feel better.
My comfort food is risotto. So risotto is the first.
Italian recipe I learned when I came and studied art in Florence and my cousin was living in Florence, and I learned how to make a celery risotto. So both with cooked celery and raw celery, so it's crunchy and it has all the celery flavor, super simple onions, celery, parmegiano, nigiano and rice. The broth she didn't even make like a chicken broth. She would just throw in the end of the celery to make a simple celery broth and
you have that deep celery flavor. But since then, I mean, risotto is the kind of thing you can empty out your pantry and.
Everyone loves a risotto. You make it with what you have, and most of all, you make it with love.
Even the process of making risotto.
Is because you have to be there, you have to be present.
You know. I've seen some nothing no criticism here, but I do have some friends who make the risotto in these kind of like thermal mixers and the Bimbi's And I.
Think, what you've taken, you've taken off.
You have friends like that human beauty out of staying there and watching it's like a hen watching her eggs.
You're watching your resulto pan.
And if you walk, if you step away, something's going to go wrong. And so it's that kind of focus. You're in the kitchen. It doesn't take that long, but everyone gathers around.
You while you're making the result.
Though, is it done?
Is it ready?
Can we eat?
What is yours? Do you have a food? It can be a memory. As I was saying, I have AVENGEVI people said of peanut butter and jelly.
Someone for me, for me, like.
The comfort food is like open if I'm home, comfort food is open the refrigerator and get all these try different ingredients that we receive, so many beautiful ingredients from all over Italy and not just Italy. So open the refrigerator, taste and you know, exercise with the ballet. It's very easy. You know, you can do in every refrigerator.
But we have like proshuto. Yeah, I know, I know, but we're saying.
This is amazing to me. Yeah, but to me, is that for yours risotto?
You know, you know what his comfort food is. I know what his comfort is.
No, no, no, no, you don't know. You don't know, you don't know. I would say, you already answer. I would say.
If we were on a dating game and we were like blindfolded and we had to say, what is your husband's favorite? What is your husband's comfort food? My answer would be pizza for.
You, pizza because yeah, it's.
Like because pizza can be anything. You know, once you have the dough, what do you have?
You have Portugue, had porcini and fontina pizza.
That was so delicious.
So pizza is also about your.
No, no, I'm telling you. And if it's traffl season right now, just some white travel at the end, you know, thank you.
This is beautiful.
And as I said, as I said in the beginning, I'm coming to the twenty first region of Italy.
Thank you, embrace you warm let.
Thank you so much, thank you and by this book are you all being given them?
Yeah? Thank you.
Ruthie's Table four is produced by Atamai Studios for iHeartRadio. It's hosted by Ruthie Rogers. It's produced by William Lensky. Our executive producers are Zad Rogers and Fai Stewart. Our production manager is Caitlin Paramore. Special thanks to everyone at The River Cafe two