Welcome to River Cafe, Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios.
There is no such thing as a simple phone call with my beautiful friend Christian Amanpour. Asking, as I did yesterday, where she's been, she answers Ukraine. Asking where she's going, she says, Afghanistan. This is what it is like having a fearless friend you love, who puts yourself in danger, reporting facts, holding people to account, and telling the truth from wherever she is and whoever she is talking to.
Christian goes on hiking trips, biking trips, retreats to her house in the Eeldarray, flies to New York to see her son Darius. The food of Persia is her passion. Today I'm going to interview the most brilliant interviewer there is, and today I think I'm the fearless one. I ask everyone to read a recipe from one of our cookbooks, and you said to me, Actually, what I'd like to do is talk about at the box sets, because yeah, and what do you read the menu for the box set that you've chosen?
I will, so, of course River Cafe for cutua fabulous. Then a zucchini the Dattarini tomatoes, broad beans, slow cook summer peas never had those were great, Cannellini beans, an Italian spirit. It all sounds simple, but it's delicious. The other thing I really love is the spatchcock chicken against deceptive because it looks like it's only for a few people, but it's for feeding the five thousand, basically. And the
other thing I love is the pistachio cake. Oh my goodness. Honestly, I'm originally Persian, Iranian and English and anything pistachio I love, and that is literally the best pistachio cake ever is so good. So Ruthie, I chose a box set because, to be Frank, I don't cook, and so to read a recipe sounded a little bit inauthentic for me, no matter how much I love eating your food at the River Cafe. And I have been incredibly spoiled during COVID
and the last two years. Great friends people like Laura and Eric Felner, Laura Bailey and Eric Feller who come here a lot, spoiled me a lot with your box set, and it was really something that was not just a luxury but a massive comfort. And I'd gone through a bit of an illness last year, and they really really sustained me, especially when people came to my house. You know, I was able to offer them things without myself having to cook.
I don't mind if you don't make because you're you know what what what we really? I mean, whether you cook or you eat. And you do cook, and you love food, and I think that you want to eat well. But what we need Christian amanpour for and I need you from my friend, but we all the world needs you for the as I said, the fearless. Do you like being all fearless? You know people say I'm fearless because I ski down mountains.
No, I think fearless to be frank, I will give you my definition. I said once that I've lived most of my professional life in a state of repressed fear. Because you'd really be dumb if you said you weren't afraid of going to all these very terrifying places where you are in the crosshairs. And you're also a target, not just randomly injured or killed like so many of us have been, because we're deliberately targeted.
So they know, they know who you are, and they know where you are, and they know your retournalists and.
Me and anybody else is there with the words press on their fronts or on their vehicles. Yeah, and they do it because they don't want the truth out.
Yeah, and that they would be give me some example.
Well, let's say in the Bosnia War, it was the Bosnian Serb militants who were attacking the civilians in Sarajevo. That was their battle plan, much like what Putin has been doing in Ukraine.
Christian what was it like living under siege in Sarajevo.
Well, it became the longest siege in modern history. It was nearly three years long, which meant that the Bosnian Serbs, backed by Serbia, who were also backed then by Russia, were besieging a city of ordinary civilians in the most medieval way. And it meant that food wasn't coming in. It meant that, you know, they cut off heat, electricity, water,
and they were bombarding. What then happened was that the United Nations got an agreement to have an airlift into the Sarajevo airport and only those people the UN was able to use it, and they would bring in pallets of humanitarian aids, so big palettes came in by military cargo planes, and they were your basics, what flower, oil, beans, cans, stuff that was nonperishable that people could use. But the motif in terms of food was severe food poverty the
very very first winter under siege. And it sounds like a cliche, and I didn't even believe it till I saw it, but literally, people were foraging, honestly, trying to get dandelion leaves and grasses and things like that that they might be able to boil up into something. Some of them may have had little vegetable gardens with lettuce or spinach or whatever it was, but there was no real protein. They could make bread because flower was coming
in eventually by the UN, but it was basic. And you know, I just remember living in the holiday in with all the press there. I didn't realize until afterwards. The managers had to pretty much bribe the besiegers and some of the UN peacekeeping forces who came in to get things like eggs and to get things like, I don't know whatever. We didn't need much. We really didn't to do with not much. It was nothing very tasty, But I will never forget what an effort they made
to keep us fed. There was some breakfast. Again, bread featured a lot. Sometimes we had some of the local fetter cheesy kind of stuff, which was like you know that they could easily sort of get or bribe or you know. I just don't remember much. There wasn't potatoes or tomatoes or or anything.
Because all the farming or the the just like now in Ukraine when it's bombed all the time and there's a scorched earth policy, you can't actually grow.
And remember again this was an urban center, so anyway, there wasn't much farming going on in the city of Sarajevo, and it was it was a terrible situation. And I remember when the seeds started to be slowly lifted, one of my one of my friends went across the lines and came back with a bag of I think it was tomatoes, that's my memory, and it was the first fresh tomatoes we'd seen. How long we've been there for years.
But of course I went in and out in a military plane, which was the only way to get out if you could. But I did spend most of the of those three years of the nineties in Bosnia.
And when you would return on the plane from Sarajeva going to Paris. Are you thinking about what you're going to eat?
Are you thinking no, first time, thinking of leaving those people behind and feeling very guilty.
I was going to ask you about the kindness of strangers, you know, being in these very tough situations. Is the connections Are they very firmly established.
Very firmly established, because to be frank, apart from anything else, your life depends on having good relations with your competitors and your colleagues, you know.
And the people of the city.
Yes, yes, they were mostly grateful for us to tell their story, but and I have to say it is important, they did begin to get angry. I remember them saying, you know, turn your cameras away from us. This isn't the Sarajevo Safari. You keep telling our stories and the world doesn't intervene, doesn't help us. And those were very painful moments because you did realize that they were telling the truth, that yeah, we could go to them, talk
to them, get their experiences. See what they were trying to cook for their families, which was pretty much nothing in their little kitchens, and trying to survive this war and nothing was happening. To help them, so then they would take it out on us because we were the closest for them. Yeah, and it was painful. That was painful. So I have no illusion that we are well comes with open arms and we're the great saviors at all. At all. We do a job. We if we're lucky,
we tell the truth and the truth gets out. And if we're very, very lucky, it causes intervention. So it didn't in Sarajevo until the Cerebnitza massacre, which was nearly three years well three years after the war started. Of course, in Ukraine it was totally different, and it's great that the West did intervene to help Ukraine defend itself when it was illegally occupied, invaded, and the Russians went to war against them. So the difference in the world's reaction is remarkable.
It shall we talk about it around? Yes, what did your father and mother did?
My father was he worked in a travel agency, and my mom was, you know, what do you call it? A homemaker? And she looked after us. We're four girls. I'm the oldest of my mother English Catholic, my father Iranian Moslim. So I grew up in a very mixed ethnic and you know household that I think served me very well in my career because I then understood that actually you can get past identity. You can actually always
find the commonality in people. And you know, the idea of mixed ethnicities or religions or nationalities means nothing to me. It's just normal, normal, normal, normal. Also, my mum was a very strong woman and really did run the household and was very influential on us and let's say our moral and spiritual education. I'm quite a strict Catholic and was my father allowed it, never said I'm the man and I'm Muslim and you have to bring up in Iran, you know, the kids as Muslims. None of that. He
absolutely agreed to my mother's demands. But it was a very I just remember a very very happy household that actually revolved around my mother's cooking.
Oh that's what I was going to ask. So your mother was British?
Yes?
Did your mother bring British film?
Really? You see, I don't even think, well, yes and no. I don't know whether my mother was a particularly accomplished cook before she got married. I think she learned on the job, so to speak, and she did become excellent, and we were the only ones really that in my group of friends that were serving more sort of Western food.
So my friends would come to my house for my mother's pizza, for her chocolate cake, which was I think kind of like a flowerless chocolate cake before I even knew that that was the case, but a very rich chocolate cake that was beautifully iced and was delicious, and everybody loved it. And chocolate moose. I mean, I have such great memories of my mum making these things and that I would be sitting at the table just trying to grab the spoon like all kids do, you know,
and lick the spoon and just love it. An angel cake. So we had the chocolate cake and then the angel cake and it. It just was sort of a theme of my childhood that my friends loved it and were always anxious to come to my house.
And what about the Persian.
Well, the Persian food was mostly when we went out to friends' houses or to families houses, but also on a Friday, which is sort of the Sunday in the Middle East. It's like the Sabbath Friday. Everybody's the holiday of the weekend, and the traditional Persian rural meal is called cello kabab. Cello is the rice. Cello cabab is the rice. So it's this pile of steaming white rice with saffron on the top and a crust underneath, which is very and it's very difficult to cheap. Yeah, it's
really tough to make. I do Actually I did it well. First of all, you have to boil the rice al dente as if you were doing pasta. Then you take it out. You've already washed it, got rid of all the extrain, your starch. You take it out, and then you have this very substantial iron pot, and you probably melt a little butter in the bottom and let that go all over the bottom. Then you take a layer of the rice and you pack it down very hard.
Then you put the rest of the rice in. Remembering Irun you cook for lots of people, so this is a big pot. So you put a thin layer, yes, and pack it down now, yes, and then you put the other pyramid on. You put holes with the you know, with the handle of a spoon. You pour in copious amounts of melted butter, and then you put a top covered by a dish towel. And that then steams. You put the heat on quite high for about ten minutes
to give the crispiness. Then you immediately turn it down and the rest is about thirty to forty minutes of steaming this rice, so you have a very light but buttery rice saffron. Then you pour on afterwards when you've dished it up. And if you've done it right, and you've got the high heat low heat done just right, you get this wonderful crust called taddig.
And this is from who says she doesn't like to cook.
I like to remember.
Sorry, I like.
To remember, and I like to eat exactly.
But can I just ask you in that maybe I got it wrong. But the rice was cooked before you pressed.
It down, cooked, so it's still very fluffy. You don't overcook it.
You don't worrying about cooking and then cook.
That's why you have to make it aldente. It's not like you put a bunch of rice on us and then let all the water absorb. Okay, And it's really delicious. And then the thing that went with it is called is the cab of the meat. So it's either boneless chicken or chicken on the bone or it's minced lamb with other stuff that you put in it. Don't ask me because I haven't done it. Or it's more of a file steak like the pile, a very tender and that you put on the bus. I like it all.
I don't not so keen on the mince. I find that somewhat sometimes a little indigestible. But you know, before the age of salmonella and all the rest of it, instead of when you served the rice, you would get a raw egg. Crack the egg, separate the white from the yolk, and then you put the yolk in the rice and mix that up. Instead of butter, because you've already got a lot of butter.
If there are even yeah, I think if you heat once, you eat it up. But going back to Tehran, your father was version and did you have grandparents?
Yes, you see, my father was nineteen years older than my mother and he was the youngest of five boys. So just imagine how old My grandmother was, very very old, And all I remember was this very old lady who was quite terrifying, quite strict. But we did visit her on Fridays. I remember again, that's the holiday. And all
I remember is that we would come in. She would be sat at the end of the room in what looked like an armchair throwne and then all of us would be arranged, you know, around the sides of the room and in front of us with these little tiny side table on which were very carefully peeled oranges, I remember, And so we'd eat the oranges and have some pistachio nuts, and it was quite formal. We'd have to go and kiss each cheek and then honestly we couldn't wait to leave.
But I'm sure she was fabulous, and to be frank, I wish I'd known more about my granda. Maybe she was tired, for sure, I mean the mother.
And I think I'm going to try, you know, giving my children nuts.
Yeah, yeah, because it is, and it's an interesting history. You remember her, she definitely remember her.
Being nineteen.
My father's father had died, so I never met him, and my father barely knew him. One thing I do remember about tomatoes though, My dad said that when he was the youngest of these five strapping boys, they used to bully him and jump on top of him and get this stuff his mouth with tomatoes, which he hated.
Funny, I remember that story of memory. And he didn't cook at all.
No, but he did do a mean vinigrette. And to this day that's my vinaigrette, and I teach it to whoever.
Comes in my.
I'm not going to tell me yet. No the rest, I'm not going to tell you. I don't want to tell the world no secret.
Oh that's you know. There's some people the thing I know sometimes they always say that restaurants, will you know, give a recipe and then leave something out or you know, but.
Then it would be no good if I gave it and then left something out.
I wouldn't do that.
It's the only thing I know. It's the only secret I have a good vinagrette. It is hard to me, it is.
You know.
And my dad. I always remember my dad, you know, he died in twenty sixteen, and I always remember that when ever I have the vinaigrette.
And have you told it to Daris?
Yes, and to whoever comes into my orbit and you know, needs to make some vinaigrette.
Do you remember going to markets in Tehran?
Not markets? Well, actually no I did. They're called bazaars. Obviously, It's not like the French or Italian or British markets, but bazaars which were I guess almost even more magnificent, because I mean, if anybody's been to the Great Bazaar in Istanbul, imagine that in all the other Middle Eastern countries. And we used to go. I do remember my mother
would do the shopping. Obviously, I would just be amazed by the color and the vibrancy and that I want this and I want that, even if I didn't know what it was. I'm afraid that the men at that time were very cheeky and quite intrusive. So I used to go, not knowing any better, in my shorts or my short skirt or whatever and get my bum pinched. That was quite dirry ger in those days. My mom told me from now on I had to bring a flip flop, you know, sandal, hold it behind my bum
and if anybody dared boo, you know, bang them. It really worked.
When I went to Syria with Richard, we went to Damascus and we went to the bazaar again. The food it was very different from the market you would see in France or Italy, and was even more compelling because there was the sanctions. There was no Coca Cola sign. There was not you know, any Hamburgers or anything Western at all, and was growing up in the Shahs. Was that more American? Was it because there was a good relationship, Yeah, I mean it was, it was.
It was. It was more friendly to the West, for sure. But remember it was only a minority of people who were able to benefit from that. Although he did bring in you know, education rights for women all of that. But in the end, you know, there was this religious revolution in nineteen seventy nine, theocracy, and to be honest, weirdly, the Iranian Revolution propelled me into my career because that's when I realized, a I needed to make it on
my own. I could not rely on my lovely parents and my idyllic childhood and whatever they thought I might do with the rest of my life, and I needed to make my way.
In the world.
The Iranian Revolution was a first hand experienced historical earthquake that clearly still has reverberations to this day, and I realized that I actually want to tell those kind of stories.
So you were actually there when Harmony.
My father sent me out about two weeks if I remember before for many came back. Yeah, he came back around the first of February and I was sent out in the mid middle January nineteen seventy nine, and I'm glad well first to England, where my English grandmother was, and then on to America to go to university. I decided that's where I needed to make my way in the world, to go to university be a journalist.
Did you have experience of the United States and Britain? It wasn't like being lifted from Iran.
I had no experience with the United States. I'd visited once as a teenager, but that's it. But I obviously, you know, every summer I would go and stay with my mother's family. We would all go to England for the summer holiday.
And you didn't have pistasia nuts.
We didn't. My grandmother was a very very simple cook, but great you know, crem caramel, roast, pork and crackling. Those were the things fish fingers and when.
You were living with your grandmother alone your parents were still in Tehran.
Yeah, I didn't really live with her really much. I mean, we were in boarding school for a period of time during the seventies, my sister and I and we went, you know, for half terms and weekends because the parents were living in Iran. That's where our home was, but we'd go back for the major holidays and then.
You were on your own. So tell the story of what happened and when you went to the United States, so you.
Know us kind of easy. My first year was you know, refertory food or whatever you call it, canteen food, disaware and gusting.
Okay, tell me about that.
The university in the US. My first year I was at the University of Rhode Island, which I loved. It was in Kingston, Rhode Island. After about a year, I then lived off campus with friends and that's where I first learned to cook.
Okay, that's fact.
I have brought a little prop because this, for me is a comfort blanket. It's a tiny, slim tome. It's called in a Persian kitchen. It's got a illustration of a Persian dancer and a woman holding a basket of fruit. And it's very very well thumbed and dirty. As you can see, it's had a lot of you know stuff. I set up a rota so we were five. We each had a day of the week where we'd go
to the supermarket and shop for the week. Each week, one different person did it, and each night of the week a different person would cook and that was fab And so I would cook out of this Persian cookbook and it was great. And that's where I first learned about tofu. One of my roommates was vegetarian, another one did trout, another one did hamburgers or steak. It was really amazing. But what was really great was that we ate well every night at home, and we had we
would invite friends. It became like the River Cafe, a hot ticket roof people wanted to to our.
We are the only non American in my group. Yeah, yeah, okay, did you cook? Yes?
I did, And if I could get the taddi right, the crust I was in very popular that night. If not, there was some complaints. But it was cool because you know, it was the eighties. We talked about the campaign for nuclear disarmament, anti apartheid, and to this day I have family lunches and group dinners.
And usually go Sundays Sunday Sundays, and I often ask you, if you want to do something on a Sunday you're with your family, what about cooking for your son?
Well, I mean my son to be Frank is a better cook than I am, and I'm so grateful that he's a great cook and he likes it. He likes it, he loves it. I did do stuff, but I'm not brilliant. His dad taught him how to do pancakes and things like that. It's very good breakfast cook there is his dad. But you know I did some stuff. I can do a roast chicken, Ruthie.
The Global Central Kitchen in Ukraine, did you get involved in to do?
Jose Chef Jose Andress, who is an amazing man, as you know. Yeah, and he's got this amazing operation called World Central Kitchen, which he takes I think, if I'm not mistaken, he first started in Puerto Rico Hurricane Maria, and what he did was quite simple. It's not again, it's not like just hand out. He comes, he scopes the situation. He looks at all the local restaurants or bars or whatever and mobilizes them to be able to cook and helps them if he has to bring in
supplies and things like that to feed their communities. So it starts small ish in terms of how many meals per day they're able to deliver, and then it gathers momentum, and they have a very very good social media platform now and they've got a lot of help. But what they do is is quite revolutionary because in wartime or in crisis, they do what others can't do and it has a huge impact.
And they worked with other with restaurants I didn't understand, yes, carrying boxes from restaurants to people.
Train stations, to hospitals, to refugee centers to places like that. And they even had to, you know, try to get the train lines, the railway lines to help move things from one city to another. It was quite an operation. I mean, it's really something yeah, logistical.
And what was it like for you being there? Was it very different from Sarajevo? Was there?
It was somewhat different, but it was I was there during a turning point which was really interesting, and that's when the Ukrainians pushed the Russians back from Kiev. So I was in Kiev at that period and I could see with my own eyes, you know, how the momentum on the ground was shifting, and how the incredible support of NATO led by the United States and many other European countries and their neighboring countries was really making a difference.
And yeah, well Ukraine food there entity there is. I would I don't want to overtalk it because I didn't get to experience much of that in restaurants. But you know, soups what they call dumplings obviously their version aborched, yes, which they are very clear. It's not like the Russia. A lot of meat, a lot of potatoes. As you know, Ukraine is the bread basket of Europe, so it's going to be very difficult. Yeah, yeah, and Africa and even
Russia is the fertilizer central for the world. So this war is going to and people are very concerned and international leaders are very concerned that it will not only exacerbate, you know, food poverty around the world, it could lead to famines and depending on how long it goes on, it could lead to unrest. Remember the Arab Springs started in Tunisia because of the high price of food and food poverty.
So we're looking at a real crisis.
It's a huge crisis. And Uin has shown the world that when they try to react just gently like they did in twenty fourteen, he just rolls right over the rest of the world.
Have you ever interviewed him.
No, I'd like to interviewed Zelenski just before the invasion. It was just amazing. He was incredible, really incredible, and he came with a warning to the West. It was in Munich what's called the Music Security Conference. It was nineteenth. The invasion was on the twenty fourth. He actually came out of his country. And you're like this because it's about food. I said to him, mister President, most people here didn't expect you to be here. You've got the
threat of an invasion the United States. Your biggest backers have suggested you don't leave at this precise moment. And he said, I had breakfast in Kiev. I'm having lunch in Munich to tell you our story and what we need, and I'm going to have dinner in Kiev tonight.
Now is there any city that really means something to you for food? I mean that you think I'm going to this city. I know where I wanted, I know what I wanted to eat. And now.
Paris and Elderay, which is not a city, has lovely, lovely restaurants, very simple, really also delicious, London, New York. I mean to be honest with you, I am very ecumenical about all of that, because they're great restaurants all
over the world and in the most unlikely places. One of the great things that Anthony Bourdain did for the world, God rest his soul, was show the world that in the most unlikely corners, in the most unlikely places, as well as in the obvious places, the idea of food was always there, and the greatest food and the greatest
experience and atmospheres. And I think, actually, what you're doing and what he did, there's no doubt that you bring people together over food in every single way, whether in joy and grief and friendship and family, whatever it.
Is, and comfort and comfort. So that's my last question to you is if you need comfort, whether you are probably when you're in a place where you can get the food of your choice, is there a food that you would turn to. I think I might know the answer.
Yes, you probably do know the answer.
You know.
It really is Persian food, and it's the white rise. It's the usually the boneless chicken arm that goes with it, and a grilled tomato that comes with it as well. And if I'm feeling okay, I'll crack that egg yolk in it. Yeah, and that will be it'll be rich, but it'll also be very very comforting.
Be careful in Afghanistan, I will the.
Women there who've been so terribly, terribly marginalized again after twenty years of promise and activity and showing how phenomenal they are, they've been so marginalized. And by the way, the dramatic food poverty in Afghanistan right now because of the sanctions that have been put on the Taliban. It's a tragedy, an absolute tragedy.
Come back.
I'm well, Chris, Thank you, Ruth.
River.
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