Ruthie's Table 4: Lily Allen

eighteen months later in September nineteen eighty seven. We both have had our shares of ups and downs as we came of age, but as creatives, I like to think that we both share a common commitment to being honest and straight about what we believe in and the values we hold. Lily really does tell it as it is, and that's what we're going to do to day. Talk about food, food and memories, food and family, food and love. Hi, Hi Danny, would you like to read your recipe? I'd

love to. I have chosen fig and cannellini salad. You'll need twelve ripe figs, two hundred miles of extra virgin olive oil, one bunch of fresh green basil, one bunch of fresh purple basil, one bunch of fresh mint, a selection of salad leaves, including rockets of cooked cannellini beans, and the juice of one lemon. Slice the figs and spread out on a large plate. Season and drizzle over half of the extra virgin olive oil. Warm the cannellini beans in their cooking liquid. Drain and season in a

large bowl. Combine the figs and warm cannellini beans, stirring well. Gently toss through the herbs and leaves. Add lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil. Why did you choose, of all the recipes of the River Cafe books, this this recipe. I love a bean salad, and figs are possibly my favorite fruit. Usually I have figs with sort of cheese or something else about both the things that delicious. And you're very good at putting delicious things together. And we'll

do it tonight because you're staying out for dinner. We'll make this for you tonight. But you do cook. I was really into cooking when I was a teenager. That's sort of thirteen. I actually went and did a called on Blur of course in Marlabone, remember asking for like a set of Sabatia nights my thirteenth birthday. It's funny because it's really one of those things that you have to keep up in order to, you know, it's it's

like muscle memory. And I definitely have, you know, like a handful of recipes that have sort of stuck with me. But I remember when I when at the beginning of my career, when I'd go off on tour for sort of two years at a time, I'd come back and I'd forget how to make a spaghetti bolonnaise, and it would really freak me out. Actually, you know, because when you're on tour, you just don't have access to a kitchen.

You know, you're in a tour bus or in hotel rooms, so there's just no way that you would ever be able to get anywhere nearer chopping board and fresh vegetables. But yeah, I love cooking and you love eating. I love eating. I've never been times when you know that your music describes when you've been on the edge, you're down. Do you find that when you're kind of emotionally vulnerable that you don't need or you know, I'm an eater

when I when I'm sad. Yeah, yeah, but I think you know, I have one in my family is emotional eaters. We all sort of reach for, usually carbohydrates feeling low. There's this thing that my mom makes, which you will think is horrendous, but it's like the thing that I want her to come over and drop off of my house when I'm feeling really depressed. Which is called cheese pie, and it's but it's used to make it when she was living in her student accommodation when I was a baby.

But it's a casserole dish with two tins of tin spaghetti within the tomato sauce, with a layer of cheesy mashed potato on top and then put in the oven. I didn't know what you were going to say, but I really didn't think you were going to say getting covered by vershed potatoes. It's really really gross, but I love it it, just like, yeah, it makes me feel really really protected and comported by my mom's sort of stodgy eighties cooking. And so tell me about growing up

in the Allen household. What was the food like? Did you Yeah, did your mom cook her your dad or my mom cooked a lot? Yeah, she was. She kind of cooked, you know, kids like stodgy food. And then I guess, as well, Yeah, we've got a little bit older, we had sort of more variation. There's always lots of entertaining going on on the weekends and Sunday roasts and yeah,

dinner party. I imagine it's where I sort of it learn a lot about food, seeing your parents entertaining and seeing the food quite different hearing the voices the adult conversation. So when you would go downstairs and sit at the table, always sit when someone's that, what what was it like? What did that feel like? I was always like, you know, fascinated by growing ups. When I was a kid, I didn't really have that many friends my own age, and I just was desperate to be an adult from quite

an early age. So I just remember sort of, yeah, sitting on you know, my godmother's laugh, you know, pretending that I liked olives, which I really didn't. Yeah, just sort of soaking up all of the conversation, pretending that you understand what's what's going on, but not really you know, probably concentrating so hard on trying to blend in that you're not really doing much with it. The day that you stay with many sense of time, we get a

bed with it. No, my parents, definitely we're not strict in that in essence, Tell about your mother and father. What did tell me about their lives. Well. First of all, you know, my parents were divorced by the time I was four, so I don't really have many memories of them together, although actually I do remember one party that

they had at our flat in Bloomsbury. I think it must have been around Christmas or New Year, and me and my brother made bagels, toasted bagels and cream cheese, and then we had like one of those sort of drinks trolleys that you could push around in our flat, and me and my brother were pushing most made like piles what seemed like piles at the time, but we were very small, Um yeah, pushing them around the living room and trying to charge people for a bagel with

cream cheese. I don't know if we've got many takers. I don't know if people are. That sounds pretty good to me, and baggers and cream chees anywhere. I mean. Actually, my my mom, my brother went to boarding school and he was eight, and my sister, you know, had a quite colorful social life from the age of sort of thirteen or fourteen, so she wasn't really around much, so

I was. There would be quite a lot of times when it was just me and my mom and my stepdad in our house in Promote Hill, and I remember getting taken to dinner parties at other people's houses quite a lot um in the week. I remember like I would be tired and I get to school the next day and people would be like, are you okay? And out of clocking the morning listening to grown ups rubbit

on about nothing. What about when you saw your father did he cook for you or did he Yeah, he was like a little bit more rustic my dad with his food. Like we did a lot of camping and going to festivals and stuff, so there was always quite a lot of like cooking on open fires with him, and he used to do like this digging hole and making like sort of baking meat or barbecuing it like in a hole for you know, slow cooking stuff. So yeah,

that was sort of more more his vibe. But yeah, you know, I had, you know, sort of fabulous social parents and was taken along for the ride. And so if you grew up with the food, when did you start discovering that they were start discovering food For myself? I mean like, yeah, going to sort of like social gatherings with my mom and her friends. My best friend Mikita.

Her mom is Antiguan and so she was always I've always been really interested in like world food, and she you know, introduced me to sort of Caribbean food and I loved all of that growing up. I thought it was just the most delicious, you know, sort of baked chicken and all of the spices with the rice and the peas. And also growing up in West London as well, there was always sort of portsbellter market market store food.

My dad had this friend called Vicky who had a stalled down in Camden Market where we would go and have sort of for laffles every weekend. So I was always really interested in trying foods from different parts of the world. And then when I started touring as a recording artist, I just became obsessed with local food from

wherever it was that we were. Whatever is it like, going on tour and discovering culture through the food, Well, I mean it's the sort of habit of mine, which is that when I get off stage, I've taken all my makeup off, I get on the bus or you know, however it is that we're traveling, I'll get my phone out and look at the city that we're driving into the next morning, and I plan each meal. Yeah, the first thing I would look for in the morning was

the best place for coffee and pastries. And then if we were in Mexico, then I want to find out where the best tackos were for lunch and etcetera, etcetera. So yeah, that was I will always plan my day or around food. There's all. You're not the only I mean, when I was talking to Jake chillen A, he said that no matter where he's going on location, wherever he's going for a movie, wherever in the world, he spends days before deciding where he's going to eat. And what

is it like touring? What is it like when you go on It really hard actually do well. I mean it's because most places where they're you know, we'll pull up outside you know the venue, and that's where we'll be based for the day. So and most venues are in you know, parts of town where there's no residential it's you know, where you can make noise. So yeah, people don't usually live there and so therefore there's not

places to eat. So yeah, it's difficult. It's difficult to meet and you're obviously relying on what the venue have got in for you a lot of the time, So you're going to the dressing room and there'll be some sort of like plate with cheeses and ham have been in the sort of sweating it's not the isis and then crisps and sweets and things like that, maybe fruit sometimes, but yeah, that's what I I sort of like have my sort of routine, which is our order and uber

and go into town and find somewhere to have coffee and then sit and decide what it is I'm going to do with the rest of my day. You ever to spend the day there before the concert at night, it depends how far away is from the venue that you come from the last night. But if you're in America and you've got like, you know, fourteen hour drive before in between shows, then you don't have that much time.

But if you you know, just a couple of miles up the road, then yeah, you might have the whole day and you can get a couple of good meals. In do you eat before a show, after a show, or during a show? Probably I'll eat like a a bigger breakfast, I won't have lunch, and then I'll have a dinner afterwards. I don't want to really go on stage on a full stomach. Not not good idea about tell me about the player and tell us about the place. I'm doing a play called two, which is a sort

of dinner party play. So what does a dinner party play. The whole thing is set over one evening around a table, and it's all about usually quite small cast like Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf and like you know plays. It's it's definitely a thing um And that's that's what there's plans is the food on the table. Yeah, I have to make an asparagus risotto because so tell me about that that because we want to bring everything back to the food. But what is it? What is it? What

is it? Like, Oh my gosh, you're going to hate it because well it's not actually resorted. They were kind of like have already made as matti rice and then I kind of like add stock to it as we're you know, doing the first sort of fifteen or twenty minutes, and then yeah, don't I chopped up asparagus and chuck the asparagus in and then I dish it out and you're talking, well, and my characters, women called Jenny, who's a primary school teacher married to a guy called Sam. We're,

you know, having friends over for dinner. Are mid renovation house and Jenny my character, is convinced that the house is being haunted by a ghost, and so she asks that the other guests stay up until two two, which is when the time of night when the ghost comes along to witness and give their thoughts on what's happening. And so, yeah, it's sort of it's a it's an interesting play. If ghosts exist, why aren't there absolutely loads of them? How do you mean, why aren't they flooding

it into our world in their thousands. A minute later, it came walking round and round, turned on the light and the room was empty. It was a dream. I wasn't asleep. Don't you believe I should have been here.

We've spoken about tables, the tables that you grew up with as a child, coming down and we can close their eyes right now, I can and see this child coming down to the grown up dinner party, or the tables that kind of even prepared for yourself in the face of not being able to have to cook, to have a pearthy meal, finding a table in a town

where you could have a cappuccino. And so the thought that you're in a play right now that is centered around a table, this is something that you think, that's a table, the theme of a table in your life, and the table is very central to our play. I can't go too much into it because it is it's part of the twist. But yeah, I guess kitchen table is central to the sort of family ideal, isn't it. And I guess maybe I put a lot of focus onto it because I don't feel like that table featured

enough in my childhood. But it's definitely something that is important to me. In fact, David and my husband and I are building a house in New York together at the moment, and I'm always talking about this table that doesn't exist yet, which is you know, very very central to the to the whole running of the house. I don't want it to be just a place where food

is prepared. I want it to be where the kids coming from school and they dump their bags on that table and they want to be doing their homework while I'm cooking their food. And it feeling like the engine room of our lives really and where we communicate and share ideas together and emotions, talk about what's happened with our day and unpack what how we're experiencing the world. So yeah, and I guess there there is a little bit of that in the play that I'm doing, which

is set around a table in a kitchen. Well, in a few minutes, you're going to be sitting around a table in the River Cafe. And I always associate you actually with Table leven, which is a table closest to the past. I don't know. I just always used to see you there and would come with him with big groups of people. Do you know you're coming with David? And yeah, it's like my sort of little secret treat.

I guess maybe because it's not in town. It always feels like a special treat coming to the River Cafe. And I live mostly in West London, so it's not never that far, but it's it's not um although I did have one birthday party here. Yeah, it's a very messy affair. Sorry, I think I behaved quite badly that night. What happened, But there was a table, that's a table, that's a very big table. That room actually just practically is a table. Tell me what was that like? That.

I don't know. I think that we were asked never, maybe not me or maybe some of my guests. When I had my kids and lived in the countryside, food and entertaining was massive for me. You know, we had like a few bedrooms, bare bedrooms, and people would come down from London every weekend and I would do, you know, massive meals on our big long table in the dining room and yeah, so that's a lot. So you did,

you know I did. Yeah. We had a house in Gloucestershire, just outside of Stroud, and you know, there's a farmer's market there, so I would go to the farmers market and buy all of the produce and um, yeah, and people would come down and it was all very seasonal fair. But yeah, I love cooking. I'm doing this play here at the moment, and I'm actually living at friend's house. My kids are spending the summer with their dad and

my mom's. But when things are a little bit more normal and we're all living together under one roof, then it's I'd make them every weekend without fail. I'd do a Sunday boast on a Sunday. It's just my mom always, you know, she she wasn't quite as militant about it as I am. But I I just love a Sunday rost. I love the ritual of it. I love getting up early on a Sunday morning and peeling all my potatoes and putting them in the fridge to dry out, and the goose bat and I just love all of the

different bits. And I just love, you know, so usually using the seasonal vegetables and you know, the root vegs in the winter and more salads in the summer. And and also I just think it's really important for my kids. I'm slightly manipulative as well, because I think that they will always come back to me on the weekends, because if they know that that roast dinner is always going to be there at three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon,

they'll always come home. They were the memories of, yeah, you're remembering your mother's I think the memory of a tradition of a Friday night dinner Shabbat or Sunday lunch, and that is, you know, the tradition. You know, I say, in an irregular world, we need regular things. You know that that Sunday election you always look the same meat? Is it always We do quite a lot of chicken, but you know, I do ribs of beef. Sometimes I

do like a pork belly. But I did a twenty four hour um pork shoulder as well, which is very popular in our house. Is that sort of more like in sort of Chinese spices and stuff starn ese and cinnamon, sugar, curklear, the allen you are, you know, it's a ventpicious and sid and picky. But yeah, what you're describing is and also you know the little thing you said, and he said, goose fat. So tell me about the goose fat. What do we do with a goose fat? Well, my roast potatoes.

I peel them, boil them for about six or seven minutes, and then I chucked them in the fridge and let the air come out of them. Goose fat, a little bit of oil into a roasting van until it starts smoking. And then I coaked my potatoes in and chuck them in for for an hour. Well, the rest of the stuff.

My mom said, actually that one of the funniest memories that she has with me is this is my emotional connection to roast inn It's that when I went traveling around Asia and I must have been eighteen or nineteen, and I came back and she'd obviously made a roast inn because that's why I said that I wanted to

come back for. And we sat around the tables as a family, and once we'd finished, my sister went, thanks, Mama, was delicious, gravy was amazing, and I just burst into tears because I had forgotten to put the gravy on. So the rose tradition is something that goes back from your childhood to yours and then to your children. Yeah, but I think even my mom's childhood as well, you know, I think she was sort of raised on roast inners.

And I mean maybe it's because in my family, just the way that things have worked out and my mom being, you know, a single working mother, and that was possibly the one time a week that we all did come together around a table. You know, there wasn't there wasn't much of that. I don't really have memories of sitting around the table as a family, but I do on Sundays. I always asked what is your comfort food? And it is very often food that was cooked for as a child.

A friend of mine who I said it was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because that's what he had with his mother when he came home from school every day, and she died when he was twenty, and that's what he wants to eat. So I think there, I think roast chicken is quite central to everything. It's the center of my world. Looks like a roast chicken. I think. So your table is waiting, and I just want to thank you so much for doing Thank you. We have

to share a table very soon. Kay. To visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go to shop the River Cafe dot co dot uk. River Cafe Table for is a production of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.