Ruthie's Table 4: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

first time the Tate has shown an exhibition twice. Lynette is a writer, a painter and also a magical baker. Today we're sitting here in the River Cafe to talk about food, words, paint, in other words, all the ingredients to make something like Lynette beautiful, cell and ed are

you going to read s? The recipe first, and the recipe of chosen is Polenta almond and lemon cake serves ten four hundred and fifty grams of unsalted butter, softened four hundred and fifty grams of granulated sugar, four hundred and fifty grams ground almonds, two teaspoons vanilla extract, six eggs. The finely grated zest of four lemons, the juice of one lemon, two hundred and twenty five grams of polenta, one and a half teaspoons of baking powder. Preheat the

oven to one hundred and sixty degrees centigrade. Butter and line a thirty centimeter round and seven point five centimeter deep cake pan with parchment paper. Beat the butter and sugar together until pale and light. Stir in the ground almonds and vanilla. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Fold in the lemon, zest and juice, the blenta, baking powder, and salt. Spoon into the prepared pan. Bake for forty five to fifty minutes, or until the cake is set

and deep brown on top. Serve with crem fresh and berries. I'd like to talk about being an artist and how you eat. I think you're here a lot, which is really nice, A fair bit, yeah, but I find that I also I generally feel better if I don't eat out a lot, so I don't. I don't tend to eat out as much when I'm very, very busy when

I'm working, because it's it's so much. I just just physically to regulate my own kind of sleep and everything when I'm trying to get stuff done, having a certain routine with what you're eating and the time you're eating at like I can't eat late. Like for example, the last couple of months, I've been working on a deadline and um, but there's a dead a show. I have a show. I have a show at the Googen Him and Bill Bao the end of my beautiful building. Um, difficult,

complicated building, but wonderful. I like a lot of the contemporary architecture museums. They're great for architecture, not great for hanging stuff on the amazing building. Yeah and yeah. So I've been really busy with that, and I've found that by sticking with a with a kind of a bit of a routine in terms of meals and certain times, I'm just able to get more done and get to bet at a decent hour. It is solitary. Yeah, you know, I don't know if you have other people in the

studio with you. You have a jadline now, but other days when you have a routine that is very structured, so you can quite try to call you up and say Lonett, let's go and have lunch. Would you say I can't, so I probably say yes, yes, but I should, I should really not answer the phone, but I I normally so three days of the week, I'll get up and train with a trainer online and like about sort of training normally around eight o'clock and then breakfast and

then work. Yeah. Yeah, so and do you work straight through you I stopped for lunch. What mornings painting wise or studio wise tend to be a bit slow. I take a while to get warmed up. Do you find the solitude of the day something that you treasure and you liked or do you like nighttime? Are you ready to see It's funny by nighttime, I'm ready to see people, But I also feel like during the day it's solitary. But it's I'm so busy, I'm so in it, I

don't even I kind of forget. I couldn't have anyone there. So yeah, too much work now. But yeah, And you know you're going to one of the great cities for food when you go to Bilbao because Sebastian is right next door. Yeah, and they're fantastic restaurants there. Yeah, great culture of food. Yeah. You travel, you find out about where you're going to look into it first and explore the food. Yeah, when I sent in the cities that

you've really liked food, really liked, so I think. I mean I spent three months in Marseilla, three months on the residency many years ago. The pastries there were out of this world. I remember, the pastries were incredible there. That was one. So back and forth to France quite a lot for many years, and and many trips over the years to the South of Spain as well, which I can I have funny memories of eating there because

we always ate so late. Yes, the food I almost don't remember it because I just remember feeling like we've eaten too late and I don't feel very well. Yeah, so at midnight. Yeah nothing. I don't know how people do it. Indigestion, how you work the next day. Yeah, I've really never understood it. Um. Yes, although a lot of trips to the to the US, which of course

is just so much variety. But yeah, I do love soul food in New York as well, just like going to Harlem and having soul food and these really kind of very down to earth, very chill, very relaxed diners and eateries. There a lot of your friends are so yeah, yeah, I got yeah, artists, curators, writers, that kind of thing. Are you having any shows in New York? Not for the foreseeable. There will be a US tour that I can't really say much about yet. But a couple of

years time. Yeah, I was Richard. My husband had got a prize in the University of Virginia and it's called the Jefferson Prize. And I was washing my hands in the bathroom and a woman came in and she was just awarded the prize as well as the first African American to graduate from law school. And I think it probably was the sixties. It was horrifically late, and I said to her. We started talking and I said, what was harder being a black woman or being a woman

to get this prize? And she said, definitely a woman. At that time, she said there was racism of course in the South, that it was vile and it was strong, but the antagonist for her being a woman. And I was wondering about in the art world, what your experience, you know, just to deviate from from food, what was your experience of being a black woman in Britain as a painter. I mean to be completely honest, it was. It was very very odd in you know, because it

wasn't that not that long ago. But when I think about when I first first was out of art school completely and working away and kind of oblivious to certain things because I never expected a career. I never went into this expecting any kind of success or anything, because you don't. It's it's a crazy path. It doesn't You're

not guaranteed anything. But thinking back to then, the level of invisibility I had, like the fact that I remember being at events and in situations or openings where I would be completely invisible, like nobody would talk to me, someone might try and hand me their coat, someone might ask me to bring them a drink. That that was my abiding memory of say, the period from two thousand and three to maybe two twelve eleven, something like that.

And because I wasn't I mean, nobody really knew who I was or I didn't really have a I mean, in some way, I couldn't. I couldn't get arrested for the first ten years of making work, which was actually really liberating. I don't complain about that because it was actually a really good time to get things done and I was working regardless, I didn't really care, and I had enough going on for me with different projects, really important shows and things that I was involved in during

that time. That kept me very motivated, and I met a lot of wonderful people, mostly US who were and still are really big supporters of mine early on. But it was in the more general art well and certainly in the UK, that invisibility, that thing of being invisible, of people turning their backs on you at dinner, of not talking to you, of not being included in anything because not just because people saw you was an issues based artist or someone who was niche in a way

that they didn't want to engage with. That at some points was difficult, that would that hurt in a certain way, But at the time I can't say I really cared, and that hasn't changed, If anything, it's increased. I really don't care now. And the same people who would turn their backs on me and asked me to take their coats or completely ignore me in the seven two thousand and six and now prostrating themselves on the floor to me,

which I still don't care about. I still don't care, and I think that was that was That's been my abiding mantra is, particularly when things have been really were really difficult, or reached a crisis point in some way, I realized, actually, all of this stuff, it doesn't really matter.

That the thing that I've always really cared about was the work I was doing, the people that I think with, the people that I respect, the people that I work with and who have always been big supporters of mine, and I've been big supporters of theirs, and what we've done together and built together was That's what matters these kind of rather that a scene or a career on art World has never ever mattered, It doesn't matter. It's just it's it's ever been a concern of mine because

it was never mine. It was never something I was a part of. So I kind of to answer your question a very long winded sort of right, I didn't, Yeah, I don't, I don't. Yeah, does it does it? If it doesn't matter to you, doesn't matter that it matters

to other people experiencing it. So you know Edward's story about walking into Vogue and you know, being told to use the side entrance to deliver or something you know that matters, and yeah, you know, And so there's a sort of there is a political aspect to the invisibility that is wrong. It's wrong, and it could be wrong

as a woman. You know, when you know we noticed, you know, we know that we go to parties and a certain kind of person or a young person that's ignored, or a quiet person that's ignored, or a black person that's ignored, or you know, somebody wearing the wrong dress. It and it's great to have the confidence that that is something that your work can see through. But then for other people, yeah, you know who are experience, who

don't have that, it's yeah, no, it's really hard. And I think that's why the things that get you through when you're younger, or you're not as confident, or you don't have the kind of agency will be that circle of people or that circle of support that really even you know, if it was even if it's your family, even if it's your your partner or you know, you need someone to turn to who can say, yeah, I

just saw that. Yeah I get it. I know. And I think because these things still happen, It's not like it doesn't happen to me anymore. It still does, you know. Still, it's that classic thing when people before people know who you are, they don't respect you. I have a problem with that. It shouldn't matter who I am. I don't I'm not someone who goes somewhere I don't believe in. I don't see myself any differently than I did twenty years ago. So I'm not going to go in somewhere

and say do you know where I am? Because that's ridiculous to me. But I shouldn't have to anither anyone else. And it's it's having it's that sense. I mean a friend was telling me a story yesterday of something that happened to them very similar that this, you know, being followed around a store. I mean that that kind of thing. You shouldn't have to go in and prove anything in order to be respected, and that that's the difference. It's I think, was it Nina Simone? You said, you know,

love us, will leave us alone. It's it's simple. What do you make when you make cakes? You know, wow, everything, But my favorite thing to bake is any type of sponge cake because that was really I learned to bake from my mum and she was she did a catering course in the seventies and yeah, she's nurse she's very busy work nights, as did my dad, both nurses, but baking for her was just such a joy. She loved

doing it, and I used to love watching. So I would stand or sit and just watch her do it intensely, and I always wanted to help, and for many years she wouldn't let me because I'd messed it up. But just watching and watching and watching, and those little things that just stay with you forever, like that. Never ever ever opened the oven before a certain point, Yeah, because I could never wait. I was really I wanted to see it. I want to see it rise on what

was happening. And I would always panic and open the oven and then it would sink. And it became a kind of running joke that my cakes would always sink because I was too impatient, and I'd always turn the oven up too high. Yeah. Yeah, but a sponge is really hard to make. Yeah, there's science, it's one of the easiest, you know, recipes, but actually to make a good sponge, as a town would your mother was she

was born in Ghana. She was born in Ghana. Yeah. Yeah, she like, oh, she's amazing, she's wonderful, she does it. She's she's my my hero. Did she come as a young child here? No? No, no, she came in her twenties, as did my dad. Well, my dad was a bit older, but they came in the nineteen sixty They met and Gharana married and Garner moved here to work as nurses settled down and we all came along in the seventies.

There's three of us. I have two older brothers. So going back to the early days, what was it like growing up in your household if your parents were both nurses and they were working. Ye? Did they work nights and days or ships or did you nights? Yeah? So there was always one of them home. Would you have a family? Yeah? All around the table one thing I mean we did. We did at the weekends more I guess, and when they were both home than we'd all be

around the table. But weekends, I remember, breakfasts on the Sunday were real everyone together. Oh omelets. My dad made a very good omelet, a kind of everything, but the kitchen sink over which was very good, very very good. He used to put baked beans into the open instress, which was bonkers, but yeah, it's really good. Would they have cooked in Ghana? Do you think or did they really? You know they both? I think they both always cooked

my dad. I mean we we we ate a lot of gunny and food when I was a kid, like foo food which I can't eat now I don't. I don't like it anymore. I think the traditional way it's made in Ghanna is with pounded Um. I'm going to get this wrong. Cassava and plantain together and it's it's pounded until it becomes like a big sort of Doughey mass and you have it with with stew or soup with meat and fish. Um, it's very heavy. And did you grow up with other friends who were gunny and

it was there a community? Yeah? I mean we had all of our my parents had a large sort of network circle of friends. And where where was this in London? South South? I remembered spending a lot of time in markets, supermarkets, shops. My my dad used to go and buy his meat like from the Hellal butchers, like because he was Muslim, so he would always we always ate Hellal meat. And one of my abiding memories was in Baalom before it gentrified, before it became posh, when Balam was still a market

surrounded by some really odd shops here and there. Um, I love I love Old Ballom. Old Ballam was quite magical, but mostly because there was this my dad's favorite butcher was in Ballom, and he would go in and inspect all of the goats heads, like for the goat's head souperies to make, and so each he'd be there, the scull be picking up all these goats heads and it's like my dad was inspecting the teeth. He's just looking at the faces, looking at the eye. I just it

was so bonkers, but it became so normal. I mean, I just were going in and inspecting goats heads with my dad. Was a main memory of shopping with my dad. And then we go to the market that was alongside that butcher's where where they had like the yams, the plantains, everything, And there was a little guinny and food shop there as well. I think it's long gone now. That sold all of the pepper sauce and the dubiously acquired dried fish that we were entirely short was legal. Yeah, it's

very good though, it's delicious, but I'm not sure. I mean, it used to be very easy to bring a lot of things in from Ghana like people I have a you know, things like snails and you know, the dried fish and everything, all these things that you can't really get here. I think it's a lot harder. You know, there's there's dogs at the airport and stuff to stop your briefings. Really but yeah, but did you get to Yeah, yeah, we went back a few times when I was when

I was young, and it was yeah. I mean the markets there are extraordinary. I mean it's really um a lot of action, possibly too much action for me, but yeah, because my auntie actually worked and worked at one of the markets, and I remember going to visit her there and just yeah, it was extraordinary, really extraordinary. A lot of noise, a lot of chaos. Well you only cakes that you only made, were you allowed? When I was younger, only cakes? Really, I don't think anyone trusted my cooking.

My my my dad was very particular. He's he passed away twenty sixteen, but he was very particular about what he would and wouldn't eat. So he could never get his head around white sauce. And I think this is kind of a guinny and male thing. White sauce is somehow not correct to him. So anything. If I put anything in front of him that had like a white sorce I'd seem to remember once trying to give him I'd made a fish pie or something, and my mom liked my fish pie. She could eat my fish pie.

My dad just couldn't even look at something with a white It had to be red or brown. So yeah, but I did. I as I got older, I did used to do things. I'd come and deer the roast, like we'd have like roast lamb or roast chicken, and then if it burned, it was my fault. So I used to like watch it religiously, and you know, take it out and turn it and stuff. Did you paint as a as a teenager? What did you know that? I always made things. I always did things with my hands.

I always was always trying to make something, usually out of cardboard or I mean drawing pictures. I did a lot of drawing as a teenager. I started painting when I was on my foundation course encouraged. They did not encourage it. I mean they could see what I was into. I think my dad was just baffled by the whole thing. My mom was far more tolerant in a way. She used to sit for me a lot. I wish you could find those paintings. Actually, I don't know. That must

be buried in my parents' house somewhere. I did lots of paintings of my mum, Drawings of my mum um pretty accurate, actually, I think. I think at that point they thought maybe there was something in it, you know, because I could get a likeness, and school was like, um, yeah, yeah, there was a I remember my high school, my secondary school had a very very good art and drama department. They had converted a whole building into just art drama,

which I remember thinking it was amazing. It was brand new at the time, and it was the early late eighties, early nineties, but it was brand new and that was kind of unheard of around there. And so you went to Falmouth. I went to Falmouth and then to the Royal Academy, which was what was the difference was Foalnmouth was Foalnmouth was very very calm. It's quite far away, very far, very calm. I loved it. I had a

really good time there. It's amazing to be by the water to study so in the somewhere that was just so different to anywhere I'd ever been, so I was born and raised in London, so it was I didn't want to go anywhere that was a city because I felt like I was in the city. You know, this is London was so important to me. Yeah, it's where it's kind of the end of the country in Cornwall, which is I think the most. They do say that it has more weather than anywhere else in the country.

They have percentage wise, more more of everything, more more weather, they used to say that, but more weather in Cornwall than anywhere else in the country. And the climb it was quite insane, like it would rain, it could rain non stop for weeks on end, months on end, and then it could be really tropical as well. It was like the most tropical point. There were palm trees, sandy beaches. It really does, or at least it did back then,

feel like paradise. It was still quite sort of cut off in the way that it felt because we didn't have mobile phones and stuff yet there wasn't. I mean a couple of people had one, but no one else did. I'd been going to pay phones and stuff to make calls, which seems odd now with one phone in the house. Yeah, and it just had that nice feeling of being at the end of the of the earth. To me, it felt like I was in the middle of nowhere, which

was so liberating. With the tradition of painters, you know, yes, yeah, and Nicholson, yeah, Yeatrick, Karen and York. Yeah, it was a community, yeah, tradition. Yeah. And we had very great We had great tutors, really good teachers who were who were you know, living down there, very different pace, and they'd all a lot of them had been in London and just study, you know, as artists in London and just thought, no this time to time together. Um a

lot of pasties. They had no money, money, Oh my goodness. So that the old version, the traditional version was you'd have this semicircle shaped pastry with a sort of woven edge that's quite thick, like a twisted edge that's thick that you could hold onto, and then inside traditionally you

would have half sweet and half savory. And it was for the miners, I guess, to to be able to hold the edge, which is the crust that they wouldn't eat because it was dirty because they're holding it there, and then they would eat the savory part and then they would have dessert afterwards. Now, of course they don't really do them like that anymore, because yeah, it wasn't ideal to put the sweet and savory into the same thing and split it. But yeah, we had a little Yeah,

I think that. Um so that's further my step. Someone who was at the Royal College chargers design airline tableware that was like a pasty kind of eat the table. We used a lot of energy because we walked everywhere. On one level, I was the fittest I've ever been, probably also the most malnourished. Kind of malnourished, but very fat. I remember one time we scraped our pennies together to go for a fancy meal because we thought, well, I

think we know, we didn't even scrape pennies. I think we We said we were going to use our credit cards that night, the emergency credit cards that were student credit cards, so there was a you know, you had about ten pounds to spend on it anyway, And we went to a fancy fish restaurant and took one look at the menu and we were horrified because everything cost

more than ten pounds. And I ordered the prawns because I thought, oh, this will be you know, it's not often I get to have prawns too expensive, and they brought us. I had a plate and the plate it was twelve pounds. You know this there's a lot of money. And there were six prawns on it, and I remember being so upset. We were just so horrified because I think we all got the prawns and we were all just like, we're going to be hungry. We can be really hungry after it, and we can't have anything else.

That's all of our money gone into these prawns. Were so angry, but we left and I think we had toast. Was still so hungry and we got back. That has a very dead strong identity a Cornish food. And so when you went back to London was it a big difference food? Did you live at home when you came back? I did. Yeah, I lived at home for the first year and a half at the R. So when did you have your first apartment? Okay, so I shared a flat with two friends. Yeah, And what did you cut

when you had your own kitchen? What's that like? Well, they, as I recall, if I remember correctly, they were both vegetarian. So I kind of fell into step a little bit. I didn't want to. I felt a bit bad bringing animals. Yeah, I couldn't deal with the horror in their eyes every time I get meat out, although I think I did used to cook chicken from time to time, but yeah, I don't. I don't remember. Actually, it's strange that period of time, that was it because we used to eat

at the RA a lot. The RA canteen was amazing back then at the RA schools canteens incredible. Yes, yeah, it's the same one, same, the same place under the in the dungeon under the building, and they had the most incredible canteen there. We have a common thread. We have many things in common, you and I, but one of them is our huge respect for James Baldwin. Yeah, and he was, you know, from me, a formidable character and absolutely history. What is it? What was your linked to?

Oh gosh, I I remember living in crouch End. I was coming to the end of my MFA at the

R and I just I can't. I think I just stumbled on the fire next time, and I remember sitting down and reading it in an afternoon on the porch of the It's very strange flat we lived in and It was quite an odd design because we were our sort of porch area was the roof of the place underneath us, and we were surrounded by um, the backs of houses, and so he had the sky opening up above you, but then these backs of houses and then Alexandra Palace in the distance. It was kind of a

really amazing view. But you're kind of in this amphitheater as well. So but and normally that bothered me having the feet that people were watching. But I was so I remember being so engrossed in this book over the course of an afternoon that I just sat there and read the whole thing. And Yeah, that that was really that stayed with me, That gave me, gave me a lot of strength. You went upstairs to the pastry kitchen, what was that like? It's incredible up there. It's huge now,

it's extraordinary to see. It's it's such a simple, tidy, neat environment to see all these huge, exciting things coming out of and making others cakes because we're doing an event tonight. Yeah, they actually had the take so welcome to the pastry kitchen hidden lair upstairs. My name's Bella Tubs and I'm the head pastry chef at the River Cafe cooking and baking. The net is an amazing irons, but also there's a great baker, so she wanted to

see the lenta, almond and lemon cake. So I'll leave it to you guys, how do I make a plent cake? So we cream the equal parts butter and sugar together, and we tend to add all of our lemon zest and lemon juice at that point, just to make sure it's like fully infused into the butter, make sure it's

beautifully light and fluffy before our kitchen. He's over there, and we'd yeah, just leave the butter and sugar creaming for at least a good ten minutes before we then start adding our eggs and are all our dry ingredients. You can ground the almonds really finely into a beautiful flower with the plentyin, and then yeah, slowly but surely add the sort of dry stuff with the eggs. Right, And so is this because again I was always taught you fold, you fold the powder in, you fold the flower,

you fold them. Does it make a difference with a plantiquet because the folding was to keep the air in or something to keep it. So we use a paddle in our mixer. So essentially that's the same sort of process as folding. I think if you were to do it my hand, sort of very romantic wast speed. Is

it the essence in the oven straight away? So yeah, we use a paddle and then incorporate all the ingredients together, line a tin on the base and side, and then in the oven for an hour and a half at one fifty and a half one fifty and is that depending on size. So this is for us, this is it, And yeah, that will tend to serve about twenty portions in the restaurant, give or take. But it's lovely to

have a breakfast. It's a really nice cake. You're feeling very tacative after tea or I'm trying to think of any other time of day. But yeah, and then we serve it with this gorgeous Taranos sauce over the blood oranges and a dollop of creme fresh. It sounds good. It's the most beautiful cake I think we serve on in this adulty side of the restaurant and school, just with the yellows and the sort of burnt oranges. And this is because a River cafe but up until about

four years ago, we never had a pastry chef. You know, we never had a pastry kitchen. We just all made cakes. You know. It's the idea that every chef had to make a cake, you know, and had to make it a tart, and it was all part of the thing. And then, first of all, some of them, I don't know, I feel like that, but some people are really good at cooking, you know, beef for lamb or fish or vegetables,

and they don't like making cakes. And then some people or just love making cakes and don't like doing doing everything else. So yeah, we and then I guess we got bigger, and then we had that space. And then you used to come in the morning and somebody would be rolling out, you know, pizza dough or pasta filling and next to a nemesis and alarm to go off. I have to stop making the tomato sauce and go take something out of the oven. So we've got very

grown up and very professional had a pastry kitchen. Yeah, and it's all good, but it's a little bit far away because sometimes we don't go it up there. And yeah, so it's a dream, Yeah, it's a dream. To have that much space, Yeah, to bake it. And it's quite calm, isn't it. Yeah, when you go up there, they're making Yeah, they're making all those cakes. Durro so told me that you you cook with rigor that you when you bake your cakes, that there's a kind of discipline and a

kind of organization and away. So maybe you were brought up that way or do you think it's something you've always Yeah, very much, so, very much so. My dad was My dad was a kind of cook who would stand over something and chick cook. And you can send anything else to be a dereliction of duty. Like you don't leave your post. You just stand there and stare at it. If it's boiling an egg, cooking a curry, you stand there and you don't leave it because it's

going to burn. I've chilled out a bit with that. But there are certain things you make that you have you can't leave alone, like porridge, Like I had porridge this morning. When have you been in doing your painting all day? And then you do have friends, would you like to cook it? So the last I did cook dinner for a bunch of friends a few weeks ago, and I'm very very indecisive and probably not not the

most confident of cooks. So I cook. I always cook like five things and the hope that somebody will like one thing and eat it. So I don't do that. With your painting, I do pretty much. Yeah, yeah, it's the same way. Paint really a lot. Just do a to figure out which one works. So I cooked a venison pie topped with like mash. So I did that, um, roast chicken. I forgot what the other thing? Vegetables do you like? I love cooking kale and carola narrow and

things like that. I kind of almost dick thementt hot water to drag them out so they're almost raw, which drives my mom insane because she hates it. She's like, it's tough, it's just drewey. Why don't you cook? I was always saying that, Mom, you have to see them in the goodness. You need this, you know, you're you're you need you need all these vitamins, and you have to just get through it because it's good for you. I don't know if that's true, but I think it's

always always. You know, in England they boil everything. They used to, Yeah, boil everything for hours. As a friend of mine used to say, you know when when suddenly people started working, they say, oh, we only you know, gosh, we don't have time to cook. So we're only going to be able to cook the vegetables for half an hour. Yeah, but then you know, then the Italians do cook them for a long time. They don't have anything authentic except

for pasta the time. Vegetables are usually cooked for a long time, but they're usually stewed in olive oil, or if they're if they're boiled and they're boiled to they're quite soft, but then a lot of olive oil eleven after that. Yeah, we talked about food and growing up ban Ghana and painting and traveling and cooking, and so I think we also think how food does affect our memories. And it's been great learning about your life through through

food and your memories. And I suppose the last question to you, and if you were to say that there was a food that you might turn to when you need comfort, So food that not necessarily when you're hungry, but when you feel that somehow eating something will make you feel better, Maybe you feel more loved, less tired, less lonely, less invisible whatever it is. Is there a food that you would go to for comfort? Yeah? Yeah, there is actually, and it's it's hard to get right.

So um, you have to buy the right ones and they have to be the right level of right. Spence is killing me. They can't be too right and they can't. Okay, okay, give me quiz. It's something that looks like one thing but is actually another. It's like a large version of another. Ye, but did you say you got the outset it? They look like banana zad Rogers, so zad Rogers, our producers just tell my my it. Don't even let me get

a story. I don't think so. So um. But the particularly the the the red what we call the red plantains to the ripe one because it's and I love it because it reminds me of my mom and my dad and being at home and it was always a real treat and my mom will still cook it when I go home. But you you, we tend to do it the lower cholesterol version. So cut them and roast them in the oven. But like I said, they have

to be at the right point of right. Nothing I know out of the skin, no oil, nothing, just in a non stick, a really good non stick pan, because I'm the wise that you won't get them off, and then you serve them with peanuts. Oh yeah, peanuts and plantains. That's it. Okay, yeah, comfort, very comforting. Okay, Dad, tomorrow morning in the pain kitchen, show us how you do, and thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. It's pleasure, thank you, absolute pleasure. The River Cafe Lookbook

is now available in bookshops and online. It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks. The River Cafe Lookbook Recipes for cooks of all ages. Ruthie's Table

four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.