Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adamized Studios.
Hello everyone, and welcome to an evening with Ruthie Rogers and Martha Stewart on the River Cafe. Look book for Ruthie's Table four podcast. Award winning chef and best selling cookbook author Ruthie Rogers launched The River Cafe in London in nineteen eighty seven.
A week ago today, I was in New York with Martha Stewart doing a live podcast.
Marta Stewart is the founder of the first multi channel lifestyle Come.
About Cooking, About Magazines, about.
Author of books about each other and our careers and food.
Reaching more than one hundred million devoted fans on a monthly basis through her magazines, television shows, books and products for the home, Martha is a go to source for the homemaker. Please join me in welcoming Ruthie and Martha.
Imagine for a moment you are Martha Stuart. It is nineteen ninety two, and you're the most important woman in.
The world of food.
You are beautiful, you're funny, and you say yourself that your best quality is your curiosity. So maybe it was that curiosity which made you drive twenty five minutes from your hotel in London to a small restaurant in a warehouse on the Thames, which had opened just a few years before, run by two women whose only culinary experience was cooking for their families. Now imagine how these women Rose Gray and Ruthie Rogers felt when Martha Stuart booked
a table for lunch. They were anxious, excited, and probably a bit overwhelmed. To day, being here together on this autumn day in New York means more to me than I can possibly say.
This is a long time ago. Nineteen wouldn't I first? Nineteen ninety two? That's it seems like yesterday, But it's actually was a long time ago. And I was a divorce a and my first big trip to London after I got divorced and started my own company, I met men, really nice men, and I read and I read in your book. I read in your book you who You're and some of them are in that list, and it's really fun to see that well or all I looked online,
you know, but yeah, people you're grateful to. But like I did, I did not have an affair with Michael Caine. But I did have affair. But I did have an affair with one of his best friends, and Terry Donovan, No Neil the photographer, remember him. He was great and he sort of introduced me to the nice crowd in London. Yeah, and we had.
That Michael Is said, Michael's amazing.
Oh. I went to Michael Kaine's house for the weekend. I had so much fun. It was a big house party, you know. And when I think about those days, I can't even believe that was me, because it was. It was, but it was so much fun. But we but we ate at that We ate at this restaurant that was so exquisite because there's two ladies dressed in their stiff white chef's jackets and they looked really great and they spoke really nicely to everyone, and the food was just
delicious and really well presented. I just loved it. I loved it for the first moment that I walked into the restaurant.
On TV.
Yes I did. We must post that segment tomorrow. Okay, you have it still, of course, that's it said, it's film, you film.
Okay, I'm still looking for the baby.
We have a big library.
I tried to find that.
It's so funny because I'm working in my hundreds book and I get this book in the mail called The River Cafe Look Book, and I open it up and I say, oh shit, she beat me to it. And what I had already discussed with my editor what I wanted to do, and I wanted to I wanted to make the food in the book it's my hundred favorite recipes. I wanted to make the food look like art. And You've done it, so I can't do it now. I
have to think of a whole new idea for the photographer. No, but I really love the picture so much.
We took all the photographs of the finished dishes, and trying to do it step by step was patronizing, boring, and we just weren't very good at it. So we thought, you know, what would be a book that might inspire people to cook, and not necessarily just children, without intimidating them, but inspiring them to cook. And it has a kind of backstory, this book, which is to do with someone bought me these books for people who have had brain
damage or autism or anything connected with neurology. And I'll just show you very quickly. It's about pairing images. And so we thought what we would do is do a book in which you just had images next to each other. So, why is looking at a vase of wilting tulips something that connects you with spaghetti? Vongelais with red chilis? And why would have you know burnt matches somehow mean something to you? With lamb chops, there's something that stops you.
And so what we did was we had the photographer do all the food photographs, Matthew Donaldson, and then we didn't commission these photographs. We went through his archives and so we went through the archives and we found photographs that we thought we could possibly match with the cooked food. And then we put the recipes at the back and with kind of very Martha Stewart like instructions, which is advice, which is to begin by reading a recipe twice, ending
by now put on your apron and wash your hands. Anyway, this is what we did and this is our book.
It was very nice production.
I said to someone who helps me, I said, can you go and get a book by Martha? Not one of the new ones, but just go and try and find a book. And they came back with Housekeeping six things to do when.
You wake up in the morning. Do you know what they are?
I know, wake your bed, get rid of the clutter. This is this dates it because it says sort your mail, which I thought just.
I disorted my mail this afternoon email letter. Really had a letter mail every day, thank you.
I haven't had a letter.
If anybody wants to write here fan mail, I'd love to sort it. Then I could have something to sort.
And I have to sort through all that mail I have saw it to. Stephanie gets all the like the fan mail. We get a lot of fan mail. I mean, it's it's amazing where they where it comes from. And then and then the guy who pays all the bills, he gets all the bills. Don't you get bills? No, oh geez, you're lucky.
I think that Housekeeping have eye. You've seen it. It is when we've been reading it every night wherevery bak comes to the house.
It's about that homekeeping handbook.
I love it is the best tells you there's you know, And I thought you know. And I was talking to a yet very young friend of mine and I was telling him that that a lot of us whose mother's perhaps really became involved in feminism. Right, so in the maybe the sixties, really didn't want to teach us how to sew a button, you know, or clean a spill when it's fresh.
Well, we know that, you know, it's easier.
But I think that what Martha really did teach us that it's okay to do what we want to do, but also know how to do something domestic.
And I think it's very important.
It's a huge Like my friends don't know to use a squeegee in their showers.
What's a squeechee?
They don't know that, And then you get into their shower and it's all grungy, you know, and the glass looks all cloudy if only you use a squeegee. My grandchildren use squeegees just to see them, and they're beautiful showers. They're cleaning them everything. You know, since they were one, they were using squeegees. But that book is great. The Home Heaping hand Book is great. And decorators, I'm Michael Smith,
who's the fanciest fanciest decorator on earth. He gives that book to his clients and they sit down and they read it so they can learn how to take care of those fancy houses that he designs for them. I wish I could read my first Twitter recipes because I was a really big fan of Twitter when it came out. I still have the original stock. I think I've gotten paid fifty four dollars a share, but I'm not sure. I haven't gotten any money yet from Elon. Let's let's
see if he pays, if he pays those debts. But I had so much fun writing those recipes. Try to do a recipe in eighty characters, It was really hard.
So Martha, can you tell me about your family? Can you tell me about growing up in a household?
Did you well? I grew up with mom and dad both in Nutley, New Jersey. Mother was a school teacher. She taught sixth grade at the Washington School in Nutley, New Jersey, and she went back to teaching when she had her sixth child. Right when that sixth child, Laura was old enough to go to kindergarten, my mother started teaching again. She took off, like I think eighteen years to have six kids, but she substituted during that time
because she didn't like staying home that much. Right father, Dad was a pharmaceutical salesman, like I said once, he was a drug salesman. And it's not exactly the right thing, missay. But but mother cooked every meal?
How did she do that?
She she was organized. And Martha I was the oldest daughter, so I was. There was a brother, a daughter, and a boy girl, boy girl all the way down. And I learned how to cook at her side, and I would help, of course. But the kitchen was the hub of our home, and it was a really ugly kitchen. My father he renovated the kitchen himself, and and he put down pink linoleum squares on the floor pink. And he put a bathroom, a little sink and toilet right
off the breakfast nook. We had a nook where we all sat with a big picture window looking out at the garden. And then he put birch cabinets which were they were okay, except that he put very ugly hardware on them, and then pink for micah countertops, which which was not nice, and and on that's all one side of the kitchen and one little oven one with a broil or in it. You know, this is for eight people right here. That that well, I guess that was
the nineteen fifties. That was the renovation of fifties kitchen. It looked like a oh, we had it, and it's still there. Have been I haven't been inside the house. I've gone to visit the house since my mother sold it, but I'm sure it's still there. It was, it was well built, but they must have put new counters in because that pink was heart was hideous.
But but you know, it's just before we go back to your mom is. I did a podcast with Alfonso cur On, the film director did Roma, and it's very interesting because he talked about the difference between the American culture of the kind of middle class wealth or growth, and the Mexican and it also reminded me of Italy that he said that in America, if you had more money, you had bigger kitchens, you had a huge fridge, you have two ovens, you'd have walk in this and you know,
that's how you showed your wealth. In Mexico, and I think probably in Italy you could go to quite grand houses and have a very simple kitchen, really really small, but you had more help.
That was the way help. You just had more domestics.
So his whole well if you've seen Roma, it is about, you know the life of the domestic where we had.
You had no your mother had no help. So when was she shop? How did she work?
Well, we went shopping. It was Friday morning. Friday morning with mister Mouse from next door, this German baker from next door, and he had a big buick a mouse and he was he and his wife would take us, would drive us because we only had one car and dad took the car to work. So they would take us to the co op that's where we shopped and uh and load up the car with a week's supply
of groceries. And we also had a large garden and so that that was only you know, during the warm weather though, it was the garden and my mother did a lot of canning and preserving. We had a large freezer in the basement, a great big freezer, and we also had a large refrigerator in the basement where overflow was kept. Yeah. And when my brother wasn't skinning muskrats in the in the laundry sink, he was a trapper. He put himself through college on his on the fur,
the fur that he trapped, can you imagine. And I was the best skinner, So I did a lot of this skinning. I imagine that I skinned muskrats. They were dead by the time I got them. Thank god I didn't.
Have to get You learned how to skin a muskrats? Do you learn that for life?
Is that something you never forget. I'm really good. I'm really good at killing the chickens and the geese and all of that stuff.
So you grew up in this house, so it's not a surprise that you taught everybody how to change your light bulb and how to make it.
I did all that stuff. I did all that stuff. I'm still not very good at plumbing, and I'm not very good at electricity, but I can do all the other stuff.
Yeah, so tell me more about growing up in them.
Well, the house was, it was. It was a fun house, you know, because you you like the old Polish joke where what's a what's a Polish vacation? Do you know what that is? And please don't take this badly. I'm not big at hit. I have polish one. It's sitting on your neighbor's stoop, and that's a vacation. And that's what we We sat next door on the Italian Stoop where we sat next door on the Irish Stoop, and we had we ate everybody's food. We were. It was
a very nice neighborhood. And I learned a lot. I learned how to roast the potato the best way you know. That was that was important to know how to do that. And I also learned how to make beautiful, beautiful yeast spreads from mister Mouse and his basement. He had a big bakery down in his basement. And I still have his bread making bowl, the big yellow ware bowl in
which I which I made all my dough. And for Thanksgiving, I'm giving my whole staff, I'm giving them all panatoni, which is which is a recipe that I learned from mister Mouse a long time ago, and it's good.
So if you had all that background, which does really explain a lot, I didn't know that because there were a lot of people grew up without any of that knowledge.
We fished. We went fishing and would bring home one hundred bluefish and we would freeze those bluefish and we could eat bluefish for a lot, a lot of bluefish. I like bluefish actually, And we would also we had farmer relatives in southern New Jersey that had cows and grew corn, really good corn. Being a Polish background, you learn a lot about agriculture, and you learn a lot about cooking and preserving. And every night, all of us, yes,
dinner was important, and conversation at the dinner was important. Oh, everything from current events to what was on the Shadow Nose to this radio program. We had a radio, but not a television. We were the last family on the street to get a television. We would have to sneak out and visit our neighbors to watch TV.
When I interviewed Nancy Pelosi, she said she'd never sat down to a meal without a Oh.
Well, we sat down to a pink for mica table in the nook of the of the kitchen nook. It was called the breakfast nook, but it was a large enough table for eight people.
And did the dishes afternoon, And.
Yes, I did the dishes, and the homework was at the kitchen table, and Mom would sit there with her one cigarette. She was so sexy. She sat there and after dinner, after everybody was in bed except for Martha who was cleaning up. And I was also sewing a lot too, because I've made my own clothes. Mom would see, asked my sisters, and my mother would sit there with one cigarette, her Chesterfield cigarette in her fingers, and I loved how she looked. I thought it was the greatest.
I never smoked, no, no, but that was only one a day.
Did your father cook?
Dad made breakfasts, but you would you know. He would make eggs with smiley faces made out of Marachine cherries and green pepper, some lips, you know, to Laura's down to the kitchen. And he had an intercom in the house. If you ever read Cheaper by the Dozen, it was a fabulous book about a father who had twelve children, and it was written in like Montclair, New Jersey. Dad would would make believe he was that father.
And uh, well, what about the intercom.
The intercondess rise and shine. I still remember that. I'm not allowed to say that in my house at all, So that the early years, I'm getting silly. This is very silly, because it is, but it is a childhood based on real good I mean, we were brought up on fresh good food. Yes, this is life in the house in the suburbs and the what was your name for? What was Martha? Casteira, Castira.
What do you think they were? Did you have a grandmother?
Oh yeah, I had two grandmothers.
Just one of the other things. Was she important?
Well, Grandma Grandma Helen lived down the street, so she and she made the best gaffilter fish. She would bring home the giant carp that would sit in the bath. Of course, the most delicious moose. The moose of carp that was the turned out to be the gaffilter fish with a wonderful sauce. She was. She was great. And the other grandmother, grandmother, Grandma Raskowski, lived in Buffalo, New York, and she lived next door to a slaughterhouse, so I
got to see how animals were slaughtered. Early on. We would peek through the wooden fence and see the cows coming in and all of that. But I learned. I learned a lot about how to treat animals and how not to treat animals. And also she was She would go to the farms up in New York State near Buffalo and and bring home the most beautiful golden cherries. And she would do all canning because they didn't have freezers, but they did. She did amazing. Oh yeah, It was incredible.
I learned how to be a good cannor from her.
How do you be a good canna?
Well, the preparation on the sterilization of the jars and making sure everything is impeccable and so that we won't get sick eating you know, tainted food, And that was impressed on us a lot.
About how your grandparents born in Poland, yes, all of them, so they brought that with them. So that was what it was growing up in that household. And then when you left, did you miss that? Was that not at all?
Not at all, Because I got married when I was nineteen. I fell in love at eighteen and got married as quickly as I could possibly get married and get out of the house and start my own house. It was fun. It was a lot of fun. And I cooked everything all the time, did you oh yeah? And dinner parties cool?
Did your husband cook?
No, no, he didn't, but he liked to eat.
With a large family and the kind of life you had, I think I might know the answer to this question.
But did you go to restaurants?
No? No, no, he had no money to go to restaurants. Six kids, all preparing to go to college. There was no time. My big treat for my dad. My dad loved good food, and he went to restaurants because he would take his doctors out that he was selling drugs to whatever. So he got to experiment and visit restaurants in New York City. But he would bring me home like a pomegranate from Chinatown.
And so when did you start going to restaurants day?
Well, as soon as I could get to work, I went to work seriously. Probably when I was around thirteen. I started to model in New York City. A girl across the street was a model and a ballerina in New York and she said, Martha, you should really come see my agent. She'd love you. So I went to see this lady. I lean forward and she accepted me as a as a kind of a point yeah, part time model. So I would I would work after school and on Saturdays, I would work maybe modeling live at Bond.
Would tell her it was fun, and you know it was like instead of fifty cents an hour, I was making more like twenty dollars an hour in New York and that's that was a lot of money. And then I got some TV commercials, and that's what really paid. It paid for my entire college education. The residuals. In those days, it was very lucrative. So I did that until I went to Barnard College. When you started eating out, oh yes, and boyfriends you know, would take me out
to dinner. We would have nice dinners different places. I remember going, oh like New York. Well, one of my boyfriends, the guy I actually married, lived in the Ritz Tower. And the Ritz Tower on Park Avenue in fifty seventh Street had the pavion downstairs. That was his lunch room and afast was sent up to his apartment and dinner if you wanted to. But we ate in the pavion. That was very nice, and there were other lovely French
restaurants to eat at. There was only one Japanese restaurant that I remember downtown on like fifty sixth Street, but I ate it. A Japanese restaurant uptown on one hundred and twentieth Street in Amsterdam called Aki that was very good. So I started to experiment with all different cuisines early on. As soon as I could, I started to eat unusual foods.
I think that that also is when you can pay for your own meal, when you can go out to a restaurant. Is it kind of almost a measure of your success. Isn't it that you know that you you know, wad paid? But it was, But it is very different now, right, What do you take your children out to restaurants?
Oh, they love to go out restaurants. Yeah, they love.
Fine food, two grandchildren.
Yes, especially Japanese food. They have very very good taste.
Do you ever order in?
I have never ordered never. I just don't do that. And I think it's during COVID. I think there was a pizza one night that somebody ordered in. But I cooked for the first hundred days of COVID, I cooked for I kept three people in my house with me. I kept my head gardener Ryan, he's not bad to have around, and I kept my driver, Carlos, and I kept my housekeeper, Elvira, and I cooked. I cooked for them all meals and we actually had a lovely time.
And I don't think it's.
Bad when I say I don't order in, I don't so judge it because I see my kids.
Do my kids do.
When I go into a restaurant to take out that's lined up on the counter. Yeah, maybe it's just not my habit to order it.
But I think that your mother probably hasn't. Has she have any of your mothers? Do you think it might be really generational? Because it is, but it goes back to your mother. It is really hard to work cold day or as many people you know work the night shift or have to go to work. You know, the image that we all have that everybody should sit down and eat a home cooked meal.
It's really hard.
It is really hard, and I think judge who don't do it isn't fair the.
People who do go home and put a good meal on the.
Table, and also respect the ones who can. I do you know, because I think maybe you'd prefer to do homework with your kid and cook a meal, or maybe, as I said, you have to leave at five to go work at Amazon, or you know that it's a tough world outbout going back, And so you went to Barnard, you get married, and then when did the thought of actually all the knowledge that you had from your mother and from your past and your experience, when did that
come into the idea of actually you do that full time?
Oh that took a while because I took some detours, like to Wall Street, I learned how to learn how to be a common stockbroker. And I traveled a lot and tasted foods all over the world and fell in love with different cuisines and tried to learn how to how to make those things. That was all more hobby than profession. And then I then I guess. Let me see, I was already forty when I wrote my first book, So yeah, I was old by the time I wrote my first book. I was.
I was thirty eight when I started really Cafe.
Yeah, yeah, so we're late bloomers. We're going to colleges would call you a late bloomer, late bloom I think they called me a late blueber.
Probably when I was eighteen. Anyways, it was like fourteen.
But I think that it is interesting how the two of us, you know, we didn't go I didn't go to cooking school, and I certainly didn't have the background that you had.
And I had been maligned for not having gone to cooking school. And I had been maligned for not knowing how to do this or do that. But my best team have you been mindlind like crazy, but well, you know, getting advice to not having Yeah, just because I didn't have an I didn't have a culinary education.
I didn't so very male at that time.
Oh it was very male. But I don't want to get into that stuff because that I don't hold any grudges and it's a fact, except yes, it is a fact. Yeah. It was kind of crazy because I learned from watching. I'm a really good observer and I have had the opportunity in my career with the TV shows to have the finest chefs in the world cooking with me. And Nobu even gave me a sushi jacket because he thought I did very well with a sushi knife and the fish. He let me cut sushi behind his bar on fifty
seventh Street. That's pretty high praise. But that's the kind of thing I like to learn from watching and learning with the finest of the you know, the finest chefs in the world.
So what happened when you were forty? What was the act?
Well, I decided I would write a book, and I wrote I was catering. I was doing a lot of catering.
Catering, Yes, oh yeah, when did that start?
That started in my mid thirties.
You just had that start that I.
Retired from Wall Street and I had to do something. So I started a catering business, which probably I should have stayed in Wall Street and you know, run General Electric or something, but just just in retrospect it would be sort of fun. But moved to Silicon Valle. Catering is the worst job on earth, and it's sort of like being a stockbroker. All you're doing is paying attention to an individual at a specific time and and it's all it's all about money and getting the stuff done
on time. And it was it was a pretty horrible business. But you're building a restaurant every night and tearing it down at the end of the evening and loading it into the car. And I knew my marriage was over the night I drove back into the driveway on Turkey Hill Road and nobody came out to help. That was I knew it was over. But that's what That's what
happened because I was devoted to the work. And then that's when I started thinking, what can I do to make something that my children, my grandchildren and grandchildren might know their grandma for And that was to write a book Entertaining.
Entertaining that nice book is a really nice book.
So that was published in nineteen eighty two. It's forty years old this year, forty years old.
Food is alleviating hunger, food is political. It's also comfort. And so my last question to you, my darling woman, is when you need comfort, is there food you turn to?
Probably the bowl of eggs in my kitchen.
How would they?
Well? I raised my own chickens, and I raise my own eggs, and the eggs are so delicious and no matter how you cook them, they're good.
Yeah, we'll see you today as a comfort. Martha Stewart, Thank.
You, so great to see you too after.
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 iHeart Radio and
Adamized Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,