Ruthie's Table 4: Stella McCartney

all here together. Stella's mother, Linda, was like her daughter, a woman with conviction, imagination and passion, A pioneering chef. I wish I had known her. Stella is a fashion designer with ethics, a spokesperson for sustainability, a supporter of young designers, an entrepreneur who takes on risks for a cause. Will talk about food and memories of childhood, ethical eating, cooking and more, and then we'll go into the restaurant and have a late dinner with her four children, her husband,

and her sister ah Ruthie. Thank you for having me. So you're going to read the recipe for I'm going to read the recipe for chickpea and fennel fara, and I'm going to do it in my sexiest accent. Okay. So this recipe serves six to eight people, and for it you will need okay, if you got your notepad and your pencils or your devices, depending on how young

and relevant you are. Okay. First of all, you need three hundred grams of Italian chicklee flower, one liter of warm water, a hundred million liters of extra virgin olive oil plus extra for the pan, one teaspoon of sea salt, and two tablespoons of fennel seats or chopped fresh sage or rosemary leaves, depending on the season. I would say you put the water in a large bowl and sift over the flour whisk to combine, and then add the extra virgin olive oil and salt. Cover and leave in

a warm place for at least two hours. This is the time that you can preheat your oven two fifty degrees celsius. Then you skim the foam from the top of the batter. You pour enough olive oil into a faranata pan to generously coat the bottom, and add in the batter. It should be about one to two centimeters deep. Top with fennel seeds or herbs and black pepper. You bake it for twenty to thirty minutes, or until the surface has bubbled and has become crisp, and you serve warm,

just like your heart, Like your heart. Fat is a street food of Liguria. It's a pancake. It's thin, it's vegan, it's delicious, debu headed and if I've had it, I'm know I've had it here, and I love it because it's always it's really simple but really has amazing flavor. I think I always remember the rosemary. That's kind of how I've had it here, and I love that it's you know, it's finger food, and everyone can just get stuck in, so everyone just kind of goes for it

and grabs it as soon as it's available. And then if you're too slow, you're too late, and you don't get any it's gone, and then we make you another one, and then we order another one, and then we're full by the time the main course comes. You know, we have a special stellar menu. When we have a menu for you, you do I remember that. Actually, I really felt like I had finally arrived when I turned up and you had your little vegetarian vegan menu for me.

And I think it goes to show how long I've been coming here because I don't think it was in the days where you didn't have separate menus for vegetarians or plant based and I remember feeling so special that you've printed out one for me, and I would always take them home because I was like, oh, these are really good menu ideas and as menu for Stella. And you have a farm where you grow vegetables and herbs, and tell me, since we were on rosemary in sage

and fennel seats, tell me about your farm. Well, I just came it's Monday, and I just came back from the farm last night. And it's funny. I grew up on an organic farm and now I have one of my own, and it was always the vegetable patch that was just kind of the most exciting place to be.

And I think it's such an incredible blessing and gift to actually grow up seeing the kind of the seasons in that way and understanding when a lettist is coming into season, or when you know when the cabbages and the beet roots and just kind of knowing when those things are coming into season is kind of I find it to be a great gift of knowledge. Actually tell me about growing up. Then tell me about the farm that you exposure to rosemary and fennel and sage and

your mother taking you through that. Was it your mom or was it both of them? Or it was both of them? I think probably a bit more mom. But it's because the very early years were actually in Scotland, and so we had a tiny little vegetable patch there and I remember we'd always get into trouble because me and Mary would go down and pick There were always like sugar snaps and carrots and we would always kind of nick them and eat them before you could yield

any kind of crop off it um. And then when we got a bit older, we got the farm in East Sussex and then we had like a proper vegetable patch. Well, it's very touching that you say that you and your sister would go and get a sugar snappy and a carrot as rather the way somebody might take sweets from the sweet club, and you know that you actually went to the and also we had horses, so we had you know, were always with horses, so it would always be right Willie the carrot and the carrot heads for

the for the horses. You'd always have this journey between picking it the soil, the smell that you know, you're dirty fingernails, that kind of adventure to go out and have that process, and then you take it up and give the you know, the carrot heads to the horse, and that would be like horse slobbery all over your hands, and like so many different smells as well. I mean, I've on creating perfumes, and it's so interesting how smell has really been inspired by food for a lot of

the things that I've created. I mean, I for example, one thing, when you're a vegetarian, there's so a few moments of kind of extravagance, whereas with meat is so associated with kind of well cost or you know, there's such a kind of different kind of relationship. And when you're a vegetarian, it's literally only truffle season that you're like, right, okay, this is like oh, this is this moment. And so I did a perfume with truffle in it because I

just always found that smell. It was so it kind of reminded me always of a time of year, and just everything associated with it seems so kind of sexy and mysterious and incredible. So I think food and smell is interesting. Well, when you look at you know, caracter, you look at an onion, you look at a piece the spinach, it moves you and you look at the color. But when you get a truffle, you choose it by the smell. You just take that. You open the are and you put it on the table here and we

put them out and then you smell them. Literally, it's like a precious diamond. Four children are working mother and working father. Far what was meal time like in the McCartney Eastman household. It was always together. Actually we always ate together as far as I can remember, and it was always either in the kitchen or in the living room on the sofa in your lap. It was just always what brought us together, you know. I think you

will have heard that many times during your podcast. It was the place and the moment where we all reunited and kind of you know, connected again from whatever we were doing in the day. Also, you know, like we

do a lot of road trips. When I was young, we got up to Scotland in the car, so we'd have like a car based sandwiches and kind of big sandwich family, but more my American side because also in those days, like a British sandwich was butter on a piece of white bread and a sliced cheese and very like layered with like lettuce and pickles and mayo, and you know, so we'd kind of have different moments for food.

I would say, it's also so interesting how food has evolved over the years now because I think being half American, I always got my mom always really new and loved food. So we always grew up with extra virgin olive oil. But when I read out your Fantanata recipe, it's like extra virgin olivel now is kind of known and a given, but I remember, you know, it didn't exist when I was younger, So I find that really fascinating. Also, traveling a lot as a child, we had access to all

these different cuisines. And then you know, we grew up a lot in Arizona, and so we had a lot of Mexican food growing up, and sweet corn and you know, in Long Island and stuff. Interesting. I think that corn. I always say that I grew up in Love State, New York. And if we were having coin for lunch in the morning, and if we're having a coin for dinner, we bought it in the afternoon. It was that and media, and my mom used to have it raw. She loved

it so much. She would just have it and she'd just be like, oh, you wouldn't even boil it, you know, like she'd never put butter on it or salt, nothing, she'd just have it. She came from a really interesting family. Tell me about them. So basically, and it's interesting, you know, they came from the Ukraine actually and sort of you know, through Russia to the United States. So I was also kind of exposed to bashed and things like that and cole slaw and pickles, you know, that was that was

something that didn't exist here too. And my grandfather Lee became a lawyer. He was a lawyer and sort of really did very well for himself, but he was an entertainment lawyer. He loved creatives. He basically represented all of the abstract expressionists. So he represented to Kooning and Rothclow and Kline and Motherwell and Albers and you know, all

of these incredible artists. So she was exposed to you know, extraordinary crea native talent, and then she was so brilliant she kind of rebelled and went to the u of A and was just like everyone's too kind of fancy in Harvard and Yale and Smith and it was all a bit too much for her. And then she became a photographer and she just it was amazing. She did Hendrix sheticed reading Aretha Franklin, the Moms and the papas she did, I mean, you know, amazing musicians. And then

met Dad and the rest is kind of history. But she was very just a real kind of just a beautiful, pure soul. And I think you know, the two of them meeting and him surrendering into that relationship meant that we as a family went into self isolation at a very early age, and thus went up to Scotland and it was just kind of the six of us in the shed. The experience that you talk about food being that connection of food being the act of love, food

being the act of education is very moving. And then when you left that environment, when you how old are you when you left home? And where did you go? Well? I kind of left home to go to college, to go to St. Martin's, So I got into St. Martin's to study fashion design when whatever age that is really early twenties and um. I came to live in London, and I was lucky that I knew how to cook, you know. I think watching mom meant that I was

a little ahead and that I could always cook. But I remember having my first kind of dinner party when I got a bit older, and it was with Naomi Campbell and Donna Tellibis Archie and it was so funny because I had them to my house and I made globe artichokes and this was good twenty odd years ago.

And my mom would always boil a globe artichoke and she made this amazing dip with olive oil and kind of lemon juice and all these sort of you know brags, amino acid Maggie that was like a source called Maggie, like all these kind of there's a dense kind of space. Yeah, but used to get a liquid. And so I made this globe bar to choke and this source. And I remember they came around They're like what's this and how to eat it? And I was like, wait a minute,

like you're done. A tellib thought you you should know how to eat, like, you know, and I was so surprised. And it's funny that whole kind of you know, how do you take vegetarian food into being dinner party kind of you know, worthy, when you've got people around you want them to come and go, oh, that was asparagus season. It wasn't that delicious. And I think that that you kind of already got to be a little bit more heightened on your offering when you're coming in as vegetarian.

When I talked to your father, he talked about being a vegetarian at a time when being a vegetarian wasn't that sexy, It wasn't interesting. It was a bit of a It was rebellion, but a kind of certainly moral

rebellion that made you feel humorless. And I told him the story about going to Cranks with Richard, and I just met him, and I was all over him, kissing him and hugging him, and and this woman was giving me really disapproval looks, and she came over to the table and she said, I think what you're doing is terrible, but that you're doing it in a vegetarian restaurant makes it even worse, as if you couldn't have sex and vegetables.

But I said to your father that he has to take the credit for changing it that your mother and your father, you know, really said you can be rock and roll, you can be wild, you can be liberal and radical and everything else, and and sexy and have vegetables. Yeah. I would definitely, had I have been running cranks, I would have let you have the non sexual intercourse on the table in front of everyone. Yeah, I mean it definitely.

Growing up, it was already hard enough coming into a room as sort of the child of these legends, but then to sort of be at dinner party and be served a grilled kind of courgette, it was you know, the person next to you would look with horror and be like what you eat? Like almost like what's wrong with you? And why? You know, if you've got an illness that means you can only awful kind of desperate vegetables. And so you would already be apologizing really for your

life choice. And then when you went in to sort of explain it you, I was often met with anger, you know, defensiveness, or you were always the brunt of a joke. Like every sitcom or comedy you'd watch on Telly, it was like, did I'm vegetarian? It was always a joke, which is weird because you know, obviously being a fashion designer that has shunned fur and leather and feathers and

never used animal products. That happened to me also obviously in my industry, which was even weirder because luxury fashion is leather, is crocodiles is fur coats. When I always sort of used to come at it saying, I don't understand why I'm not like the coolest rebel punk rock person in the room, because if you're all using fur and you're all using leather, and you're all eating meat, then you're the ones that are boring a mainstream I'm the one that's like questioning and China like you know,

push buttons and kind of challenge convention. And has that changed, Yeah,

it has. It has very much changed. And I think it's, you know, largely because people now associate animal agriculture in the farming and animals with not only with disease ridden you know, hotbeds, which we're you know, looking at today with COVID and bird flu and bovine and all you know, mad cow and all these things, but also I think it's a conversation that young people, the generation of tomorrow just you know, most of them have turned most of

the vegan. It's basically a life choice. How you eat, what you wear, how you travel, how you consume. You know, kids of tomorrow just have been thank god educated enough to see that this is just not necessary. You can still eat really, really well, you have great taste, you can still have a community around great food, great fashion,

great you know everything. So but I think it is the kids largely, and I think also the connection between animal agriculture and the environment has been a big shift for people because now they're seeing it. And you know, I also think if you give up meat one day a week, it's the equivalent to all transport for one week. So you just do it one day a week, you know, and most people don't eat meat fish every day in

the week. Now, in a world of science and technology and substitutions and ability to create what we want to create in a laboratory, what is your feeling about creating meat that is not meat? That's a good question. I was one of the first people to go to the Impossible Burger as well, and that obviously has done incredibly well and actually is a great success story for plant based food versus conventional meat. And actually when you look

at the business. That's when I think we have a chance at solving the issues because as a business woman, you know that the minute that a plant based meat, for example, is growing on the Stock Exchange faster than a real meat, you know you've got something exciting about to happen. So I'm kind of all for it, really, I mean I also, I'm a huge fan of a film I don't know if you've seen it, called Fantastic Fungi, and you must watch it. If you haven't watched it, it

it will blow your brains. Tell me better. Um, it's about mushrooms. I had worked to have been working closely with the company in San Francisco, a tech company that are growing leather from mushrooms and the mycelium roots. So that kind of thing is really fascinating, the crossover between food and fashion for me because I'm literally making handbags out of mushroom. So those kind of things, I'm all for. Technology really trying to be an answer to a lot

of the problems that we have. You do so much, I know you do, and still making yourself feel like you have time. That's one of the great gifts as a busy person. Makes you feel that you have time. Richard taught me that. He said, never say you're busy. People used to come up to him at the end of a lecture and day, I'd like to show you my portfolio. Are you very busy? And I'm not that busy. And it's a great quality, but I think you have

that still. And who cooks at home? It's changed a lot, you know, as our kids have gotten older and they're all home at different times, and I'm home at different times. They kind of just eat when they get home, and it's kind of either were like, for example, this weekend, I cooked, and I cooked so that they had stuff in the wheat. Because also when you've got vegetarian kids and they go to school, it's normally pizza pasta. It's

kind of there's no real protein or health involved. And when they're going to play day, it's like, oh, they're ter share and give them pastor a tomato sauce. So I'm always kind of overcompensating so that the weekends are cook for in the week when they get home. So I just always do like a big vegetable soup with tons of fresh herbs and loads of beans, or like you know, I did one with Keen Warren. It this weekend, so we've charked about the ingredients we cook with, the

influences we cook with, and the seasons we're cooking. Do you have utensils that you'd particularly like to use? I have definitely. I think everyone that cooks has one or two utensils in their kitchen that are so over their cell by day and they're like knack and chip, but you just can't throw them away. But one thing I grew up very much with with salad balls. My mom made a wicked salad dressing. Again in England, you didn't have salads when I was growing up. It was literally

salad dressing and like a leaf. We never that was like the kiss of death in our house. So she would always make this incredible salad. I would say salad was a big coming together because it would be like tossing and you're all eating out of the same bowl and the last dish out is the best one because it's called the dressing on it. But my mom had it was like the sacred thing in the kitchen was this big salad bowl one piece of wood, and she

would never let anybody wash it. So you don't have to always just dry it out with some you know, dishcloth or with some some paper towel. And for my wedding, my aunt Louise, my mother's sister. Sadly my mom had passed away, but she got me as my wedding present a salad bowl carved out of one piece of wood. And so that I would say, would be the kind of the house is burning down one of the things I would say, And it's I'm exactly same with my kids.

I'm like, if I see somebody about to wash it out with water, I have to run up and tell them it's sort of illegal to touch it with water. Well, there is that connection for food, isn't it? How your children and I think having you know, bringing the kids here tonight for dinner, for example, I remember like when the first time we brought them here to the River Cafe, it was like such a treat. We had to get them to a certain age so they'd really kind of acknowledge,

you know, how special it was. So we come here for sort of special occasions, and I think that's good as well, to kind of associate food, you know, with different occasions in your life. Those are the memories you remember the time. Do you remember going out with your

parents to certain restaurants. It's funny. I had lunch somewhere today with a friend that you know, Kate Moss and her daughter Lila actually, and we went to a restaurant in the Western I hadn't been there for years, and I was like, oh my god, you remember this restaurant? Can I say the restaurant to Coney's? But do you remember when I was young? I was explained to them. I was like, did you come here when it was

Mr Chaco and I might know? And I was like, we used to go and it was such a kind of it was that that was the equivalent for me as a kid, because we come up to London rarely, and when we did, it was like, you know, you go and Lady Dining was in the corner, or you know, still a black was in the corner, and it was like that. I always remember going there. But yeah, I think food is special and restaurants are special, you know in our family anyway, Yeah, I think that there is

a sense of the special occasion. Certainly when I was growing up, it was a special occasion. It was a birthday, it was an anniversary, it was something. We lived in the country, miles away from any place. So how did you get into your food. I'm sure everyone's asked you this and everyone on your podcast, but I always love to cook. But it was from your mother. My mother was not a great cook, actually, she was just a very She was a librarian and my father was a

doctor and so they both had jobs. But food was simple, but it was good. Apparently I had a Hungarian grandmother who was a great cook. And it's interesting when you talked about the Eastman's because is it about immigrants who come to a country and bring the food with them. So I think the first generation on a arrival cook the food that they grew up with. They still cook the Ukrainian food that you described, or Polish or my family Russian, and then perhaps the next generation wants to

integrate more with the community. But I think it's really interesting we then both have similar heritage, and I think you're right bringing that food with you, but also making the most of your ingredients. I mean you're talking about quite similar to British ingredients like the root veget from that part of the boys and you know, potatoes essentially, and how you make the most of that how you bring flavor with what you have, and then how that

grows into the next community. It's interesting. So food if it's an act of love, if it's a memory, and I think of your mother and how she cooked for you and taught you and and talk to you about being careful of the planet and respectful of animals, and it also is a comfort. It's a comfort. So if I were to ask you, as my last question, Stella McCartney, what would be your comfort food? God, what's my comfort food? I would say probably pasta, good bowler pasta, probably because

it's still It's funny. Even with pasta, there are different sort of levels of entry. You know, you get any kind of dried pasta and that's that, and then you do the sauce. But is it, you know, your three four hours simmering tomato sauce or is it your quick one? Or then is it a homemade rabbit? You know, you can get up to a truffle kind of homemade taglia telly here, So I would probably have for that last

option here for the pastor. Okay, well, we can't have a truffle pastor because in that season, but let's go and eat. Can come back and do that for sure. Yeah, thank you, Stella. I'd thank you for having me. I love it. That wasn't too bad. I was scared by the way I've done desert and discs. I've done everything, and here I am terrified. Food is a connection, it's easy. It was nice. It was really nice. Thank you. To visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go to

shop the River Cafe dot co dot UK. River Cafe Table four 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 podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.