Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. Artists coming together in the restaurant, you know, and the casso drawn on the table cloth and all that kind of thing. It's really known throughout history, but it is to do with the solitary nous of being in the studio and the solitariness of being an artist, being very much alone. So this idea of coming together to eat is such a nice thing.
Here we are and unseasonably wet and cold Saturday in London, but I feel warmed, as I always am, by being with my friend Tracy Emmon. She's a great friend and a great artist. Tracy, over to you, okay, so I'm My favorite thing to eat here is the grilled squid with shred, chili and rocket. Eight medium squid no bigger
than your hand. Six large fresh red chilies, seeded and very finely chopped, a hundred and fifty meal, extra virgin oil, two DRAMs of rocket, four tablespoons of oil, and lemon dressing. One lemon cut into quarters to make the sauce. Put the chopped chilies in a bowl and cover with extra virgin olive oil, season heat a grill until very hot. Place the squid, including the tentacles, scored side down on the grill. Season and grill for two minutes. Turn a
squid pieces over. They will immediately curl up and by which time they will be cooked. Toss the rocket in the dressing. Arranged two squid bodies with tentacles on each plate with the rocket. Put a little of the chili sauce over the squid, and serve with lemon. I'm so happy that you chose such a class typically representative of the river cafe recipe, and I was wondering why you
chose squid chilian rocket. When I go to a restaurant, I always like to choose food that I wouldn't cook myself, but god, it's so easy to cook, so maybe I should do it. But then, and also, I'm Mediterranean, so um squeet is such a Mediterranean food, and I always have this sort of light in a primal thing that if I can eat Mediterranean, eat part of my ancestral food as much as possible, it makes me feel really good when I eat it, So that's why I chose it.
When you say that you're Mediterranean, tell me about being Mediterranean. Because I thought you were a market. Well Margaret is yeah, Margaret Mediterranean market. And well I'm Turkish Cypriot. My dad's Turkish Cypriot and my great grandfather was from the Sudan and he was a slave in the Ottoman Empire and around eighteen, I don't know, about nineteen hundred he was
given his freedom in Cyprus with fifty sheep. So we're known as the there's a thing called like the Black Turks, and they actually came from the slaves from the Ottoman Empire, and my family on Mediterranean side is from that background, so um, there's your Mediterranean. My dad was really fantastic cook, like amazing cook. Grew all his own vegetables. We actually grew all our ound. Me and my dad grew all up all my vegetables on my studio roof back in
the nineties. Everything everything from cucumbers, grigettes, ob jeans, potatoes, tomatoes, heritage tomatoes, beans, green beans, everything, and then my dad would cook so and my mom was a terrible cook. I hate saying it, both it's true. And the kind of food I grew up on was a kind of strange mixture of like this sort of really amazing food that my dad could cook, and this really terrible food that my mom could cook that I really loved, and
what you loved mother's food, egg and chips. My mom was completely against me cooking, and when we were cooking at school, my mom would actually wrote me letters saying, my daughter will not learn to cook. My daughter is not going to be a slave to any man. But the truth was we didn't actually have the money for the cooking ingredients, so my mom. But even so it worked out kind of badly and kind of good. I didn't learn to cook at school. Cooking at school was
pretty awful. And um, I only learned to cook when I was much older, when I was sort of a look around eighteen or nineteen, And even now I'm not a very good cook, but I really like nice food. Yeah, and what I cook, I cook well. So, yeah, that's so interesting that she she did not want you to be stuck in the kitchen as a slave or anyone to cook for her for a man. That's normal, yeah, but in a way for that time, back in the seventies,
it was pretty radical as well. It's kind of like a strange psychotomy because there's my father being a good cook, and there's my mom being a bad cook, telling me not to be a slave to any man. She was. She ambitious for you and everywhere apart from keeping you from cookie did she have very strong ambitions for you. She put me on the pill when I was fourteen to make sure I didn't get pregnant. That's pretty ambitious. She's considered the idea of me having children to be
a complete failure and not a positive thing. So she did everything to stop me from being a single mother and a young single mother. But that's right or wrong, it doesn't matter. It seemed to have worked in my favorite Yeah and yeah, she's when I think about it, she was really not. My mom was very cozy herson, but she wasn't home based. Really wasn't her strong point. Do you think she wanted to do something else for herself? Absolutely?
My mom was brilliant dancer, and when she was sort of around fifteen, she had in an interview audition in a theater to for dancing, and her dad wouldn't let her go when you left her? And how old were you when you actually left your father's cooking? The deliciousness of growing vegetables, and how how old were you. Actually, my dad never lived at home. My dad only spent My dad left us when we were about seven, and my mom left us when we were twelve for quite
long periods of time. So me and my twin brother when we grew up, it was very different from other people's backgrounds, and it was very impoverished. Were incredibly poor. Were It's strange we had were very wealthy when we had that growing up in we were seven and then my dad lost everything and my dad was married, so my dad spent three days with his wife, three days with my mom. We would say, one day somewhere else.
So um, and so when my dad was around, the cooking or anything my dad did was like a big tree. My dad came here in on a ten pound ticket from Cyprus, and then my mom's a gypsy, so it's really quite exotic actually, you know. I was brought up on pomgranites and watermelon and with with my dad and well, my dad was at home, and then when I was older, Um, I started traveling to Turkey with him as soon as we could go back to Cyprus. When I was I think I was twenty when the war finished, my dad
took me to Cyprus and baby, we're going home. And that was the first trip to turken Sight for since I was a baby, and and it was like amazing m to be with my dad, to be living with my dad. They're cooking everything, and and my mom was kind of a bit piste off because all that she'd done for me. And then suddenly I'm like, but I'm you know, on my my father's when you started out by saying you're Mediterranean, and so to actually probably go
and see the Mediterraneans and have the food. But when we when we were up until we were about six, we would go to Turkey regularly once a year, and we spent when we were really tiny, we spent two periods of six months there. Once when I was about three or four, and then another time when I was six, we spent six months there and and all that time it would have been Mediterranean food and Mediterranean cooking. And we used to drive to Turkey, and this is really cool.
We used to have in the back of the our car.
We had a Zodiac. We had these little tiny wooden chairs, you know, with the rapportive seats, and my dad just with a brand new Zodio and my dad just stuck a hole through the roof through the you know the bits, and then got bongee plastic things around the chairs and then just sat us in the back of the car bouncing up and we're twins bouncing up and down on these chairs with those little knotty dogs, and we drive to Turkey, and we'd stop on the way all the time,
and my dad would get the calor gas stove out and fry eggs and cook and everything, and we'd go go to fields and take watermelons and things. So it was really exciting and like adventurous these drives. And I'm being I'm romanticizing about it now because it is romantic, and it was different and it was different from everybody
else's upbringing that I knew. And so we went from that to this, like to squatting in a cottage and my mom working in a hotel as a waitress and aimper made and so it was like from high to like really fast, a reversal of fortune when you were having to cook for yourself. Did you what did you read? What did you do? There was so my mom was out a lot most of the time, working leading, and at weekends as well, she'd be out to three in the morning, so we were on our own and often
my mom would leave our sandwiches and whatever. But my big thing was just like orange, just orange squash and just tons of orange squash and sitting up at night crosier in bed and we and also for example, like Christmas, Like you said about this, a lot of this podcast is about people sitting around the table and remembering it. Oh, there was no sitting around the table for me. It was sitting and watching the Telly with a tray with egg and chips. You know, when my mom came home
and Christmas was not Christmas. We didn't have Christmas because my mom was always working. Our Christmas was like a week after and kind of cobbled together, but it was never going to feel the same as the real Christmas. And one I remember we had Salvation Army one year, you know, coming around with food and presents because we didn't have anything. My mom, if she didn't work, we had nothing. And that is a very different upbringing to a lot of people I know, And it's not a
thing to feel sorry for. I'm just staying the difference. And also it's pretty shocking to go from this wealthy thing of being quite spoiled as well in lots of ways up until I was seven and then nothing. Do you remember being hungry? Yeah, and I think my mom remembers asked, my mom's dead now? But you know, my mom this, this is one of the most shameful things that I have to say, But in a way, I'm
sort of proud of her. When that the hotel was derelict behind, my mom went climbing on the roof and took lead off the roofs to sell it so as we had something to eat. And that is on another level, complete different level. And so much of this is down to education and so much and it's like the cooking thing and education and food. There is really better ways
to do this. But when you actually have nothing, and you're here about these people women shoplifting to get their babies food, and it seems unimaginable, but it's not when you've been that poor, that's not. And it's happening now because we know that it's happening today, and we know that. You know, when children couldn't get to school because of the lockdown, they were missing the only meal they had for the whole day. You know, very many children only
have lunch and that's it. I'm a big supporter of the Salvation Army or mentioned earlier, and the Salvation Army will feed sixty thou people a day a day and it's more now and and all of these support of food banking, margate or whatever. It is a really really bad level. So um, yeah, And when you left, when you left? When did did you? Did you London at thirteen? Left school at thirteen, and I had to go back to school by law for lost four months from Christmas
till May. Otherwise my mom social services would have been involved or whatever. And my mom my mom didn't mind if we didn't go to school. And I was brought up with absolutely no rules and I guess this might be slightly the gypsy side and things no rules whatsoever. We made our own rules up. If I didn't want to go to school, I didn't go to school. I don't want to brush my teeth, I didn't want to brush. I wouldn't have sex, have sex as long as I
was not going to get pregnant. All of these from the age of about thirteen fourteen, and and not going to school was because school was so depressing. It was like, oh, my god, I'll get there and they chat at me, or this would happen. All that would happen. I wasn't doing what I wanted to do, So the last few months when I went back, I just did art for four months more or less three days a week, and then left when I was fifteen, and then came to London the day I could leave school, that the first
of May, I think it was. I just came straight to London with a bag to David Bowie albums and some clothes and stare. I stayed in all different places. I stayed in a school in Warren Street which was pretty educational, with quite a lot of well known they're quite well known people now, very successful people lived there, and I stayed with different friends different floors. Stayed in
a cupboard in Clapham for quite some time. And and it's a real mystery how I never really got into trouble or but I was kind of sassy and sort of streetwise, so that saved me quite a bit. So I learned a lot and I grew up. But I was always a lot more mature from my age. I don't know why. I just grew up very quickly. I had too and but I don't really have such big regrets over that because it wasn't it wasn't my fault,
it wasn't my doing. Do you have memories of food in that poverty at that time in London when you first came, it's okay. So this is my only Scott memory of food at Warren Street. I was only fifteen or sixteen and I turned up and they were in the basement cooking there. A lot of them went to St Martin's in the Royal College of Art whatever, so it was a good influence in lots of ways. And I was so hungry and they said, you're hungry tracers.
So I probably haven't eaten for about two days, wasn't it. And then they told me they were cooking dog and I believe them, so I wouldn't eat it. And that was one of my And when I bring this up but in a step, when I see any of them, they always yeah, it's not a good story. But that's my only real big story about food. I think parvary parvarty and food youth and food loneliness and food being
the first into world. But you don't know where you're sleeping, what you're eating, you know, the lack of being taken care of is would make it. It's true because now I have this thing that i'll i'll work on, my war covered, and I have one in France and my house there and one in London, and my war cover is just full of like literally, if there was like a war, I've got enough food to keep me going in tins and tins of saldines and all kinds of stuff and everything. And it just gives me a sense
of security. And I really love going shopping for really nice food and putting it in the fridge and looking at it, and it makes me feel so safe and cozy and secure. And it's taken me a long time to realize that I had to hang up about it. I think probably only in the last few years that I realized how much it meant to me to that food makes you feel secure and come portable. And for a long time I didn't eat. I used to be so thin and everything and whatnot. I didn't care about it.
I didn't care about food at all. For years and years and years. I was very um, sort of not anti food, but it just wasn't on my list of things as a priority for living. But now now it really is because because I understand about my strange relationship with it and food and art and food and creating, and you know, the the solitariness. I was thinking of an artist, you know, in the studio working and then um going out at night and partying and having food, drinking,
being together with other artists. When you were in art school, was that something that you sort of where you exposed to the idea that you all were painting and working together. There was that hole? What was it like being now? When I when I was at art school, I worked. I used to get in wors getting late in the morning, getting about quarter to eleven, which I was. I went to Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art.
Did painting at the Royal College of Art. When I was at the Royal College of Art, I get in about quarter to eleven in the morning, and I'd stayed at ten o'clock every night, and I'd work at the weekends as well. I had no social life when I was at the Royal College of Art, none at all.
Just worked every single day. So and but the thing about artists and restaurants is brilliant because then after I left art school years later when when I m I think one of the first things I did as soon as I started having got money was oysters, and I just I love oysters, and I all of my excess income was spent on oysters. Absolutely. However, anywhere everywhere I'd go, well like, I actually liked I actually really like rock oysters.
So that was quite easy in Witstable in those days, and you get you get free oysters for seventy five or something. It was amazing. And um, I used to just try all different restaurants or different oysters, work out what I like, what I don't like. And I think my my biggest moment was I was on about a hundred a week oysters, hundred oysters, and I used to cycle everywhere, and I was so fit and I was just lean on, sort of like a ballerine. I just sind youw muscle and just like oyster diet, I was
just like on fire. It was fantastic. Do you have a house in the south of France? What is what is eating like there? Did you choose it? Also because it was on the Mediterranean, I chose it by default, but yes, it is on the Mediterranean, and I'm on the top of a hill. On top of a hill, looking at I have a sort of two hundred and maybe two hundred and sixty degree of the sea. It's just behind me that I can't see the sea, and it is really beautiful. And it's in the middle of
a nate you reserve. I don't have any neighbors, and it's a sort of twenty five minute drive to the little town to buy food and everything. So what I tend to do is do one shop in a week and that's it. And then I have my war cupboard. And my favorite cooking is when I get down and I've got a vegetable garden as well, really Britute vegetable garden, and I get down to the real nitty gritty and I have to be really inventive with what I cook. I really love it and it's exciting and it's funny
with what I come up with and everything. And and I just cook for myself there as well, because there's no there's no restaurants whenywhere to eat near me, and I love to produce there do you go and you go around vegetables. I don't know if you if you do want to talk about this, but we've had quite a to multuous time, but probably nobody, certainly in this room,
certainly that mean more than you with your illness. And I think your illness must have affected the way you eat because it was to do with your digestive system, isn't it? And so did you did you have to start eating when you were ill? Or because actually it's not my digestive system, it's my bladder, okay, so different bag. And and yes, it has affected the way that I eat because I can't have I still can't couldn't have I can't have a full bow. I can't be because
it affects the stormer and everything. And my diets completely changed since I was ill, which is quite quite strange. It's like totally, I mean totally changed. To tell me, what do you I am vast amounts of fish, vast amounts of apples, vast amounts of fruit all day long. I am a lot of which is not supposed to be good for me. By eat a lot of cold food, and I don't know why, much more than hot food. I am a lot more lemon all the time because they alkaline. I am my diet and it's not conscious
thing either. It's really sub I haven't even tried. I'm not even thinking about it. It's just what's happened. It's strange. So you haven't been directed by doctors of what you can. I eat quite healthily. So they when you're when you're coming out of hospitals that you see nutritions and they tell you this, and they tell you that. But I'm kind of quite forward thinking on good food. So when I eat something bad, it's because I really want to. And when you there are so many reasons we eat.
There isn't There are reasons we eat because we're hungry, or eat because we're in a beautiful place and we want to celebrate, or we eat because we are feeling a certain way. We need comfort. If you needed food, if you needed it for comfort, is there a food that you might reach for and be totally apples? Apples, apples. I eat probably about six D eight apples a day a day, apples. I couldn't live without apples. What kind I like? I've forgotten what they called it. Those pink
ones and they're kind of sweet, pink lady. Yes, I absolutely loved them. I washed them, put them on the bread board, and I get the knife and I don't cut them equally. I just slice all bits off till I gets the course. So it's all different shapes. And maybe I take three of them, and I'm like a big pile on a very beautiful blue Delf plate. And then I sit anywhere and just slowly eat three apples at a time that are all different bits, shapes and pieces,
and it makes me feel so good. That's what we want you to feel, Drecy, we want you to feel good. Thank you, 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.