Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and Adami's Studios.
Last night, after dinner in the River Cafe, I sat with the chefs. Usually we talk about the evening service, what happened, who came, what we cooked. But this time, knowing he was coming to the kitchen today, we spoke about our guest, Yotam Ottolenghi. They've all the chef's read his books, they've all eaten in his restaurants, and like me, love his food. In short, they were thrilled he was coming. Yatama and I were introduced years ago by a mutual friend,
Ari Shapiro Ruthie. He said, you've got to meet this guy. You think the same way, and you will adore him. Yatim and I share a lot. Most of all, we believe in the people we work with, valuing them and their creativity. We also share a kind of geography. Mine is an Italian landscape with cities of the Renaissance. His is further east, desert mountains and biblical We both live and work in culture is far from where we were born. Today we will talk about separation and connection, Eastern and
Western family and friends. Would you like to read a recipe uniquely, I would say, not from one of our cookbooks, but from one of yours.
I was looking forward to reading a recipe from one of your cookbooks because they're just so much shorter. Famously, al Telengy recipes are very long, so I worked hard to find a short recipe in the minutes. Yeah right, and it's only going to have like twelve ingredients and not like twenty four. But this is from one of my most recent books, called The Alto Lengthy Test Kitchen Shelf Love. It's a butterbean recipe, so it's called one jar of butter beans with preserves, lemon, chili and herb oil.
Five garlic cloves, finely chopped, two mild red chilies, finely chopped, seeds in all, two tablespoons coriander seeds finely crushed with a pestable mortar. Three preserved lemons, inner parts discarded and skin finally sliced. One and a half tablespoons roughly chopped thyme leaves, four rosemary sprigs, one tablespoon to milo paste, one hundred and seventy meals olive oil. One jar of
butter beans seven hundred grams. Two large vine tomatoes roughly grated and skin discarded, flaked sea salt, and black pepper. Put the first eight ingredients and one quarter teaspoons of flaked salt into a medium saute pan on a medium low heat and steer everything together. Heat gently for twenty five minutes until very fragrant but not at all brown. If the oil gets too hot to turn the heat down too low. Stir in the butter beans. Then turn the heat, eat up to medium and cook for ten minutes.
Remove from the heat and leave to infuse for at least an hour or longer if time allows. Meanwhile, mix the greater tomatoes with a third of a teaspoon of flakes sea salt and a good grind of pepper to serve poor the butter beans. Mixture into a shallow bowl and spoon over the greater tomatoes. Mixing it in places.
Sounds like a recipe that I would definitely want to make.
It sounds a bit like a river feb I.
Actually I did read that. Your first word was was it Therali word for Hebrew word for soup.
Well, it is the kind of the little dumplings that go into the soup, so it has the word soup in it. Yeah, it was it something I think my mum used to spread on the table while we were waiting for the food and I just used to kind of grab them and eat them.
And So going back then, starting at the very very beginning, tell me about your early childhood in terms of food as well.
What you know. Yeah, so I grew up in Jerusalem and the food in Jerusalem.
At that point, can I just ask you were your parents born in.
Israel or My parents were born in Europe just before the Second World War and they immigrated with their parents as little kids just before the war in nineteen thirty nine. My mother was from a German family, so they were German Jews, and my father were they were an Italian family from Florence.
Really.
Yeah, so my dad was born in Florence and they met in Israel and they so, yeah, they met in Israel years later, yeah, yeah, and Jerusalem was so I grew up in a very kind of a non traditional Jewish home, very secular food wise, Like we had pork, which nobody was unheard of. You know. My mom had that butcher in Jerusalem, the one and only one that sold pork, but it was under the counter and the brown bag. Yes, she used to come in by a ham and we used to get ham sandwiches for school.
But you know, we were not allowed to say what's in our sandwiches and we were not allowed to share it with friends. So the cover story was that it was Turkey, where it was a very pink Turkey.
Great woman, very woman to come from Germany. She was from Germany, so she probably had pork in Germany. I was not going to give that up.
Yeah, yeah, there were various secular you know, and so she just had to have four. But it was you know, the stories about these things they sound quite you know, inocus, but actually it was quite. It was a big deal. So that butcher, and when people found out that he was selling pork, you know, his shop was vandalized and you'd have like people would like like glue in his locks, so he couldn't open the shop the next day, et cetera.
It was in Jerusalem. Food is not a neutral stance, you know, like all those decisions, all those things that happened, those political implications, what.
Year with this have been?
So this was so I was born in sixty eight, so we're talking about the seventies and eighties.
So late as that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely. So the food culture of the city was the food of the immigrants from wherever they came, the Jewish immigrants, but also the Palestinian population, which was so had such a rich, wonderful culinary history. And I feel that I grew up in this world in which we ate very European food. At home, my father was cooking traditionally Italian dishes, and my mom was kind of an international cook, but with a very Germanic approach to cooking.
But outside, you know, when we went out, we used to have Palestinian food, Arabic food, and that's the mix that I grew up having, and I always thought that I was quite lucky to have had been exposed to all those kind of foods from quite a young age.
Could your father find ingredients that he wanted for Italian.
Cooking, Yeah he could, so, first of all, they've had they used to have food, like like I remember my grandparents, because they couldn't really separate themselves from their Italian background, so they used to have food sent to them, so we had to. We used to get like anchovy paste and olive oil and biscuits and cookies and things, so they always get these packages of Italian produce that arrived in Parmesan. So they lived about an hour from where
we lived in Jerusalem. They lived in the suburb of Tel Aviv, and I used to come to their house as a kid with my dad and the smell was just completely different. It smelled of Italy in so many ways. So they kept the Italian connection going on. And they used to travel in the summer because they had a house in the hills outside Florence that we used to go to when I was growing up, So we had
a lot of a lot of that. So in between the Italian and the Palestinian and the German influences, I've had all that.
Because I often think that I often say that in my history as as an interviewer, that many of the people, especially immigrants, talk more about their grandparents food than their parents.
That if you've moved from your culture to another culture, the mother is probably tried and adapt So if you have a family from Ghana coming from Ghana to London, the mother would try and kind of still remember her food she grew up with, but would try to adapt, and the children completely adapted and would have the food of their friends, but the grandparents, when he went to their house, they would cook the Danaan food or the
Italian food. And my mother in law left Italy for London pre war, and her father, who's kind of Florentine site aristocrat, would send her candied oranges every month. You know that she craved those kind of Italian the Italian food of your culture totally.
And the only difference is that in Israel at the time, there wasn't like a cuisine as such. It was because it was just so early on and it was just so new and so young, so a national cuisine has not evolved. There was a place Senian, the Palestinian food was extremely evolved, but what people would call Israeli food is something that evolved later. But when I was growing up, there was the food that Polish Jews would would have cooked, or Russian Jews, or Libyan Jews, or Moroccan Jews or
Iraqi Jews. Those each one had their own cuisine. But I always like to say, like in Jerusalem was like survival of the fittest, you know, like the best food from every culture would surface and we have yeah, that's really great.
So you would have the Sephardic and you would.
Have so you'd have a Sephardics, you know, salads and like and messies, and you'd have like the bubkas that would come from the Ashkenazi food and and in some ways like some restaurants in Jerusalem these days, that then when you go, that's what's featured, you know, like the best of every culture that makes up the city.
Because in America, definitely my family where they were Hungarian and Russian Jews, and my hunger and grandmother was a great pastry cook, you know, she made all the strudles and all that, but I remember not really liking all that sort of can filter fish and multi course that that meat they cooked for hours, and I'm going to get in trouble for this.
I always you're in good company. It's fine, the Eastern European food. I always say, like, you know, there is this Israeli chef called Aras Komorowski. He's a baker and he's become quite well known because he's outspoken. He's one of the founders of the modern way of cooking. And he always says in Israeli, only you filter fish if your grandmother is still alive.
That's funny, and I guess they are, but those grandmothers might not be here for very long now.
Yeah, But I also think there's good things you can do with and I always say there's no bad cuisines. It's just about how people cook those foods. And there's when I go and people say, oh, how could you would you like about British cooking, I said, like, there's so many things here, and the desserts are like some of the best desserts in the world, and you know that, And I think it's it really is about what you do with it, not I agree.
So going back again, it seems like you had a household where food was really important, but your father and your mother cooked.
Yeah, both my parents cooked. My father because of this Italian sensibilities, he used to cook in a way that doesn't remind me of the way I cook now. So it was quite minimal, great ingredients, cooked with care and attention.
And he used to make polenta and he's just to stand there and stir it, you know, for forty five minutes or an hour until it was just right, and at the cheese, but everything very kind of moderately and with a lot of attention, and was so different from the way I ended up cooking, which is this kind of quite a maximalist way of cooking, quite a lot of ingredients more in I think, more keen to maybe how they cook in North Africa or in Asia, South Asia or Southeast Asia, in the sense that quite a
lot of spices, cook them down, create something, which is kind of a base for sauce. He didn't cook like that. He cooked much more the Italian way, but he was a professor of chemistry at the university, so he had a really kind of a deep understanding of ingredients. Intuitive.
But I would say that a recipe, I don't know if you agree, is part science and part poetry. Yes, you know, everybody likes the image of the Italian that throws something in and does something there and does something that. But actually they're very precise, I think.
Very precise. But he loved food. But there's certain things he just like all Italians, he loved his foods the most, and he just looked like there are certain combinations that he would just not have, Like he said, sweet in savory food. No, because he was from northern Italy, you know that's maybe in Sicily you'd find there. Pulia but not in the North. So if you'd have like something Moroccan, you know, like a tagine with prunes or whatever, I wouldn't touch that.
And your mother did she cook German sy Then.
My mom cooked German food. She was more of an international cook, you know. She had these international cookbooks of the fifties, you know, and she would try like a Malaysian curry or delicious caspachio. But she also was a food in the sense that for her food was very important. The most important meal of the day in our house was breakfast, and we had this kind of spread of food. Again,
not very tally. You went to school mostly on the weekend, but even before I went to school, there was like freshly sliced vegetables, fresh vegetables and some cheese and brine, you know, like feta style and fresh bread and egg. And this is still what I do for my kids, Like before they go to school, I give them this massive breastfast and Carl, my husband, looks at me and says, like, is that really breakfast? You know, but they love it.
It really is delicious. But the whole concept of breakfast is like people different cultures do it very different.
My grandchildren have Chinese and they have chicken soup for breakfast service. They can think of nothing nicer than having a bowl of soup. You know, I agree, and why not? You know, it doesn't matter.
When I came here and I saw that grilled tomato and beans and sausage, I thought like, what, I'm an abomination. I do like it now? You okay?
And so growing up in your do you have brothers and sisters?
I have one sister.
Yeah, And so the family meal would be sitting. Did your mother work yeah?
Yeah, my mom was a teacher.
Yeah, so you would sit down to breakfast, fantastic breakfast, and then most dinners, would you have dinner together?
Yeah? We would also have dinner together. Yeah. Breakfast was the main time you could trust that everybody would be there. My parents worked a lot of dinner, not always, but we also had dinners together.
Do you have memories of the kitchen?
Yeah? We So we had. The kitchen I was growing up with was a long, kind of gally kitchen with a dining table and chair at the very end. It wasn't fancy at all. It was very particle, but there's always cooking going on, and it was Yeah, I remember I remember a cupboard where everything was was stored. And I remember that I was alway used to climb up the counter. I couldn't reach to get chocolate. There was a box and she didn't mind. I don't know. She
always she never told us off, but we was. We just come and had that cooking children.
When we need to start in the morning, they do all the fish hungary and all the butchery.
So we start off with the meat and fish. While I'm writing the menu.
Watch the level of butchery, like we get a we get a whole pig or.
Yeah, yeah, or a whole you know, being saloon on the bone or yeah, the legs of lamb and all and the whole fish fully scale with all the scales and everything that's gotten gill and scale fish and do all the proper you know stuff that's skillful stuff that I suppose some we're busy kitchen, but we have a lot of chefs and.
We do all that.
We don't have stations stations, so anyone can do everything anything.
By the end of probably it takes about four years to learn all the sections. Well, not everyone here can look on every section past the section is quite hard.
It is hard.
A lot of people be learning that section, so the person on it today it's sort of.
Learning as well.
We're teaching them how to you know, and thank.
You at all.
Did your parents take you to restaurants? Did you go out?
Yeah, so we didn't have We didn't have great restaurants in Jerusalem in the sense in the way we have now. So this whole, this whole revolution in food has not happened yet, so we ate when we ate out. We used to go to Palestinian restaurants. So the war just happened not long before the nineteen sixty seven war in which Israel occupied East Jerusalem. So in some ways this is before the pre traumatic times. You know, it was all very new and obviously it was complicated, but it
was relatively peaceful. So I remember we used to go travel a lot into the West Bank. We used to go to Annapolis to Jericho to have bron to have meals. So we used to go to Jericho and have like incredibly little meals. Oh, we would have these spreads of delicious things that you find, some of them you'd know and some of them you wouldn't. So from you know, like hummus or in Labana, you know, the strain yogurt, but you'd also have like local herbs that be sauteed
in garlic and olive oil. They have incredible so they have wonderful oranges, so you'd have orange juice freshly squeezed a bit like Seville's, like they have some of them that are cooking and some of them mostly for juicing because it's so hot and humid, it's like perfect for citrus and lamb on the grain. Also they have with cooked lamb on open grill and rice dishes like my cluba, like upside down rice cakes and bulgar salads. And it
was an amazing wonderful olive oil. Wonderful olive oil, and great freshly baked breads, pizza breads and all and other variations on that fiend. Because of Palestine cook their bread in a taboon, which is that you know that kind of ceramic oven, earthenware oven. So all that was there, and I really have really really strong memory of driving down to Jericho and just having all these wonderful foods and coming back, but also in Jerusalem, I have such strong memories of the of these flavors.
Did you ever think that you would like to do that? Did you ever think you'd want to be a chef.
No, I didn't really think I would want to be. I really loved eating so much so that like my dad always used to make fun of me, used to call me golozzo, which is like it's that in word for like greedy, because I was greedy and I had
to make them like take me to restaurants. On my There was one restaurant and restaurant in Jerusalem that served as seafood, like shrimps and squid in that and it was in East Jerusalem and the Arab part because they were Christian era, I mean, Muslims can eat seafood as well. And we'd go there and have like a plate of like prawns and like butter and garlic and lemon, you know, like and I just thought it was the most delicious thing I've ever had. It was so exotic and so yeah.
So I had all really all that wonderful food. But I never thought I was going to become No. I kind of just assumed I'm going to follow in my parents' path an academic, you know, go to university study, which I did. I went to university and I studied and Tel Aviv university. In the late nineties, I studied university, I moved to Tel Aviv.
So what did you eat?
So my first apartment that I had with my boyfriend at the time, we live by Caramel Market, which is the main food and vegetable market, so it really was an apartment really close to the market. And this was when the first time I started to cook because I was at university and so many students, like you know, food was not forthcoming anymore, as I had to cook, and I fell in love with cooking through the market.
So on Friday I would go and buy fresh herbs and vegetables and cheese that I had this incredible cheese standards. They had all the Balkan cheeses, you know those sitting in brine, you know, the different types of feta and many different there are many different types of I used the word feta, but it's the Bulgarian cheeses. It's a whole range of young cheeses that they vary in saltiness and texture from something which is more like a ricotta
to something much firmer. Yeah, you have like really really bland like with unsalted cheeses that would you be used for one use and then things that are crumblier like more like every kota, and some are much smoother, like other Greek cheeses, And so you'd have the whole the
whole range, and would you entertain. Yeah, we would have other student friends came over and I would make like you know, I remember making, you know, just starting to understand what the like marinating a chicken and grilling it and making a salad to go with, like very baby steps in the kitchen. But I did fall in love with cooking through that, but I was still I was still in university. I still didn't think it's going to
be a career for me. So I finished a master's degree in comparative literature and philosophy, and I just decided it's not for me.
It's the academic life.
I just thought it was very insular, you know. I thought like I was speaking to like seven people who knew what I was talking about, and then the rest of the world knew nothing and wasn't really remotely interested,
and it just felt esoteric. And it's like and then the opposite happened when I started cooking, because all of a sudden, everybody's interested, right, And that dichotomy between somewhere where you really have no one to share your passions with the world in which you can everybody is interested. Was such a eye opener for me, and I realized, yes, I want to try and engage in this conversation, and
I'm in that conversation. When I came to London in nineteen ninety seven, I haven't made up my mind who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. But I thought, like, I'm going to take a year off, and I went to the Court on Blue and yeah, and I took a course there in Marleybone, Yeah, yeah, Marlivaut Lane.
Yeah.
And I did a course there and I thought, okay, maybe there's something for me there, but I wasn't at sure I did. I did pastry and savory cooking for three months and then I started working in the evenings. I worked at the Capitol Restaurant and yeah, yeah, behind hard I was. It was really good. They had a mission and star and I was an assistant to the pastry chef there.
I was working with her right into pastry.
Right into pastry. Well, I didn't know anything. So they always throw you into pastry if you don't know anything, because you know nobody's way. So I loved that. And then I met Roly Lee and I started working at Kensington Place. Yeah that was in ninety eight. Yeah, and I worked for him for a couple of years and I learned a lot.
So by that time you kind of knew that this was a career, but.
That Yeah, I was a pastry chef. Yeah, and I always I was with Roly I did mostly pastry as well. I was running the pastry kitchen at some point, and then I realized, I'm want to specialize in pastry. And then I went to work for gale a baker and spice.
What do you think you liked about pastry?
I loved how that just the fact that you got to play with your go for I love that, and the magic that happens when you bake. I still I still love that, how one thing turns to another thing. You know, you take a chicken, you put in the oven, you get a chicken. But when you take a cake and you put in the oven, you get something completely different. It's it's not the same thing, and I still love that magic. So I really specialized in baking, and even when we opened up to lengthy years later, I was
I was still baking. Yeah, when I went to your kitchen now, it really reminded me of the way we work at Baker and Spice. Like Gaye would come back from the market with like strawberries and apricots and quinces and she said, like, there you go, like six boxes. Do something with them. There wasn't a plan, and there wasn't a there wasn't a recipe or a plan for the day. It was just like these things arrived because she saw them and they looked great, and we just had to work what we have.
Amazing times you could do that.
And then and then my good friend, my ex partner, Noam Barr, came back from traveling the world and he said, like, let's do something together. And he studied business and I was a Baker and Spice at the time, and he said like he said, like, let's let's open a shop. And we decided to do it. And it took about a year to make it all happen, and Sammy Sammy Tamimi, who's our other partner, I wasn't quite ready to join us,
so we started the process without him. And it was supposed to be just a bakery in which I would be baking. And then when Sammy joined at the very last minute, This was in two thousand and two when we opened on Lidbury Road in notting Hill. He joined us and we decided we're going to have two sides to our offering, which would be freshly made salads and savory food mirrored by amount of cakes and.
Fruit are colors.
And we just thought, like the same thing that you were doing in restaurants, we thought we can do the same kind of philosophy apply it in in a takeout environment. You know, we will just cook things freshly every single day and sell it until we run out. And that was still the idea that these these tiny kitchens produce a lot of food and people come in and instead of cooking themselves, we put the food and the cakes out there and they come and buy them. But there
was there was nothing made off site. There's nothing. We don't buy anything and we just cook it all there for you.
I think what you brought to us to London to food was a sense of exotic which was also so accessible. You know that you had ingredients of perhaps the words we couldn't pronounce. So we had a dish that was named something we'd never heard of, or we could go in and try one of your beautiful salads and take it home and eat it. Or it just celebrates so much a kind of a joy of ingredients of cooking. Would you call this Middle Eastern?
Do you like that phrase or think so? I don't think it's Middle Easter. And there's been Eastern sensibilities in what we do. So even when Sammy and I started cooking and serving food, it wasn't until like when we published the book Jerusalem, in which we talked about our heritage and background Sami's Palestinian background in Jerusalem, my Jewish
background in Jerusalem. Only that then people started saying, oh, Middle Eastern ottelengis and Middle Eastern restaurants because before we yeah, we used to have tahini and sumac and all those things, but we also used to use miso and soy and pomegranates and chili and cumin, which are not specific to
this region. But there's something about this kind of little strip of the that goes from all the way from Tunisia and Morocco and North Africa all the way through the Middle East and then through South Asia all the way to Southeast Asia, and it has a certain language that I think we use. Sometimes you find something in Mexico that speaks the same language, but it's a kind of some sunny temperament. It's Chile's it's garlic, it's citrus,
it's these kind of intense flavors. So of course the Middle East has them, but there's other places that have them, and we just love to borrow from all those parts of the world and use it and build on it.
To travel.
Yeah, I travel less now, but I used to travel. My children are seven and ten, they're still quite young man. So I chose to travel less when they were born because I realized that every time I traveled, if I couldn't take them with me, I would miss them too much.
But I find it necessary to go to Italy. You know, it's a kind of we go, we go to taste the new oil. But for me, going back to the source is very important, you know, to actually go to somebody's house in Rome, or in Piso, or in Milan. There's a kind of sense of also. It kind of makes me feel we are you know, the connection is strong, and those roots are very important, you know, the identity too well.
I have that in Israel, so yeah, because my mom's we go to visit her a few times a year, and she lives outside a village in our village called Abu Goosh, which is on the way from Tel Aviv to trus Im, And whenever we arrive, we go and as soon as we'd arrive with the kids, we go and eat in the local restaurants and we have those platters of Palestinian food that I love so much, and then we go to the green grove certain by the local vegetables, and I reconnect and I love that and
I find it very familiar in a way that I don't find anywhere else. You know, everything is very familiar.
It's amazing. I'd like to know what you feel about the food scene or the culture of food in Israel right now is something that I'm made aware of all the time, either by friends of mine who go there, friends of mine who live there, and chefs that come into the restaurant from you know, I can see them. You know, there's the table of eight Israelis and they've come and there they order everything on the menu or they're tasting. And in London there are more restaurants. How did this happen?
I don't have a really good explanation, but I'm seeing it everywhere, Like you say, in London, there's some fantastic Israeli restaurants. In America, they're really really flourishing, and in Israel itself. And what I find interesting is this thing has not existed fifteen or twenty years ago. When I
was living in Israel. There wasn't an original cuisine, and those great restaurants, the good restaurants that you could find were, you know, the restaurants of immigrants that have just arrived, right. But this didn't formulate, and I think so when I looked. I did a show for the BBC years ago called Jerusalem on a Plate, and I took the director around and showed him, you know, this is this this cuisine and that cuisine, And then I was trying to formulate
actually what was going on that I really understand. And the one thing that occurred to me is that it was just all so new and fresh, and nobody felt that they were kind of like committed to one way of cooking. There was something very liberating about this sense that everything is possible, you know, like, which is a very Israeli thing. First of all, like you know there isn't that there's a lais say air kind of like whatever attitude, which helps, but also nobody felt nothing had
and I haven't seen it. I haven't been to another country that is just so recently informed. But there's that possibility of just like working with all those options, is created these cuisines, and people travel in Israel or they go to Israeli restaurants here and they realize that there's something very original about it. And I think it has to do with the fact that it's not indebted to one part of the world, one teh wir one cuisine. It's kind of it's a magpie of cuisines and then
it comes together really nice. Is it strongly ara based on I think there is a lot and that's not being acknowledged enough. There is a very very strong underlying Palestinian tradition of cooking that underscores this, and often people don't talk about it enough for political reasons, and they
don't mention that often enough. I always have to say that I don't think it's a bad thing that Palestinian cooking has become so much part of what is perceived as Israeli cooking, but it's really important to tell that story, to tell that fact, because that's very much the basis of so many of those dishes, not all of them, many of them belong to Jewish diasporas of other cultures, but Palestinian is really a massive factor there in the way the news really.
Chef's cook I think that's something that we're all looking at right now, is acknowledging the history and to recognize where these roots come from.
I think what I had understood intuitively when I started publishing cookbooks is that the best thing you can do is just put it all on paper, you know, like, where does this come from? Because first of all, I think it adds depth to a recipe if you can tell a story. But I think it's also really important to be able to acknowledge the people who were even
if it's an individual, not necessarily a culture. You know, to say, oh, that's this person, that idea came from this person or from that person, because it's just the right thing to do. But also it really helps to create a much more a deeper sense to the recipe, to the dish that you're eating if you know where it comes from.
Writing books, yeah.
All of my last few books are all co written, so I've collaborated with someone. That's what allows the books to stay fresh, the fact that they featured other voices, not just mine.
What is your most recent book?
So my most recent book is The Extra Good Things from the Auto Lengthy Test Kitchen. So it comes out of the Auto Lengthy Test Kitchen, and I've written it together with Norm Rudd, who's yeah, she's half Baheranian, half English, so she's got that kind of what I have, which
is this kind of mix of culture. And it is a book that tries to feature what we call extra good things are condiments, are things that marinades and dressings and sprinkles and things that are derivatives of a recipe that you could kind of keep to one side and use another day. Because often in our food we have
a dressing or sauce marinad. And what we're trying to do is at tea people how people used to cook in the old days, so they would instead of cooking starting from scratch, every time you're go into the kitchen, you'd have like a pot of sauer kraut or kimchi or flavored oil or just something that is useful already is halfway through it to a meal. So every recipe has a takeout, something that you could keep on a shelf or in the fridge that you could use for future.
I always like, first, you know, to follow a recipe really, really precisely and really do it, and then you know, to spontaneously change. And I also think when you talk about the number of ingredients. I had a friend who had six children and one summer she was taking They were all under the age of sort of shit, twins under the age of ten. I said, are you taking
all the kids to Martha's Vintage? She said no, because I'm just going to take four of them, because you know, it's really hard to stay with a friend when you have six kids, but if you only have four, you can stay with anybody, you know. And it was so relegive, you know, to the idea that suddly, you know, so simple, because you did book with ten ingredients, didn't you.
Yeah, well I did simple It has some ingredients. Some recipes have ten or yeah, which is like nothing, which for me is not exactly ingredients. Yeah, I know, And people say, you know that, why do you need so many ingredients and so many exciting areas? I said, you don't need anything. It's a choice, you know. But there is this expectation these days that every recipe is for everyone, and people can I substitute this if I don't like that,
And I always have to say, yes, you can. But why don't you just choose another recipe?
Yeah? Maybe exactly. But and you're cooking? Are you cooking at home? Do you have time to cook.
Less than I used to, which is a shame. I cook mostly on the weekend. So we are we as parents to young kids. I wouldn't say young parents. We don't entertain much during the week, but on the weekend we have people over and then there will we do big weekend meals.
It's a question that I ask everyone if there's a food we know, people that we turn to for comfort and places we go for comfort. But if there's something that you would want to eat apart from your mother's chocolate being hidden, I can never get rid of that image on the top shelf, is there a food that you've reached for when you really need comfort?
So I have to say that from all the things that I've had, it's things that my father used to cook, or my Italian grandmother she used to make. And it's not just because I'm at the River cafam saying, as she used to make ki ala romana. Ah yeah, yeah,
And it's the one smell that I have. As you know, people talk too much about you know, those you know, moments of childhood, but this is really one that stands so strong in my mind that in my head that is there thinly spread semolina and yoki on a tray dotted with butter and cheese, and it would go under
the grail and all. And since they did get grete cheese from Italy and they had parmigiano, and she would put that under the graill and it would just make and that kind of semolina soft, you know, milky with a grated cheese milk and cheese on top. It's just it's just such a child with favor and that is definitely the one that brings the most comfort to me. And I've never managed to do it as not even remotely as good as she does.
I know, well, we'll try and make it for if I know, we would have put it on the menu. It on the menu sometimes, yeah, yeah, especially we have it on very often when we have white truffles because it's one of those delicious recipes, which it's still just without white truffles, but it does take because it's like it's almost like a cheese fla and they are so delicious. So we're going to go ahead and have lunch in
the River Cafe now without Jacky Romana. But the next time we do, we'll definitely have Thank you, thank you, Yes, let's do it.
Thank you so much much great.
The River Cafe Book 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
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