You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair. A few weeks ago, I was invited to a gala dinner at the National Theater. The host of My Table, Yan Appeal, said she was sitting me next to a young filmmaker who had recently won a BAFTA. Then I met an artist whose work had just been exhibited at hauserin Worth Gallery in Los Angeles and is about to be shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Then I met a champion volleyball player who, aged eighteen,
represented Britain in the twenty twelve London Olympics. To day in the River Cafe, I'm about to talk with all three, as Savannah Leaf incredibly is them all? The London born, California raised athlete turned artist who still only thirty, has just won the baft Of for Best British Debut Director for her powerful film Earth Mamma. Executive chef of the River Cafe, Sean Owen is joining us. Now we are five cook, an artist, a director, an athlete and me women rule. I love that. Yeah, we're good.
So it was.
It was an amazing dinner, wasn't it It?
Was really nice.
You never know who you're going to sit next to you, you know, I don't know me too, next to each other, and it was it was a pretty amazing night. Was because it was a gala supporting the National Theater and it was really created by the actors and the director.
Yeah, you really felt like the theater experience while also going to a galla with food and you know, an auction and all of it. But it was really nice to just be seated next to you and and talking to you about everything architecture, food.
Films, covered volleybool, volleyball, volleyball, and I think what you know, I mean, I think you very often meet people who do different things. You know that they can be well, they could be a chef, they could be a writer, they could be an actor and a mother. They could be an actor and a director and love to swim. There are people who do combine different parts of life together. And then there are people who do one thing you know, so that's fine too. Or some people do nothing and
that's fine too. But you know, so from interesting to meet, I've ever met anyone who was an Olympic, much less a volleyball player in the Olympics. So I think it's interesting how you have taken those parallel lives and put them together. There's lots to talk about food, and lots to talk about how you got where you are and what you want to do, But how does the combination of being an athlete and being an artist, what has that taught you.
At this point?
It's it sounds really weird saying that I played in the Olympics and you know, have made a film and do video art, and it sounds like not like a typical kind of narrative. But when I look back on it, I really feel there's a lot of parallels, you know, and the transition doesn't feel as crazy because because when I was an athlete, I was working in a team environment.
You're very good under pressure a lot of the times, and you're kind of looking at all your teammates around you and you're seeing what their strengths are and then you're trying to pull that out of them, and you're also seeing their weaknesses and where you can kind of fill in or help them in spaces that they're struggling with.
And it's all about this kind of movement towards a common goal, you know, and at the time also when I played in the Olympics, I was also going to university in Miami and I was playing Division one volleyball there. And while I was at that university, I studied psychology and human and social development. So I was already thinking about kind of how we interacted our societies and what individuals struggle within their own kind of mental health.
And so I.
Was thinking about kind of like society and how we can help one another or kind of focus on individuals stories. And then I was also in this team environment. So in a way, like film is kind of a combination of all of that, because you have to kind of
work in a similar setting. You have this like clock while you're on set, and you have this kind of the day is, you know, moving quickly and you have to get to this common goal and you have to make quick decisions, and there's like an intuition there that I think is kind of very common in a lot of these artistic scenarios. And then you also have this kind of study on the character and the human development
and society. And then you have artistic expression, which is something I felt like I was lacking in sports, you know, like I didn't get to share my mind or what was going on in terms of my worldview.
And so there was a.
Point in sports where I was like, I need to share my voice. I have all these stories inside of me, but I haven't been able to show them because all I'm doing is expressing.
Things with my body.
So all of a sudden, I could start expressing things with my mind and that that was very liberating for me.
I want to you then segued from volleyball to film. Did you start out as an actor in a film? Did you just play small films? Well?
My first well, I think like ever since I was a kid, I was like painting or drawing or doing you know, different variations of art. And then I got injured playing in Puerto Rico. Because I was playing professionally in Puerto Rico at the time.
What is Andreie, you would suffer in volleybale.
So I had stress fractures in both of my legs. And at the time they were telling me, which actually relates to food in a funny way, I had transitioned. When I was in TMGB, I was like eating everything and then I started becoming like a pescatarian. Then I became a vegan because I realized, like I was eating kind of everything and anything like Burger King McDonald's. Literally every day was just like downing as much food as possible, like six eggs for breakfast, just excessive.
Amount of food.
And then when I got to the Olympics and I started getting a nutritionist, they were kind of like, ah, you're a little bit you're like not eating very healthy. You're kind of a little bit heavier than you should be, and you need to kind of like be thinking about what you're eating and the kind of energy you're preserving, and you know how you can kind of utilize that energy. And so it kind of started to get me thinking
about food a little bit more. But when I went back to I decided to just like go full throttle like vegan, and so I just cut everything. But I didn't really know how to like balance that vegan diet.
So I was just.
Kind of eating like an insane amount of like bananas and bruccoli and like but not really thinking about what is what is that food?
Were you having enough protein? Then?
So exactly that, So when I went and played in Puerto Rico like a few years later, I had such a strict diet, but I got these stress fractors in my bones and my shins and my bones were becoming really frail, and I don't know, maybe it's just the overworking. I was working like all through the year, both for
Team GB and England and then also professionally. I was literally taking no time off and a lot of times you're jumping in a gym with like just cement beneath your legs, and so you're just completely over overworking yourself. But then when I went to the doctors, they were saying, oh, like it could be because you're not getting enough vitamin D and you're not getting enough nutrients for your bones
to kind of maintain while you're overworking them. Basically, they told me I had to either put rods in my legs or I would have to take at.
Least a year off, if not more.
And they said during that time, if I take that time off, I can't walk much. I have to just like be as still as possible, don't do exercises any If you do any exercise, ass be in the pool. And so it really forced me to like sit and think about kind of what my life was at that kind of young age and how long I wanted to do this for and like, at what age do you retire?
Can I go back to this?
And so? And am I happy doing what I'm doing? And I started thinking about what else could I be? Like?
What else?
I've always been known as this athlete because you see me when I walk in, I'm like very tall, athletic looking. It's like instantly what people think of when they see me. And so I started kind of thinking of myself as more than an athlete. And that was like very liberating.
The River Cafe is excited. We're opening the River Cafe. Cafe. Come from a morning Briosian cappuccino, a plate of seasonal antipasty on the terrace, or an ice cream or a paratibo in the sun. We can't wait to open, and we cannot wait to welcome you. In your family growing up as a child, what was food like in your family? Did your mother cook? Did you sit around the table being a child in the household? You had a single parent and you grew up in San Francisco.
Well, so I grew up half my life here in a in Vauxhall, and I grew up with just my mom when I was little, and uh, it was you know, she's working long hours, and so sometimes it was neighbors that are I'm eating dinner with, or sometimes it's my mom, and so it would be a mixture of things.
And we were an only child.
I was an only child until I was sixteen, and then my mom had my sister.
Growing up though, growing up the all So would she come back from home.
Yeah, sometimes it would be late, sometimes it'd be late, And I think like as I got older, there was a lot of like you know, microwaveable meals or whatever you could have, especially like when you're also thinking about I would then go to sports practice.
I'd go to volleyball practice or basketball practice.
What day should you stop playing volleyball?
I think I was like nine, maybe, Yeah, a lot of times, like my mom would be riving home and I'd be going to practice or something like that, so I would have to eat before she came home. But then also, like I think there was different stages sometimes, you know, there was also times where my mom would make something on a Sunday and then there would be leftover so I could eat it for the next couple of days.
You have grandparents around, no, because.
I grew up with only my mom, and then we moved to the Bay Area in California, and my grandma lives in Yorkshire, Weatherby.
Do you know where that is?
Yeah?
Okay, so my grandma lives in Weatherby, and so she wasn't really around. We would sometimes go for Christmas or something like that. But my grandma had this like really simple pasta and I remember just like asking my mom for it all the time, and it was the most simple thing. It was literally like penne pasta with like a tin red sauce and then cheese on top and you put it in the oven. But for some reason
it like had this kind of I don't know. I would just ask my mom for it like all the time, and I think even now we call it like Grandma's famous famous pos even though very simple.
San Francisco. What was that like for you to move? How old are you then?
I was eight years old when I moved.
So did you start playing volleyball?
When I got there?
And I started seeing because volleyball is not really like a big thing in the UK at all. I think, like in the London twenty twelve Olympics is when people realize, you know, what kind of sport it was? But when I moved to the Bay Area, volleyball and basketball were huge.
And for what was when I saw women?
Yeah, for women, for young girls, and I mean I think basketball I was more excited about at the time. But I was like, I've always been a kid that hung around a lot of guys, and so I would There was like this basketball hoop kind of close to my house where all the guys would play and they would ask me if I wanted to join it, and so I would join in. But you went for volleyball
over basketball, Yeah, because I was better at volleyball. Yeah, and I was stronger at it, and I was starting to people were noticing me for volleyball, and like I was getting a lot of offers to play in university, and the more offers I got, I realized, like, let's lean into that, you know, let's lean into the where I naturally am like better.
What does your mother think?
I think she was just like excited to see me finding something I was good at. Also, it was something like I could go and play in university and have everything paid for and have like this whole trajectory in my life, and so she was excited to watch that.
But yeah, It's very moving to me. The way you spoke about about being in a team, in the space into another space to help someone, having someone move into your space, the the collaboration. That reminded me of what we do here. Yeah, you know, probably and in many many offices, many fields, there are people who, as I say, like to work at home by themselves in a room with the typewriter, or the people who really seek out
kind of feel. And I think cinema, I was on a set the other day and it really struck me how similar probably or in the National theater, how many, how many similarities they are I thought at the time between a restaurant and.
Yeah, I can see it even now, like just looking into the kitchen and seeing everyone kind of knows their position, but then also can help each other out if they need to. But yeah, that's it's something that I think about a lot when I get when I'm like in the hiring position, you know, as a director you're thinking about who can I hire and balance out on a set because I need Sometimes I I want to hire some that's never done this role before, but I like
them for their kind of general vision, you know. For my film Earth mamac I hired this costume designer who had never done a film before, but she just had such a great taste for it, and so it's like a matter of hiring her and then hiring someone that's very experienced that can work with her, you know, as a kind of under her to help kind of manage everything.
And so I like that idea of hiring and kind of thinking, how can we find people from different places to help this vision be progressive and challenge the way cinema is made. But then I also kind of have the experience of some of these people that have done it time and time again.
You know, during this period when you became interested in doing film working and then you say how you started, and then when you were in a situation of being actually a director, yeah, and you could create your own work world? Was that very well? Yeah?
I didn't take long.
I started working for a company and then I like left maybe four months in or something and kind of saved up money and made.
My first little short.
What was that?
It was called f Word.
It was kind of about a girl who's coping with not knowing her father. At a biographical yes, it is, but it's also you fictionalize it a little bit to have a bit of distance to it.
How long ago was that?
That was twenty fifteen?
I think I was twenty one and then actually it's interesting you thinking about, like, you know, shifting your career finding ways because then you know, eight years later, I guess Earth Mama was released in twenty three last year, which is my first feature film, which feels like a big shift from them from doing your first, you know, little short film to doing your first feature film, and then last year also releasing like a piece of video art and like moving into the video arts space and
the art world.
And I don't know.
I think you get to a point in your career where you've been doing it for almost ten years and then you feel like how can I challenge myself in a whole other space or like keep evolving? And I think for myself, I hope that I'm always like that throughout my whole life, is like always not afraid to take that kind of jump into a new space, because the idea of having one job for all of your life doesn't excite me. Like for me, I need to have those shifts, you know.
Can you tell us about the movie?
Earth Mama is about a young woman who has two children in foster care and one child on the way, and it's all set in the Bay Area, and she is trying to figure out what she's going to do with her unborn child, whether she's going to give her child up for adoption or try to keep it. And so there's kind of this dilemma there of whether or not as well whether the system is going to allow
her to keep her child or not. So it kind of goes through her final days of her pregnancy and how she maneuvers those those obstacles.
When we talk about adoption, yeah, and I'm a mother of an adopted child, A lot of it is about love. As a mother, I had one child that was I would say, handed to me on my breast after giving birth, and another child who was handed to me in a hotel lobby, you know, in Philadelphia, and then I remember going up on the elevator and thinking I could no sooner give this baby away, yeah, you know, than the one that I was I gave birth to. And I think, and it is about what is what is love? What
is protection? What is taken care of? And so I think that and you experienced that with yeah, your own sisters.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, the film is like roughly based on my relationship to my own sister. My sister was adopted when I was sixteen. It was a really pivotal moment in my life, which is why I wanted to make this film because for me as a sixteen year old meeting her birth mother and like sitting across from her and just thinking about this kind of selfless act that she was going to do, but also the pressures in her life at that time and how she was
going to have to make that decision. And she told me at the time, she said, I want you to be the role model that I can't be in her life. And I remember like that shifting something within me because it just all of us. When you're an only child, you don't have that same sort of responsibility as you have as you know, an older sister or a parent, and at that age, being sixteen, I almost felt like a second parent, you know, to my siblings.
Did you cook for her?
She was so young, she was like, I was giving her the bottle, so I was, I was doing that, but she I left the house before she really started eating foods.
You have a scene in the movie which takes place in a restaurant. Yeah, and it's a very emotional scene.
Yeah, yeah.
Can you describe the scene.
Yeah, So there's this moment which is actually, you know, in the first draft of the script, I wrote it, and there was one scene that's stuck through that whole first draft, which was the scene that you're talking about, which is the middle point of the film, which is where the birth mother meets the adoptive family for the first time and they meet over food over in a restaurant, and it's kind of playing with this the uncomfortability, but also the intrigue and the questions you have all these
feelings that arise when you're sitting across the table from someone who who's potentially going to be giving her child to you, and you kind of anticipating that child, whether you couldn't have children before that, or what that anticipation is like. And also as a sister, what it was like to sit across from this person that you're kind of know nothing about, but they're potentially changing your whole life.
So it was such an important scene in the film, and it started in the first draft and maintained throughout the whole film. But I think it's also been one of the things that people take home or take with them the most.
In the movie, it's interesting in the see the detailed ordering of the food. And also I think what's interesting is that you're doing a very very personal, very probably I can't imagine a more compellingly personal emotional scene between people than talking about, you know, the loss of a baby and giving a baby away to parents. Yeah, it's
set in a restaurant. You think you might do that in somebody's house, in a in a living room, or in an office that you that you put it in at a restaurant is interesting because again I say over and over that people do very private things in a very public space. Yeah, people do gravitate. If you go to the tables looking out here in the garden, you know,
you have no idea what they're talking about. They might be just talking about their day or what their plans are, or how much fun they're having in London, or they might be discussing very life changing issues.
Yeah.
I think actually, like some of my most key moments in life have been in like restaurant, you know, like meeting my sister's birth mother for the first time, or meeting with someone that you had a relationship with before and then you're just having a meeting again, and that there is this like kind of comforting space because you can always eat to fill the silence.
So if you need to and.
You're being looked after by a waiter, you don't have to get up and get the salt from the coupboard.
Yeah, there's like something about that. The fact that it's in a public space and you're sharing this personal moment in a public space is like very vulnerable and it kind of can bring all these emotions out or you're having to hide emotions as well, And so I think in scenes in films, there's something really profound about setting these like private moments in a public space.
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you please make sure to rate and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, o, wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. As we're reading the recipe for far and out her a Sean executive share for the River Cafe is just coming in with farinata food. You just share have you ever heard of before?
I actually have no idea what farinata is. So this is exciting.
So this is actually a pancake made out of chickpea flour, so it's super it's actually vegan and gluten free.
I don't know if you have any diet trees. I do. I'm pescatarian, so you're going to take all boxes.
Yeah, it's a kind of street food from Genoa and it's just made with chickpea flour and olive oil, fennel seeds, rosemary and just cooked in the wood oven. But you don't need a wood oven to make it at home. You could just in an ou in case you don't have a wood oven. It's really nice if you want to try it.
Yeah.
One of the things about farinata's very very regional, goes at the coast of Laguria up until France, in which it then becomes a nice when you have it. It's pretty much the same recipe, but it has a different name, and so it is a street food, but it also is quite sophisticated. It's also really good to have before you have a meal.
So very often do you put it with anything.
We find in the restaurant that instead of if people don't want to have brisketta, Fretty will send it out like that. But it's also really nice with something else, like some pretty rutto or mozzarella or even crab, so it can be an accompaniment or just a nibble.
If you're making fairinata at home, what would be your advice when you're cooking it? Because it is so simple, but it's hard to make it good farinata? Really, don't you think? Yeah?
I think you need to do it like any pancake. You need to make sure the pan is really hot before you put the oil in, and then let the oil be hot before you put the chippea mixture in it, and then because otherwise it can stick, can't it. I mean that was one of the things that whenever I'm cooking for Ruthie, you always like, do you want to make farrilata?
No? No, because it sticks. The more the more experienced the chef in the River Cafe, the higher up there are on the on, the harder they find. And it's also such a performance you judged immediately like how fair and half their it is. You know, how thick it is, how creamy it is, how dry and so.
You know, it's kind of a bit of all of that, like it's crispy and it has the like softness inside.
And it's one of those things if you're working next when one's freshly made and it comes out of the oven, you don't want to be working too near it because you end up eating like half a.
Fowl at night, like one slice is actually really.
Yeah, And if you were making it at home, would you would you make the better the day before?
What?
What? What do you feel about making the better? How long do you let it rest? Probably you let it.
It says in the recipe to leave it rest for about two hours, But if you leave it overnight, I think you get a better, better end result.
There's also telling about the para nada pan. What is a paranada pan.
It's like a kind of massive big skillet, a couple of about twenty inches. It's got like a pitted the bottom of the It's not just flat, is it. It's got kind of like slightly grooves in it.
Yeah.
I don't really know what the grooves do apart from textually.
What do you think?
Really?
I think it does give a texture and it probably also helps perhaps with the separation. Yeah, when it eats ups, so you have a copper pan and it has a little hook, so you can hang it, and you can, and then it has a tin base, so the tin the inside is tin. It's a very beautiful thing to look at. I remember that when I wanted to buy one, I could not find one in the liquoria. I went to a place called the Spezzia. I couldn't find one
in any shop. And then I made a meeting for a cousin of a friend of a friend who met me in the parking lot at pizza station. And he took out of the of his car, not drugs, not something. It was like, you know, at seven o'clock he took out a far night. I gave him the cash, and it is. And then but then you can get them, you sell them, and I shop, you know, shop the
River Cafe, and it is. You know, it's something that I really loved as a thing, as you say, something to have before with a NEGRONI with that sounds nice. Any other tips for making it? How do you know when it's done it will.
Look set on top, it won't be runny. That's really hard to get out if it's running.
I don't think you.
Can really overcook it. I can definitely undercook it.
Like you don't mind if it's burnt a little bit.
Yeah, probably it's more forgiving in going the underway and then trying to scoop it out, which.
Yeah, looks like a real mess. Farinata. Wow, now that you've eaten it and you've learned how to make it, would you like to read the recipe?
Farinata chickpea and fennel Farinata serves four people. Two cups of warm water, three quarter cups of Italian chickpea flour, four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, one tablespoon fennel seeds, chopped fresh stage or rosemary, and some salt. First, you're gonna put the water in a large bowl and sift in flour. You're gonna whisk to combine. Then add the extra virgin olive oil and salt. Cover and leave in a warm place for two hours and preheat the oven
to two hundred and fifty degrees celsius. Pour enough olive oil into a farinata pan to coat to the bottom. Pour in the batter it should be about one to two centimeters deep. Top with the fennel seeds or herbs and black pepper. Bake for twenty to thirty minutes until the surface has bubbled and become crisp.
So you're about to embark on an exhibition sf MoMA, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Incredible city, a city that also you know, yeah, and I have so many friends who lived there. There's such an energy for new art, new design. Tell us about what you're planned to do with sf MoMA.
I'm really excited because last year we were able to show a piece that kind of delved into my sports backgrounds and was almost like a self portrait, and it showed at Hauser and Worth Gallery and a group show with other women artists in LA And then this year we're going to be kind of part of another group show, but this group show is also about sports in a year you know, where there's the Olympics happening, and so it's going to be kind of another way to show
this kind of sports story combining with my art and film work in a place like essef moment, so kind of bringing it back to where I grew up half my life.
So I'm really excited about that.
When will that be it opens I believe October nineteenth.
Okay, we'll all be there.
Thank you.
So in your life. You have been an athletes, We have a filmmaker, we have artists. Is there a Savannah leaf that we've been thinking might be doing we put out an album.
It's funny you should say that. I mean, actually over the pandemic. My partner and I learned ableton and making music, and I think kind of learning different crafts is something that really excites us and excites me a lot because making music is such something so interesting because it helps me in the filmmaking world. It helps me edit films, it helps me write films. So I don't know what's next for me, but who knows, maybe you'll come.
You know how to cook parano exactly right there, And if we were going to ask you for your last question, very very lovely talk. Yeah, if you need food for comfort and all the roles you've been as in sport and film, is there a food that you would actually go back to that in your past or something you'd like to eat or that you.
Grave Recently, in the past few years, my partner and I have had like a tradition of going to this place called the Wedding Patisserie, which is in Vauxhall, which is like a Portuguese bakery and they have like little questants and it's like a warm quaest on. It's just a simple thing. And I have like a questlong with an orange juice, like a freshly squeezed orange juice in the morning and we go there kind of like almost
every morning to have it. And it kind of that walk along to little Portugal and Vauxhail is like something I used to do as a kid because we would go to all the little Portuguese restaurants over there. So there's something nostalgic and comforting about that, but it's also a nice like routine to have when you're waking up early in the morning.
So that's what I have been doing to start the day.
Yeah, thank you so much for that, and we have many more dinners to share it together.
Yeah, thank you.
Thanks, thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair