October 26, 2021 • 22 mins
Today, on the sixth episode of Ruthie's Table 4, Emily Blunt gives Ruthie the recipe for the roast chicken she cooked, leading to a proposal of marriage, reveals why her best-loved pasta is cacio e pepe, and endearingly explains why she ran to Burger King before acting with Dame Judi Dench.
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home.
On Ruthie's Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers.
Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks.
Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation.
For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
and Adami Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is River Cafe Table four with me Ruthie Rogers.
On River Cafe Table four, I talk to friends who
know the River Cafe well about food, the food they cook,
the food they eat, the food of their memories.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Pennae with zucchini and lemon zest Serve six.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
This week I have wonderful, beautiful, brilliant, few adjectives emily plant.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
One kilo medium zucchini, yellow, green or ridged.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
In each episode, my guest reads a recipe they have
chosen from one of our cookbooks.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, two hundred and fifty
grams unsalted butter, one garlic clove, peeled and thinly sliced,
three hundred and fifty grams penne. One bunch fresh mint leaves,
roughly torn, two lemons, preferably Amalfi. Wash and trim the
(01:19):
zucchini and cut into small pieces, and in a large saucepan,
heat the olive oil with one hundred grams of the butter.
Add the zucchini and stir season well. Adding the garlic.
Cook gently, stirring from time to time for twenty minutes.
Bring a pot of salted water to the boil, Add
(01:42):
the penne to the water, and cook ten minutes or
until al dente. Drain and add the zucchini, Add the
remaining butter and the mint leaves. Mix thoroughly great, lemon
zest on top.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Thank you, Emily. Here we are in the River Cafe,
late afternoon, looking at the restaurant, getting ready actually for
the evening service.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Can't wait.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I'm so happy that you chose this recipe because it
is one of my favorites. Actually, I say that most
times that the recipe is my favorite, but this one is.
And I was wondering why this recipe do you cook it?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Honestly, it just has three of my favorite things in it,
so any I just wanted to pick one of your
pasta dishes because it is my ultimate favorite thing and
what I crave most.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
And did you grow up eating pasta? Yes, the food child, but.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
It was more like spaghetti, you know my mom. My
mom did tell me, well, God bless her. She had
four kids, and I'm sure we were all wanting different things,
and she just had so many kids in so little
time that very often she'd be like you know, you
get what you get and you don't get upset. But
I do have this lasting memory of her spaghetti bolonnaise
(02:55):
and then always wanting just pasta with butter and cheese
as well. So she would always let us have the
pasta with the butter and cheese if we had the
bolonnaise first. And I find myself doing it to my kids,
I will bribe them. They've got to have the sauce
pasta and then they can have just the butter and
che cheese.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
And when kids come to the River Cafe for lunch families,
you know, two pasta, butter and cheese. But in fact
it is really delici.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
It's actually delicious. No, I have to be careble not
to shovel it into my mouth as I'm serving it
to them. They love lasagna, they love I mean, I've
always made them all kinds of pasta, sauces, and I'll
sneak all kinds of things in there and try and
get it past them. My oldest one will try most things, steak, chicken.
Neither of them want the fish apart from sushi fish.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
It's funny about yeah, I know, my stepson said fish.
It was about thirty I.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Think it's so weird. I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Fish maybe where they look, or maybe.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
The b they look. To be honest, I think it
is more the way they look. They kind of envision
what they look and it kind of roastes them out.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah, we were once Increase. It was about four and
it was fishing. It'd stand there all day. We made
with this little fishing rod in the harbor, and in
the end, Richard, my husband, actually went to the market
and bought a fish and we all dove put the
fish on the hook, and then I think he never
ate a fish again for a long time.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
We had a fishing experience in Martha's Vineyard, where we
liked to go every summer because John's from Boston and
his whole family is sort of around there, and it's
a magical place. Mouths beautiful, absolutely love it's so bizarre
and bohemian special. But we took the kids fishing and
Hazel pulled in a fish and it flopped around on
the deck and she screamed. She never recovered. She was like,
it's bleeding, Like it was awful.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
It's very real. So did they cook with you? Did
they come in there? They do?
Speaker 3 (04:40):
I make this chicken noodle soup that they really love.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
How do you make that?
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Well, I actually used ginger in it, and it has
this kind of richness to it. Either I'll use leftover
roast chicken, or I'll sort of sear her or some
chicken thigh. I usually like using chicken thighs bonus skinless.
They're like a dream on there. You can kind of
put them in thing and it's got carrots and celery
and onions and beautiful chicken stock, wine and those egg noodles,
(05:06):
and they just love it.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I always say you should always have chicken soup around.
I always have a part of chicken soup because there
is something so sustaining about it.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah, it's very Moorish. It was one of the first
things I made for John. I think the.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Chicken soup. I think it's always interested the food we
cook for an occasion. You know, Yes, I was going
to want to do a book called What to Cook
When when you're depressed, when you're broke, when you want
us to do somebody when you don't have somebody important
coming to dinner? Did you think about that when you
were cooking for him?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Well, it's funny, I guess they just made that. I
knew he would love, like I mean a roast chicken.
Who doesn't love roast chicken. And the roast chicken I
love is Ina Garten's roast chicken. It's called it her
engagement chicken because I think when people make it for people,
they get engaged or something. Lemon, garlic, onions up the chicken, thyme,
(05:57):
salt and pepper, all that, and you scatter onions around
the chicken, but you pack them in really tight into
the tray and then you roast them really high about
an hour and twenty minutes and they're done and they're perfect.
And then when you take the chickens out, you then
kind of cute in some wine and some butter and
into that onion eque garlicy mixture. Oh my gods, divine,
(06:19):
it's really sticky and yummy, and then they fell in love.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
That's it, that's all it took.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
But were you going out tell me more about your
did you rather work or? She had four kids and
so her cooking was well.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
So she was an actress when Fie and I were
very little, and then she just had too many kids.
She had two more after me and Fee and then
I think, you know, really felt she needed to be
home with us. I don't know if she loved cooking
because it was more of a chore for her with kids,
being like, I don't like risotto. I don't you know.
I think it's probably like a bit joyless at times.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Did she teach you how to do her recipes?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
She did, but she sort of is a bit of
a just bung it all in So was it very British?
They're very British in general. And then definitely every Sunday
was the religion of the Sunday roast.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
What was that? As an American, I'm really intrigued by
the whole British Sunday lunch.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Well, it's like Christmas Dinner, Thanksgiving. Yeah, Sunday, Every Sunday
we would either have roast beef, roast lamb, roast chicken,
or roast pork. It was one of those. Always a roast,
always a roast, and then we would have roast potatoes
with the beef. You'd have Yorkshire puddings, we'd have everything.
We'd have the bread, sauce, we'd have vegetables, we'd have gravy.
(07:31):
I mean, I just have this lasting memory in my
dad's plate, just like swimming in Great swimming In.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Emily talked about Sunday roast when she was a child.
So when we're roasting meat here, we like to sear
the meat and get a good color on all sides.
And then often we'll put it into the wood oven
and get a dry heat into it to start the
cooking process. And then maybe after ten or fifteen minutes,
we can go in with hard herb, whether it's rosemary,
(08:01):
sage bay, and if it wants a splash of wine
or water. Now this is the same weather we're making
slow roasted veal, spatchcock chickens, pot roasted beef, Philip. This
is the way that we like to do it.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So when you're growing up with this really important food
tradition in your house of sitting down to dinner that
your mother goes, what age did you kind of leave?
Did you go to university here and stay home or
did you go abroad?
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Or so I am the only person in my family
who didn't go to university because when I was about seventeen,
I did this play with my school and an agent
came to see the play and he said, I think
you're really good. You should do this. And I really
had a cavalier attitude towards it because I was like, oh, okay,
I'm not worrying. I wasn't really thinking about being an actress.
I was sort of wanting to go to university and
(08:58):
do languages like I always loved Spanish and French and
my mum's an amazing linguist and yeah, brilliant British speaks
like three languages. And so I was sort of inspired
by that and wanted to do that. And then he said, well,
why don't you give it a go? And I'd also
seen from my mother how tough the industry was, you know,
I didn't have a rose tinted gaze towards it. I'd
(09:21):
seen how damaging it can be. It's so personal, you know.
So I was like, okay, we I'll give it a go,
but I don't really know if I want to do it.
I can't believe I was talking like that now, because
I truly am madly in love with it. But anyway,
I tried it. I auditioned. I got my first job
when I was eighteen, once I was out of school,
which was a play with Dane Judy Dench and she
(09:41):
was just divine to me, and so Peter Hall directed it.
I mean it was just mad. I was just such
a love the royal family.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
It's like, no twenty years.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yeah, it's based on the Barrymores. The fictional family is
called the Cavendishes. And yeah, so quite soon after that,
around eighteen nineteen, I got my own place. I just
cut Yeah, I got my own place in Parsons Green
and I was so green. I mean I just like
went and looked at it, and I just liked the
look of the colors on the walls. So I just
went with it. And my mom came over and she
(10:11):
was like, is there any heating in here? And I
realized there was no central heating in the apartment, and
I was like, oh, I just got a case. The
walls were really cool, because I.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Think that's a good criteria.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
It was a happy place. It just was freezing and
that's very young ETI yeah, it was young.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And then did you cook at all? Did you still
want to eat? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Yeah, I mean I do. Remember before I did the play.
I mean, you're going to be horrified to hear this,
because I haven't had one since I used to go
every night to Burger King and get a double cheeseburger
before I went on stage. I don't know how I
went on stage to two hours after that.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I was going to ask you, you know, because it
is intriguing. You know, we all think about how we
work and how we eat and when we when we work,
and how we sort of fit all that in, and
so if you are in the theater you weren't there,
would you still do that now that you would eat
before going on stage?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
She would like, I'm someone who needs to eat all day.
I'm not someone who can have three meals a day.
I feel like I'm usually hungry most of the time,
and so I tried to do sort of four to
five smaller meals throughout the day. But yeah, I couldn't
eat a double cheeseburger with fries now and not want
to go and have a nap.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
But you would eat.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I was eighteen, so I was like, it's fine. So
I would get to the theater around I don't know.
I guess we would go on at seven thirty, so
I would eat at like six fifteen, and just disgusting
every night. Every night, I was obsessed with it. It
was my favorite thing. I get the Tube Incadilly Circus.
I go to Burger King and go straight to the theater.
I probably stank of burgers and Judy Dench noticed that
(11:44):
you were smelling of a Burger King. Burger so lovely here,
Like every night after the show, she would bring me
into her dressing room and there'd be so many like
famous people in there, and I was like, what, Like
I was a kid. I mean it was amazing. And
Peter Bowls was in it. Do you know him?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I remember? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:03):
And he took me to the.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Ivy for the first Yeah, yeah, do you remember that?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
I do? I remember it. I mean I'd never been
to a restaurant like that before. It was mad.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Did you go to restaurants with your parents?
Speaker 3 (12:13):
If I remember on a Friday night we would go
for a Chinese Great Lehampton and Crispy Duck pancakes, And
I remember just being obsessed with that kind of thing
growing up. But I feel it's a more common thing
for people to take their kids out to cafes and
restaurants now.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, And I think that you know, as you say,
can be the pane butter and cheese, but sometimes, you know,
I was once amazed we had an eight year old
who ordered a grouse. No, they were Italian, but.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Oh see, that's incredible. It was even Stanley and Fee
like Stanley who is you know, fist of food. Even
his little kids, like they have about five things they
really love and he's like, come on, like I made
a lasagna for my kids yesterday and Hazel loves it
and everything. But Violet, my little one who's for she
(13:01):
was really like, no, I just want the plane lasagna.
I just want blanket pasta, she calls it. But I said,
come on, you got to try it and then I'll
give you the blanket pasta. And then she looks at it.
She goes, it looks like a cake. I said, there
you go, and then she loved it.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah. What about when you leave them and you go
to do a film.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Well, normally they're with me when I work, but it's
hard during school time. And now they're both in school.
Like when they were little, like it kind of dragged
them around anyway, but now they kind of have to
be a bit more stable. So they're going to stay
in London as school. And I'm doing this six part
Western which I'm completely thrilled by. It's heart racing piece
(13:38):
it's sort of as violent as it is witty. It's real.
It's written by Hugo Blick, and it was brought to
me about two years ago. We got delayed because of COVID,
but I truly read the first page and I was like,
I'm going to be doing this.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
This is about the first case.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
It's so dynamic and arresting and beautiful. You just know
the writing. It's all about the writing for me. Now,
I'm just realizing you just cannot make a good movie
out of a bad script. And there's conflict and intrigue
and something different. I'm in.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Are there other women?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
There's a couple of other really cool female parts. There's
a lot of boys. It's like a very but it's
partly because she is presented as this aristocratic woman is
a real fish out of water in this brutal, masculine
world in eighteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Do you eat on the film set? They do good
food or is it?
Speaker 3 (14:24):
It depends where you are, And I've been someplace it's
not very good. But we're in Spain, so maybe they might.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, they might do that.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Sometimes I just try and make my own thing, and
I'll bring my crop part and whip something up during
the day, so I've got something waiting for me when
I get home. But I think when I'm working, I
don't tend to eat sort of pasta and bread because
it just makes me so sluggish. So I'm obsessed with rice.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Right about rice?
Speaker 3 (14:50):
It is one of my favorite things.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Like, yeah, what do you love about rice?
Speaker 3 (14:54):
I love the taste of it. I love that you
can put anything with it. I love all kinds of rice.
I love that you can soak it in stut like
I have this meso soaked black rice that this chef
I know does for me.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
I understand that Emily loves rice. So here at the restaurant,
we use two different risotto rices. One is carnioli, the
other is violona nano rice. The cornorroli we generally use
with chicken stock, and this can go with a variety
of things mushrooms, artochokes, greens, and then the smaller, fatter grain,
(15:27):
which is the violano nano rice, we use with fish stocks.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
When I interviewed Michael Kane, he said that he'd never
done a deal for a movie that was in any
place other than a restaurant. Everything that was decided was
decided in his day, you went to the IVY or
two like with your age, with your agent, with the producer.
Somebody's trying to convince you to be in a movie,
and it was done. And I always think it's interesting
(15:56):
how people going back to restaurants, how people use restaurants.
Some people use it to you announce that they want
a divorce, so they want to fire someone. You can
do a very private thing in a public space.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Do you know, I do see what you're saying about
that people do use restaurants. I think for me in Hollywood,
like everyone meets in restaurants. Like I've met cast members
for the first time in a restaurant. I've met producers, directors.
That's normally how I've met people. It's only recently sort
of over zoom or a phone call that it's very
new to me because I do need to sit with
(16:30):
someone and get a sense of them and get a
sense of the vibe and whether our energy is going
to be good, whether it's going to be copa setic
and a cool experience. And I'm always interested what people
eat and what they want or what they drink, like
if they'll have a glass of wine, yeah, if they
won't like, so if it's an evening sit down, I'll
definitely have a drink, you know, if it's someone I've
(16:51):
never met before, because it's a bit nerve wracking as well.
But a restaurant it is that safe, atmospheric, buzzy place
where if there's a lull income conversation, it doesn't matter.
There's always stuff around you that you can feed off.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
You know who there was somebody I was swill to
or that said he absolutely did not like going into
a quiet restaurant. No, that you need that safety, and
I think that's why people do things. It might be
like firing somebody or breaking up because you can't throw
a frying pan the sentence, you know, really there's a
kind of behavior. But then also I think that a
(17:25):
lot of people do go for a first date in
the restaurant because it does tell you something, doesn't It
how the person needs, how they treat the waiter, whether
they say thank you when they buat something down. It's
kind of does.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
It's very true. And I'm always aware of how people
are with because I feel sometimes everyone's nice to me,
but I always watch how people are with the pas
on set and how are you with people working in
a restaurant, like I want to get a real sense
of who people are is how they are with everybody.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Did you ever work in a restaurant? No?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
But I did work in a catering company. This amazing
friend of my mother's alwageous catering company that she does,
and she would I am Fee and I to be
her waitresses. Really yeah, it was fun actually because the
food was so good. She'd feed us like extraordinary food.
And I have this lasting memory of a quail leg
cannope with hollandaise over it and on this little krusty Christina.
(18:15):
Fee and I used to just steal them. We used
to like pop them like pills. I mean, we loved them.
But I have that memory of the quail leg.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
It is interesting just this conversation is about memory. You know,
you might now remember so many things about that experience,
but the quails comes right.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Fact, I do remember turning up one time and I
was wearing these really ugly sandals and I had a
chipped blue nail polish. I was like sixteen, and she
thought I looked so unpresentable. I had to wash dishes
all night. She was like the best place for you?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Did that? And I was like, and what about the
politics of food, you think about sustainability or about giving
your kids organic food or arms. Martha's Vineyard has so
many good farms.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Watch is fun. Yes, they have the most beautiful produce
and eggs and cheese. And in Brooklyn it's harder. I
find the produce is so much better in the UK.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Better here.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yes, it's so real, Like the carrots are all wonky,
they taste right, like the strawberries, the berries. Everything is
just doesn't taste manufactured. And I think sometimes it's not
the same. Being in the UK has been a bit
of a wake up call for me of how much
better I feel the produce is here.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
And I think again, I think that seems to be
something that we're all thinking about our kids, aren't we think?
And I think that generation is really interesting, especially as
they get older. What they're eating. Yes, I mean when
I have dinner when my grandchildren are older. Once a vegan,
one's a vegetarian, one's gluten free. That's like, you know,
I think the politics of food are consistent with the
(19:49):
politics of everything.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Yes, do you feel at the restaurant you have to
adapt for people in that way?
Speaker 2 (19:54):
We're really lucky to be a time because we are
so focused on vegetables. Yes, so a vegan and the egg,
you know, tag your telly. But they can have a
spaghetti with peas. We do something called farinata. Have you
ever had chippea flower? And so they don't have to
have gluten and you know, you can have a whole meal.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
And I get so excited to look at your menu
and just see what's changed, and it changes all the time.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
It's just so exciting. So if you were thinking about comfort,
do you have a comfort food that this could be anything?
You know, it could be something that you reach for
when you're feeling back to what to eat, when, what
to cook? When?
Speaker 3 (20:30):
All right, I'll comfort Like for me, one of my
favorite things is a toasted bagel with tons of butter
and marmite. It's my favorite thing that I really think heaven.
But I will say the other thing if I were to,
because it's pasta that I create, is a couch pass barchi.
(21:02):
It's so simple and it's just one of my favorite things.
And the first time I had it was in Rome.
I was shooting a TV series in Rome that was
not a very good and I was living alone in Rome,
and I was like twenty years old, lived there for
three months. Bachi the Armorami Barchie. It was near Campeldi Fiori,
(21:26):
and I'd go to all of these little local places,
and I noticed that don't go to the tourist places.
And I remember this one Italian rest where all the
locals went. The vat of wine was just put on
the table. I don't know what wine it was, it
didn't matter. And you get what you get and they
bring you a steak or pasta whatever they have, and
it was just heaven to eat like that. There's simplicity
of it. And I remember going and having couchy to
(21:49):
perpet and people saying this. I think they called it
like the peasant pasta or something. It was sort of
known as being a really sort of low brow pastor.
But I was like, but it's a passive.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
I think that's a brilliant for the food because it's
the cheese actually pasta, butter and cheese.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
It's just got a lot of pep, a little bit
of but you just want to eat.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Like my children maybe maybe loved food is food memories
of childhood and comfort.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Thank you, Emie, Thank you so much, Jerthy Leon, thank you,
thank you. Oh.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
To visit the online shop of the River Cafe, go
to shop the River Cafe dot co dot uk.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeart Radio
and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of iHeartRadio
and Adami Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is River Cafe Table four with me Ruthie Rogers.
On River Cafe Table four, I talk to friends who
know the River Cafe well about food, the food they cook,
the food they eat, the food of their memories.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Pennae with zucchini and lemon zest Serve six.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
This week I have wonderful, beautiful, brilliant, few adjectives emily plant.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
One kilo medium zucchini, yellow, green or ridged.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
In each episode, my guest reads a recipe they have
chosen from one of our cookbooks.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Two tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, two hundred and fifty
grams unsalted butter, one garlic clove, peeled and thinly sliced,
three hundred and fifty grams penne. One bunch fresh mint leaves,
roughly torn, two lemons, preferably Amalfi. Wash and trim the
(01:19):
zucchini and cut into small pieces, and in a large saucepan,
heat the olive oil with one hundred grams of the butter.
Add the zucchini and stir season well. Adding the garlic.
Cook gently, stirring from time to time for twenty minutes.
Bring a pot of salted water to the boil, Add
(01:42):
the penne to the water, and cook ten minutes or
until al dente. Drain and add the zucchini, Add the
remaining butter and the mint leaves. Mix thoroughly great, lemon
zest on top.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Thank you, Emily. Here we are in the River Cafe,
late afternoon, looking at the restaurant, getting ready actually for
the evening service.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
Can't wait.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
I'm so happy that you chose this recipe because it
is one of my favorites. Actually, I say that most
times that the recipe is my favorite, but this one is.
And I was wondering why this recipe do you cook it?
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Honestly, it just has three of my favorite things in it,
so any I just wanted to pick one of your
pasta dishes because it is my ultimate favorite thing and
what I crave most.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
And did you grow up eating pasta? Yes, the food child, but.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
It was more like spaghetti, you know my mom. My
mom did tell me, well, God bless her. She had
four kids, and I'm sure we were all wanting different things,
and she just had so many kids in so little
time that very often she'd be like you know, you
get what you get and you don't get upset. But
I do have this lasting memory of her spaghetti bolonnaise
(02:55):
and then always wanting just pasta with butter and cheese
as well. So she would always let us have the
pasta with the butter and cheese if we had the
bolonnaise first. And I find myself doing it to my kids,
I will bribe them. They've got to have the sauce
pasta and then they can have just the butter and
che cheese.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
And when kids come to the River Cafe for lunch families,
you know, two pasta, butter and cheese. But in fact
it is really delici.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
It's actually delicious. No, I have to be careble not
to shovel it into my mouth as I'm serving it
to them. They love lasagna, they love I mean, I've
always made them all kinds of pasta, sauces, and I'll
sneak all kinds of things in there and try and
get it past them. My oldest one will try most things, steak, chicken.
Neither of them want the fish apart from sushi fish.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
It's funny about yeah, I know, my stepson said fish.
It was about thirty I.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Think it's so weird. I don't know why.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Fish maybe where they look, or maybe.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
The b they look. To be honest, I think it
is more the way they look. They kind of envision
what they look and it kind of roastes them out.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Yeah, we were once Increase. It was about four and
it was fishing. It'd stand there all day. We made
with this little fishing rod in the harbor, and in
the end, Richard, my husband, actually went to the market
and bought a fish and we all dove put the
fish on the hook, and then I think he never
ate a fish again for a long time.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
We had a fishing experience in Martha's Vineyard, where we
liked to go every summer because John's from Boston and
his whole family is sort of around there, and it's
a magical place. Mouths beautiful, absolutely love it's so bizarre
and bohemian special. But we took the kids fishing and
Hazel pulled in a fish and it flopped around on
the deck and she screamed. She never recovered. She was like,
it's bleeding, Like it was awful.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
It's very real. So did they cook with you? Did
they come in there? They do?
Speaker 3 (04:40):
I make this chicken noodle soup that they really love.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
How do you make that?
Speaker 3 (04:44):
Well, I actually used ginger in it, and it has
this kind of richness to it. Either I'll use leftover
roast chicken, or I'll sort of sear her or some
chicken thigh. I usually like using chicken thighs bonus skinless.
They're like a dream on there. You can kind of
put them in thing and it's got carrots and celery
and onions and beautiful chicken stock, wine and those egg noodles,
(05:06):
and they just love it.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
I always say you should always have chicken soup around.
I always have a part of chicken soup because there
is something so sustaining about it.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
Yeah, it's very Moorish. It was one of the first
things I made for John. I think the.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
Chicken soup. I think it's always interested the food we
cook for an occasion. You know, Yes, I was going
to want to do a book called What to Cook
When when you're depressed, when you're broke, when you want
us to do somebody when you don't have somebody important
coming to dinner? Did you think about that when you
were cooking for him?
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Well, it's funny, I guess they just made that. I
knew he would love, like I mean a roast chicken.
Who doesn't love roast chicken. And the roast chicken I
love is Ina Garten's roast chicken. It's called it her
engagement chicken because I think when people make it for people,
they get engaged or something. Lemon, garlic, onions up the chicken, thyme,
(05:57):
salt and pepper, all that, and you scatter onions around
the chicken, but you pack them in really tight into
the tray and then you roast them really high about
an hour and twenty minutes and they're done and they're perfect.
And then when you take the chickens out, you then
kind of cute in some wine and some butter and
into that onion eque garlicy mixture. Oh my gods, divine,
(06:19):
it's really sticky and yummy, and then they fell in love.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
That's it.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
That's it, that's all it took.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
But were you going out tell me more about your
did you rather work or? She had four kids and
so her cooking was well.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
So she was an actress when Fie and I were
very little, and then she just had too many kids.
She had two more after me and Fee and then
I think, you know, really felt she needed to be
home with us. I don't know if she loved cooking
because it was more of a chore for her with kids,
being like, I don't like risotto. I don't you know.
I think it's probably like a bit joyless at times.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Did she teach you how to do her recipes?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
She did, but she sort of is a bit of
a just bung it all in So was it very British?
They're very British in general. And then definitely every Sunday
was the religion of the Sunday roast.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
What was that? As an American, I'm really intrigued by
the whole British Sunday lunch.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Well, it's like Christmas Dinner, Thanksgiving. Yeah, Sunday, Every Sunday
we would either have roast beef, roast lamb, roast chicken,
or roast pork. It was one of those. Always a roast,
always a roast, and then we would have roast potatoes
with the beef. You'd have Yorkshire puddings, we'd have everything.
We'd have the bread, sauce, we'd have vegetables, we'd have gravy.
(07:31):
I mean, I just have this lasting memory in my
dad's plate, just like swimming in Great swimming In.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Emily talked about Sunday roast when she was a child.
So when we're roasting meat here, we like to sear
the meat and get a good color on all sides.
And then often we'll put it into the wood oven
and get a dry heat into it to start the
cooking process. And then maybe after ten or fifteen minutes,
we can go in with hard herb, whether it's rosemary,
(08:01):
sage bay, and if it wants a splash of wine
or water. Now this is the same weather we're making
slow roasted veal, spatchcock chickens, pot roasted beef, Philip. This
is the way that we like to do it.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So when you're growing up with this really important food
tradition in your house of sitting down to dinner that
your mother goes, what age did you kind of leave?
Did you go to university here and stay home or
did you go abroad?
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Or so I am the only person in my family
who didn't go to university because when I was about seventeen,
I did this play with my school and an agent
came to see the play and he said, I think
you're really good. You should do this. And I really
had a cavalier attitude towards it because I was like, oh, okay,
I'm not worrying. I wasn't really thinking about being an actress.
I was sort of wanting to go to university and
(08:58):
do languages like I always loved Spanish and French and
my mum's an amazing linguist and yeah, brilliant British speaks
like three languages. And so I was sort of inspired
by that and wanted to do that. And then he said, well,
why don't you give it a go? And I'd also
seen from my mother how tough the industry was, you know,
I didn't have a rose tinted gaze towards it. I'd
(09:21):
seen how damaging it can be. It's so personal, you know.
So I was like, okay, we I'll give it a go,
but I don't really know if I want to do it.
I can't believe I was talking like that now, because
I truly am madly in love with it. But anyway,
I tried it. I auditioned. I got my first job
when I was eighteen, once I was out of school,
which was a play with Dane Judy Dench and she
(09:41):
was just divine to me, and so Peter Hall directed it.
I mean it was just mad. I was just such
a love the royal family.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
It's like, no twenty years.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
Yeah, it's based on the Barrymores. The fictional family is
called the Cavendishes. And yeah, so quite soon after that,
around eighteen nineteen, I got my own place. I just
cut Yeah, I got my own place in Parsons Green
and I was so green. I mean I just like
went and looked at it, and I just liked the
look of the colors on the walls. So I just
went with it. And my mom came over and she
(10:11):
was like, is there any heating in here? And I
realized there was no central heating in the apartment, and
I was like, oh, I just got a case. The
walls were really cool, because I.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
Think that's a good criteria.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
It was a happy place. It just was freezing and
that's very young ETI yeah, it was young.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
And then did you cook at all? Did you still
want to eat? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:32):
Yeah, I mean I do. Remember before I did the play.
I mean, you're going to be horrified to hear this,
because I haven't had one since I used to go
every night to Burger King and get a double cheeseburger
before I went on stage. I don't know how I
went on stage to two hours after that.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
I was going to ask you, you know, because it
is intriguing. You know, we all think about how we
work and how we eat and when we when we work,
and how we sort of fit all that in, and
so if you are in the theater you weren't there,
would you still do that now that you would eat
before going on stage?
Speaker 3 (11:03):
She would like, I'm someone who needs to eat all day.
I'm not someone who can have three meals a day.
I feel like I'm usually hungry most of the time,
and so I tried to do sort of four to
five smaller meals throughout the day. But yeah, I couldn't
eat a double cheeseburger with fries now and not want
to go and have a nap.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
But you would eat.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
I was eighteen, so I was like, it's fine. So
I would get to the theater around I don't know.
I guess we would go on at seven thirty, so
I would eat at like six fifteen, and just disgusting
every night. Every night, I was obsessed with it. It
was my favorite thing. I get the Tube Incadilly Circus.
I go to Burger King and go straight to the theater.
I probably stank of burgers and Judy Dench noticed that
(11:44):
you were smelling of a Burger King. Burger so lovely here,
Like every night after the show, she would bring me
into her dressing room and there'd be so many like
famous people in there, and I was like, what, Like
I was a kid. I mean it was amazing. And
Peter Bowls was in it. Do you know him?
Speaker 2 (12:02):
I remember? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:03):
And he took me to the.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Ivy for the first Yeah, yeah, do you remember that?
Speaker 3 (12:07):
I do? I remember it. I mean I'd never been
to a restaurant like that before. It was mad.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Did you go to restaurants with your parents?
Speaker 3 (12:13):
If I remember on a Friday night we would go
for a Chinese Great Lehampton and Crispy Duck pancakes, And
I remember just being obsessed with that kind of thing
growing up. But I feel it's a more common thing
for people to take their kids out to cafes and
restaurants now.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, And I think that you know, as you say,
can be the pane butter and cheese, but sometimes, you know,
I was once amazed we had an eight year old
who ordered a grouse. No, they were Italian, but.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Oh see, that's incredible. It was even Stanley and Fee
like Stanley who is you know, fist of food. Even
his little kids, like they have about five things they
really love and he's like, come on, like I made
a lasagna for my kids yesterday and Hazel loves it
and everything. But Violet, my little one who's for she
(13:01):
was really like, no, I just want the plane lasagna.
I just want blanket pasta, she calls it. But I said,
come on, you got to try it and then I'll
give you the blanket pasta. And then she looks at it.
She goes, it looks like a cake. I said, there
you go, and then she loved it.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah. What about when you leave them and you go
to do a film.
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Well, normally they're with me when I work, but it's
hard during school time. And now they're both in school.
Like when they were little, like it kind of dragged
them around anyway, but now they kind of have to
be a bit more stable. So they're going to stay
in London as school. And I'm doing this six part
Western which I'm completely thrilled by. It's heart racing piece
(13:38):
it's sort of as violent as it is witty. It's real.
It's written by Hugo Blick, and it was brought to
me about two years ago. We got delayed because of COVID,
but I truly read the first page and I was like,
I'm going to be doing this.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
This is about the first case.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
It's so dynamic and arresting and beautiful. You just know
the writing. It's all about the writing for me. Now,
I'm just realizing you just cannot make a good movie
out of a bad script. And there's conflict and intrigue
and something different. I'm in.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Are there other women?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
There's a couple of other really cool female parts. There's
a lot of boys. It's like a very but it's
partly because she is presented as this aristocratic woman is
a real fish out of water in this brutal, masculine
world in eighteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Do you eat on the film set? They do good
food or is it?
Speaker 3 (14:24):
It depends where you are, And I've been someplace it's
not very good. But we're in Spain, so maybe they might.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Yeah, they might do that.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Sometimes I just try and make my own thing, and
I'll bring my crop part and whip something up during
the day, so I've got something waiting for me when
I get home. But I think when I'm working, I
don't tend to eat sort of pasta and bread because
it just makes me so sluggish. So I'm obsessed with rice.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Right about rice?
Speaker 3 (14:50):
It is one of my favorite things.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Like, yeah, what do you love about rice?
Speaker 3 (14:54):
I love the taste of it. I love that you
can put anything with it. I love all kinds of rice.
I love that you can soak it in stut like
I have this meso soaked black rice that this chef
I know does for me.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
I understand that Emily loves rice. So here at the restaurant,
we use two different risotto rices. One is carnioli, the
other is violona nano rice. The cornorroli we generally use
with chicken stock, and this can go with a variety
of things mushrooms, artochokes, greens, and then the smaller, fatter grain,
(15:27):
which is the violano nano rice, we use with fish stocks.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
When I interviewed Michael Kane, he said that he'd never
done a deal for a movie that was in any
place other than a restaurant. Everything that was decided was
decided in his day, you went to the IVY or
two like with your age, with your agent, with the producer.
Somebody's trying to convince you to be in a movie,
and it was done. And I always think it's interesting
(15:56):
how people going back to restaurants, how people use restaurants.
Some people use it to you announce that they want
a divorce, so they want to fire someone. You can
do a very private thing in a public space.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Do you know, I do see what you're saying about
that people do use restaurants. I think for me in Hollywood,
like everyone meets in restaurants. Like I've met cast members
for the first time in a restaurant. I've met producers, directors.
That's normally how I've met people. It's only recently sort
of over zoom or a phone call that it's very
new to me because I do need to sit with
(16:30):
someone and get a sense of them and get a
sense of the vibe and whether our energy is going
to be good, whether it's going to be copa setic
and a cool experience. And I'm always interested what people
eat and what they want or what they drink, like
if they'll have a glass of wine, yeah, if they
won't like, so if it's an evening sit down, I'll
definitely have a drink, you know, if it's someone I've
(16:51):
never met before, because it's a bit nerve wracking as well.
But a restaurant it is that safe, atmospheric, buzzy place
where if there's a lull income conversation, it doesn't matter.
There's always stuff around you that you can feed off.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
You know who there was somebody I was swill to
or that said he absolutely did not like going into
a quiet restaurant. No, that you need that safety, and
I think that's why people do things. It might be
like firing somebody or breaking up because you can't throw
a frying pan the sentence, you know, really there's a
kind of behavior. But then also I think that a
(17:25):
lot of people do go for a first date in
the restaurant because it does tell you something, doesn't It
how the person needs, how they treat the waiter, whether
they say thank you when they buat something down. It's
kind of does.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
It's very true. And I'm always aware of how people
are with because I feel sometimes everyone's nice to me,
but I always watch how people are with the pas
on set and how are you with people working in
a restaurant, like I want to get a real sense
of who people are is how they are with everybody.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Did you ever work in a restaurant? No?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
But I did work in a catering company. This amazing
friend of my mother's alwageous catering company that she does,
and she would I am Fee and I to be
her waitresses. Really yeah, it was fun actually because the
food was so good. She'd feed us like extraordinary food.
And I have this lasting memory of a quail leg
cannope with hollandaise over it and on this little krusty Christina.
(18:15):
Fee and I used to just steal them. We used
to like pop them like pills. I mean, we loved them.
But I have that memory of the quail leg.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
It is interesting just this conversation is about memory. You know,
you might now remember so many things about that experience,
but the quails comes right.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Fact, I do remember turning up one time and I
was wearing these really ugly sandals and I had a
chipped blue nail polish. I was like sixteen, and she
thought I looked so unpresentable. I had to wash dishes
all night. She was like the best place for you?
Speaker 2 (18:47):
Did that? And I was like, and what about the
politics of food, you think about sustainability or about giving
your kids organic food or arms. Martha's Vineyard has so
many good farms.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Watch is fun. Yes, they have the most beautiful produce
and eggs and cheese. And in Brooklyn it's harder. I
find the produce is so much better in the UK.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Better here.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yes, it's so real, Like the carrots are all wonky,
they taste right, like the strawberries, the berries. Everything is
just doesn't taste manufactured. And I think sometimes it's not
the same. Being in the UK has been a bit
of a wake up call for me of how much
better I feel the produce is here.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
And I think again, I think that seems to be
something that we're all thinking about our kids, aren't we think?
And I think that generation is really interesting, especially as
they get older. What they're eating. Yes, I mean when
I have dinner when my grandchildren are older. Once a vegan,
one's a vegetarian, one's gluten free. That's like, you know,
I think the politics of food are consistent with the
(19:49):
politics of everything.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Yes, do you feel at the restaurant you have to
adapt for people in that way?
Speaker 2 (19:54):
We're really lucky to be a time because we are
so focused on vegetables. Yes, so a vegan and the egg,
you know, tag your telly. But they can have a
spaghetti with peas. We do something called farinata. Have you
ever had chippea flower? And so they don't have to
have gluten and you know, you can have a whole meal.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
And I get so excited to look at your menu
and just see what's changed, and it changes all the time.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
It's just so exciting. So if you were thinking about comfort,
do you have a comfort food that this could be anything?
You know, it could be something that you reach for
when you're feeling back to what to eat, when, what
to cook? When?
Speaker 3 (20:30):
All right, I'll comfort Like for me, one of my
favorite things is a toasted bagel with tons of butter
and marmite. It's my favorite thing that I really think heaven.
But I will say the other thing if I were to,
because it's pasta that I create, is a couch pass barchi.
(21:02):
It's so simple and it's just one of my favorite things.
And the first time I had it was in Rome.
I was shooting a TV series in Rome that was
not a very good and I was living alone in Rome,
and I was like twenty years old, lived there for
three months. Bachi the Armorami Barchie. It was near Campeldi Fiori,
(21:26):
and I'd go to all of these little local places,
and I noticed that don't go to the tourist places.
And I remember this one Italian rest where all the
locals went. The vat of wine was just put on
the table. I don't know what wine it was, it
didn't matter. And you get what you get and they
bring you a steak or pasta whatever they have, and
it was just heaven to eat like that. There's simplicity
of it. And I remember going and having couchy to
(21:49):
perpet and people saying this. I think they called it
like the peasant pasta or something. It was sort of
known as being a really sort of low brow pastor.
But I was like, but it's a passive.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
I think that's a brilliant for the food because it's
the cheese actually pasta, butter and cheese.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
It's just got a lot of pep, a little bit
of but you just want to eat.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
Like my children maybe maybe loved food is food memories
of childhood and comfort.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Thank you, Emie, Thank you so much, Jerthy Leon, thank you,
thank you. Oh.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
To visit the online shop of the River Cafe, go
to shop the River Cafe dot co dot uk.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
River Cafe Table four is a production of iHeart Radio
and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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