December 12, 2022 • 28 mins
Some years ago Gwyneth Paltrow worked for a day in the River Cafe Kitchen. She arrived early. in professional chef’s whites, ready to cook. Gwyneth volunteered to clean and then fry fresh anchovies. And for 3 hours, she did. This memory speaks to how professional Gwyneth is. An Oscar winning actor she built Goop from a simple newsletter into an inspirational business. She is an entrepreneur, an activist for with social values. Like Ruthie Rogers food and family is the focus of her life.
Listen to two friends discuss all this and more on season two of Ruthie's Table 4.
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/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/
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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 for a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios, Gwyneth Paltrow worked for
a day in the River Cafe kitchen. She arrived early
dressed in professional Chef White's ready to cook. Gwyneth is
the only chef ever to a vast, clean and cook
(00:21):
fresh anchovies, and for three hours she did. I learned
a lot that day. I mean, you know, just when
you're a home cook, you don't think about precision and
like repetitively turning out something that's perfect and exactly the
same over a course of many hours. Didn't Jamie Oliver
(00:42):
come in when you were there? You know, what is Gwyneth?
Quite a few people say, what is Gwyneth Paltrow doing
in your kitchen? We said, she's frying anchovies. It was
This memory speaks to how professional Gwyneth is. An Oscar
winning actor. She built Coop from a simple newsletter into
an influential and uplifting business with energy, elegance and strong values.
(01:07):
Another memory ten years ago, just after the death of
our son bow, I asked Gwynneth if she might surprise
the River Cafe team and sing one song for them
at our Christmas party to thank them for their care
and concern for me. Gwyneth not only said yes, she
sang four songs, danced with everyone, and stayed to the
(01:29):
very end. In the River Cafe history, we still talk
about the time Gwyneth Paltrow came to sing. I admire
Gwyneth for being a brave, smart entrepreneur. I respect Gwynneth
as a writer of recipes. Most of all, I love
Gwyneth for being there with me that night and here
with me today. Oh boy, I wasn't expecting it. That's
(01:56):
so beautiful. Thank you, Gwyneth. Would you like to read
the recipe? I would love to one of my favorites
from the River Cafe. Zucchini free tea five d Graham zucchini,
one leader sunflower oil for the batter, A hundred and
fifty grams of plain flour, three table spoons extra virgin
(02:19):
olive oil, three table spoons warm water, three egg whites organic.
Cut the zucchini into five millimeter thick ovals, then cut
them into thick matchsticks. For the batter, see the flower
into a bowl, make a well in the center, Pour
in the olive oil, and stir to combine. Lucin atting
(02:40):
enough warm water to make a batter the consistency of
double cream. Heat the oil in a high sided pan
to a hundred ninety degrees celsius. Beat the egg whites
until stiff and fold into the batter. Dip the zucchini
in the batter, frying batches in the hot oil until
golden and crisp. Serve immediately. So when you make do
(03:02):
you make zucchini? Do you fried? DoD zucchini fritti all
the time? It's apples. One of Apple's favorite foods is
zucchini free ti, and they're so good, especially when so
one thing also you can do with zucchini. They're slightly larger,
I think because the way we do it of cutting
it into rounds and then cutting into strips maybe make
it easier. Do you grow them here? No? Do you
(03:23):
go back east on Long Island In the summer we
have we have tomatoes and zucchini for days and days
and days, and flowers are so delicious. Except I have
to say, and I probably this is probably really unpopular,
but I like mozzarella and them more than ricotta in them.
I don't put any cheese in them. Interesting now I
(03:43):
never have. I just love having them absolutely, just the
flower and the kids fry them and then you hold
them by the stem and you just eat them. So,
if we were going to start at the beginning, what
is the beginning? Where are we born? Where did you
grow up? I was born here in Los Angeles, in
Hollywoo would. We kind of went back and forth between
New York City and Santa Monica a lot. I did
(04:05):
a lot of preschool in New York City, and I
did first and third grades in New York City while
my mother was on Broadway, and then the bulk of
the rest of elementary school here and then moved permanently
to New York City when I was eleven. I can
remember the kitchens I described the kitchens, but a very
different the l a house and the kitchens were very different.
(04:27):
So our our kitchen and in Los Angeles here had
a brick floor, red brick floor and a tile counter,
sort of like very country kitchen. Um lots of windows,
and you can see the backyard in the pool, and
we were in there a lot. I mean, I think
with every house you're in the kitchen more than anywhere.
Our New York kitchen was on the ground floor. We
(04:48):
grew up in a townhouse, almost no windows, but we
had a big fireplace in the kitchen, which was really
nice um and it was more of a modern kitchen
that had been done by a Swedish architect. It was
kind of minimal. Allen and who cooked well. When I
was a little I remember, I mean my mom cooked.
(05:08):
My dad started cooking a lot, but that was later.
He got very into cooking kind of when we were
older teenagers. But we had we had a no pair
that would cook. My mom would cook. It was kind
of like a group effort in the kitchen. But my
mom was always like, she loves food, but she would
get sort of stressed cooking, you know, whereas my dad
(05:30):
was like thought it was really fun. My mom, I
don't think she found it so relaxing. And also you
just mentioned that she was theater nights, so what was
that like. So she would come home late after the theater,
which when I was older was really nice. I remember
when I was in high school and she would finish
a plane come home and I would still be awake
(05:51):
and we would kind of have a chat, which was
some of my favorite memories of growing up in New York.
And or she was doing, um, she experience the park
and I would walk down Central Park to go visit
her and watch her. Um. So it was really a
wonderful thing having a mother so in steeped in the
arts in New York and with all of the friends
(06:14):
and you know, the artist singing around the piano, and
you know, it was really a great way to cheat.
Would she have eaten? Do you think? I often ask
actors who are acting in the play do they before
the play? Do they after the play? Did they doing?
And everyone varies. She eat afterwards? I think she would
generally eat before unless she had friends coming. Um, it's
(06:36):
sort of an occupational hazard to eat after. I did
a play in London, I think it maybe two thousand
and two, and I ate every night after the play
and I gained about fifteen Yeah, there is also that
thing when you go to see somebody in the play
and then they go, you know Ray Fines does it.
It's always dinner afterwards, and you do see the kind
of fatigue and then letting go and probably eating too
(06:59):
much it at night, but then eating before you might
go on, did you feel stuffed when you went onto
the Yeah, I couldn't I couldn't eat before. I was
too nervous to eat before, so I would always end
up eating after. And I go to Jay Sky and he,
you know, have a bottle of wine and French fries
and some kind of oyster. I'm back to New York
and back to growing up with a mother who was acting.
(07:22):
And what was your father doing? He was making TV shows,
So he was making shows here in New York and
doing a lot of traveling back and forth, and then
and then kind of settled in New York. And that
was great when he was with us all the time.
And um, but I don't remember him really being in
the kitchen until he had kind of slowed down. Um
(07:44):
how prolifically he was making TV shows and when he
kind of slowed turned everything down and notches when he
really got into cooking. And would you have meals around
the table together with you and Jake parents sit down?
What were they like? They were really nice? I mean
it was I think we felt special being included at
(08:04):
the dinner table, even though it was a nightly event.
It felt, you know, like if they had friends over.
We we sat with them at the table and had
long conversations. That's something that I've carried on with my
kids as well. You know, we always have dinner all
together as a family, no phones allowed at the table,
and you get into great discourse with them and hear
what they think about things. And I think my father
(08:27):
made me feel that I was valuable during those dinners
because he really elicited our opinion. He asked questions, and
my brother and I were very much a part of
of the conversation. It was his background. Well, it's interesting,
you know because touching on what you were saying, before
he grew up without money. He grew up on Long Island,
(08:47):
and they were you know, they were kind of a
working class moving trying moving up into middle class Jewish family,
but they didn't have a lot of disposable income, and
they didn't they didn't go out to eat. So when
my father finally made it, you know, like his and
he loved food and all the beautiful things in life.
(09:08):
You know, he loved beautiful fabrics and paintings, and you know,
he would take me to every museum in the world
and we would walk for hours. And I think food
for him was really an expression of life's beauty and
and our blessings and and good fortune to be able
to eat something that was fresh and delicious and really
well conceived and thought about and um, and he was
(09:32):
so proud that, you know, we ate oysters and you know,
things that he hadn't come across until really later in
his life. And I always remember, and I wrote about
this in my first book, that when we would get
into the car to go out to dinner, like, no
matter how many times we had gone out, like, he
was so excited. It was like the greatest thing of
(09:55):
all time that we were going out to dinner. I
think that it's interesting because people that I've told to,
many of them measure their success in the ability to
eat well. It's fascinating that people, you know, when they
were able to go to restaurants and choose something that
they weren't worried about how much it cost, or you
know Paul McCartney saying that he always thought wine was
(10:17):
terrible because he only had really really cheap wine. And
then when he was able to go to restaurants somebody
bought him a fabulous bottle of wine. He kind of
understood what it had meant to work hard and what
he could do and even just going to restaurants. So
that what going back to your dad, what were his
parents like? They were New Yorkers. They had so my
(10:39):
my grandfather's grandfather had come from Poland. Um they were
from a long line of rabbis, and they were all
Ashkenazi Jews from Poland and Russia kind of Belarusian, and
they were, you know, had grown up. My grandfather had
grown up in a tenement on the Lower East Side
and fought his way into military school so he could,
(11:03):
you know, have three square meals a day and learned.
He craved discipline and order, and so he was very
proud of himself that he had put himself, you know,
had gotten himself in that position. And and they were great.
And my my grandmother, my dad's mom, was a great
I mean I loved eating at her house. Grandmother's are
really important food stories. I mean she made brisket and
(11:26):
that it was like the best brisket in the world.
And and then she also let us have junk food,
which we were not allowed from my mother. So you know,
we would go to stay with them and there would
be fruit loops and I would be out of my mind,
you know, Jake, and I wouldn't be eating wonder bread
with French is mustard and a slice of tomato and lettuce,
and we thought it was the most delicious thing of
(11:49):
all time. So, um, we do have a recipe for brisket,
I do. And what about your mother's mother. My mother's
mother was a fantastic cook and entertainer. Um. She was
a really scary person, but she made the best food.
She I'll never forget the things that, you know, really
(12:10):
sort of like fifties food that she made all throughout
the eighties, you know. So her the best deviled eggs
in the whole world, the best Christmas dinners like her
stuffing in her and her spreads would be this whole
table full of the most delicious food. And it was
only her, you know, on her on her own chopping
(12:32):
and cooking, and her food was amazing. She was a great,
a really great cook. You grew up in this house
where your father loved to take you to restaurants and
(12:53):
to eat, and your mother cared for you and came
home after after theater stories. And then you left home.
And did you cook after you left home for yourself
or did you go home to eat or I that's
when I really started to learn how to cook. I
went I graduated from school in New York City and
I went to UC Santa Barbara, all the way across
(13:15):
the country, and my father was in Santa Monica a lot,
and I would come home for weekends or you know,
for some good food, and we would cook together a lot.
And that's when we both really started cooking. And that's
when the Food Network was just amazing and really instructional
and tactical, and we would watch you know, the food
(13:36):
the Food Network and learn things and try them out,
and or we would go out to there was a
restaurant in Venice that was kind of legendary called seventy
two Market Street, and we would go there, and or
Shin Juan Maine, which is a Wolfgang Puck French fusion
Chinese restaurant that I still love to this day. So
there's like a couple of places that he would that
(13:57):
he loved that we would go to. But but we
also cook a lot. And so do you do that
with your children? Do you cook with them? I do
both of them. Are I cook for both? I cook?
You know, Apple is really interesting because now she's kind
of very independent and she likes to cook for herself
a lot so and she's vegetarian, and she has like
really specific food ideas, which is so great and I
(14:19):
love I would say what she asked me to make
still for her the most is um lemon pasta. She
went through a real like feta chini alfredo phase and
breakfast potatoes. She asked, that's probably what she asked me
to make the most these days. And then Moses, you know,
during the week, I don't I don't have time to
cook very much, but I cook kind of all weekend long,
(14:43):
and I really love it, especially Friday nights. It's like
how I transition from my week to being like a
woman in a body. And did they cook with you?
What do you think they do for them? I mean,
Apple will definitely cook with me. Moses will help yea um,
but I mostly cook for them. I mean I think
(15:04):
they liked being especially because when we were living in
London and I was before I started Goop, I cooked
all the meals and so they really they have nostalgia
around me cooking them all the meals, and so I
think there's I think especially Moses sometimes he's like, why
are you making me more food? Do you think that
(15:26):
you're interested? In cooking for them does come from your
own childhood or I do, because it was such an
unabashed expression of my father's love for us, like there
was no denying it. And when someone is so excited
about like the sear on their baby back ribs, you know,
and like look at this, Look what I did. You know,
it's so imbued with love that you can't It's undeniable,
(15:49):
and so you learn it as a love language. I
just had this, this the weeginning at a house full
of people in our house in Santa Barbara, and I
was making all these different breakfasts, and you know, my
friends are like, oh my god, we feel so terrible,
and I was like, no, you don't understand, Like this
is my love language. Like I'm so happy doing this.
Did you travel with your parents? Did you go to
Italy or Spain? We never went to Italy until you know,
(16:14):
the first time I ever went to Italy with my
father he was when he died. He died in Florence.
Did he died in Um? He died in Rome. And
we were doing our first kind of road trip after
my thirtieth birthday, and yeah, he kind of died on me,
which complicated the trip doesn't complicated Italy for you. It
(16:41):
did complicated Italy for me for a long time. I
didn't go back for ten years. And when we were
on our road trip and I found out that he
was sick and he had been coughing up blood, and
I said, we have to go to the hospital. And
he had been hiding it for me because he didn't
want He really wanted to finish our trip. And I
was like, this is so, we are going to the hospital,
(17:01):
and he was like, no, we got to get to
the Splendido. He really was trying, and I was like,
we're not going to the like, we're going to the hospital.
And he ended up dying, and then I had a
real aversion to Italy for a long time. And then,
very sweetly Chris Martin, my first husband, on my forty
birthday ten years later, and I was having a lot
(17:22):
of anxiety about it anyway, because I think turning forty
and don't I'm about to turn fifty and I kind
of don't give up, but forty, I was like, really
had so much anxiety about it, and he um. By
that point, I had the two kids and we got
on a plane and I didn't know where we were going,
and we all of a sudden I realized we were
(17:43):
landing in Genoa and that we were going to the Splendido,
which was so sweet. It was such a nice surprise.
So it was like a completion, but it was. But
Jake was with me and my two best friends Mary
and Julia, who have been my best friend since once
since I was four and once since I was eleven.
(18:03):
They were with me, and they my father was like
a father to them too, so it was it ended
up being a really beautiful experience that we all got
to be there and and kind of come full circle.
And now I'm you know, we we bought a little
farmhouse in Umbria, so just south of the Tuscan border.
Great food in Umbria. Have black truffles in the full
(18:25):
you have lentils and you know four it's great. It's
really it's a really special place. So I'm excited to
spend more time there and to learn some Italian. But
what about Spain and France? Spain so France, Well I
kind of told this like now and now it's kind
of food. Was a famous story about my dad taking me.
(18:47):
My mom was doing a filming something in London when
I was ten, we still lived in Los Angeles, and
we all made the trip over to visit her. And
then my dad took me to um Paris for the
weekend and and just he and I and we stayed
at the Rits and we went to the Pompey Dew,
we went to the Loop, we went to all museums.
(19:07):
And my main thing was that I wanted to eat
French fries, like actual French fries. So that was the
first thing we did when we checked into the hotel,
is that I ordered French fries. Um, and he took
me all around, you know, we were eating all kinds
of things. And and on the way back to London,
(19:29):
he said, do you know why I took you to Paris,
just you and I? And I said no, And he said,
because I wanted you to see Paris for the first
time with a man who will always love you no
matter what. So sweet, I mean, what you've been talking
(19:49):
about is memories of a man who loved food, loved you,
wanted to take you and indulge in new experiences to
do with eating and cooking and spending time with you.
And I think that you know that is about what
we do. Food is memory and food is love. You know,
it's really and that's what you're doing with your children
(20:10):
and what we can keep doing. And your grandmother. So
many people have talked to really talk about their grandmother's
you know, because I think, again, I do it with
my grandchildren. I know that. You know, if you're working, mother,
you're trying to get through the day or it's like
a struggle, and the can mother is a place you
want them to remember your food. You want them to
you want to spoil them and give them loops fruit
(20:32):
loops and and also a recipe that they'll cook from
they're gone. It's true. I often think about that, think
about the food legacy of a family and what dishes
go from generation to generation. And there's also seems to
be such a specific flavor profile. You know. It's like
if if I cook something, you know, my kids like
the way I cook something as opposed to anybody else,
(20:55):
even if it's you know, like there we're all following
the same recipe. Do we just talk about the food
that you're cooking with Google that you want? Because you
have had such an influence on the way we know,
(21:18):
the way we live, the way we by the way
we collect the way we treat ourselves. Yeah, I mean
it's been, um, probably the steepest learning curve of my life.
And it's also a marathon. You know, it's been years
of building a business and not having any idea what
I was doing, not not knowing how to monetize business,
(21:40):
and you know, been through so many highs and lows
and learnings and incredibly painful mistakes and real triumphs that
you know are little but meaningful to us. And so
but I do think that the cultural impact is it's
an important thing to contribute, right if you feel whatever
(22:03):
you're trying to do in the world that you authentically
are trying to you know, connect somebody to something good
or that will be beautiful or uplifting. Um, it's a
very fulfilling job in a lot of ways to have
and and so it's really fun right now because we're
kind of in this last year launched something called Goop Kitchen,
which is only still here in Los Angeles, but I
(22:26):
think we're going to expand quickly, which is not a restaurant.
It's just being able to deliver on those brand values
of of getting really high quality, organic, local seasonal food
to people's plates, because the quickest road to feeling better
is just watching the quality of the food that you're eating,
Like is it nutrient dense? Is it minimally processed? I mean,
(22:50):
you know, that's why you're such a big inspiration to me,
is everything you make is so ingredient driven and so delicious.
I remember when I first started coming to the restaurant
so many years ago, gosh, years ago, I mean so
long ago, and just thinking, oh my gosh, there's you
can see everything like the beauty of you know, that dish,
(23:12):
I forget the name of it, but you have the
sort of fava beans and artichokes and yeman and it's like,
oh my gosh, it's also visible and you just you
see it in your mind coming straight from the garden
right onto the plate and just enhancing all of the
beautiful aspects of nature and great olive oil and there
(23:33):
you go. You know, I always think that if you
cook with few ingredients that we do, and I think
in Italy you do. Um. I love I love going
to Paris and having a bourb block over a piece
of turbot with spinach and moreal mushrooms. But there's something
about going to Italy and having a grilled piece of
fish with three herbs and a bit of olive oil,
or as you say, the vegetables which just depend on themselves.
(23:56):
You can't mask it, you know. I mean, what was
it like for you to open the River Cafe in
London at that time where you know it wasn't like that.
I mean, there wasn't an ingredient forward food culture when
Rose and I started. She had lived in Luca for
five years. And Richard's mother was a cook from Trieste
(24:16):
who then went to Florence and then came to London,
probably thirty nine. And we always say that she used
to wander around London coming from Florence looking for a view.
She's always trying to find the Piazza michael Angelo was
somewhere in London. She's a woman who said to me
once on her deathbed, she said, Ruthie, I want you
to put She had amazing skin, and she said, I
want you to put more cream on your face and
(24:38):
less herbs on your fish. You know, that was her
her last And every time I put herbs on by fish,
I was like, not too many, And every night I
put more cream. But at the but I think that
that rose and I thought, why can't we have the
kind of food that we cooked and ate in Italy
but in London and it was challenging. Know if you
(25:00):
we served to pop up Homadoro and it had tomatoes
and bread and basil and that was it. And somebody
pays would say in those days and by paying four
pounds fifty for a bit of bread and tomato. But
now I always put you know, the travel people traveled
more and more to Europe, and you know, Freddie Laker
with his planes where you could go cheaply or whatever.
They were opened up Europe. Unfortunately right now because if
(25:23):
you want me to be political, Brexit is closing the doors.
But in those days we're all going and opening the
doors and seeing what food was like. And so I
think that really changed things. Um was it quite iconoclastic,
that kind of simplicity of yeah, I think, well, I
think other people were doing it. You know, Roi Lee
at Kensington Place did a more French version of it
(25:44):
and I was too little, And people also changed restaurants.
I think everywhere. I think give credit to Wolfgang Puck,
you know, going from Mamai's on to making pieces at
Spago It's like you could either dress up and go
to a restaurant and be terrified, or you could but
eat very well, or you could go to the local
Greek or treachery had not eat very well but have
a great time. We thought, why can't you come and
(26:06):
have a great time any well now? And I think
a lot of people were doing that. So we learned
what we started knowing nothing. So you know, we learned
as we grew. There's a lot to do with food.
It's love, it's history, it's memories, it's politics, but it's
also comfort. And so if I were to ask you
for our last question, this beautiful room, on this beautiful day,
(26:30):
what Gwynneth, would be your comfort food? Pasta? I love
pasta and I love that it can be the most laborious,
you know, hand rolling out and stuffing something that you
are puring like most intense all day episode. Or it
(26:52):
can literally be a sauce that you make in the
time it takes for the water to boil and cook
the pasta, which are my favorite with some garlic, chovy,
you know, chili, oils oil, but it always has the
same result, which is just taste delicious and it makes
you feel so good. It makes you feel bull but
also I don't know. There's also an elegance to pasta
(27:15):
and and I find it really just the perfect meal,
pasta and a glass of red wine. Well, I'm waiting
for you in London. Okay, you don't have to fry
on chies. I want to get back behind that friar.
If you back in the kitchen, come back in the kitchen.
We miss you there. Thank you. To visit the online
(27:41):
shop of The River Cafe, go to shop the River
Cafe dot co dot uk. River Cafe Table four is
a production of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios, Gwyneth Paltrow worked for
a day in the River Cafe kitchen. She arrived early
dressed in professional Chef White's ready to cook. Gwyneth is
the only chef ever to a vast, clean and cook
(00:21):
fresh anchovies, and for three hours she did. I learned
a lot that day. I mean, you know, just when
you're a home cook, you don't think about precision and
like repetitively turning out something that's perfect and exactly the
same over a course of many hours. Didn't Jamie Oliver
(00:42):
come in when you were there? You know, what is Gwyneth?
Quite a few people say, what is Gwyneth Paltrow doing
in your kitchen? We said, she's frying anchovies. It was
This memory speaks to how professional Gwyneth is. An Oscar
winning actor. She built Coop from a simple newsletter into
an influential and uplifting business with energy, elegance and strong values.
(01:07):
Another memory ten years ago, just after the death of
our son bow, I asked Gwynneth if she might surprise
the River Cafe team and sing one song for them
at our Christmas party to thank them for their care
and concern for me. Gwyneth not only said yes, she
sang four songs, danced with everyone, and stayed to the
(01:29):
very end. In the River Cafe history, we still talk
about the time Gwyneth Paltrow came to sing. I admire
Gwyneth for being a brave, smart entrepreneur. I respect Gwynneth
as a writer of recipes. Most of all, I love
Gwyneth for being there with me that night and here
with me today. Oh boy, I wasn't expecting it. That's
(01:56):
so beautiful. Thank you, Gwyneth. Would you like to read
the recipe? I would love to one of my favorites
from the River Cafe. Zucchini free tea five d Graham zucchini,
one leader sunflower oil for the batter, A hundred and
fifty grams of plain flour, three table spoons extra virgin
(02:19):
olive oil, three table spoons warm water, three egg whites organic.
Cut the zucchini into five millimeter thick ovals, then cut
them into thick matchsticks. For the batter, see the flower
into a bowl, make a well in the center, Pour
in the olive oil, and stir to combine. Lucin atting
(02:40):
enough warm water to make a batter the consistency of
double cream. Heat the oil in a high sided pan
to a hundred ninety degrees celsius. Beat the egg whites
until stiff and fold into the batter. Dip the zucchini
in the batter, frying batches in the hot oil until
golden and crisp. Serve immediately. So when you make do
(03:02):
you make zucchini? Do you fried? DoD zucchini fritti all
the time? It's apples. One of Apple's favorite foods is
zucchini free ti, and they're so good, especially when so
one thing also you can do with zucchini. They're slightly larger,
I think because the way we do it of cutting
it into rounds and then cutting into strips maybe make
it easier. Do you grow them here? No? Do you
(03:23):
go back east on Long Island In the summer we
have we have tomatoes and zucchini for days and days
and days, and flowers are so delicious. Except I have
to say, and I probably this is probably really unpopular,
but I like mozzarella and them more than ricotta in them.
I don't put any cheese in them. Interesting now I
(03:43):
never have. I just love having them absolutely, just the
flower and the kids fry them and then you hold
them by the stem and you just eat them. So,
if we were going to start at the beginning, what
is the beginning? Where are we born? Where did you
grow up? I was born here in Los Angeles, in
Hollywoo would. We kind of went back and forth between
New York City and Santa Monica a lot. I did
(04:05):
a lot of preschool in New York City, and I
did first and third grades in New York City while
my mother was on Broadway, and then the bulk of
the rest of elementary school here and then moved permanently
to New York City when I was eleven. I can
remember the kitchens I described the kitchens, but a very
different the l a house and the kitchens were very different.
(04:27):
So our our kitchen and in Los Angeles here had
a brick floor, red brick floor and a tile counter,
sort of like very country kitchen. Um lots of windows,
and you can see the backyard in the pool, and
we were in there a lot. I mean, I think
with every house you're in the kitchen more than anywhere.
Our New York kitchen was on the ground floor. We
(04:48):
grew up in a townhouse, almost no windows, but we
had a big fireplace in the kitchen, which was really
nice um and it was more of a modern kitchen
that had been done by a Swedish architect. It was
kind of minimal. Allen and who cooked well. When I
was a little I remember, I mean my mom cooked.
(05:08):
My dad started cooking a lot, but that was later.
He got very into cooking kind of when we were
older teenagers. But we had we had a no pair
that would cook. My mom would cook. It was kind
of like a group effort in the kitchen. But my
mom was always like, she loves food, but she would
get sort of stressed cooking, you know, whereas my dad
(05:30):
was like thought it was really fun. My mom, I
don't think she found it so relaxing. And also you
just mentioned that she was theater nights, so what was
that like. So she would come home late after the theater,
which when I was older was really nice. I remember
when I was in high school and she would finish
a plane come home and I would still be awake
(05:51):
and we would kind of have a chat, which was
some of my favorite memories of growing up in New York.
And or she was doing, um, she experience the park
and I would walk down Central Park to go visit
her and watch her. Um. So it was really a
wonderful thing having a mother so in steeped in the
arts in New York and with all of the friends
(06:14):
and you know, the artist singing around the piano, and
you know, it was really a great way to cheat.
Would she have eaten? Do you think? I often ask
actors who are acting in the play do they before
the play? Do they after the play? Did they doing?
And everyone varies. She eat afterwards? I think she would
generally eat before unless she had friends coming. Um, it's
(06:36):
sort of an occupational hazard to eat after. I did
a play in London, I think it maybe two thousand
and two, and I ate every night after the play
and I gained about fifteen Yeah, there is also that
thing when you go to see somebody in the play
and then they go, you know Ray Fines does it.
It's always dinner afterwards, and you do see the kind
of fatigue and then letting go and probably eating too
(06:59):
much it at night, but then eating before you might
go on, did you feel stuffed when you went onto
the Yeah, I couldn't I couldn't eat before. I was
too nervous to eat before, so I would always end
up eating after. And I go to Jay Sky and he,
you know, have a bottle of wine and French fries
and some kind of oyster. I'm back to New York
and back to growing up with a mother who was acting.
(07:22):
And what was your father doing? He was making TV shows,
So he was making shows here in New York and
doing a lot of traveling back and forth, and then
and then kind of settled in New York. And that
was great when he was with us all the time.
And um, but I don't remember him really being in
the kitchen until he had kind of slowed down. Um
(07:44):
how prolifically he was making TV shows and when he
kind of slowed turned everything down and notches when he
really got into cooking. And would you have meals around
the table together with you and Jake parents sit down?
What were they like? They were really nice? I mean
it was I think we felt special being included at
(08:04):
the dinner table, even though it was a nightly event.
It felt, you know, like if they had friends over.
We we sat with them at the table and had
long conversations. That's something that I've carried on with my
kids as well. You know, we always have dinner all
together as a family, no phones allowed at the table,
and you get into great discourse with them and hear
what they think about things. And I think my father
(08:27):
made me feel that I was valuable during those dinners
because he really elicited our opinion. He asked questions, and
my brother and I were very much a part of
of the conversation. It was his background. Well, it's interesting,
you know because touching on what you were saying, before
he grew up without money. He grew up on Long Island,
(08:47):
and they were you know, they were kind of a
working class moving trying moving up into middle class Jewish family,
but they didn't have a lot of disposable income, and
they didn't they didn't go out to eat. So when
my father finally made it, you know, like his and
he loved food and all the beautiful things in life.
(09:08):
You know, he loved beautiful fabrics and paintings, and you know,
he would take me to every museum in the world
and we would walk for hours. And I think food
for him was really an expression of life's beauty and
and our blessings and and good fortune to be able
to eat something that was fresh and delicious and really
well conceived and thought about and um, and he was
(09:32):
so proud that, you know, we ate oysters and you know,
things that he hadn't come across until really later in
his life. And I always remember, and I wrote about
this in my first book, that when we would get
into the car to go out to dinner, like, no
matter how many times we had gone out, like, he
was so excited. It was like the greatest thing of
(09:55):
all time that we were going out to dinner. I
think that it's interesting because people that I've told to,
many of them measure their success in the ability to
eat well. It's fascinating that people, you know, when they
were able to go to restaurants and choose something that
they weren't worried about how much it cost, or you
know Paul McCartney saying that he always thought wine was
(10:17):
terrible because he only had really really cheap wine. And
then when he was able to go to restaurants somebody
bought him a fabulous bottle of wine. He kind of
understood what it had meant to work hard and what
he could do and even just going to restaurants. So
that what going back to your dad, what were his
parents like? They were New Yorkers. They had so my
(10:39):
my grandfather's grandfather had come from Poland. Um they were
from a long line of rabbis, and they were all
Ashkenazi Jews from Poland and Russia kind of Belarusian, and
they were, you know, had grown up. My grandfather had
grown up in a tenement on the Lower East Side
and fought his way into military school so he could,
(11:03):
you know, have three square meals a day and learned.
He craved discipline and order, and so he was very
proud of himself that he had put himself, you know,
had gotten himself in that position. And and they were great.
And my my grandmother, my dad's mom, was a great
I mean I loved eating at her house. Grandmother's are
really important food stories. I mean she made brisket and
(11:26):
that it was like the best brisket in the world.
And and then she also let us have junk food,
which we were not allowed from my mother. So you know,
we would go to stay with them and there would
be fruit loops and I would be out of my mind,
you know, Jake, and I wouldn't be eating wonder bread
with French is mustard and a slice of tomato and lettuce,
and we thought it was the most delicious thing of
(11:49):
all time. So, um, we do have a recipe for brisket,
I do. And what about your mother's mother. My mother's
mother was a fantastic cook and entertainer. Um. She was
a really scary person, but she made the best food.
She I'll never forget the things that, you know, really
(12:10):
sort of like fifties food that she made all throughout
the eighties, you know. So her the best deviled eggs
in the whole world, the best Christmas dinners like her
stuffing in her and her spreads would be this whole
table full of the most delicious food. And it was
only her, you know, on her on her own chopping
(12:32):
and cooking, and her food was amazing. She was a great,
a really great cook. You grew up in this house
where your father loved to take you to restaurants and
(12:53):
to eat, and your mother cared for you and came
home after after theater stories. And then you left home.
And did you cook after you left home for yourself
or did you go home to eat or I that's
when I really started to learn how to cook. I
went I graduated from school in New York City and
I went to UC Santa Barbara, all the way across
(13:15):
the country, and my father was in Santa Monica a lot,
and I would come home for weekends or you know,
for some good food, and we would cook together a lot.
And that's when we both really started cooking. And that's
when the Food Network was just amazing and really instructional
and tactical, and we would watch you know, the food
(13:36):
the Food Network and learn things and try them out,
and or we would go out to there was a
restaurant in Venice that was kind of legendary called seventy
two Market Street, and we would go there, and or
Shin Juan Maine, which is a Wolfgang Puck French fusion
Chinese restaurant that I still love to this day. So
there's like a couple of places that he would that
(13:57):
he loved that we would go to. But but we
also cook a lot. And so do you do that
with your children? Do you cook with them? I do
both of them. Are I cook for both? I cook?
You know, Apple is really interesting because now she's kind
of very independent and she likes to cook for herself
a lot so and she's vegetarian, and she has like
really specific food ideas, which is so great and I
(14:19):
love I would say what she asked me to make
still for her the most is um lemon pasta. She
went through a real like feta chini alfredo phase and
breakfast potatoes. She asked, that's probably what she asked me
to make the most these days. And then Moses, you know,
during the week, I don't I don't have time to
cook very much, but I cook kind of all weekend long,
(14:43):
and I really love it, especially Friday nights. It's like
how I transition from my week to being like a
woman in a body. And did they cook with you?
What do you think they do for them? I mean,
Apple will definitely cook with me. Moses will help yea um,
but I mostly cook for them. I mean I think
(15:04):
they liked being especially because when we were living in
London and I was before I started Goop, I cooked
all the meals and so they really they have nostalgia
around me cooking them all the meals, and so I
think there's I think especially Moses sometimes he's like, why
are you making me more food? Do you think that
(15:26):
you're interested? In cooking for them does come from your
own childhood or I do, because it was such an
unabashed expression of my father's love for us, like there
was no denying it. And when someone is so excited
about like the sear on their baby back ribs, you know,
and like look at this, Look what I did. You know,
it's so imbued with love that you can't It's undeniable,
(15:49):
and so you learn it as a love language. I
just had this, this the weeginning at a house full
of people in our house in Santa Barbara, and I
was making all these different breakfasts, and you know, my
friends are like, oh my god, we feel so terrible,
and I was like, no, you don't understand, Like this
is my love language. Like I'm so happy doing this.
Did you travel with your parents? Did you go to
Italy or Spain? We never went to Italy until you know,
(16:14):
the first time I ever went to Italy with my
father he was when he died. He died in Florence.
Did he died in Um? He died in Rome. And
we were doing our first kind of road trip after
my thirtieth birthday, and yeah, he kind of died on me,
which complicated the trip doesn't complicated Italy for you. It
(16:41):
did complicated Italy for me for a long time. I
didn't go back for ten years. And when we were
on our road trip and I found out that he
was sick and he had been coughing up blood, and
I said, we have to go to the hospital. And
he had been hiding it for me because he didn't
want He really wanted to finish our trip. And I
was like, this is so, we are going to the hospital,
(17:01):
and he was like, no, we got to get to
the Splendido. He really was trying, and I was like,
we're not going to the like, we're going to the hospital.
And he ended up dying, and then I had a
real aversion to Italy for a long time. And then,
very sweetly Chris Martin, my first husband, on my forty
birthday ten years later, and I was having a lot
(17:22):
of anxiety about it anyway, because I think turning forty
and don't I'm about to turn fifty and I kind
of don't give up, but forty, I was like, really
had so much anxiety about it, and he um. By
that point, I had the two kids and we got
on a plane and I didn't know where we were going,
and we all of a sudden I realized we were
(17:43):
landing in Genoa and that we were going to the Splendido,
which was so sweet. It was such a nice surprise.
So it was like a completion, but it was. But
Jake was with me and my two best friends Mary
and Julia, who have been my best friend since once
since I was four and once since I was eleven.
(18:03):
They were with me, and they my father was like
a father to them too, so it was it ended
up being a really beautiful experience that we all got
to be there and and kind of come full circle.
And now I'm you know, we we bought a little
farmhouse in Umbria, so just south of the Tuscan border.
Great food in Umbria. Have black truffles in the full
(18:25):
you have lentils and you know four it's great. It's
really it's a really special place. So I'm excited to
spend more time there and to learn some Italian. But
what about Spain and France? Spain so France, Well I
kind of told this like now and now it's kind
of food. Was a famous story about my dad taking me.
(18:47):
My mom was doing a filming something in London when
I was ten, we still lived in Los Angeles, and
we all made the trip over to visit her. And
then my dad took me to um Paris for the
weekend and and just he and I and we stayed
at the Rits and we went to the Pompey Dew,
we went to the Loop, we went to all museums.
(19:07):
And my main thing was that I wanted to eat
French fries, like actual French fries. So that was the
first thing we did when we checked into the hotel,
is that I ordered French fries. Um, and he took
me all around, you know, we were eating all kinds
of things. And and on the way back to London,
(19:29):
he said, do you know why I took you to Paris,
just you and I? And I said no, And he said,
because I wanted you to see Paris for the first
time with a man who will always love you no
matter what. So sweet, I mean, what you've been talking
(19:49):
about is memories of a man who loved food, loved you,
wanted to take you and indulge in new experiences to
do with eating and cooking and spending time with you.
And I think that you know that is about what
we do. Food is memory and food is love. You know,
it's really and that's what you're doing with your children
(20:10):
and what we can keep doing. And your grandmother. So
many people have talked to really talk about their grandmother's
you know, because I think, again, I do it with
my grandchildren. I know that. You know, if you're working, mother,
you're trying to get through the day or it's like
a struggle, and the can mother is a place you
want them to remember your food. You want them to
you want to spoil them and give them loops fruit
(20:32):
loops and and also a recipe that they'll cook from
they're gone. It's true. I often think about that, think
about the food legacy of a family and what dishes
go from generation to generation. And there's also seems to
be such a specific flavor profile. You know. It's like
if if I cook something, you know, my kids like
the way I cook something as opposed to anybody else,
(20:55):
even if it's you know, like there we're all following
the same recipe. Do we just talk about the food
that you're cooking with Google that you want? Because you
have had such an influence on the way we know,
(21:18):
the way we live, the way we by the way
we collect the way we treat ourselves. Yeah, I mean
it's been, um, probably the steepest learning curve of my life.
And it's also a marathon. You know, it's been years
of building a business and not having any idea what
I was doing, not not knowing how to monetize business,
(21:40):
and you know, been through so many highs and lows
and learnings and incredibly painful mistakes and real triumphs that
you know are little but meaningful to us. And so
but I do think that the cultural impact is it's
an important thing to contribute, right if you feel whatever
(22:03):
you're trying to do in the world that you authentically
are trying to you know, connect somebody to something good
or that will be beautiful or uplifting. Um, it's a
very fulfilling job in a lot of ways to have
and and so it's really fun right now because we're
kind of in this last year launched something called Goop Kitchen,
which is only still here in Los Angeles, but I
(22:26):
think we're going to expand quickly, which is not a restaurant.
It's just being able to deliver on those brand values
of of getting really high quality, organic, local seasonal food
to people's plates, because the quickest road to feeling better
is just watching the quality of the food that you're eating,
Like is it nutrient dense? Is it minimally processed? I mean,
(22:50):
you know, that's why you're such a big inspiration to me,
is everything you make is so ingredient driven and so delicious.
I remember when I first started coming to the restaurant
so many years ago, gosh, years ago, I mean so
long ago, and just thinking, oh my gosh, there's you
can see everything like the beauty of you know, that dish,
(23:12):
I forget the name of it, but you have the
sort of fava beans and artichokes and yeman and it's like,
oh my gosh, it's also visible and you just you
see it in your mind coming straight from the garden
right onto the plate and just enhancing all of the
beautiful aspects of nature and great olive oil and there
(23:33):
you go. You know, I always think that if you
cook with few ingredients that we do, and I think
in Italy you do. Um. I love I love going
to Paris and having a bourb block over a piece
of turbot with spinach and moreal mushrooms. But there's something
about going to Italy and having a grilled piece of
fish with three herbs and a bit of olive oil,
or as you say, the vegetables which just depend on themselves.
(23:56):
You can't mask it, you know. I mean, what was
it like for you to open the River Cafe in
London at that time where you know it wasn't like that.
I mean, there wasn't an ingredient forward food culture when
Rose and I started. She had lived in Luca for
five years. And Richard's mother was a cook from Trieste
(24:16):
who then went to Florence and then came to London,
probably thirty nine. And we always say that she used
to wander around London coming from Florence looking for a view.
She's always trying to find the Piazza michael Angelo was
somewhere in London. She's a woman who said to me
once on her deathbed, she said, Ruthie, I want you
to put She had amazing skin, and she said, I
want you to put more cream on your face and
(24:38):
less herbs on your fish. You know, that was her
her last And every time I put herbs on by fish,
I was like, not too many, And every night I
put more cream. But at the but I think that
that rose and I thought, why can't we have the
kind of food that we cooked and ate in Italy
but in London and it was challenging. Know if you
(25:00):
we served to pop up Homadoro and it had tomatoes
and bread and basil and that was it. And somebody
pays would say in those days and by paying four
pounds fifty for a bit of bread and tomato. But
now I always put you know, the travel people traveled
more and more to Europe, and you know, Freddie Laker
with his planes where you could go cheaply or whatever.
They were opened up Europe. Unfortunately right now because if
(25:23):
you want me to be political, Brexit is closing the doors.
But in those days we're all going and opening the
doors and seeing what food was like. And so I
think that really changed things. Um was it quite iconoclastic,
that kind of simplicity of yeah, I think, well, I
think other people were doing it. You know, Roi Lee
at Kensington Place did a more French version of it
(25:44):
and I was too little, And people also changed restaurants.
I think everywhere. I think give credit to Wolfgang Puck,
you know, going from Mamai's on to making pieces at
Spago It's like you could either dress up and go
to a restaurant and be terrified, or you could but
eat very well, or you could go to the local
Greek or treachery had not eat very well but have
a great time. We thought, why can't you come and
(26:06):
have a great time any well now? And I think
a lot of people were doing that. So we learned
what we started knowing nothing. So you know, we learned
as we grew. There's a lot to do with food.
It's love, it's history, it's memories, it's politics, but it's
also comfort. And so if I were to ask you
for our last question, this beautiful room, on this beautiful day,
(26:30):
what Gwynneth, would be your comfort food? Pasta? I love
pasta and I love that it can be the most laborious,
you know, hand rolling out and stuffing something that you
are puring like most intense all day episode. Or it
(26:52):
can literally be a sauce that you make in the
time it takes for the water to boil and cook
the pasta, which are my favorite with some garlic, chovy,
you know, chili, oils oil, but it always has the
same result, which is just taste delicious and it makes
you feel so good. It makes you feel bull but
also I don't know. There's also an elegance to pasta
(27:15):
and and I find it really just the perfect meal,
pasta and a glass of red wine. Well, I'm waiting
for you in London. Okay, you don't have to fry
on chies. I want to get back behind that friar.
If you back in the kitchen, come back in the kitchen.
We miss you there. Thank you. To visit the online
(27:41):
shop of The River Cafe, go to shop the River
Cafe dot co dot uk. River Cafe Table four is
a production of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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