December 14, 2022 • 30 mins
Two years after starting the River Café, Rose Gray and I were asked by a publisher to do a cookbook. We replied sternly that we were chefs, not writers. But the more we thought about it, we realized that being a chef is about communicating. 30 years and 12 cookbooks later, we have just published our newest The River Café Lookbook for Kids of All Ages.
It's a collaboration between a photographer, designers and chefs. When you hold any book in your hands, there's a story to be told about how it was created. And that's what we're going to do on today's special episode 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):
Welcomed to Ruthie's Table for a production of I Heart
Radio and Adamize Studios. When you open a cookbook, you
expect to see a photograph of the food with a
recipe on the opposite page. But imagine if you are
also saw something different, something completely unexpected, something that might
(00:22):
inspire you. There's a classic, there's all some I don't
know that. There's one opposite the chicken and milk, isn't
it were the hands look like they've been dipped in costard.
Somehow it works as a combo, doesn't it. And the
one with someone disappearing into the round chair in front
of the cross stater, it's really nice. I do love
(00:44):
the pink telephone with the sawbabe, because that picture of
that pink telephone and found at home, and it just
it is exactly where it needs to be. The other
one I love is the one which is I think
it's reveal with there's a car, there's a car up
on blocks and there's a big square piece of ribs.
I think it is it will be your ribs or
which is wrapped up? And I love that. Two years
(01:12):
after starting The River Cafe, Rose Gray and I were
asked by a publisher to do a cookbook. We replied
sternly that we were chefs, not writers. But the more
we thought about it, we realized that being a chef
is about communicating to the people eating your restaurant, to
the people who cook in the restaurant, to your family,
(01:32):
to your friends. Thirty years and twelve cookbooks later, we
have just published our newest, The River Cafe look Book
for kids of all ages. It's a collaboration between a photographer, designers,
and chefs. When you hold any book in your hands,
there's a story to be told about how it was created,
(01:53):
and that's what we're going to do on today's special
episode of Ruthie's Table four. Joseph Travelli and Sean wyn
Owen are executive chefs at The River Cafe and co
authors of The River Cafe look Book. In the smartphone era,
physical cookbooks offers something special and uniquely inspiring. As a
(02:16):
kind of older adolescent, one of my first cookbooks was
an Alice A Little Cookbook. Maybe that began a path
that led me here. I don't know, because it's that
same generation. So it was Alice a Little and then
definitely on my twenty if I got the River Cafe Cookbook,
(02:37):
but there weren't these kind of children's cookbooks. I can't remember.
I love them all, Like was it on Claudia Rhodin's
Food of Italy and Michel Hazzan and the Rue Brothers
and people like that. I really enjoyed that French cooking.
And actually, when I started being a chef, I thought,
I want to go and work in the Rits in
London and learn every single potato dish that exists. I
(02:57):
always read the classics, but I've never read the six
I've read the classic cookbooks. I've got children myself, and
you know, my oldest she is an avid cookbook reader.
She will sit in bed, the kind of cliche I
used to always joke, you say, you know, I sit
in bed and read cookbooks and don't cook for them.
Sometimes not that much her all the time, you know.
(03:18):
So she has all these books, some of which I
find completely horrifying, loads and loads of sugar icing, but
not just. She also really enjoys the Silver Spoon Italian Cookbook,
as you'll sit there reading through and then you know,
quotes measurements to me, which is quite funny. Yeah, we're
starting to cook now, and you know, we'll be leading
(03:39):
up to this book, I think pretty quickly. To be honest,
it's really good because it's going to open her eyes
to a whole bunch of new things. At the heart
of the book, of course, are the recipes. Sean Winnellen
and Joseph Tavelli. We chose the recipes thinking about all
the young people that we knew what they like to eat,
(04:01):
and a little bit, you know, because after all, we
are parents, what we'd like them to eat, So we
wanted to choose things that they'd find exciting but nevertheless straightforward,
not super challenging, but also not patronizing. It's what we
would like to eat. And also their recipes that you're
(04:22):
never going to regret learning how to spatch cock chicken
that you've grilled or cooked in milk, or how to
make a basic tomato risotto, and then you know, take
from that, I actually know how to make a resutto,
maybe I'll try and do something different, you know, And
so their recipes that they're not children fied. One of
the things we wanted to do was do a book
(04:42):
that was the chef's book for young people or latterly
kids of all ages as if a chef was looking
over your shoulder, as opposed to it being kind of
a step by step. The thinking behind the tips was
to give some pointers and to shine just a few
kind of specific lights just to help that go smoothly.
(05:04):
I think it's really useful photography and design bring a
cookbook to life. Matthew Donaldson took all of the photographs
in the book. I think the first thing that we
really did together was the thirty years of the River
Cafe cookbook. It was like an education, you know, to
see every plate of food that was put in front
(05:25):
of me. It just wasn't something that I was photographing
and had photographed before. Right now we're doing pastor, it's
got to look like this. I didn't have any preconceived
ideas the sort of minimal ethos and the architectural ethos.
The color made it incredibly easy for me because you
Joseph and Sean, you'd already taken away a lot of
(05:47):
the things that would be fussy, that would that I
would be having to trot with anybody else would be
having to get rid of. So often you do photography
and and people want it to be styled. They want
a lifestyle or they want to dial so that involves
we need to have cutlery or or salt and pepper,
or we need flowers, or we need Although there was
(06:08):
movement in the seventies and were the eighties, I guess
I think I'm always looking for, um, what to take
out of a photograph, rather than what to add in.
I'm always, I've always always think that there's got to
be something else we can get rid of. I think,
and when you said to me, we don't have knives
and forks in our photographs, I was so happy. Maybe
a lot of those magazines and um cookbooks were kind
(06:30):
of aspirational that if you cooked a fabulous meal, people
would be impressed, or you can make it different. Seemed
like you were a different lifestyle. And I think what
Rose and I started with the first book and then
we've continued is the idea that you know, the immediacy
of actually cooking something, putting it on a table, and
then taking a photograph of it. But I think one
(06:53):
of the things before we get to River Cafe look
book is shadow, and not in every photograph, but there
is the beautiful, beautiful use of shadow. And I was
wondering what is your thought in that it's a control
I think if it's if it's always there, if if
you have one thing that is like a control thing
(07:13):
that makes all of the photographs it together. It was
a real environment we had. We were using real light.
But I think that the shadow really holds the image
on the page. I think that if you've got a
white plate on a white background or something you really
need something that it frames the image really in a
way that it's allowed to be there. It also, particularly
(07:35):
with the River Cafe, it suggests that there is some
and there is light, and there is and it's optimistic
and it makes you feel good, but it's not. I
don't think we would ever and I might have done
it a couple of times. But the idea of having
sunlight that sort of dappled is going into a lifestyle thing.
It's putting ideas. It's trying to make a mood that
(07:58):
I don't ever really want to do that. I just
want to present the things as simply as possible, you know,
and that you know, a plate of a dinner or
lunch of the River Cafe is what it is. It
really doesn't need any help from me. My name is
Hamish I am one of the chefs here at the
(08:19):
River Cafe, so I'm having to look through the look book.
Now I'm thinking about maybe doing these slowly roasted Dattini tomatoes.
We've got seven fifty grams of red and yellow Datterini tomatoes,
two cloves of garlic, two tablespoons of olive oil, ten
sprigs of time tea, salt, and freshly ground pepper to season.
(08:43):
I've preheated my oven to a hundred and fifty degrees,
which is gas marked. Two. I've just gone and washed
my red and yellow datterin ese and then pricked them
all with a toothpick. They stopped them bursting when you're
cooking them. It allows the juices to flow. Okay, So
the third step, after you've washed them pricked your tomatoes
(09:06):
is to put them into a bowl with the olive oil,
the garlic and the time And now I'm just tossing
them around in the bowl and I'm going to season
them up fairly generously with salt and pepper. Spread out
your tomatoes now without overcrowding them onto a thin bacon sheet.
(09:28):
So now we're just gonna put them into our preheated
oven for about an hour and an hour and a half.
Mm hmm. Oh. They're beautiful, super simple, very delicious, not
(09:53):
too overpowering in any flavor, which is why they're quite
delicate and lovely to have with many dishes. Yeah, it's amazing,
isn't it. How those recipes you think are so simple,
but they're so good, Like the simple cooking is actually
maybe the best cooking. There's a cookbooks that are really challenging.
(10:13):
Often not always, this can be disappointing because they're so
challenging and you get yourself in the right mess. You
also don't maybe you want to make so much mess
the rest of the times when clearing up, you just
need like the best of us, few ingredients and just
a little bit of knowledge and then you're away, you know.
And I think that's what this kid's book is. I'm
(10:44):
here today with Stephanie Dash and Anthony Michael, the designers
are directors of everything in The River Cafe, but especially
these beautiful books River Cafe thirty and today what we're
going to be talking about is The River Cafe a
Look book. The idea for having the book in two
different sections came quite late in the day. The book
(11:06):
started off as a cookbook for kids and was based
around how kids might interact with making food. We would say,
you know, as I say, by a tomato peel, the
tomatoes squeeze a tomato, fried tomato, and we're doing it
and we I think Anthony's definitely all of us thought
(11:28):
and at a certain point it's been done before and
probably done better than I could possibly do it. We
just felt uncomfortable with that method. It was very process driven,
and we were doing it sort of a step by step,
and then we did it and looked at it and
it just looked no fun, and then worse than that,
it looked patronizing. So I think we all just looked
at it on everyone. Everyone just liked it and it
(11:50):
was back to the drawing board. In any creative process,
there are moments when you feel stuck. What inspired the
creation of the River Cafe look Book was a pamphlet
I was given created by an artist, a photographer and
two neurologiers funded by the Nesse Foundation, pairing diverse images.
(12:10):
Matthew Donaldson or we didn't really know we were onto something.
I don't think until we had those books. There were
books that you had at home that paired photographs together,
and they were done by a doctor and a researcher
for neurological patients to stimulate by putting pictures opposite each other,
(12:35):
like a picture of a baboon opposite I can't remember
what's opposite of a booon picture, but there would be
a picture of her building or something. Something clipped and
something happened. I remember when Stephanie put two pictures together,
and one was a picture of some stilly sits DeLine
a soup like chicken soup, basically the suit that you're
in my house and anyway, if anyone's ill, that's what
(12:56):
they've given tiny little pastors in a chicken broth. And
Stephanie put it opposite a photograph of a fire escape,
which I'd photographed in Los Angeles in and I had
been lying in bed in my hotel room, and I
looked at that every day, and I've just been very
ill and definitely not knowing anything about the about these
(13:18):
photographs of where they come from. And put the two together,
and there was the view of the person who was
recovering with the suit. They should have been eating the
thing that they were looking at, and immediately there was
something in it. We went from kind of teaching in
a very small way how to cook to a kind
of almost inspirational book. You know, how do you inspire
(13:41):
somebody to cook? How did you inspire somebody to make
a recipe? And we, you know, we thought it's not
by perhaps having a photograph and then the recipe, because
that could be intimidating or overwhelming, or you love the photograph,
but then when you look at the recipe, it's thinking, well,
maybe I won't. And so we did work are pairing photographs.
(14:02):
Having worked with Matthew a lot, we knew his pictures
very well, so we used the food pictures and then
literally trawled through his instagram, which was relentless job, and
then matched the photographs. There was a really challenging process
of how you put a vase of flowers next to
a spaghetti anglais or you know, Roman villa next to
(14:27):
a plate of piers. It's easy, somewhat obvious. Some just
felt they were they were meant for each other, that
they were they were separated at birth, and then others
you have to work out what would you like to
describe what we're So we're looking at a horse that's
a Spanish decorated dress horse and a plate of tomatoes
(14:50):
in the same colors, all circles, all dogs. The relationship
is really about. Yeah, I mean it's a very obvious relation,
but putting the two together and having food next to
an image which has nothing to do with food, and
I think that came really from I think children have
the amazing thing, whether they just are not they're not programmed,
(15:14):
they're not programmed to think plate on a food recipe
next to the page, and they have this amazing I
think their visual thinkers. I think they imagine things in
pictures and they don't necessarily need this perfect picture of
food and to copy it. And that's kind of what
we didn't really want to do. So putting all the
pictures together and doing that old druxposition just seemed to
be to work. But I don't think it's a specifically
(15:37):
child centric thing. I think a lot of adults think
like that. And it's lying on your back and looking
at clouds and seeing what you see in the clouds.
There's lots of things that children see that we all see,
so things that remind you of things like so you
sometimes you look at a piece of polished wood and
you can see figures in there or animals in there,
and you make the shapes up because I think your
(15:59):
mind's searching all the time to see things to recognize.
So when you present two images next to each other
that have got an obvious relationship, you start to see
the similarities and it can make you smile. And I
think that the books, the original books that Ruthie was given,
I've got a much more serious intent that they're They're
(16:19):
meant to open up pathways in somebody's head that might
have closed. But these are these are just good fun.
But it really Ruthie was the was the the instigator
and the pusher. She she she planted the idea and
then the concept of it, and then and then we
sort of took it with Matthew's pictures, and strangely we
did the juxtaposition because I think Matthew probably there were
(16:43):
his photographs, so us putting them together, and then we
put them all together around the table and everybody sit around.
Ruthie would changed we then at that point then we
would all look at them and move them around until
everyone was happy. Some like ones and not another. But
they're very they are very subjective. Some things are jarring,
and I can imagine it's a bit like food as well.
So if you put two flavors together, you sometimes think,
(17:04):
oh my god, I can't eat that possibly, but once
you've had it a few times, you think, actually, do
you know what? I really enjoy that sort of bitter
and sweets or something. I don't know. So I think
the pictures can do the same thing. So I think
that there are ones that obvious couplings, and then there
are ones that you have to learn to enjoy it
to like. And then you decided that it should just
(17:24):
be those photographs the book, the first hundred pages of
the book. Let's say, I think it is hundred pages
should just be photographs. Do you have a page that
you particularly love. I like the one I mentioned earlier
with the Stele neighbor because of that story. I do
love the pink telephone with the sorbet because that picture
that pink telephone has been around knocking around my studio
(17:47):
and draws and computers for such a long time, and
I'm so happy that it found at home and it
just it is exactly where it needs to be. It
does I mean maybe that I'm not allowed to say this,
but we're I do look through it, and I have
looked through it quite a lot lately because obviously it's
you know, it's just arrived and so curious to look
at what we did. I think that it makes it
(18:08):
does make me. It makes me smile, and that can't
be a bad thing. Not in a cookery book. Joseph
Travelli and Sean Wino and our executive chefs in the
River Cafe and co authors of The River Cafe Look Book,
every single picture of food we cooked ourselves, every single
picture of the food we did, and it is as
a recipe. It was taken in real time, wasn't It
(18:30):
wasn't wasn't styled as such. It was just out of
the off and onto the plate. And then trying to
select the image that went alongside it. That was maybe
one of the hardest bits of the book because there
was five of us, so it was Anthony and Stephanie, Matthew, Ruthie, Me,
Joseph and trying to get five people to agree on
what picture sits opposite spaghetti bongala for example. That probably
(18:54):
took about a year. What's so nice I think we've
been talking recently is about the way that especially you're
a beginner cook and you get a picture and a
recipe you want to cook. You know the picture exactly,
And what's lovely is that with the with the juxtaposition
of the pictures, you've got these two images and you
get more of a kind of feeling or something. And
then again the recipe isn't right there. You've got to
(19:15):
keep shuffling backwards and forwards. So I think that will
give people their ability to cook better food. Actually, but
one of the things we thought, I I felt having
got a teenage kid, is how they you know, giving
them a book may not be the most popular present
you buy a teenager, and so you know, knowing how
(19:37):
image lead they are, I like the idea of the
fact it is almost like scrolling through Instagram, where you
are getting a lot of images that are just mixed up,
and it's up to you how long you stay on
a picture. And then if you know, often some of
the pictures you rest upon are actually not the food,
and you're like, I like that picture of a telephone,
but I don't know why. Or you might hover over
(19:58):
a picture of as cream in a old and things
I want to make that. But then also at the end,
you've got all the colors. So even if you just
look at the book just because you like the colors,
it feels like it's you can use it in many ways.
But for me, I was interested in trying to get
a teenager to enjoy it or to to want to
own it as well. And I thought, you know, maybe
(20:19):
that that element of image image image was might just
get them to pick it up. Hi, I'm Monica. I'm
a waitress at the River Cafe. I have the cookbook
(20:39):
at home. We only just got it, so i haven't
cooked from it, but I'm hoping that when I do
have a couple of weeks spare, that I can make
the potatoes from it. Next to each of the pages,
there's sort of a picture of kind of a visual comparisons.
As I flicked through the book, I like the stairwell
(21:02):
next to the Paranoma tarp. I think that the pair
and Almontae is a transporting experience like a stairwell. I
think when a lot of people come to the River Cafe,
they really look forward to their desserts. I think the
three probably most popular are the Paranorma Talk, the Lamon Talk,
and the Chocolate Nemesis. I used Cope books a lot.
(21:24):
I think what makes the River Cafe some of the
recipes so special is that they are accessible. One of
the beauties of this book. And I think it was
a challenge because you remember, we had all the photographs,
and then how do we segue from these photographs into
the recipes, you know, how do we do that? We
(21:44):
had black and white and white and black, and we
had and then one day you said two words to us,
and it was baracous airport. We used to have a
client in Madrid and used to have to go to
Madrid probably twice week to come a month, and I
used to not like going to the meetings, but I
(22:05):
and I just really loved the airport and just loved
landing and seeing the rainbow colors on the stanchions as
you as you came in. Just always always sort of
stayed with me for a really long time. So then
when we came to the Rainbow Kings, all sort of
came together and we actually used photographs and Richard's reference
points for those colors. We've done the images, and we've
(22:27):
done the cover, and we were trying to do the layout,
and then we were sitting in the private room. And
remember and we were just talking about something I can't
in the book didn't quite come together. We couldn't put
a finger on what was missing it for like, had
all this visual stuff, there's great recipes, but this somehow
it was a bit of a disconnect. And we were
just talking about someone was being in Spain. Ruth was
talking about Madrid Airport and how Richard designed it with
(22:49):
the color walk through different color zones. And then we
were like, maybe we should do that with the book.
And we didn't know whether it would work or not
because there's no ware testing it. So we did know
whether there will be enough creep of the color into
the edges of the pages so that we would be
able to make a rainbow out of all the text
pages on the edge, because we like to paint the
(23:10):
edges of books normally. UM. And when we discovered that
we couldn't for budgetary reasons then and the fact that
we were we were, yes, we've extended the time quite significantly. UM.
We were really hoping that this this rainbow would appear.
It was just so fun and it just thought, oh,
this is maybe what it needs, because you know, it
(23:32):
is also meant to be like a fun book, you know,
and then it just brought it together. It felt like
that was quite nice at the end. And so let's
talk about the back of the book. I always say
that the recipes from the writing of it were it's
a book more verbs than adjectives. So it's mixed or
whisk bake, you know, plate serve, it's all. It's very
(23:53):
it's very verbal, isn't it that you have a verb
saying what you have to do, not what you have
to sort of think about that came from the fact
that you, with your chefs constantly craft these recipes to
be as instructive as possible without being superfluous. There's no
It is utility in the fact that it's it's very
(24:14):
very it's it's well crafted so that everything is is
done with the least amount of words to do give
the maximum effect. And I think that's a real skill
in itself. That's a kind of book that you could
take off to college and just have it in your
in a repertoire of just recipes are so easy that
you can take them with you through your young adult
(24:37):
life as well or as a beginner. I suppose in
this day age where you can get so many meals
delivered so easily, or but you know, these are like
ready meals, you know, ready for your teenager to take
to college with them. My favorite thing about the book
is the fact that, you know, is the physical book,
the fact that it's a book. It's not you know,
it's obviously completely visual, but it's not an line thing.
(25:01):
And of course you know we're all cookbook fans, but
this one, with the soft cover and the way it's bound,
it just feels really nice in the hands. So I
think my favorite thing about the book is the physical form,
because it's soft, so that feels quite good. I like
the fact that it reminds me of the restaurant in
(25:22):
many ways, because it's not just about the food, is
it because the restaurants about the design and the color
and the people and the way it makes you feel
when you walk through the door. I think that book
is very much not one thing. It's many things, and
it feels a bit like where the River Cafe is today. Also,
having been involved with the production of a few books,
(25:42):
now um, this is the one that I just you know,
having you know, we've lived with it for a couple
of years, I'm just happy to keep picking it up
and keep looking through it and scrolling through it, you know,
really enjoy it. And I think, I mean Anthony and Stephanie,
the designers are just unparalleled. Yeah, I was going to
say that is a very good example, isn't. It's incredibly
(26:02):
long process and I think we did a hundred and
eighties six different versions of this book. But I will
I will say when we were very young designers, we
went to a lecture given by Milton Glazer, the probably
most famous graphic design of all time, and he showed
us his work, and everybody was an auditorium of a
designer is sitting there in awe this man, and he said,
I'll just give you one piece of advice. It's the
(26:24):
only work for people you like. And at the end
of the day, that's a piece we've taken it, and
we only ever work for people we like. I think
this is I can't remember said we say it's our
twelve or thirteenth or whatever coup book. But I don't
think I've ever given a book, and they've all been
beautiful books, but I don't think I've ever handed a
book to someone and said, look at the printing. Look
(26:45):
at the quality of the printing in this book. I
usually say, look at the you know, of course I do.
I talked about the colors, and I talked about the
juxtaposition and everything we tried to do to inspire children
to cook. But what really and you really blew me away.
And you did tell me this on the telephone quite
a few times, and we spoke that you were preparing
(27:05):
this book to be printed in the most rigorous way.
And I know that you worked with the printers, you
worked with someone who you felt with. You know, I
would say this book get the Nobel Prize for printing.
I do really think that on matt paper to see
the qualities. Do you do you feel that way? I
do think it's just And what did you do Stephanie's rigor? Again,
(27:27):
there are there are things that you, you, as designed
as you, you mustn't let go of. And some of
those is some of those are the process of preparing
the materials in the best way you can. And I
think we start off like recording the beginning material is
always really important. Matthews. Pictures are beautiful, pictures are beautifully lit,
(27:47):
They're so exquisite, and we get beautiful files to convert
those files is a challenge, and the first couple of
tranches of files we got through, we're not we're not right.
But Matthew went through individually and adjusted every single one,
and then the next step we got through or a
hundred times better. But it's it's again. It is this
(28:10):
doing things over the wire, doing things by zoom, doing
things digitally where you're not sitting in a room with people.
It's very hard to understand. There's lots of ways of
interpreting the same material, but Matthew is the person to
interpret it because his picture, so he knew how he
wanted them printed. It's the food, it's the cooks, it's
the restaurant, it's the designers, it's the photographer, it's Ruthie.
(28:32):
I think you can see everybody in that book, everyone
that was involved. I don't think you can forget Richard
in this. You know, my first time I ever met
him when he said that thing he said Ruthie. I
got paraphrasing because I can't remember exactly, but I think
it's in the film that we made. Ruthie is a
very good cook, and I'm very good at eating. You know,
there's this everyone's every every I can't cook, but I
(28:53):
can eat, and so everybody, whether they were actively involved
or they were heavily influencing what was going on, will
all involved. And that brings me more joy than any
of it, that we all got to do it together.
And I think, you know, I think that Richard loved
the River Cafe, he loved food, he loved you, he
(29:14):
loved your work, and I know that he would have
loved this book. Thank you, Matthew, My pleasure. The River
Cafe Look Book is now available in bookshops and online.
It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs
from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty
(29:37):
delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of
River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks.
The River Cafe Look Book Recipes for Cooks of all ages.
Ruthie's Table four is a production of I Heart Radio
(29:57):
and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcomed to Ruthie's Table for a production of I Heart
Radio and Adamize Studios. When you open a cookbook, you
expect to see a photograph of the food with a
recipe on the opposite page. But imagine if you are
also saw something different, something completely unexpected, something that might
(00:22):
inspire you. There's a classic, there's all some I don't
know that. There's one opposite the chicken and milk, isn't
it were the hands look like they've been dipped in costard.
Somehow it works as a combo, doesn't it. And the
one with someone disappearing into the round chair in front
of the cross stater, it's really nice. I do love
(00:44):
the pink telephone with the sawbabe, because that picture of
that pink telephone and found at home, and it just
it is exactly where it needs to be. The other
one I love is the one which is I think
it's reveal with there's a car, there's a car up
on blocks and there's a big square piece of ribs.
I think it is it will be your ribs or
which is wrapped up? And I love that. Two years
(01:12):
after starting The River Cafe, Rose Gray and I were
asked by a publisher to do a cookbook. We replied
sternly that we were chefs, not writers. But the more
we thought about it, we realized that being a chef
is about communicating to the people eating your restaurant, to
the people who cook in the restaurant, to your family,
(01:32):
to your friends. Thirty years and twelve cookbooks later, we
have just published our newest, The River Cafe look Book
for kids of all ages. It's a collaboration between a photographer, designers,
and chefs. When you hold any book in your hands,
there's a story to be told about how it was created,
(01:53):
and that's what we're going to do on today's special
episode of Ruthie's Table four. Joseph Travelli and Sean wyn
Owen are executive chefs at The River Cafe and co
authors of The River Cafe look Book. In the smartphone era,
physical cookbooks offers something special and uniquely inspiring. As a
(02:16):
kind of older adolescent, one of my first cookbooks was
an Alice A Little Cookbook. Maybe that began a path
that led me here. I don't know, because it's that
same generation. So it was Alice a Little and then
definitely on my twenty if I got the River Cafe Cookbook,
(02:37):
but there weren't these kind of children's cookbooks. I can't remember.
I love them all, Like was it on Claudia Rhodin's
Food of Italy and Michel Hazzan and the Rue Brothers
and people like that. I really enjoyed that French cooking.
And actually, when I started being a chef, I thought,
I want to go and work in the Rits in
London and learn every single potato dish that exists. I
(02:57):
always read the classics, but I've never read the six
I've read the classic cookbooks. I've got children myself, and
you know, my oldest she is an avid cookbook reader.
She will sit in bed, the kind of cliche I
used to always joke, you say, you know, I sit
in bed and read cookbooks and don't cook for them.
Sometimes not that much her all the time, you know.
(03:18):
So she has all these books, some of which I
find completely horrifying, loads and loads of sugar icing, but
not just. She also really enjoys the Silver Spoon Italian Cookbook,
as you'll sit there reading through and then you know,
quotes measurements to me, which is quite funny. Yeah, we're
starting to cook now, and you know, we'll be leading
(03:39):
up to this book, I think pretty quickly. To be honest,
it's really good because it's going to open her eyes
to a whole bunch of new things. At the heart
of the book, of course, are the recipes. Sean Winnellen
and Joseph Tavelli. We chose the recipes thinking about all
the young people that we knew what they like to eat,
(04:01):
and a little bit, you know, because after all, we
are parents, what we'd like them to eat, So we
wanted to choose things that they'd find exciting but nevertheless straightforward,
not super challenging, but also not patronizing. It's what we
would like to eat. And also their recipes that you're
(04:22):
never going to regret learning how to spatch cock chicken
that you've grilled or cooked in milk, or how to
make a basic tomato risotto, and then you know, take
from that, I actually know how to make a resutto,
maybe I'll try and do something different, you know, And
so their recipes that they're not children fied. One of
the things we wanted to do was do a book
(04:42):
that was the chef's book for young people or latterly
kids of all ages as if a chef was looking
over your shoulder, as opposed to it being kind of
a step by step. The thinking behind the tips was
to give some pointers and to shine just a few
kind of specific lights just to help that go smoothly.
(05:04):
I think it's really useful photography and design bring a
cookbook to life. Matthew Donaldson took all of the photographs
in the book. I think the first thing that we
really did together was the thirty years of the River
Cafe cookbook. It was like an education, you know, to
see every plate of food that was put in front
(05:25):
of me. It just wasn't something that I was photographing
and had photographed before. Right now we're doing pastor, it's
got to look like this. I didn't have any preconceived
ideas the sort of minimal ethos and the architectural ethos.
The color made it incredibly easy for me because you
Joseph and Sean, you'd already taken away a lot of
(05:47):
the things that would be fussy, that would that I
would be having to trot with anybody else would be
having to get rid of. So often you do photography
and and people want it to be styled. They want
a lifestyle or they want to dial so that involves
we need to have cutlery or or salt and pepper,
or we need flowers, or we need Although there was
(06:08):
movement in the seventies and were the eighties, I guess
I think I'm always looking for, um, what to take
out of a photograph, rather than what to add in.
I'm always, I've always always think that there's got to
be something else we can get rid of. I think,
and when you said to me, we don't have knives
and forks in our photographs, I was so happy. Maybe
a lot of those magazines and um cookbooks were kind
(06:30):
of aspirational that if you cooked a fabulous meal, people
would be impressed, or you can make it different. Seemed
like you were a different lifestyle. And I think what
Rose and I started with the first book and then
we've continued is the idea that you know, the immediacy
of actually cooking something, putting it on a table, and
then taking a photograph of it. But I think one
(06:53):
of the things before we get to River Cafe look
book is shadow, and not in every photograph, but there
is the beautiful, beautiful use of shadow. And I was
wondering what is your thought in that it's a control
I think if it's if it's always there, if if
you have one thing that is like a control thing
(07:13):
that makes all of the photographs it together. It was
a real environment we had. We were using real light.
But I think that the shadow really holds the image
on the page. I think that if you've got a
white plate on a white background or something you really
need something that it frames the image really in a
way that it's allowed to be there. It also, particularly
(07:35):
with the River Cafe, it suggests that there is some
and there is light, and there is and it's optimistic
and it makes you feel good, but it's not. I
don't think we would ever and I might have done
it a couple of times. But the idea of having
sunlight that sort of dappled is going into a lifestyle thing.
It's putting ideas. It's trying to make a mood that
(07:58):
I don't ever really want to do that. I just
want to present the things as simply as possible, you know,
and that you know, a plate of a dinner or
lunch of the River Cafe is what it is. It
really doesn't need any help from me. My name is
Hamish I am one of the chefs here at the
(08:19):
River Cafe, so I'm having to look through the look book.
Now I'm thinking about maybe doing these slowly roasted Dattini tomatoes.
We've got seven fifty grams of red and yellow Datterini tomatoes,
two cloves of garlic, two tablespoons of olive oil, ten
sprigs of time tea, salt, and freshly ground pepper to season.
(08:43):
I've preheated my oven to a hundred and fifty degrees,
which is gas marked. Two. I've just gone and washed
my red and yellow datterin ese and then pricked them
all with a toothpick. They stopped them bursting when you're
cooking them. It allows the juices to flow. Okay, So
the third step, after you've washed them pricked your tomatoes
(09:06):
is to put them into a bowl with the olive oil,
the garlic and the time And now I'm just tossing
them around in the bowl and I'm going to season
them up fairly generously with salt and pepper. Spread out
your tomatoes now without overcrowding them onto a thin bacon sheet.
(09:28):
So now we're just gonna put them into our preheated
oven for about an hour and an hour and a half.
Mm hmm. Oh. They're beautiful, super simple, very delicious, not
(09:53):
too overpowering in any flavor, which is why they're quite
delicate and lovely to have with many dishes. Yeah, it's amazing,
isn't it. How those recipes you think are so simple,
but they're so good, Like the simple cooking is actually
maybe the best cooking. There's a cookbooks that are really challenging.
(10:13):
Often not always, this can be disappointing because they're so
challenging and you get yourself in the right mess. You
also don't maybe you want to make so much mess
the rest of the times when clearing up, you just
need like the best of us, few ingredients and just
a little bit of knowledge and then you're away, you know.
And I think that's what this kid's book is. I'm
(10:44):
here today with Stephanie Dash and Anthony Michael, the designers
are directors of everything in The River Cafe, but especially
these beautiful books River Cafe thirty and today what we're
going to be talking about is The River Cafe a
Look book. The idea for having the book in two
different sections came quite late in the day. The book
(11:06):
started off as a cookbook for kids and was based
around how kids might interact with making food. We would say,
you know, as I say, by a tomato peel, the
tomatoes squeeze a tomato, fried tomato, and we're doing it
and we I think Anthony's definitely all of us thought
(11:28):
and at a certain point it's been done before and
probably done better than I could possibly do it. We
just felt uncomfortable with that method. It was very process driven,
and we were doing it sort of a step by step,
and then we did it and looked at it and
it just looked no fun, and then worse than that,
it looked patronizing. So I think we all just looked
at it on everyone. Everyone just liked it and it
(11:50):
was back to the drawing board. In any creative process,
there are moments when you feel stuck. What inspired the
creation of the River Cafe look Book was a pamphlet
I was given created by an artist, a photographer and
two neurologiers funded by the Nesse Foundation, pairing diverse images.
(12:10):
Matthew Donaldson or we didn't really know we were onto something.
I don't think until we had those books. There were
books that you had at home that paired photographs together,
and they were done by a doctor and a researcher
for neurological patients to stimulate by putting pictures opposite each other,
(12:35):
like a picture of a baboon opposite I can't remember
what's opposite of a booon picture, but there would be
a picture of her building or something. Something clipped and
something happened. I remember when Stephanie put two pictures together,
and one was a picture of some stilly sits DeLine
a soup like chicken soup, basically the suit that you're
in my house and anyway, if anyone's ill, that's what
(12:56):
they've given tiny little pastors in a chicken broth. And
Stephanie put it opposite a photograph of a fire escape,
which I'd photographed in Los Angeles in and I had
been lying in bed in my hotel room, and I
looked at that every day, and I've just been very
ill and definitely not knowing anything about the about these
(13:18):
photographs of where they come from. And put the two together,
and there was the view of the person who was
recovering with the suit. They should have been eating the
thing that they were looking at, and immediately there was
something in it. We went from kind of teaching in
a very small way how to cook to a kind
of almost inspirational book. You know, how do you inspire
(13:41):
somebody to cook? How did you inspire somebody to make
a recipe? And we, you know, we thought it's not
by perhaps having a photograph and then the recipe, because
that could be intimidating or overwhelming, or you love the photograph,
but then when you look at the recipe, it's thinking, well,
maybe I won't. And so we did work are pairing photographs.
(14:02):
Having worked with Matthew a lot, we knew his pictures
very well, so we used the food pictures and then
literally trawled through his instagram, which was relentless job, and
then matched the photographs. There was a really challenging process
of how you put a vase of flowers next to
a spaghetti anglais or you know, Roman villa next to
(14:27):
a plate of piers. It's easy, somewhat obvious. Some just
felt they were they were meant for each other, that
they were they were separated at birth, and then others
you have to work out what would you like to
describe what we're So we're looking at a horse that's
a Spanish decorated dress horse and a plate of tomatoes
(14:50):
in the same colors, all circles, all dogs. The relationship
is really about. Yeah, I mean it's a very obvious relation,
but putting the two together and having food next to
an image which has nothing to do with food, and
I think that came really from I think children have
the amazing thing, whether they just are not they're not programmed,
(15:14):
they're not programmed to think plate on a food recipe
next to the page, and they have this amazing I
think their visual thinkers. I think they imagine things in
pictures and they don't necessarily need this perfect picture of
food and to copy it. And that's kind of what
we didn't really want to do. So putting all the
pictures together and doing that old druxposition just seemed to
be to work. But I don't think it's a specifically
(15:37):
child centric thing. I think a lot of adults think
like that. And it's lying on your back and looking
at clouds and seeing what you see in the clouds.
There's lots of things that children see that we all see,
so things that remind you of things like so you
sometimes you look at a piece of polished wood and
you can see figures in there or animals in there,
and you make the shapes up because I think your
(15:59):
mind's searching all the time to see things to recognize.
So when you present two images next to each other
that have got an obvious relationship, you start to see
the similarities and it can make you smile. And I
think that the books, the original books that Ruthie was given,
I've got a much more serious intent that they're They're
(16:19):
meant to open up pathways in somebody's head that might
have closed. But these are these are just good fun.
But it really Ruthie was the was the the instigator
and the pusher. She she she planted the idea and
then the concept of it, and then and then we
sort of took it with Matthew's pictures, and strangely we
did the juxtaposition because I think Matthew probably there were
(16:43):
his photographs, so us putting them together, and then we
put them all together around the table and everybody sit around.
Ruthie would changed we then at that point then we
would all look at them and move them around until
everyone was happy. Some like ones and not another. But
they're very they are very subjective. Some things are jarring,
and I can imagine it's a bit like food as well.
So if you put two flavors together, you sometimes think,
(17:04):
oh my god, I can't eat that possibly, but once
you've had it a few times, you think, actually, do
you know what? I really enjoy that sort of bitter
and sweets or something. I don't know. So I think
the pictures can do the same thing. So I think
that there are ones that obvious couplings, and then there
are ones that you have to learn to enjoy it
to like. And then you decided that it should just
(17:24):
be those photographs the book, the first hundred pages of
the book. Let's say, I think it is hundred pages
should just be photographs. Do you have a page that
you particularly love. I like the one I mentioned earlier
with the Stele neighbor because of that story. I do
love the pink telephone with the sorbet because that picture
that pink telephone has been around knocking around my studio
(17:47):
and draws and computers for such a long time, and
I'm so happy that it found at home and it
just it is exactly where it needs to be. It
does I mean maybe that I'm not allowed to say this,
but we're I do look through it, and I have
looked through it quite a lot lately because obviously it's
you know, it's just arrived and so curious to look
at what we did. I think that it makes it
(18:08):
does make me. It makes me smile, and that can't
be a bad thing. Not in a cookery book. Joseph
Travelli and Sean Wino and our executive chefs in the
River Cafe and co authors of The River Cafe Look Book,
every single picture of food we cooked ourselves, every single
picture of the food we did, and it is as
a recipe. It was taken in real time, wasn't It
(18:30):
wasn't wasn't styled as such. It was just out of
the off and onto the plate. And then trying to
select the image that went alongside it. That was maybe
one of the hardest bits of the book because there
was five of us, so it was Anthony and Stephanie, Matthew, Ruthie, Me,
Joseph and trying to get five people to agree on
what picture sits opposite spaghetti bongala for example. That probably
(18:54):
took about a year. What's so nice I think we've
been talking recently is about the way that especially you're
a beginner cook and you get a picture and a
recipe you want to cook. You know the picture exactly,
And what's lovely is that with the with the juxtaposition
of the pictures, you've got these two images and you
get more of a kind of feeling or something. And
then again the recipe isn't right there. You've got to
(19:15):
keep shuffling backwards and forwards. So I think that will
give people their ability to cook better food. Actually, but
one of the things we thought, I I felt having
got a teenage kid, is how they you know, giving
them a book may not be the most popular present
you buy a teenager, and so you know, knowing how
(19:37):
image lead they are, I like the idea of the
fact it is almost like scrolling through Instagram, where you
are getting a lot of images that are just mixed up,
and it's up to you how long you stay on
a picture. And then if you know, often some of
the pictures you rest upon are actually not the food,
and you're like, I like that picture of a telephone,
but I don't know why. Or you might hover over
(19:58):
a picture of as cream in a old and things
I want to make that. But then also at the end,
you've got all the colors. So even if you just
look at the book just because you like the colors,
it feels like it's you can use it in many ways.
But for me, I was interested in trying to get
a teenager to enjoy it or to to want to
own it as well. And I thought, you know, maybe
(20:19):
that that element of image image image was might just
get them to pick it up. Hi, I'm Monica. I'm
a waitress at the River Cafe. I have the cookbook
(20:39):
at home. We only just got it, so i haven't
cooked from it, but I'm hoping that when I do
have a couple of weeks spare, that I can make
the potatoes from it. Next to each of the pages,
there's sort of a picture of kind of a visual comparisons.
As I flicked through the book, I like the stairwell
(21:02):
next to the Paranoma tarp. I think that the pair
and Almontae is a transporting experience like a stairwell. I
think when a lot of people come to the River Cafe,
they really look forward to their desserts. I think the
three probably most popular are the Paranorma Talk, the Lamon Talk,
and the Chocolate Nemesis. I used Cope books a lot.
(21:24):
I think what makes the River Cafe some of the
recipes so special is that they are accessible. One of
the beauties of this book. And I think it was
a challenge because you remember, we had all the photographs,
and then how do we segue from these photographs into
the recipes, you know, how do we do that? We
(21:44):
had black and white and white and black, and we
had and then one day you said two words to us,
and it was baracous airport. We used to have a
client in Madrid and used to have to go to
Madrid probably twice week to come a month, and I
used to not like going to the meetings, but I
(22:05):
and I just really loved the airport and just loved
landing and seeing the rainbow colors on the stanchions as
you as you came in. Just always always sort of
stayed with me for a really long time. So then
when we came to the Rainbow Kings, all sort of
came together and we actually used photographs and Richard's reference
points for those colors. We've done the images, and we've
(22:27):
done the cover, and we were trying to do the layout,
and then we were sitting in the private room. And
remember and we were just talking about something I can't
in the book didn't quite come together. We couldn't put
a finger on what was missing it for like, had
all this visual stuff, there's great recipes, but this somehow
it was a bit of a disconnect. And we were
just talking about someone was being in Spain. Ruth was
talking about Madrid Airport and how Richard designed it with
(22:49):
the color walk through different color zones. And then we
were like, maybe we should do that with the book.
And we didn't know whether it would work or not
because there's no ware testing it. So we did know
whether there will be enough creep of the color into
the edges of the pages so that we would be
able to make a rainbow out of all the text
pages on the edge, because we like to paint the
(23:10):
edges of books normally. UM. And when we discovered that
we couldn't for budgetary reasons then and the fact that
we were we were, yes, we've extended the time quite significantly. UM.
We were really hoping that this this rainbow would appear.
It was just so fun and it just thought, oh,
this is maybe what it needs, because you know, it
(23:32):
is also meant to be like a fun book, you know,
and then it just brought it together. It felt like
that was quite nice at the end. And so let's
talk about the back of the book. I always say
that the recipes from the writing of it were it's
a book more verbs than adjectives. So it's mixed or
whisk bake, you know, plate serve, it's all. It's very
(23:53):
it's very verbal, isn't it that you have a verb
saying what you have to do, not what you have
to sort of think about that came from the fact
that you, with your chefs constantly craft these recipes to
be as instructive as possible without being superfluous. There's no
It is utility in the fact that it's it's very
(24:14):
very it's it's well crafted so that everything is is
done with the least amount of words to do give
the maximum effect. And I think that's a real skill
in itself. That's a kind of book that you could
take off to college and just have it in your
in a repertoire of just recipes are so easy that
you can take them with you through your young adult
(24:37):
life as well or as a beginner. I suppose in
this day age where you can get so many meals
delivered so easily, or but you know, these are like
ready meals, you know, ready for your teenager to take
to college with them. My favorite thing about the book
is the fact that, you know, is the physical book,
the fact that it's a book. It's not you know,
it's obviously completely visual, but it's not an line thing.
(25:01):
And of course you know we're all cookbook fans, but
this one, with the soft cover and the way it's bound,
it just feels really nice in the hands. So I
think my favorite thing about the book is the physical form,
because it's soft, so that feels quite good. I like
the fact that it reminds me of the restaurant in
(25:22):
many ways, because it's not just about the food, is
it because the restaurants about the design and the color
and the people and the way it makes you feel
when you walk through the door. I think that book
is very much not one thing. It's many things, and
it feels a bit like where the River Cafe is today. Also,
having been involved with the production of a few books,
(25:42):
now um, this is the one that I just you know,
having you know, we've lived with it for a couple
of years, I'm just happy to keep picking it up
and keep looking through it and scrolling through it, you know,
really enjoy it. And I think, I mean Anthony and Stephanie,
the designers are just unparalleled. Yeah, I was going to
say that is a very good example, isn't. It's incredibly
(26:02):
long process and I think we did a hundred and
eighties six different versions of this book. But I will
I will say when we were very young designers, we
went to a lecture given by Milton Glazer, the probably
most famous graphic design of all time, and he showed
us his work, and everybody was an auditorium of a
designer is sitting there in awe this man, and he said,
I'll just give you one piece of advice. It's the
(26:24):
only work for people you like. And at the end
of the day, that's a piece we've taken it, and
we only ever work for people we like. I think
this is I can't remember said we say it's our
twelve or thirteenth or whatever coup book. But I don't
think I've ever given a book, and they've all been
beautiful books, but I don't think I've ever handed a
book to someone and said, look at the printing. Look
(26:45):
at the quality of the printing in this book. I
usually say, look at the you know, of course I do.
I talked about the colors, and I talked about the
juxtaposition and everything we tried to do to inspire children
to cook. But what really and you really blew me away.
And you did tell me this on the telephone quite
a few times, and we spoke that you were preparing
(27:05):
this book to be printed in the most rigorous way.
And I know that you worked with the printers, you
worked with someone who you felt with. You know, I
would say this book get the Nobel Prize for printing.
I do really think that on matt paper to see
the qualities. Do you do you feel that way? I
do think it's just And what did you do Stephanie's rigor? Again,
(27:27):
there are there are things that you, you, as designed
as you, you mustn't let go of. And some of
those is some of those are the process of preparing
the materials in the best way you can. And I
think we start off like recording the beginning material is
always really important. Matthews. Pictures are beautiful, pictures are beautifully lit,
(27:47):
They're so exquisite, and we get beautiful files to convert
those files is a challenge, and the first couple of
tranches of files we got through, we're not we're not right.
But Matthew went through individually and adjusted every single one,
and then the next step we got through or a
hundred times better. But it's it's again. It is this
(28:10):
doing things over the wire, doing things by zoom, doing
things digitally where you're not sitting in a room with people.
It's very hard to understand. There's lots of ways of
interpreting the same material, but Matthew is the person to
interpret it because his picture, so he knew how he
wanted them printed. It's the food, it's the cooks, it's
the restaurant, it's the designers, it's the photographer, it's Ruthie.
(28:32):
I think you can see everybody in that book, everyone
that was involved. I don't think you can forget Richard
in this. You know, my first time I ever met
him when he said that thing he said Ruthie. I
got paraphrasing because I can't remember exactly, but I think
it's in the film that we made. Ruthie is a
very good cook, and I'm very good at eating. You know,
there's this everyone's every every I can't cook, but I
(28:53):
can eat, and so everybody, whether they were actively involved
or they were heavily influencing what was going on, will
all involved. And that brings me more joy than any
of it, that we all got to do it together.
And I think, you know, I think that Richard loved
the River Cafe, he loved food, he loved you, he
(29:14):
loved your work, and I know that he would have
loved this book. Thank you, Matthew, My pleasure. The River
Cafe Look Book is now available in bookshops and online.
It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs
from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty
(29:37):
delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of
River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks.
The River Cafe Look Book Recipes for Cooks of all ages.
Ruthie's Table four is a production of I Heart Radio
(29:57):
and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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