(Bonus episode) Bono reads the recipe for Spaghetti alla Puttanesca and shares how his father influenced him

In the bonus this week, Bono shares the River Cafe recipe for Spaghetti alla Puttanesca. He also  describes fulfilling his father's dream of performing Torna A Surriento in the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, and reflects on how he was shaped by his father's values. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
What recipe did you choose?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is the spaghetti a la putinesca. Oh, that's nice
in your cookbook and it's I think putin esca means
it's a sort of salty woman or a working woman.
And I'm sure it's it's a recipe that was put
to people. He's working girls, you know, put together what
they could get. And I was in Mini's, this restaurant

(00:29):
in Naples recently and I ordered it. It's where Fellini
and lots of people ate, and it's it's just I
recommend that if you there's a Michueli is ninety two,
his son, I think it's Flabittori something like that. He's brilliant.

(00:49):
But here is here's from the River Cafe, classic Italian cookbook.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Okay, you can read it in anybody you want. The
other day I did a podcast with Benedict Coma Batch
and he he does impersonations, so he did an impersonation
of me reading the recipe.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Oh that's really good. I wouldn't dare do such a thing.
I'll tell you what I'll do it. You can say
it I'll do an impersonation of you're and my great
friend Paddy mckillnon reading, because he had it with me.
He had the spaghetti Ali putnesca right for sex, extra

(01:33):
virgin olive oil, four garlic cloves, peeled and finally sliced,
six anchovy phillips roughly chopped, two tablespoons dried organ or
two dried red chilies, actually kind of. If it's me,
it's six dried red chilies.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
You like it hot?

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Yeah, I like it hot. It's three tablespoons salted capers
rinsed in a sieve under a cold running tap, chopped,
four tablespoons small black olives, stoned and toWin in a half,
five tablespoons finally chopped fresh flat leaf parsley, seven and
fifty grams of ripe plum tomatoes, peeled cord and finally

(02:16):
chopped sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. If my
mates could hear me doing this, they give me such
a slaging. Five undergrams of spaghetti and one lemon a lemon.
Do you like some lemon cello?

Speaker 1 (02:35):
We do your lemon cello. That's fairing, Neapalitan. You don't
have to read out the method. We can just read
out the ingredients. Do you want to read the method
or not?

Speaker 2 (02:45):
How about I do it really fast? I'll do it.
Heat three tablespoons of olive oil in a wide, thick
bottomed pan and add the garlic and reduce the heat.
When the garlic begins to brown and the fees, organ
and chili, stirring them into the oil, cook briefly, just
to melt the edge ofvies. Add half the capers, half

(03:07):
the olives, and half the parsley, stir well to combine.
Then add the tomatoes. Bring the sauce back to the boil,
then reduce the heat in summer until all the tomatoes
become thick, stirring from time to time to prevent sticking.
This should take about twenty to thirty minutes. Season with
sea salt and black pepper. Bringing a large pan of

(03:30):
salted water to the boil, Add the spaghetti and cook
until aldente. Drain and add to the sauce. Then stir
in the remaining olives, capers and parsley. Finish with a
drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and a squeeze of lemone.

(03:54):
Speaking of puts and esca and being in Naples. At
the end of the Stories of Surrender film, I carried
out this fantasy of my father's, or that I presumed
was my father's fantasy, which was to sing to Suriento

(04:17):
and in the oldest opera house in the world, because
my dad was a tenor and a really good one,
and I had to sing this is sacred grant and
the Italian's God Bless them was so generous to me
that they allowed me sing that song, and I sang
it in the theater of San Carlo.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Did you feel the presence of your father? Did you
feel him there?

Speaker 2 (04:44):
You know I did, and I you know, I always
loved my father, but playing him every night on that
what the band used to call the Quarterman Show. But
on the one and Show, I would play my father
just by turning my head, you know, left or right.

(05:05):
And I really started to like him, and I really
started to just to get the humor of him. And
maybe I just didn't get it when I was younger,
how funny he was. And then yes, singing that was
very hard. I can't even think about it too much now,

(05:25):
but it's you know, it's the opera. Think about this.
You're from the inner city. As such, Oxman'stown's where they
came from. Booth my mother and my father. But my
father Catholic, taken out of school, very bright, but taking

(05:45):
at school when he's fifteen, goes to work with the
post office and is interested in stuff like cricket. You know.
His mother would listen to the cricket scores on the
BBC opera. He read, you know, Shakespeare, he painted, it's
a wild thing. And Irish people are very, i think,

(06:07):
very intellectually curious. And my father just would just go
to those places where you're not supposed to go because
you're you know, you're from you're from there. And and
I have a bit of that. I've realized that a
lot of my ideas about social justice, or rather the
lack of it, came from my father too. And that

(06:30):
kitchen table that we talked about earlier, rather than a
kitchen sink drama, our kitchen table drama. As well as
us sort of arguing with each other, there was some
brilliant arguments about the right things health, housing, fundamental rights, education.

(06:55):
After that, he'd say people can go, he say people
I don't. I don't, I don't. I couldn't care less.
But if people have to have health, housing, and educations
drilled into me. And his values and of course whether
it's one or or read injustice can I can describe

(07:18):
itself in various different ways, but but that I got
that from him. Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table
four in partnership with Montclair