Bonus Episode - Tagliarini with Luca Guadagnino

In this bonus episode of Ruthie's Table 4, BAFTA-winning and Oscar-nominated director Luca Guadagnino discusses pasta and the diversity of Italian food from different regions.

Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Moncler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Do you have all your pasta? Very idente?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
And yes, I found this amazing pasta called Mancini, which
is from Pulia. I'm a friend with few great chefs,
one in particular Nicromito. I don't know if you know
Nico Nikos. He creates all the menus for the Bulgary
hotel in the world, but also he has his own restaurant,
which is three star mish Land in Abruzzo. And we

(00:27):
know each other since ever like twenty years now, and
he gave me this tip, get pasta mancini. It's so good.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Is it in a blue packet?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
No white, an orange?

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Look it up.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
I'll send you some.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Okay, okay, very good. So you going back to the
recipe you talk about you tell us talk about it well.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
I mean, there is this famous recipe of Taierne that
there is a woman chef in Pimonte made thirty or
forty years ago by using one kilo of white flower
and forty yolks. And I tried one.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
How is it?

Speaker 2 (01:01):
And I thought it was a disaster, and in fact
was amazing because it gets very dry almost crumbly. You
don't have a soft dough. You have a very dry dog.
And then when you pass the door through.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
The did you use the machine or do you no?

Speaker 2 (01:17):
No, in this case, you cannot. You need the machine
because the machine helps the pasta to become one. The
pasta was amazing, amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Well, when we do it with truffles, we put you know,
if we do child green with tartufi, then we use
a lot more eggs. But if we do it with
tomato or with then let's let's sechi. Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
But pasta you do every week a lot?

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Yeah, we sell every night. We sell probably sixty portions
fifty a lot. You know, everybody says, oh, I don't carbs,
I don't include, and they all are. Everyone does right
all the time, and it's evolved, you know. So we
make if you're cooking in the restaurant, it's easier to
have fresh pasta because you know, if you're cooking quickly,

(02:09):
it cooks quickly you added to the sauce. A hard
pasta takes a bit longer. But I always love a
hard pasta as well. So we often do three fresh
pastas in one hard, or we do a risotto and
two pastas and jaki.

Speaker 2 (02:22):
You know, how are the habits of the clients changed
throughout time.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
That's an interesting question. I think when we first opened
the River Cafe in eighty seven, we served Papa poal
Medoro right because I was my husband was from Tuscany.
We cooked in Tuscany and we wanted to make the
kind of food that you ate not in restaurants in
Italy but at homes. And people said, I am not
paying at that time, like eight pounds six pounds for

(02:47):
a bit of bread and some tomatoes and you know basil,
And you'll think this is surprising. But there was a
man here called Freddy Laker, and what he did is
he operated cheap airlines, like you could buy a ticket
tow for ten pounds. Remember. So what it meant, I
think is that a lot of British people traveled to
the source. They went to Italy, they went to Rome,

(03:08):
they went to Pulliad and I think it kind of
changed the way people could them maybe more. And I
think people now are so curious. You know, we have
an open kitchen. People come up to the past and say,
how did you make that? What's in that? And they
ask questions.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Do you like to divulge?

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Always?

Speaker 2 (03:26):
You do, right?

Speaker 1 (03:27):
Always. That's why we did thirteen books. You know that
we've thirteen books, because why not? You know, would you
ever write a book?

Speaker 2 (03:35):
I don't know, a foot book? Yeah, I don't know.
I mean I On the one hand, I would say, yeah,
it would be it would be amazing. On the other hand,
I like to do things that I know how to
do them. And you know, like I love food and
I love to cook. But it's more like personal than
something that I could be, like I have an authority

(03:56):
about maybe I could do a book about the art
of the table that I can do. That I can
do it.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
But what do you mean by art of the table?

Speaker 2 (04:04):
The art of the table means how you set up
a table. The many fashions in which you can create
a table setting for a meal, whether it's a two
people meal or a large important dinner.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Describe it one for me. If I came to dinner,
what would bla tables setting?

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Well, if you came to dinner to my house in
Pimonte right now, I think we would and it was
a funny day. We would eat outside on a simple
garden iron table and chairs and we would have probably
a pasta with tomato on a ceramics. I have a
blue ceramics set that I bought from a beautiful artisan

(04:44):
in Wales. I would use that for.

Speaker 1 (04:46):
You, red and blue like your eyes. It's interesting that
you say tomato pasta because I always tell the story
that we were in Verona and we met someone from
al greenie To and she said that when she was
growing up that she never until she was sixteen growing
up in Verona, had never had a pasta with.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Tomato, because that's part of data.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
She went down to Naples, and she came back from
Naples for the summer, and they called her Piccolo pomodoro whatever,
because she's experienced. And I love that about Italy is
the regional.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Italy is so elongated and so fractured that you don't
have what could be considered Italian food even now. Absolutely,
I think you have many myriad you say myriad, myriad,
myriad of possibilities coming from not a single region, but

(05:42):
a part of the region. So what you can get
in the Verona area you would not get maybe from
the Treviso area, And that is something that it's very
important to learn about Italian Heritaga would say, and that's
what makes our food canon very wide and important. One

(06:02):
other thing that I love is I like to read books,
recipe books from the past, you know, Peligrine or Tuzi
or at a Bonnie. You can see the Verie.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
It was a big influence on me. She's great. I
think she's great. Yeah, talents man, remember that. Yeah I
have it. Yeah, so have I hope I have a
line downstairs. But she there was so simple, right, so
short these recipes. Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table
for in partnership with Montclair