November 3, 2025 • 30 mins
Marina, Richard and Ruthie discuss the secret to hosting a good dinner party, Marina's love for schnitzel, and how their podcast 'The Rest Is Entertainment' began.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Ruthie's Table four in collaboration with me
and m Intelligence Style for Busy Women. Over two hundred
eighteen episodes of Ruthie's Table four, I've interviewed actors, chefs, musicians,
and politicians. To day, I'm here with Marina Hyde and
(00:21):
Richard Osmond, two great friends and also the hosts of
my favorite podcast, The Rest Is Entertainment. Marina is a
brilliant journalist. When I don't know what to think on
any subject, I read her with an open mind and
then think what she thinks. Richard is a brilliant TV producer, presenter,
(00:41):
and hugely successful novelist and one of the most loved
members of the River Cafe family. Last night he was
here celebrating his newest book, The Impossible Fortune.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
To day, we'll talk.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
About food, friendship, entertainment. I'm also looking forward to learning
about how to do a really good podcast with two
great friends.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
I agree. I agree with all the stuff about Marina,
let the stuff about me.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
But how did it start?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Do you want to go? Do you want to take
this one?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (01:14):
I will, because I tell you what when I had
a book out, which when I have a book out
it's not quite the same as when Richard's got.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
A book out.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
They said, we want to do a big London event
and we want to get a host for it. And
then it came back to me and said Richard also
was going to do it, and I said, what's he
doing there?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
He's got no need to do that. I was affronted
that you had said yes. Some time before.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
Gary Denicuad said to me, will you do a podcast
or something? And I said, oh, no, I'd.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Be absolutely terrible at it. Which yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
But then Richard wrote to me on a Saturday evening
and I saying, what do you think about doing this?
And it would be about entertainment, which I also that
was a whole separate thing, which I thought, Okay, this
would be really fun. This is all the things that
people escape to from from a darkening world. And I thought,
and I wait the entire night, but not in an
unhappy way.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
And then at like.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
Quarter to five on Sunday morning, I wrote back and said, no,
I think I would.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, I think I will do that.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
I know. I I was delighted, well, because I wanted
to do an entertainment podcast. I feel it's the only
thing I actually have some authority on you know, people
always ask your opinions on things and politics and stuff.
I think I've have an opinion, but it's not based
on anything other than, you know, my opinion. Whereas entertainment,
I've sort of worked in it for a long time,
so I feel like it's an area that I can
talk about and working out who to do it with
(02:30):
and finding Ingrid my wife, who loves Marina almost as
much as I do. She said, well, if this only
one person, that's got to be Marina. Yeah, And so
immediately I wrote to Marina and suggested it, thinking because
I know you famously you don't do many things like that.
I thought, well, she'll say no, and then we'll have
to get some sort of inferior Marina.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
But so many Marinas trust me.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
But I remember thinking, oh, I think this would be
really fun, and I just think I would really look
forward to speaking to him every single week.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Which I do.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
I really, we do it on Monday morning, and every
Monday morning. I think, I wonderful ritual all have to
say about these matters?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So do you how do you prepare?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Well, we sort of across our poor producers, they're always
like like the previous Thursday, or you know something, any
any ideas what you're going to talk about this week
now Thursday radio silence from me and Marina. Then maybe
sort of like a panicked email on Saturday evening going
maybe it was just should we talk about this this
week and then on Sunday, but you know what, maybe
we'll talk about that, And so Sunday is sort of
my research date.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Very occasionally we would change it on Monday morning.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yes we did. We did. We talked about The Salt
Path the book the other day because it came out
on the Sunday evening, all this story. So we changed
it on the Monday morning, and yeah, we So we
do our bit of research and then we turn up.
We never tell each other what we're going to say.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
I often like it so often in life like that
to be impressed until I hear something coming out of
my mouth and I'm like, oh, I don't know you're
going to say that. It's my opinion, But I just
often I just sit back and you know, Marina, let's rip,
and I'm thinking, this is great.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So we're here to talk about food, so we are.
It's we always start with the reading of the recipe.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Would you like to take the ingredients and I'll do this, No.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I'll say I'm attend in the podcast.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I think you should just do that and I could
sit back and relax.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Hello and welcome to Grilled Veiled Shops.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
My name is Richard Osman and I'm Marina Harri. I
have a question. Marina is from a Ruthie Rogers. Thank
you for your question, and she's saying, exactly what would
you use for ingredients if you were cooking grilled veal chops?
Great question.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I'd have four thick veal.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Chops, four of them.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Is that for four people?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I think it would serve four. Yeah. And then I'd
have fifty grams of precuto fat okay, yeah, the peel
of two lemons, yeah, two tablespoons of sage lead.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Two tablespoons of sage lead.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
But you're pining them up.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, yeah, well I'm chopping.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I'm never I'm never sure about tablespoons as a because
heap tablespoons. I don't know. Listen, that's my issue.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
There's a level of imprecision that this wouldn't it of
Then we'd have a tablespoon of lemon juice and.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Sea salt and freshly ground back pepper.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
When aren't they there Longoria and at Orlando Bloom of
celebrity weddings, there are on every list those two.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Do you have a further question for me?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yes, I'd like to know what to do with these items?
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Who's that question from ruth question?
Speaker 4 (05:24):
I think she's known as what's called a super fat,
so super van Ruthie Rodgers asked what would you do
with these?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
For the grilled?
Speaker 3 (05:32):
What would I do with think? God, that's a good question.
So what have we got four thick veal chops? So
quite thick? I think probably? So you got the pursuit.
I take the pursuito fat, take the lemon peel and
sage leaves, lemon juice and that seasoning stigma. The food
process is the first thing I would do. And if
you've got the you know you've got all your different
settings on your food process up. I would use pulse chop.
(05:53):
So pulse chop that to make a like a coarse
thick paste is what I would do. Then you dry
the veiled chops thoroughly. I don't know how wet they are,
but if they.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Are wet, if the new kitchen towel.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I think I would definitely do it with a kitchen
town and then I would spread the mixture, remember from
the free processor from before, just spread it evenly on
each side, grill gosh. I would say five to eight
minutes something like that, and then hey, presso you've got
yourself absolutely perfect grilled veal chops. I hope that answers
your question. Rufie, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
That was brilliant and I really will learn a lot
from the next time. As I thought I would ask
you why you chose that recipe or did you.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
Have the Well, I chose this recipe and I have
made this recipe many times actually, and it is a
real high wire at because I have to tell you
veal chops are very very expensive. There's something about me
that I don't.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Know, especially thick ones.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, especially very thick.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
And if it goes wrong, it's completely ruined, and all
veal chops are wrong. This is from the book that
came out in the mid nineties.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Right, this was the first book.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, exactly lot wrong in that book.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Did you people say to me I made something and
it didn't come out there? Like what was our first books?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
It's like the Thursday Murder Club. I didn't absolutely know
what I was doing.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I didn't know that. I don't want to reduce the
sales of our first book because we do love it.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
It's a banger.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, it's a classic memory book. I would go. It's
called the River Cafe Cookbook, but it's the blue one,
but definitely followed by the one that we did for
our thirtieth birthday called River Cafe thirty, which is kind
of more knowledgeable.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
It's fine. Yeah, we were young. We started out.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
You were faking it, were making it.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
We're saying how and why the veal chops, Why you
chose this recipe?
Speaker 4 (07:41):
But I chose this recipe because, first of all, I
absolutely love feld chops. I felt the recipe was quite
forgiving because I could see obviously the main thing you
didn't want to happen is for it to dry out,
because once that's happened, the end. So I saw that
you did this thing with a fat I'm really always
trying and push myself too hard on all sorts of
different things. So when I did this, I've always used
(08:01):
to feel like, oh, this is such a high onie.
If I can pull this off, then maybe everything else
in my life will go right to cooking it.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Cooking is a performance. Do you think people say to me,
you know, how do you feed two hundred people here
when I can't do a dinner party of eight? And
I go, I don't like doing a dinner party of eight.
You know, it's hard. It's such a performance. You're taking
something out, you're feeling it to people. They have to
like it or not like it. You've succeeded or you fail.
Do you find that or do you find it?
Speaker 3 (08:27):
My job as a as a as a non chef
is the job in the dinner party is to make
sure everyone is happy all the time. Weirdly, in the
same way that when you're presenting a TV program. I've
got four people, you work out who they are, what's
slightly different about them, and you just make sure everyone gels.
So my job at any dinner parties is always a
(08:47):
playlist and vibes. That's all I've got. I will prep,
I will clear up, and I will do a playlist.
And that's a that's sort of because I love They're okay,
aren't they?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, all of those are good.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
I would not cook this at a dinner party is
too stressful. I would cook this for my husband here.
That's why who coble?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Who is an obsessive lover of veal chops? But that's it?
Speaker 1 (09:09):
And what do you do when you have a dinner donner?
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Now I've over the years.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Yeah, I used to sell myself completely mad and be
like suck in the kitchen and making all these recomplicated things.
Now I do things that can be put out at
almost at room temperature, or there's one thing that's coming
out of the oven that the oven's doing all the work.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
And I can do things like that. Can't remember you
came the.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Other We had an amazingze.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Oh yes, I mean god.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
The thing I eat most more than anything is schnitzel,
of all different types.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I make that.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
I have a different type of schnitzel at least once
a week, all different things, once with seeds on the
side that one has had almonds and por jokes.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
It's really nice. Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
A classic sort of Milanaisy one Austrian one with the
with the matso do port ones. I'll do anything sitz
or anything schnitzel, are you.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I will eat any schnitzel as well.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
That's where my very last minute, though you have to
be in the kitchen.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
But it's fine because it's actually doesn't take very it's
last minute, but it's not many minutes.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah. So schnitzel is.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Probably the thing that I cooked by father most and
everybody likes it.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
It might be the thing I eat the most. Yeah,
I love it. My wife is half German, so we
go to Germany a lot, and I'm so happy because
every restaurant you go into that doesn't matter what they do,
there will always be schnitzel, and usually assity in the
south that'll always be fond of as well. So I'm
I'm always happy to be in Germany.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
And when you were growing up, did your parents entertained?
Did you grow up with dinner parties in your house?
Did you have No?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
They never really did that, and actually we never went out,
but my no, I think it was expensive and we
didn't go out, but we my mother sort of hated
cooking and sort of still does, but cooked every single meal.
But we had about five dishes of rotation and they
were called funny things. They were, you know, some of
them were like obvious what they were. There was like
kidneys and rice or spaghetti boas. Some of the things
(11:09):
were called things like chicken in a mess with rice, okay,
and there was so they were all of these things.
But when I was coming here, I was thinking, my god,
you know, if I was giving the honest sort of
account of all of those things, there were certain moments
and you look back to them.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Remember the shot Bee.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Jam, Remember I had a Saturday job and Jam, did
you did it? It was the precursor to Iceland.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah, it was a freezer.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
It's a shot that sold freezers and things that went
in freezers.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
So clever, and I'll take it esthetically.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
It's nothing experienced these gys, but for a certain type
of woman who did not want to cook.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Particularly, those chests were treasure.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Chests, and in them were things like I mean, I
remember the first time we saw a vernetta. We were like,
how could such a thing be created and look SuperFect
and retain its I mean the answer, of course.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Was when it opped processed or whatever.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
But at the time we didn't know any of these things,
and we lived in bliss for ignorant, and they.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Had no one's ever, no one's ever topped the viennetta.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Well, Sarah Lese, how did you go, I'll tell you
some of Sarah Le's frozen desserts.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
You know that came out.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
That was very American. Well eventually, yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
And you so those sort of things would come out
and they you know, and ice cream, fancy ice cream flavors.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Can I say something about fancy ice cream flavors? Now, Ruthy,
you're an experimenter in the kitchen. You understand food and
flavor and all of those things. So the history of
ice cream, we have vanilla, of course classic, and then
we had chocolate, and then we had strawberry, so we
got I absolutely get that. Those are the first three flavors, right.
The next flavor out of the traps, I think like
(12:47):
the fourth flavor immediately before they thought of anything else,
was rum and raisin. Remember in the seventies said run raisin.
That's a really early, So early to go rum and
raisin when you haven't when you haven't even done pistachia
or we, by the way, had some ice creams here
yesterday that were sensational.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
But it's not like outreaching flavors.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
The beautiful, beautifully made talking for ultra high processed food
one of the greatest moments of the nineteen seventies was
when they brought out ice Magic. Do you remember ice Magic?
So ice Magic. You'd have some you know, Sainsbury's vanilla
ice cream, and you get the squeezy bottle that was
chocolate flavored, and you would pour this, you know, squeeze
(13:31):
out this chocolate sauce and it would instantly form like a.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Hard crust against sorcery, like a chocolate bomb. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yeah, there are some things even now that I think
if they hadn't existed in the seventies, and some white
if you went to a restaurant and someone showed that
to you, you go, this is the greatest act of
gastronomy in the history of restaurants. But they were so
far ahead of the curve. I think the best ice
cream flavor I don't know if you agree with me
with the and I I don't think there's any argument
with this. I think the best ice cream flavor is
(13:59):
mint choc chip.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Got I'm so embarrassed you Oh, okay, are.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
You going to say scratch a tailor or something?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
You'd be really surprised to amazing. I really love vanilla
ice cream. Wow, yeah, kind of she gets.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
This is this is the best podcast Ship compared to ship.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
The best ice cream I ever had was in Italy,
of course, in Rome, and there was this gelat area
we went to all the time, which is called Otter Leg,
and we thought that's an unusual name, but anyway, we
we kept going back there because it was just incredible.
And you know, it's a hole in the wall one
and it was only at the boat. We were there
for a month. It's only at the end of the
month that I worked at the leg was gelato backwards.
(14:45):
I'd always think, give us an unusual name, the hole
in the wall place.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
There's a place in Newlyn in Cornwall that's called Gelbert
and I have been having this ice cream since. People
used to cue for aptly miles for it and it
just they just do vanilla. And it was honestly served
out of a bucket. There was really they had a dairy.
It was amazing and no one ever got saved. But
it was a it was a proper thing and the
(15:11):
only way you could have it served was plain or
with plotted cream on top. And by the way, plotted
cream on top of ice cream, you're thinking superversed, it's
far toy much.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
It is the best dessert. Don't I love ending a
meal with ice cream.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
It's a million different things. You can be whatever you
want it to be.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Sometimes on the way home from work, I stop, we
have one on the King's Wild convents. They do, really,
that is not too late. But then I was buy
one for the taxi driver, feel guilty, and I bring
him one. And then I gave one to him the
other day and so he said, you know, the last
time you were in my cap see you got ice cream.
(15:50):
So back to your mother now, except your poor mother, she.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Has never loved cooking at all, but I do think
for you know, there was a sort of liberation in
those frozen and chests for many people. And I love cooking,
but I taught myself.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
But did you sit.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Down to dinner every night as a family? Yes? I
did every night. You are how many of you were?
Speaker 4 (16:10):
And it was very noisy because we had there were
three girls, three sisters, and my parents. My father loved
having three girls. But if we bought friends home from
school and stuff like that, then sometimes there would quite
regularly be like nine people.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Did you did you have every night?
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah? Every night? My mom. Again, I think my mum
would love to have been a good cook, and my
parents put up when I was quite young, so she
kind of got out of the thing of people coming around.
And she had two boys, in neither of whom particularly adventuress,
so very very quickly was it was the absolute typical.
I think there's the reason I never get through poisoning,
because I was brought up on you know, potato waffles
(16:45):
and sphetty hoops from a can and fish fingers and
things like that. So I think that she would have
loved to every night rustle something up, but she never
had an apprecitive audience.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Oh it's awesome. Did she work during the.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Day, Yes, yes, she became a teacher. She's a primary
school teacher.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Because that's all right, you're working all day and the
new come home and you got to cook your mam work.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
She did when we got She didn't when we were
all small at the same.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Time, but you'd love it. I do.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
I do all the cooking at home, but I taught myself.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Funnily enough, in the pandemic.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
The only time that I've sort of met friends online
that i'd never met, and I these they are these
two producer brothers who have We've got a company called
full Well who produced things like The Late Late Show
with James Corden when they did and they were called
Gaben Bennett, and they wanted me to do a TV
project with which I thought I'd be terrible at what
I didn't do, but they said, we don't know really
know how to cook them. We're getting people to teach
(17:39):
us how to cook. With two others and they were
Phoebe Wallerbridge and her sister Isabel, who's a brilliant composer.
And so we were in this cook along. So we would
go on Zoom and people would teach us how to
cook things. And there were amazing like people who taught
us how to make like hollow bread.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
You know.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Our platting was so bad. And when the things were
like rising and do this, we would all talk to
each other and it was this amazing thing and we
didn't know what we were doing technologically. We would just
like have our laptops set up on our shelves in
our kitchen and it was so fun.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Oh, I ate your ice cream yesterdays? Did so?
Speaker 1 (18:15):
You say your parents you didn't go to either. Neither
of you went to restaurants as kids, which is not
surprising because we only went for special occasions.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
We didn't have them.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
But you didn't go at all.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
I remember reading The Tiger who Came to Tea the children,
and the main thing should be that there's a tiger
in your house. But the thing I took away from
it was that they went to a restaurant and it
had like kind of those the Gingham tablecloths, and I
was like, I loved it so much.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
She goes in and it's so glamorous because she goes
in her nighty and her she puts my coat on
over her ninety They have sausages and ice cream.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
I think, do you do you think about what you're
going to eat when you wake up in the morning?
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Do you immediately I think about all the different meals.
I love all the different meals. I can't play favorites.
And I really think for my children, like, oh, I
want to make them okay. I want to do things
like I want to do things like that. I always
try and do absolutely everything and do all my work
and make a really big stuff everyone a cake.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Do you think that's a personality?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Do you go yes?
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I do think it's never Did you do you go
to sleep thinking about what you're going to eat the next.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Time, and this I'm in a hotel and then I've
got the hotel breakfast coming up, and then I can't.
I can barely sleep because I'm so excited. I think
it's the great deal. You have a hotel breath will
just help yourself if I if I go to a
hotel and you go down to breakfast and it's way
to service, I'm like, well, we're moving hotels because listen,
(19:38):
it's I want to be able to see. I want
to go that.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Silver thing and mushrooms, make a couple of trips.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
You want to Yeah, I always think it'd be a
great restaurant, a hotel breakfast restaurant in the evening. Yeah.
I think people will get nuts for it.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Did you ever interview somebody over breakfast? Would you breakfast
meetings or lunch meat?
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Do you like food and work business breakfast? Yes, definitively.
I think that's great. We all know where we are
and there's something about it because, as we know, the
calories don't count and all that, all that kind of stuff,
and you've got to eat.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Anyway, you've got the day ahead of Youah, business lunch, No,
I don't like business do business lunch.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
I love a long lunch, but very very rarely, but
I love to do it. I go out with all
these slightly older guys and they're really good fun and
I have like I have a long lunch, but then
I'm not sort of good.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Are they drinking at lunchtime? Generation? That's the one that
I really I wish i'd been born in that generation.
I don't know how they did it.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
The cabinets in the room, right, they had my Madman cocktails.
When you came back from the business ledge, you had
three martinis and then you went back to the office
and had another.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
It's just building up resistance, exactly.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
I love a business breakfast. You're so right, that's that's
so much. Although having said that, I start work really
early in the morning, I start I always start by five,
so I don't and I'm much better. Yeah, something that
takes me five minutes at five a m. Will take
me an hour at five pm. So those are my
good hours of working.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
If ever I get a text at six in the morning,
it's only marine and.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
You know I am waiting to send it.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
To take calls at five because sometimes I like covert
five and nobody. I'd love to call you, because.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
What I'm so available is what I have to do.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
I wanted to have a website called are youwake dot
com because then you could find out who's actually awake,
because often in the morning I'll bring somebody to say
I said I woke up at three, and they go,
I was awake at three. I think if we just
knew each other, we're awake. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Whenever my wife and I are separated, she works away
a lot and I'll work away a lot, and both
of us find it harder to sleep when the other
isn't there. And so I know sometimes if I could,
that's the only time I would send a text at
three in the morning and just go, are you finally
trouble sleeping? And then immediately yeah, yeah, okay, let's have
a chat.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
So you will both go up at these houses where
you were given food every day, your mother's chose them,
you ate them. And then what happened when you left home,
like when you were to university.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Well, at that point, I mean, you know, there was
a lot more choice, I suppose, and you, I mean
we did you did, I mean, you did find out
about all these other other foods that were out there, but.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
You have to have money to do it all. So
you have to work.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
And then as time goes on, you become someone who
can maybe go to one of those restaurants you see.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I mean it dates quite a long time.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Where I went, they had like a cafeteria, so you
didn't really have to.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Do do you go Oxford and you went to So
was the food? What was the food like in the
whole It.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Was quite like squeezy.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
I went to a boarding school, so that was a
whole other food food journey where you were just always
you felt like you were always hungry. I don't know
why we always did feel so hungry the entire time,
although presumably.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
There was enough. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
I guess we were growing and I just remember feeling
hungry all the time.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
We used to have we used to have like a
corner shops around the corner from my school, and there
fifteen hundred kids at my school, and that shop like
twice a day. It was like the busiest ship was
like Harold's twice a day.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
And then they moved to in the end. If you've
got a captive market like that, yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Amazing, But so back to university. So did you did
you discover the local Greek or did you did you
discover Chinese?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
And that was quite expensive When you were at university there.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Was a there was a takeaway and came to called Guardenias,
which which was sort of kababbi and stuff like that,
and that was fairly cheap. And I think it's still there,
which is weak because when you think about it's like
thirty five years ago. So that's quite something. So, yeah,
you would do that because you wouldn't get a bedtill
four in the morning or something, so you needed.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
Some and you would have kabab fans fans, there were
so many you'd be eating at midnight.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah, imagine doing that now, Well, you'd.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Have to eat twice.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
You might have been canteen earlier, and then you might
have the whole food or whatever it was called.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
And then you might have.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Because you certainly weren't having breakfast because you were you
were not seeing the morning.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, so when did you actually find that food was interesting?
Speaker 3 (24:01):
I think never is the truth with me. I've always
had a slightly uncomfortable relationship with food. So you know,
I like it. I like nice food. That's very bland tastes.
I've got very you know, I've got the taste of
a boyfriend the nineteen seventies. I've never had it beaten
out of me. So every restaurant I go to, I
make sure I see, Okay, there's one thing I like,
So whenever I go to that restaurant, I know I
can have that. And so, yeah, I've never had an
(24:23):
adventurous time with food. I listen, I like, I eat it,
Yeah for sure, But it's never been something I've fetishized particularly,
and I always wish it what I love. You know,
when you see someone playing like a concerto and you think,
what must that be like? And I'm the same with
it if I you know, looking at what you do
in this restaurant and seeing the joy that it brings you,
seeing the joy it brings other people as well, and
see it and bringing people together, I'm like, oh my god,
(24:45):
So I love it. I see it. I see that
it's joyful. But with food, I think I don't have
that the visceral attachment to it.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, no, I think I do.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
I feel Actually, really, what my university food story was
was that I had an eating disorder this and then afterwards.
Funnily enough, when I thought, I can't really continue like
this at all. I thought to myself, I will never
think about food in the same way that I have
been thinking about it, and I can't and I must
go back. I must tunnel back to my childhood adoration
(25:15):
of Viennetta's and so on. And I thought, I'm you know,
I will never weigh myself again. I mean, now I'm
fifty one and I haven't really weighed myself since that's
twenty two. And it's funny even when I go to
remember when I was pregnant, and you know, they have
to weigh you in the hospital appointments, when they would
say the thing, I would do a thing like that
because I thought, I must never hear this number ever again.
And I still do that now, Isn't that silly?
Speaker 3 (25:36):
And I thought that, please don't tell me the gender
or how much it was.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
And the only thing that I could really think of
all the time was I must never ever think about
it in those terms again. I must never look at
what a calorie is. I must never think about this
ever again in my life. And it took time to
get out of that.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
It was are was it?
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
But yes, but not.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
But you know, it's like an excess of control. So
and I know you've had the other side, which is
I had to learn to let go control. And then
when I had, everything became this unbelievable world of like
a sort of Wonka factory of that's when I taught
myself to cook, and I don't you know, and I
and I would eat anything and try anything, and I
(26:19):
loved it all and I still love it all, and
I think in a funny kind of way, it's probably
one of my most significantitude that some of my adult life.
And also that came at a time when then you
started work and I had more, you know, I had
some of my own money, and I could go to
places and it's.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
A world This did a restaurant.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
I've told to you before about like restaurants is entertainment
and you're you're in a tiny it's like it's two
hours of glamour and being a verbal like in the
way that people are on holiday are much more bold
and so they say I might wear this on holiday.
About if it's women say this about dresses. I wouldn't
wear it in London, but I'd wear it on holiday.
You become a version of yourself that's a sort of
slightly kind of knowing glamorous, you know, fifteen percent more
(27:00):
Lan's version of yourself when you go out, I don't.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Do you feel that.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
I think that a restaurant to me, especially somewhere like this,
It's like we sometimes on the rest of entertainment, we
talk about entertainment and what it is, and I think
it's if you go to the theater, if you watch
a great piece of TV, if you listen to a
great song, if you go to a great restaurant, nobody
here needs to be doing this. Yeah, right, then it's
like someone has gone out of the way to do
something extraordinary to make you happy, you know. And that's
(27:27):
the same with films that you leave a theater, you
just go that's so weird. Eight human beings for six
months just to tell me this imaginary story. And it's
the same with food. You know, if the food is
coming from everywhere, people have grown the food, people have
cooked the food, and it's none none of it needs
to happen, and that it makes it's what makes us human.
The fact that we want to.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
Do that, and it's evanescence, the fact that it's sort
of it just sort of vanishes into the night and
that was that, and it was. It is like a
theatrical thing, I think, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
I was. I often think that in.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
The best restaurants I've been to, like, wow, I'm part
of just an incredible performance.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
It is a performance, you know, I think, there is
the last night I've worked here in the kitchen and
you just when I saw you, and you could have
the same audience, you can have change the food all
the time, you can have the food, you can have
the same chefs you're working with, whatever it is. But
you can finish and say that was a great night,
or you can say that wasn't a great night, and
(28:22):
why wasn't a great night? Yeah, exactly exactly. So we're
going to go and have some lunch now, but we
always end this podcast or our conversation with a food question. Marina, First,
what would you go to for comfort food?
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Well, now I've talked about it, I'll have to talk
about the other. Mine would be roast chicken and roast potatoes.
And one of the main reasons it would be is
because I know that the way I do roast chicken
and the.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Way I do roast potatoes is the way that my
husband likes it the most, and it's it's him.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Yeah. I always love that question, and everyone has different answers,
which is, if you go in the cuisine of one
country for the rest of your life, which would it be?
And people that which is like sort of impossible, but
Italian is the only obvious answer. I think my daughter
would say Chinese. I think my son would say Japanese.
I would say, but that's the problem. You can only
have one. This isn't real. So I would say something
(29:18):
like a like like a carbonara, which is one of
the few things that I can cook and I love
to cook, and you can make with the simplest of ingredients,
and it's it's that is.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Just like it.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Who's not enjoying that? It's so it's like I'd almost say,
catch you a pepe, which is even sort of simpler,
but I think carbonaro just has a little bit of
a little bit extra to it.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I think you like food.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
I have an unrefined palette.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
I think you do like it, don't you. I think
this is a man who says he's not.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Think I like your food, and I like your food.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
One that's entertaining. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Thank you so much, ruth.
Speaker 5 (29:59):
Ruthie's Table four was produced by Jack Boswell and Zad
Rogers with Susanna Hilop, Andrew Sang and Bella Sellini. This
has been an atomized production for iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Ruthie's Table four is proud to support Leukemia UK. Their
Cartwheel for a Cure campaign raises funds for vital research
and more effective and kinder treatments for a cute my
Lloyd leukemia. Please donate and to do so search Cartwheel
for a Cure. Ruthie's Table four in collaboration with Me
(30:36):
and M Intelligence Style for Busy Women
You're listening to Ruthie's Table four in collaboration with me
and m Intelligence Style for Busy Women. Over two hundred
eighteen episodes of Ruthie's Table four, I've interviewed actors, chefs, musicians,
and politicians. To day, I'm here with Marina Hyde and
(00:21):
Richard Osmond, two great friends and also the hosts of
my favorite podcast, The Rest Is Entertainment. Marina is a
brilliant journalist. When I don't know what to think on
any subject, I read her with an open mind and
then think what she thinks. Richard is a brilliant TV producer, presenter,
(00:41):
and hugely successful novelist and one of the most loved
members of the River Cafe family. Last night he was
here celebrating his newest book, The Impossible Fortune.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
To day, we'll talk.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
About food, friendship, entertainment. I'm also looking forward to learning
about how to do a really good podcast with two
great friends.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
I agree. I agree with all the stuff about Marina,
let the stuff about me.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
But how did it start?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Do you want to go? Do you want to take
this one?
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (01:14):
I will, because I tell you what when I had
a book out, which when I have a book out
it's not quite the same as when Richard's got.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
A book out.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
They said, we want to do a big London event
and we want to get a host for it. And
then it came back to me and said Richard also
was going to do it, and I said, what's he
doing there?
Speaker 2 (01:28):
He's got no need to do that. I was affronted
that you had said yes. Some time before.
Speaker 4 (01:35):
Gary Denicuad said to me, will you do a podcast
or something? And I said, oh, no, I'd.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Be absolutely terrible at it. Which yeah.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
But then Richard wrote to me on a Saturday evening
and I saying, what do you think about doing this?
And it would be about entertainment, which I also that
was a whole separate thing, which I thought, Okay, this
would be really fun. This is all the things that
people escape to from from a darkening world. And I thought,
and I wait the entire night, but not in an
unhappy way.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
And then at like.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
Quarter to five on Sunday morning, I wrote back and said, no,
I think I would.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yeah, I think I will do that.
Speaker 3 (02:08):
I know. I I was delighted, well, because I wanted
to do an entertainment podcast. I feel it's the only
thing I actually have some authority on you know, people
always ask your opinions on things and politics and stuff.
I think I've have an opinion, but it's not based
on anything other than, you know, my opinion. Whereas entertainment,
I've sort of worked in it for a long time,
so I feel like it's an area that I can
talk about and working out who to do it with
(02:30):
and finding Ingrid my wife, who loves Marina almost as
much as I do. She said, well, if this only
one person, that's got to be Marina. Yeah, And so
immediately I wrote to Marina and suggested it, thinking because
I know you famously you don't do many things like that.
I thought, well, she'll say no, and then we'll have
to get some sort of inferior Marina.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
But so many Marinas trust me.
Speaker 4 (02:51):
But I remember thinking, oh, I think this would be
really fun, and I just think I would really look
forward to speaking to him every single week.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Which I do.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
I really, we do it on Monday morning, and every
Monday morning. I think, I wonderful ritual all have to
say about these matters?
Speaker 1 (03:05):
So do you how do you prepare?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Well, we sort of across our poor producers, they're always
like like the previous Thursday, or you know something, any
any ideas what you're going to talk about this week
now Thursday radio silence from me and Marina. Then maybe
sort of like a panicked email on Saturday evening going
maybe it was just should we talk about this this
week and then on Sunday, but you know what, maybe
we'll talk about that, And so Sunday is sort of
my research date.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Very occasionally we would change it on Monday morning.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Yes we did. We did. We talked about The Salt
Path the book the other day because it came out
on the Sunday evening, all this story. So we changed
it on the Monday morning, and yeah, we So we
do our bit of research and then we turn up.
We never tell each other what we're going to say.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
I often like it so often in life like that
to be impressed until I hear something coming out of
my mouth and I'm like, oh, I don't know you're
going to say that. It's my opinion, But I just
often I just sit back and you know, Marina, let's rip,
and I'm thinking, this is great.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
So we're here to talk about food, so we are.
It's we always start with the reading of the recipe.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Would you like to take the ingredients and I'll do this, No.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I'll say I'm attend in the podcast.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
I think you should just do that and I could
sit back and relax.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Hello and welcome to Grilled Veiled Shops.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
My name is Richard Osman and I'm Marina Harri. I
have a question. Marina is from a Ruthie Rogers. Thank
you for your question, and she's saying, exactly what would
you use for ingredients if you were cooking grilled veal chops?
Great question.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I'd have four thick veal.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Chops, four of them.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Is that for four people?
Speaker 2 (04:39):
I think it would serve four. Yeah. And then I'd
have fifty grams of precuto fat okay, yeah, the peel
of two lemons, yeah, two tablespoons of sage lead.
Speaker 3 (04:49):
Two tablespoons of sage lead.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
But you're pining them up.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, yeah, well I'm chopping.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
I'm never I'm never sure about tablespoons as a because
heap tablespoons. I don't know. Listen, that's my issue.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
There's a level of imprecision that this wouldn't it of
Then we'd have a tablespoon of lemon juice and.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Sea salt and freshly ground back pepper.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
When aren't they there Longoria and at Orlando Bloom of
celebrity weddings, there are on every list those two.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Do you have a further question for me?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yes, I'd like to know what to do with these items?
Speaker 3 (05:20):
Who's that question from ruth question?
Speaker 4 (05:24):
I think she's known as what's called a super fat,
so super van Ruthie Rodgers asked what would you do
with these?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
For the grilled?
Speaker 3 (05:32):
What would I do with think? God, that's a good question.
So what have we got four thick veal chops? So
quite thick? I think probably? So you got the pursuit.
I take the pursuito fat, take the lemon peel and
sage leaves, lemon juice and that seasoning stigma. The food
process is the first thing I would do. And if
you've got the you know you've got all your different
settings on your food process up. I would use pulse chop.
(05:53):
So pulse chop that to make a like a coarse
thick paste is what I would do. Then you dry
the veiled chops thoroughly. I don't know how wet they are,
but if they.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Are wet, if the new kitchen towel.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I think I would definitely do it with a kitchen
town and then I would spread the mixture, remember from
the free processor from before, just spread it evenly on
each side, grill gosh. I would say five to eight
minutes something like that, and then hey, presso you've got
yourself absolutely perfect grilled veal chops. I hope that answers
your question. Rufie, thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
That was brilliant and I really will learn a lot
from the next time. As I thought I would ask
you why you chose that recipe or did you.
Speaker 4 (06:35):
Have the Well, I chose this recipe and I have
made this recipe many times actually, and it is a
real high wire at because I have to tell you
veal chops are very very expensive. There's something about me
that I don't.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Know, especially thick ones.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, especially very thick.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
And if it goes wrong, it's completely ruined, and all
veal chops are wrong. This is from the book that
came out in the mid nineties.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Right, this was the first book.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, exactly lot wrong in that book.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Did you people say to me I made something and
it didn't come out there? Like what was our first books?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
It's like the Thursday Murder Club. I didn't absolutely know
what I was doing.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
I didn't know that. I don't want to reduce the
sales of our first book because we do love it.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
It's a banger.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, it's a classic memory book. I would go. It's
called the River Cafe Cookbook, but it's the blue one,
but definitely followed by the one that we did for
our thirtieth birthday called River Cafe thirty, which is kind
of more knowledgeable.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
It's fine. Yeah, we were young. We started out.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
You were faking it, were making it.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
We're saying how and why the veal chops, Why you
chose this recipe?
Speaker 4 (07:41):
But I chose this recipe because, first of all, I
absolutely love feld chops. I felt the recipe was quite
forgiving because I could see obviously the main thing you
didn't want to happen is for it to dry out,
because once that's happened, the end. So I saw that
you did this thing with a fat I'm really always
trying and push myself too hard on all sorts of
different things. So when I did this, I've always used
(08:01):
to feel like, oh, this is such a high onie.
If I can pull this off, then maybe everything else
in my life will go right to cooking it.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Cooking is a performance. Do you think people say to me,
you know, how do you feed two hundred people here
when I can't do a dinner party of eight? And
I go, I don't like doing a dinner party of eight.
You know, it's hard. It's such a performance. You're taking
something out, you're feeling it to people. They have to
like it or not like it. You've succeeded or you fail.
Do you find that or do you find it?
Speaker 3 (08:27):
My job as a as a as a non chef
is the job in the dinner party is to make
sure everyone is happy all the time. Weirdly, in the
same way that when you're presenting a TV program. I've
got four people, you work out who they are, what's
slightly different about them, and you just make sure everyone gels.
So my job at any dinner parties is always a
(08:47):
playlist and vibes. That's all I've got. I will prep,
I will clear up, and I will do a playlist.
And that's a that's sort of because I love They're okay,
aren't they?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Yeah, all of those are good.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
I would not cook this at a dinner party is
too stressful. I would cook this for my husband here.
That's why who coble?
Speaker 2 (09:05):
Who is an obsessive lover of veal chops? But that's it?
Speaker 1 (09:09):
And what do you do when you have a dinner donner?
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Now I've over the years.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
Yeah, I used to sell myself completely mad and be
like suck in the kitchen and making all these recomplicated things.
Now I do things that can be put out at
almost at room temperature, or there's one thing that's coming
out of the oven that the oven's doing all the work.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
And I can do things like that. Can't remember you
came the.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
Other We had an amazingze.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Oh yes, I mean god.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
The thing I eat most more than anything is schnitzel,
of all different types.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
I make that.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
I have a different type of schnitzel at least once
a week, all different things, once with seeds on the
side that one has had almonds and por jokes.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
It's really nice. Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
A classic sort of Milanaisy one Austrian one with the
with the matso do port ones. I'll do anything sitz
or anything schnitzel, are you.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
I will eat any schnitzel as well.
Speaker 1 (10:02):
That's where my very last minute, though you have to
be in the kitchen.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
But it's fine because it's actually doesn't take very it's
last minute, but it's not many minutes.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah. So schnitzel is.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
Probably the thing that I cooked by father most and
everybody likes it.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
It might be the thing I eat the most. Yeah,
I love it. My wife is half German, so we
go to Germany a lot, and I'm so happy because
every restaurant you go into that doesn't matter what they do,
there will always be schnitzel, and usually assity in the
south that'll always be fond of as well. So I'm
I'm always happy to be in Germany.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
And when you were growing up, did your parents entertained?
Did you grow up with dinner parties in your house?
Did you have No?
Speaker 4 (10:47):
They never really did that, and actually we never went out,
but my no, I think it was expensive and we
didn't go out, but we my mother sort of hated
cooking and sort of still does, but cooked every single meal.
But we had about five dishes of rotation and they
were called funny things. They were, you know, some of
them were like obvious what they were. There was like
kidneys and rice or spaghetti boas. Some of the things
(11:09):
were called things like chicken in a mess with rice, okay,
and there was so they were all of these things.
But when I was coming here, I was thinking, my god,
you know, if I was giving the honest sort of
account of all of those things, there were certain moments
and you look back to them.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Remember the shot Bee.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Jam, Remember I had a Saturday job and Jam, did
you did it? It was the precursor to Iceland.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah, it was a freezer.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
It's a shot that sold freezers and things that went
in freezers.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
So clever, and I'll take it esthetically.
Speaker 4 (11:38):
It's nothing experienced these gys, but for a certain type
of woman who did not want to cook.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Particularly, those chests were treasure.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
Chests, and in them were things like I mean, I
remember the first time we saw a vernetta. We were like,
how could such a thing be created and look SuperFect
and retain its I mean the answer, of course.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Was when it opped processed or whatever.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
But at the time we didn't know any of these things,
and we lived in bliss for ignorant, and they.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
Had no one's ever, no one's ever topped the viennetta.
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Well, Sarah Lese, how did you go, I'll tell you
some of Sarah Le's frozen desserts.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
You know that came out.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
That was very American. Well eventually, yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
And you so those sort of things would come out
and they you know, and ice cream, fancy ice cream flavors.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Can I say something about fancy ice cream flavors? Now, Ruthy,
you're an experimenter in the kitchen. You understand food and
flavor and all of those things. So the history of
ice cream, we have vanilla, of course classic, and then
we had chocolate, and then we had strawberry, so we
got I absolutely get that. Those are the first three flavors, right.
The next flavor out of the traps, I think like
(12:47):
the fourth flavor immediately before they thought of anything else,
was rum and raisin. Remember in the seventies said run raisin.
That's a really early, So early to go rum and
raisin when you haven't when you haven't even done pistachia
or we, by the way, had some ice creams here
yesterday that were sensational.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
But it's not like outreaching flavors.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
The beautiful, beautifully made talking for ultra high processed food
one of the greatest moments of the nineteen seventies was
when they brought out ice Magic. Do you remember ice Magic?
So ice Magic. You'd have some you know, Sainsbury's vanilla
ice cream, and you get the squeezy bottle that was
chocolate flavored, and you would pour this, you know, squeeze
(13:31):
out this chocolate sauce and it would instantly form like a.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Hard crust against sorcery, like a chocolate bomb. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yeah, there are some things even now that I think
if they hadn't existed in the seventies, and some white
if you went to a restaurant and someone showed that
to you, you go, this is the greatest act of
gastronomy in the history of restaurants. But they were so
far ahead of the curve. I think the best ice
cream flavor I don't know if you agree with me
with the and I I don't think there's any argument
with this. I think the best ice cream flavor is
(13:59):
mint choc chip.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Got I'm so embarrassed you Oh, okay, are.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
You going to say scratch a tailor or something?
Speaker 1 (14:06):
You'd be really surprised to amazing. I really love vanilla
ice cream. Wow, yeah, kind of she gets.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
This is this is the best podcast Ship compared to ship.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
The best ice cream I ever had was in Italy,
of course, in Rome, and there was this gelat area
we went to all the time, which is called Otter Leg,
and we thought that's an unusual name, but anyway, we
we kept going back there because it was just incredible.
And you know, it's a hole in the wall one
and it was only at the boat. We were there
for a month. It's only at the end of the
month that I worked at the leg was gelato backwards.
(14:45):
I'd always think, give us an unusual name, the hole
in the wall place.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
There's a place in Newlyn in Cornwall that's called Gelbert
and I have been having this ice cream since. People
used to cue for aptly miles for it and it
just they just do vanilla. And it was honestly served
out of a bucket. There was really they had a dairy.
It was amazing and no one ever got saved. But
it was a it was a proper thing and the
(15:11):
only way you could have it served was plain or
with plotted cream on top. And by the way, plotted
cream on top of ice cream, you're thinking superversed, it's
far toy much.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
It is the best dessert. Don't I love ending a
meal with ice cream.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
It's a million different things. You can be whatever you
want it to be.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Sometimes on the way home from work, I stop, we
have one on the King's Wild convents. They do, really,
that is not too late. But then I was buy
one for the taxi driver, feel guilty, and I bring
him one. And then I gave one to him the
other day and so he said, you know, the last
time you were in my cap see you got ice cream.
(15:50):
So back to your mother now, except your poor mother, she.
Speaker 4 (15:54):
Has never loved cooking at all, but I do think
for you know, there was a sort of liberation in
those frozen and chests for many people. And I love cooking,
but I taught myself.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
But did you sit.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
Down to dinner every night as a family? Yes? I
did every night. You are how many of you were?
Speaker 4 (16:10):
And it was very noisy because we had there were
three girls, three sisters, and my parents. My father loved
having three girls. But if we bought friends home from
school and stuff like that, then sometimes there would quite
regularly be like nine people.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Did you did you have every night?
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah? Every night? My mom. Again, I think my mum
would love to have been a good cook, and my
parents put up when I was quite young, so she
kind of got out of the thing of people coming around.
And she had two boys, in neither of whom particularly adventuress,
so very very quickly was it was the absolute typical.
I think there's the reason I never get through poisoning,
because I was brought up on you know, potato waffles
(16:45):
and sphetty hoops from a can and fish fingers and
things like that. So I think that she would have
loved to every night rustle something up, but she never
had an apprecitive audience.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Oh it's awesome. Did she work during the.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
Day, Yes, yes, she became a teacher. She's a primary
school teacher.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Because that's all right, you're working all day and the
new come home and you got to cook your mam work.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
She did when we got She didn't when we were
all small at the same.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Time, but you'd love it. I do.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
I do all the cooking at home, but I taught myself.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Funnily enough, in the pandemic.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
The only time that I've sort of met friends online
that i'd never met, and I these they are these
two producer brothers who have We've got a company called
full Well who produced things like The Late Late Show
with James Corden when they did and they were called
Gaben Bennett, and they wanted me to do a TV
project with which I thought I'd be terrible at what
I didn't do, but they said, we don't know really
know how to cook them. We're getting people to teach
(17:39):
us how to cook. With two others and they were
Phoebe Wallerbridge and her sister Isabel, who's a brilliant composer.
And so we were in this cook along. So we would
go on Zoom and people would teach us how to
cook things. And there were amazing like people who taught
us how to make like hollow bread.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
You know.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Our platting was so bad. And when the things were
like rising and do this, we would all talk to
each other and it was this amazing thing and we
didn't know what we were doing technologically. We would just
like have our laptops set up on our shelves in
our kitchen and it was so fun.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Oh, I ate your ice cream yesterdays? Did so?
Speaker 1 (18:15):
You say your parents you didn't go to either. Neither
of you went to restaurants as kids, which is not
surprising because we only went for special occasions.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
We didn't have them.
Speaker 1 (18:23):
But you didn't go at all.
Speaker 3 (18:24):
I remember reading The Tiger who Came to Tea the children,
and the main thing should be that there's a tiger
in your house. But the thing I took away from
it was that they went to a restaurant and it
had like kind of those the Gingham tablecloths, and I
was like, I loved it so much.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
She goes in and it's so glamorous because she goes
in her nighty and her she puts my coat on
over her ninety They have sausages and ice cream.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
I think, do you do you think about what you're
going to eat when you wake up in the morning?
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Do you immediately I think about all the different meals.
I love all the different meals. I can't play favorites.
And I really think for my children, like, oh, I
want to make them okay. I want to do things
like I want to do things like that. I always
try and do absolutely everything and do all my work
and make a really big stuff everyone a cake.
Speaker 3 (19:07):
Do you think that's a personality?
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Do you go yes?
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I do think it's never Did you do you go
to sleep thinking about what you're going to eat the next.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Time, and this I'm in a hotel and then I've
got the hotel breakfast coming up, and then I can't.
I can barely sleep because I'm so excited. I think
it's the great deal. You have a hotel breath will
just help yourself if I if I go to a
hotel and you go down to breakfast and it's way
to service, I'm like, well, we're moving hotels because listen,
(19:38):
it's I want to be able to see. I want
to go that.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Silver thing and mushrooms, make a couple of trips.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
You want to Yeah, I always think it'd be a
great restaurant, a hotel breakfast restaurant in the evening. Yeah.
I think people will get nuts for it.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Did you ever interview somebody over breakfast? Would you breakfast
meetings or lunch meat?
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Do you like food and work business breakfast? Yes, definitively.
I think that's great. We all know where we are
and there's something about it because, as we know, the
calories don't count and all that, all that kind of stuff,
and you've got to eat.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Anyway, you've got the day ahead of Youah, business lunch, No,
I don't like business do business lunch.
Speaker 4 (20:16):
I love a long lunch, but very very rarely, but
I love to do it. I go out with all
these slightly older guys and they're really good fun and
I have like I have a long lunch, but then
I'm not sort of good.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
Are they drinking at lunchtime? Generation? That's the one that
I really I wish i'd been born in that generation.
I don't know how they did it.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
The cabinets in the room, right, they had my Madman cocktails.
When you came back from the business ledge, you had
three martinis and then you went back to the office
and had another.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
It's just building up resistance, exactly.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
I love a business breakfast. You're so right, that's that's
so much. Although having said that, I start work really
early in the morning, I start I always start by five,
so I don't and I'm much better. Yeah, something that
takes me five minutes at five a m. Will take
me an hour at five pm. So those are my
good hours of working.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
If ever I get a text at six in the morning,
it's only marine and.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
You know I am waiting to send it.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
To take calls at five because sometimes I like covert
five and nobody. I'd love to call you, because.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
What I'm so available is what I have to do.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
I wanted to have a website called are youwake dot
com because then you could find out who's actually awake,
because often in the morning I'll bring somebody to say
I said I woke up at three, and they go,
I was awake at three. I think if we just
knew each other, we're awake. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
Whenever my wife and I are separated, she works away
a lot and I'll work away a lot, and both
of us find it harder to sleep when the other
isn't there. And so I know sometimes if I could,
that's the only time I would send a text at
three in the morning and just go, are you finally
trouble sleeping? And then immediately yeah, yeah, okay, let's have
a chat.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
So you will both go up at these houses where
you were given food every day, your mother's chose them,
you ate them. And then what happened when you left home,
like when you were to university.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Well, at that point, I mean, you know, there was
a lot more choice, I suppose, and you, I mean
we did you did, I mean, you did find out
about all these other other foods that were out there, but.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
You have to have money to do it all. So
you have to work.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
And then as time goes on, you become someone who
can maybe go to one of those restaurants you see.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I mean it dates quite a long time.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Where I went, they had like a cafeteria, so you
didn't really have to.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Do do you go Oxford and you went to So
was the food? What was the food like in the
whole It.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Was quite like squeezy.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
I went to a boarding school, so that was a
whole other food food journey where you were just always
you felt like you were always hungry. I don't know
why we always did feel so hungry the entire time,
although presumably.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
There was enough. I don't know.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
I guess we were growing and I just remember feeling
hungry all the time.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
We used to have we used to have like a
corner shops around the corner from my school, and there
fifteen hundred kids at my school, and that shop like
twice a day. It was like the busiest ship was
like Harold's twice a day.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
And then they moved to in the end. If you've
got a captive market like that, yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Amazing, But so back to university. So did you did
you discover the local Greek or did you did you
discover Chinese?
Speaker 2 (23:22):
And that was quite expensive When you were at university there.
Speaker 3 (23:25):
Was a there was a takeaway and came to called Guardenias,
which which was sort of kababbi and stuff like that,
and that was fairly cheap. And I think it's still there,
which is weak because when you think about it's like
thirty five years ago. So that's quite something. So, yeah,
you would do that because you wouldn't get a bedtill
four in the morning or something, so you needed.
Speaker 4 (23:39):
Some and you would have kabab fans fans, there were
so many you'd be eating at midnight.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Yeah, imagine doing that now, Well, you'd.
Speaker 2 (23:46):
Have to eat twice.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
You might have been canteen earlier, and then you might
have the whole food or whatever it was called.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
And then you might have.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Because you certainly weren't having breakfast because you were you
were not seeing the morning.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, so when did you actually find that food was interesting?
Speaker 3 (24:01):
I think never is the truth with me. I've always
had a slightly uncomfortable relationship with food. So you know,
I like it. I like nice food. That's very bland tastes.
I've got very you know, I've got the taste of
a boyfriend the nineteen seventies. I've never had it beaten
out of me. So every restaurant I go to, I
make sure I see, Okay, there's one thing I like,
So whenever I go to that restaurant, I know I
can have that. And so, yeah, I've never had an
(24:23):
adventurous time with food. I listen, I like, I eat it,
Yeah for sure, But it's never been something I've fetishized particularly,
and I always wish it what I love. You know,
when you see someone playing like a concerto and you think,
what must that be like? And I'm the same with
it if I you know, looking at what you do
in this restaurant and seeing the joy that it brings you,
seeing the joy it brings other people as well, and
see it and bringing people together, I'm like, oh my god,
(24:45):
So I love it. I see it. I see that
it's joyful. But with food, I think I don't have
that the visceral attachment to it.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Yeah, no, I think I do.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
I feel Actually, really, what my university food story was
was that I had an eating disorder this and then afterwards.
Funnily enough, when I thought, I can't really continue like
this at all. I thought to myself, I will never
think about food in the same way that I have
been thinking about it, and I can't and I must
go back. I must tunnel back to my childhood adoration
(25:15):
of Viennetta's and so on. And I thought, I'm you know,
I will never weigh myself again. I mean, now I'm
fifty one and I haven't really weighed myself since that's
twenty two. And it's funny even when I go to
remember when I was pregnant, and you know, they have
to weigh you in the hospital appointments, when they would
say the thing, I would do a thing like that
because I thought, I must never hear this number ever again.
And I still do that now, Isn't that silly?
Speaker 3 (25:36):
And I thought that, please don't tell me the gender
or how much it was.
Speaker 4 (25:40):
And the only thing that I could really think of
all the time was I must never ever think about
it in those terms again. I must never look at
what a calorie is. I must never think about this
ever again in my life. And it took time to
get out of that.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
It was are was it?
Speaker 4 (25:56):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (25:57):
But yes, but not.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
But you know, it's like an excess of control. So
and I know you've had the other side, which is
I had to learn to let go control. And then
when I had, everything became this unbelievable world of like
a sort of Wonka factory of that's when I taught
myself to cook, and I don't you know, and I
and I would eat anything and try anything, and I
(26:19):
loved it all and I still love it all, and
I think in a funny kind of way, it's probably
one of my most significantitude that some of my adult life.
And also that came at a time when then you
started work and I had more, you know, I had
some of my own money, and I could go to
places and it's.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
A world This did a restaurant.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
I've told to you before about like restaurants is entertainment
and you're you're in a tiny it's like it's two
hours of glamour and being a verbal like in the
way that people are on holiday are much more bold
and so they say I might wear this on holiday.
About if it's women say this about dresses. I wouldn't
wear it in London, but I'd wear it on holiday.
You become a version of yourself that's a sort of
slightly kind of knowing glamorous, you know, fifteen percent more
(27:00):
Lan's version of yourself when you go out, I don't.
Speaker 1 (27:02):
Do you feel that.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
I think that a restaurant to me, especially somewhere like this,
It's like we sometimes on the rest of entertainment, we
talk about entertainment and what it is, and I think
it's if you go to the theater, if you watch
a great piece of TV, if you listen to a
great song, if you go to a great restaurant, nobody
here needs to be doing this. Yeah, right, then it's
like someone has gone out of the way to do
something extraordinary to make you happy, you know. And that's
(27:27):
the same with films that you leave a theater, you
just go that's so weird. Eight human beings for six
months just to tell me this imaginary story. And it's
the same with food. You know, if the food is
coming from everywhere, people have grown the food, people have
cooked the food, and it's none none of it needs
to happen, and that it makes it's what makes us human.
The fact that we want to.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
Do that, and it's evanescence, the fact that it's sort
of it just sort of vanishes into the night and
that was that, and it was. It is like a
theatrical thing, I think, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
I was. I often think that in.
Speaker 4 (27:57):
The best restaurants I've been to, like, wow, I'm part
of just an incredible performance.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
It is a performance, you know, I think, there is
the last night I've worked here in the kitchen and
you just when I saw you, and you could have
the same audience, you can have change the food all
the time, you can have the food, you can have
the same chefs you're working with, whatever it is. But
you can finish and say that was a great night,
or you can say that wasn't a great night, and
(28:22):
why wasn't a great night? Yeah, exactly exactly. So we're
going to go and have some lunch now, but we
always end this podcast or our conversation with a food question. Marina, First,
what would you go to for comfort food?
Speaker 4 (28:39):
Well, now I've talked about it, I'll have to talk
about the other. Mine would be roast chicken and roast potatoes.
And one of the main reasons it would be is
because I know that the way I do roast chicken
and the.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Way I do roast potatoes is the way that my
husband likes it the most, and it's it's him.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Yeah. I always love that question, and everyone has different answers,
which is, if you go in the cuisine of one
country for the rest of your life, which would it be?
And people that which is like sort of impossible, but
Italian is the only obvious answer. I think my daughter
would say Chinese. I think my son would say Japanese.
I would say, but that's the problem. You can only
have one. This isn't real. So I would say something
(29:18):
like a like like a carbonara, which is one of
the few things that I can cook and I love
to cook, and you can make with the simplest of ingredients,
and it's it's that is.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Just like it.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
Who's not enjoying that? It's so it's like I'd almost say,
catch you a pepe, which is even sort of simpler,
but I think carbonaro just has a little bit of
a little bit extra to it.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
I think you like food.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
I have an unrefined palette.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
I think you do like it, don't you. I think
this is a man who says he's not.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Think I like your food, and I like your food.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
One that's entertaining. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
Thank you so much, ruth.
Speaker 5 (29:59):
Ruthie's Table four was produced by Jack Boswell and Zad
Rogers with Susanna Hilop, Andrew Sang and Bella Sellini. This
has been an atomized production for iHeartMedia.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Ruthie's Table four is proud to support Leukemia UK. Their
Cartwheel for a Cure campaign raises funds for vital research
and more effective and kinder treatments for a cute my
Lloyd leukemia. Please donate and to do so search Cartwheel
for a Cure. Ruthie's Table four in collaboration with Me
(30:36):
and M Intelligence Style for Busy Women
Host
Ruth Rogers
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