February 1, 2022 • 19 mins
David Beckham loves family, loves football, and loves cooking.
On Episode 20 of The Ruthie's Table 4, he discusses it all with Ruthie Rogers—telling her how he learned to make a traditional risotto while playing for AC Milan, explaining why his idea of a perfect night is cooking dinner for his children, and recalling in detail the jellied eels, pie and mash, gammon and chips he ate as a child in the East End of London.
David has a lot of friends, a lot of colleagues, and certainly a lot of fans, but when he comes to The River Cafe, it’s with Victoria and their four children—always sitting at the table closest to the kitchen, sharing food and always enjoying a bottle of Sassicia, his favourite wine.
Listen to David Beckham, as you’ve never heard him before, on Episode 20 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/therivercafelondon/
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. I'm sitting here in
the River Cafe garden with David Beckham. He has just
cooked an exquisite tagatelli with fresh yarrolls, butter and parmesan.
It's a bit much, really, as I don't go around
(00:22):
scoring free kicks. I know David has a lot of friends,
a lot of colleagues, and certainly a lot of fans,
but when he comes to the River Cafe, it's with
his family, Victoria and their four children, always sitting at
table one, basking and family, love, sharing food and always
(00:42):
having his favorite wine sasakiya. Thank you, David, You're welcome.
Thank you Rupie. You were describing cooking was one of
the great pleasures the other night. It's one of my
biggest passions, you know, along with wine. Now, I love
to cook, you know. I was in the kitchen the
other day cooking for the kid kids, and Victoria was like,
can I help? What can I do? And I was like, honestly,
(01:04):
sit down, have a Voglan tonic, relax, be with the kids.
This is what I love to do. And I really
relate to that because you kind of father. There's a method,
isn't there. But it's also creative, and it's also you're
doing it for your kids who you haven't seen all day,
and there's the anticipation, and I think that is something
why you probably like to cook, and I'd like to cook.
(01:26):
It's just one of the main reasons why I love
to cook, because it's why I love lego. Also because
it relaxes me, you know, and I'm forty seven years
older and I'll still sit there with you on my
own actually till two, three, four in the morning doing
lego because actually it relaxes me. And it's the same
cooking for the kids. I love to cook for my parents.
(01:46):
I love to cook for my friends. And I think
that it's obviously come from, you know, my upbringing. What
was your mother cook? My mom? My mom cooked for
me and my sisters every single night. And I had
hard working parents, working clas parents when my dad was
out from six in the morning til seven in the evening.
My mom was a hairdresser and still is a hairdresser.
(02:07):
She used to spend her evenings obviously cooking for me
and my sister's and then about eight or nine o'clock
in the evening, some old ladies would arrive and she'd
be doing their hair to eleven twelve at night. So yes,
my mom used to cook for us every evening, every
Sunday lunch. And my grandma was exactly the same as well.
(02:27):
So that's really my childhood with my grandparents and my
my granddad was Jewish, so every Saturday when we turn up,
my grand would have this most amazing chicken noodle soup
with the motster meal dumplings. So I was like brought
up That's what I was brought up on. And the
(02:48):
jelly deals. One of the delights have been from the
East End of London was piemash and jelly deals and liquor.
That was what I was really brought up on. It
was it was the one treat that I used to
go with my nan, my granddad um. We used to
go down to Chapel Market that was the most amazing
piemash shop there and we used to sit in there
(03:09):
sawdust on the floor, sat on wooden seats and eating
our piemash and jelly deals. What was in the pie actually,
it's it's just mince meat. It's just mince meat. The
pies are the most amazing pastry and I always get
them to turn them upside down on my plate. And
then it's a big dollop of mash. And the mash
is literally there's no there's hardly any butter in it.
(03:31):
It's just salt and the potatoes. And then the liquor
is this most amazing green sauce. It's made with parsley
and stewed deals, and then I put some spicy vinegar
over the top with some a little bit of salt
and lots of pepper. But the jelly deals are the
thing that not many people that I know love the
(03:53):
jelly deals. My my grand used to like them stewed.
I literally like them in the gellytine. So they come
up in slices so that eels are cut up, and
they come in this this plastic pot and I just
pour vinegar and pepper on it, and I have it
at least once a week. Now. Many people that I
talked to talk about the food of their parents, but
(04:15):
the memory of their grandparents is really important to them.
We used to go there every weekend, um because my
dad's parents actually had passed away before we had all
grown up, so we always used to spend weekends at
my man and granddad's house. So my mom's mom and
dad and we used to turn up there at their
(04:37):
flats in London, and the first thing that I would
do when I walked through the door in my grand's
flat would open, I'd open the fridge and there she'd
have fresh strawberries. Every Saturday morning that we turned up,
she'd have fresh strawberries and a big pot of sugar.
It's interesting that you talked about that because my husband,
(04:58):
Richard designed house which was a very very strong route
from the park through the garden, through the courtyard into
the house and into a garden. But my route, I
always used to say, was from the courtyard into the
house and into the fridge. You know, my first staf
was always at the fridge because again his mother always
had food for its. Yeah. Well they had a very
(05:20):
They had a very small flat, so as you walk in,
literally the toilet was on your left and just slight
a foot further was the fridge. So you opened the
fridge and there there was you know, the most amazing
fresh strawberries every every Saturday morning. Every Saturday morning. Because
my grandfather used to go to work at about eleven
o'clock in the morning. So what we do is would
(05:42):
arrive really early, like nine o'clock. My grand would have
this thick, freshly cut bread, should make the most amazing sandwich.
I'd sit and watch like the football on a Saturday
morning before my granddad left, and then he'd go to
work and then go and watch Spurs players they do.
He was in the print, so he was in the
(06:03):
print and he worked up until he was two. He
still went to work and yeah, he's amazing man. And
he was a Tottenham fan. So he used to go
and watch Tottenham in the afternoons um and that's where
my grand and my mom used to take me down
to Chapel Market and we used to go and have piemash.
How old would you then? Oh my god. We went
(06:25):
there from as long as I can remember, I mean
two three years old and up until up until they
passed away. So there's your mother. That's interesting that she
worked all day, then she cooked for you at night,
so you sat at the table and then worked again.
Would she have done a weekly shop or would she
(06:46):
stop at the market or how would she do all that?
Do you think I mean she'd do she'd probably do
a weekly shot shop, I'd say. But you know, my mom,
like I said, she'd drop us to school in the mornings.
Then you know, you do hairdressing throughout the day, pick
us up from school, bring us home, cook us, you know,
whatever we were going to eat that evening, which was
(07:08):
either she used to make the most amazing gammon and chips,
which again it's one of those things that I still
have now. I have. It was amazing gammon, fried egg,
pineapple from a tin coleslaw, um, and chips, and it
was one of my favorite meals and she still cooks
that for me now. So yeah, that was one of
(07:29):
the things that I used to love. When you left
home and you were no longer had your mother to cook,
but you also you had such a love for food
(07:51):
and an understanding of the connection of food and the
importance of sitting at a table. What was that like
when you left that? Um? I was actually quite excited
because I left home when I was fifteen years old
to move up to Manchester when I was fifteen, and
then I was in lodgings. So I was in lodgings
for about four years and then I bought my first
(08:11):
house and actually I was quite excited about it, because,
in all honesty, I spent a lot of time in
the kitchen with my mom helping, helping her with the dinners,
and then when she would do a hairdressing in the evenings,
I I used to make the cups of tea and
bring the biscuits or the cake for all my mom's
(08:33):
ladies that she was doing their hair. So I used
to love that kind of thing. So get in my
own house having to cook for myself, Actually, I was
very excited about did you entertain would cook? I would
entertain I'd have a few friends around, you know. I
did like to go out for dinner, but my favorite
evenings were and still are you cooking for the kids,
(08:55):
cooking for friends, you know, and especially when I have
when I have like a lot of time, you know.
Pretty recently, I was in isolation actually for five days
because I've just been to Italy. So I came back
and I'm one of the last days. Victoria's parents had
a party and I couldn't actually go to it, so
everyone was out of the house, and I actually secretly
(09:17):
loved it. So I literally had two most amazing cuts
of meat, and one was a t bone and I
had some English waigou. I poured one glass of the
most amazing red wine that I treated myself too because
I was on my own, feeling sorry for myself, looking
(09:39):
forward to watching the football in the afternoon. On my own,
I set the barbecue up, and I think, there's there's
nothing better than when you have time to get everything
right and you have you know, I had a nice
tomato and onion or schlot salad, and I literally had
the meat and a glass of wine and it was
the most amazing meal that I had had for a
(09:59):
long time. So those are my perfect afternoon. It was
actually quite thick. I don't like to brag, but absolute perfection.
What's your idea of Well, I've been watching Chef's Table
that morning and it gave me the idea of obviously
doing you know, the barbecue in the afternoon. So I've
(10:19):
been watching the butcher. There was there's an Italian butcher
on the chef's table. So I put it on the grill,
cooked it for six or seven minutes either side, and
it was quite a thick piece. Um a bit of salt,
bit of pepper, and I like I like my meat.
I like it rare medium, a push, but rare, more rare,
(10:43):
and it was it came out perfect, and it was
only me in the house, So I ate it. I
like it when it's when if it's thick enough, then
you can get it really black on the outside black,
so there's that contrast and think of the the star.
So that's that's what it was like that day. So
that was the perfect day. And I had a bottle
(11:04):
of Italian massetto so I Cora Vanda and poured a
couple of glasses for myself. Tell me, we've been talking
about food, what do you feel about wine? You know,
I'm at the end of the Dame, from the East
end of London, so really I only saw my mom
and dad drinking either you know, blue Nun or Lambrusco um,
(11:24):
and that was as good as it really got. UM.
So then when me and Victoria actually first started dating, UM,
we used to go to this restaurant in the Midland
Hotel in Manchester called the French Restaurant, and it was
very fancy and we used to go in there and
we used to sit in the corner and we used
to order the most expensive bottle of champagne and the
(11:47):
most expensive bottle of wine, not knowing what we were drinking.
We were just wanting to have a nice night out
and know that we were drinking something great, even though
we had no idea what we were drinking. And I
think that was my first introduction into tasting a great wine,
one of the first I I want to say it
(12:09):
was either a sixty two or sixty seven Latour, and
that was my first introduction into tasting something that I
thought was great, even though I had no idea whether
it was great or not. I knew that I was
tasting something special. So at that point, obviously I was still,
you know, a professional player, so I never really I
(12:31):
was never a big drinker. I used to have a
glass of wine or you know, every now and again,
but I never really drank throughout my career. But then
I really started loving wine when we first moved to
l A and we used to go to Napa Valley
a lot, and I used to sit with people like
Bill Harland or and Colgan, and I think that there's
(12:52):
nothing better than actually sitting at a table with someone
that knows what they're talking about and what they're drinking
and what they're smelling and what they're tasting. Annoyingly, Victoria
is very good on that. It is annoying. Actually she
has she can say this wine tastes of cigarette smoke, yes,
and just exactly what she can say. And I'm like, yeah,
(13:15):
it really does. And I'm like, I don't taste that,
but no, but annoyingly, she's very good at that, and
she she'll never admit it. She'll always say, well, David's
the expert. Then then you know, all of a sudden
she'll come out with that smell that tastes a little
bit smoky, and you know, so yeah, but you know,
I love wine. Does matter to you if you order
(13:36):
a wine that you might not be happy with that?
Do you know what I have? How does it make
me feel? Actually? I think it can make or break
an evening in my and I really do think it does.
Even though you know that you're going to get great
food in the restaurant wherever you are. For me, if
(13:58):
I have picked the wrong wine, wrong glass of wine,
or the wrong bottle of wine, I wouldn't say it
ruins my evening, but yeah, it does ruin my evenings.
And I get quite emotional about food and wine. You know,
when I'm when I'm eating something great, I want everyone
to try it, you know, And that's unfortunately I'm married
(14:20):
to someone that has eaten the same thing for the
last twenty five years since since I've met Victoria. She
she only eats you know, grilled fish, steam, vegetables. She
will very rarely deviate away from there. The only time
that she's ever probably shared something that's been on my
plate was actually when she was pregnant with Harper, and
(14:42):
it was the most amazing thing. It was. It was
my one of my favorite evenings. I can't remember what
it was, but I know that she's not eating it since.
To be honest, I've been so lucky because in a way,
(15:06):
when I left Manchester and I had to leave Manchester United,
I was obviously devastated at the time, but it's really
really educated me in living in different countries, eating different foods,
trying different things. And when I was playing in Italy
for eleven months, i was on loan at AC Milan,
(15:27):
so I'd train in the morning and in the afternoon.
I decided to take a culinary course in Italian cuisine
and I absolutely loved it. So I did that favorite
lesson or was it in a class. I had a
few private lessons and then it was in a class,
but everybody was very you know, focused on what they
were all doing, so they weren't even bothered that I was.
(15:47):
Obviously at the time, it's a big deal to be
playing for an Italian team. Um, So I did the
culinary course because my kid's favorite food is Italian. So
I wanted to perfect making the perfect ragu. I wanted
to perfect doing the perfect risotto. I always had it
(16:09):
in my head that doing a risotto. Making a risotto
was difficult. Actually it turns out not to be that difficult. So, um,
what did they teach you about making it? Obviously, the
stock is really most important, and literally you're stood there
for twenty minutes kind of making sure that you're keeping
an eye and everything that's not going too dryer, that
(16:30):
it's not going it's not got too much liquid in it.
And then obviously the ending is the part where everything
comes together with the palmers, you know, so that I
I just loved that time because I got to perfect
the perfect well, I think it's the perfect ragu, making
fresh pasta from scratch and obviously the risottos, So that
(16:51):
was one of the things that I loved about living
in Italy, you know, and it's the one thing that
I love about Italians and the Italian food and the
culture because ours, for a start, it's all about family.
It's all about food and the wine, of course, but
whether you go into a small cafe on the side
of the street or you're in the middle of Tuscany
(17:13):
with an old Italian mama making the most amazing pasta,
everything that I ate and I have always eaten in
Italy has always been astonishing. Everything I would say when
you say that it's family, I always tell the story
that I was once in a room in the house
with Richard with his family in Tuscany, and I heard
(17:35):
this huge argument going on downstairs in Italian and I thought, oh, no,
you know what's going on. So I kind of made
my way downstairs, and there were two sisters and they
were in the kitchen and they were having this unbelievable
argument about whether or not with a papa pomadora, which
is a bread soup of just bread and tomatoes. One
(17:56):
wanted to add a bit of water at the end
and the other one didn't. And you know, so it's
not even village to village, family to family, region to region.
It can be sister to sister. You know that there's
the right way to do. And they care so much,
so much, and even when they're not arguing, it sounds
like they're arguing because they're so passionate about it. I
(18:19):
hope we'll cook together more. And they loved having you
in the kid I loved It's good. We'll plan that well.
Thank you, David, You're welcome, Love you too. In the
(18:43):
next episode, you can hear David cooking a pasta in
the River Cafe kitchen. Then we'll continue our conversation about football,
family and food. To visit the online shop of the
River Cafe, go to shop the River Cafe dot co
dot uk. River Cafe Table for is a production of
(19:08):
I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. For more podcasts
from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to River Cafe Table four, a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. I'm sitting here in
the River Cafe garden with David Beckham. He has just
cooked an exquisite tagatelli with fresh yarrolls, butter and parmesan.
It's a bit much, really, as I don't go around
(00:22):
scoring free kicks. I know David has a lot of friends,
a lot of colleagues, and certainly a lot of fans,
but when he comes to the River Cafe, it's with
his family, Victoria and their four children, always sitting at
table one, basking and family, love, sharing food and always
(00:42):
having his favorite wine sasakiya. Thank you, David, You're welcome.
Thank you Rupie. You were describing cooking was one of
the great pleasures the other night. It's one of my
biggest passions, you know, along with wine. Now, I love
to cook, you know. I was in the kitchen the
other day cooking for the kid kids, and Victoria was like,
can I help? What can I do? And I was like, honestly,
(01:04):
sit down, have a Voglan tonic, relax, be with the kids.
This is what I love to do. And I really
relate to that because you kind of father. There's a method,
isn't there. But it's also creative, and it's also you're
doing it for your kids who you haven't seen all day,
and there's the anticipation, and I think that is something
why you probably like to cook, and I'd like to cook.
(01:26):
It's just one of the main reasons why I love
to cook, because it's why I love lego. Also because
it relaxes me, you know, and I'm forty seven years
older and I'll still sit there with you on my
own actually till two, three, four in the morning doing
lego because actually it relaxes me. And it's the same
cooking for the kids. I love to cook for my parents.
(01:46):
I love to cook for my friends. And I think
that it's obviously come from, you know, my upbringing. What
was your mother cook? My mom? My mom cooked for
me and my sisters every single night. And I had
hard working parents, working clas parents when my dad was
out from six in the morning til seven in the evening.
My mom was a hairdresser and still is a hairdresser.
(02:07):
She used to spend her evenings obviously cooking for me
and my sister's and then about eight or nine o'clock
in the evening, some old ladies would arrive and she'd
be doing their hair to eleven twelve at night. So yes,
my mom used to cook for us every evening, every
Sunday lunch. And my grandma was exactly the same as well.
(02:27):
So that's really my childhood with my grandparents and my
my granddad was Jewish, so every Saturday when we turn up,
my grand would have this most amazing chicken noodle soup
with the motster meal dumplings. So I was like brought
up That's what I was brought up on. And the
(02:48):
jelly deals. One of the delights have been from the
East End of London was piemash and jelly deals and liquor.
That was what I was really brought up on. It
was it was the one treat that I used to
go with my nan, my granddad um. We used to
go down to Chapel Market that was the most amazing
piemash shop there and we used to sit in there
(03:09):
sawdust on the floor, sat on wooden seats and eating
our piemash and jelly deals. What was in the pie actually,
it's it's just mince meat. It's just mince meat. The
pies are the most amazing pastry and I always get
them to turn them upside down on my plate. And
then it's a big dollop of mash. And the mash
is literally there's no there's hardly any butter in it.
(03:31):
It's just salt and the potatoes. And then the liquor
is this most amazing green sauce. It's made with parsley
and stewed deals, and then I put some spicy vinegar
over the top with some a little bit of salt
and lots of pepper. But the jelly deals are the
thing that not many people that I know love the
(03:53):
jelly deals. My my grand used to like them stewed.
I literally like them in the gellytine. So they come
up in slices so that eels are cut up, and
they come in this this plastic pot and I just
pour vinegar and pepper on it, and I have it
at least once a week. Now. Many people that I
talked to talk about the food of their parents, but
(04:15):
the memory of their grandparents is really important to them.
We used to go there every weekend, um because my
dad's parents actually had passed away before we had all
grown up, so we always used to spend weekends at
my man and granddad's house. So my mom's mom and
dad and we used to turn up there at their
(04:37):
flats in London, and the first thing that I would
do when I walked through the door in my grand's
flat would open, I'd open the fridge and there she'd
have fresh strawberries. Every Saturday morning that we turned up,
she'd have fresh strawberries and a big pot of sugar.
It's interesting that you talked about that because my husband,
(04:58):
Richard designed house which was a very very strong route
from the park through the garden, through the courtyard into
the house and into a garden. But my route, I
always used to say, was from the courtyard into the
house and into the fridge. You know, my first staf
was always at the fridge because again his mother always
had food for its. Yeah. Well they had a very
(05:20):
They had a very small flat, so as you walk in,
literally the toilet was on your left and just slight
a foot further was the fridge. So you opened the
fridge and there there was you know, the most amazing
fresh strawberries every every Saturday morning. Every Saturday morning. Because
my grandfather used to go to work at about eleven
o'clock in the morning. So what we do is would
(05:42):
arrive really early, like nine o'clock. My grand would have
this thick, freshly cut bread, should make the most amazing sandwich.
I'd sit and watch like the football on a Saturday
morning before my granddad left, and then he'd go to
work and then go and watch Spurs players they do.
He was in the print, so he was in the
(06:03):
print and he worked up until he was two. He
still went to work and yeah, he's amazing man. And
he was a Tottenham fan. So he used to go
and watch Tottenham in the afternoons um and that's where
my grand and my mom used to take me down
to Chapel Market and we used to go and have piemash.
How old would you then? Oh my god. We went
(06:25):
there from as long as I can remember, I mean
two three years old and up until up until they
passed away. So there's your mother. That's interesting that she
worked all day, then she cooked for you at night,
so you sat at the table and then worked again.
Would she have done a weekly shop or would she
(06:46):
stop at the market or how would she do all that?
Do you think I mean she'd do she'd probably do
a weekly shot shop, I'd say. But you know, my mom,
like I said, she'd drop us to school in the mornings.
Then you know, you do hairdressing throughout the day, pick
us up from school, bring us home, cook us, you know,
whatever we were going to eat that evening, which was
(07:08):
either she used to make the most amazing gammon and chips,
which again it's one of those things that I still
have now. I have. It was amazing gammon, fried egg,
pineapple from a tin coleslaw, um, and chips, and it
was one of my favorite meals and she still cooks
that for me now. So yeah, that was one of
(07:29):
the things that I used to love. When you left
home and you were no longer had your mother to cook,
but you also you had such a love for food
(07:51):
and an understanding of the connection of food and the
importance of sitting at a table. What was that like
when you left that? Um? I was actually quite excited
because I left home when I was fifteen years old
to move up to Manchester when I was fifteen, and
then I was in lodgings. So I was in lodgings
for about four years and then I bought my first
(08:11):
house and actually I was quite excited about it, because,
in all honesty, I spent a lot of time in
the kitchen with my mom helping, helping her with the dinners,
and then when she would do a hairdressing in the evenings,
I I used to make the cups of tea and
bring the biscuits or the cake for all my mom's
(08:33):
ladies that she was doing their hair. So I used
to love that kind of thing. So get in my
own house having to cook for myself, Actually, I was
very excited about did you entertain would cook? I would
entertain I'd have a few friends around, you know. I
did like to go out for dinner, but my favorite
evenings were and still are you cooking for the kids,
(08:55):
cooking for friends, you know, and especially when I have
when I have like a lot of time, you know.
Pretty recently, I was in isolation actually for five days
because I've just been to Italy. So I came back
and I'm one of the last days. Victoria's parents had
a party and I couldn't actually go to it, so
everyone was out of the house, and I actually secretly
(09:17):
loved it. So I literally had two most amazing cuts
of meat, and one was a t bone and I
had some English waigou. I poured one glass of the
most amazing red wine that I treated myself too because
I was on my own, feeling sorry for myself, looking
(09:39):
forward to watching the football in the afternoon. On my own,
I set the barbecue up, and I think, there's there's
nothing better than when you have time to get everything
right and you have you know, I had a nice
tomato and onion or schlot salad, and I literally had
the meat and a glass of wine and it was
the most amazing meal that I had had for a
(09:59):
long time. So those are my perfect afternoon. It was
actually quite thick. I don't like to brag, but absolute perfection.
What's your idea of Well, I've been watching Chef's Table
that morning and it gave me the idea of obviously
doing you know, the barbecue in the afternoon. So I've
(10:19):
been watching the butcher. There was there's an Italian butcher
on the chef's table. So I put it on the grill,
cooked it for six or seven minutes either side, and
it was quite a thick piece. Um a bit of salt,
bit of pepper, and I like I like my meat.
I like it rare medium, a push, but rare, more rare,
(10:43):
and it was it came out perfect, and it was
only me in the house, So I ate it. I
like it when it's when if it's thick enough, then
you can get it really black on the outside black,
so there's that contrast and think of the the star.
So that's that's what it was like that day. So
that was the perfect day. And I had a bottle
(11:04):
of Italian massetto so I Cora Vanda and poured a
couple of glasses for myself. Tell me, we've been talking
about food, what do you feel about wine? You know,
I'm at the end of the Dame, from the East
end of London, so really I only saw my mom
and dad drinking either you know, blue Nun or Lambrusco um,
(11:24):
and that was as good as it really got. UM.
So then when me and Victoria actually first started dating, UM,
we used to go to this restaurant in the Midland
Hotel in Manchester called the French Restaurant, and it was
very fancy and we used to go in there and
we used to sit in the corner and we used
to order the most expensive bottle of champagne and the
(11:47):
most expensive bottle of wine, not knowing what we were drinking.
We were just wanting to have a nice night out
and know that we were drinking something great, even though
we had no idea what we were drinking. And I
think that was my first introduction into tasting a great wine,
one of the first I I want to say it
(12:09):
was either a sixty two or sixty seven Latour, and
that was my first introduction into tasting something that I
thought was great, even though I had no idea whether
it was great or not. I knew that I was
tasting something special. So at that point, obviously I was still,
you know, a professional player, so I never really I
(12:31):
was never a big drinker. I used to have a
glass of wine or you know, every now and again,
but I never really drank throughout my career. But then
I really started loving wine when we first moved to
l A and we used to go to Napa Valley
a lot, and I used to sit with people like
Bill Harland or and Colgan, and I think that there's
(12:52):
nothing better than actually sitting at a table with someone
that knows what they're talking about and what they're drinking
and what they're smelling and what they're tasting. Annoyingly, Victoria
is very good on that. It is annoying. Actually she
has she can say this wine tastes of cigarette smoke, yes,
and just exactly what she can say. And I'm like, yeah,
(13:15):
it really does. And I'm like, I don't taste that,
but no, but annoyingly, she's very good at that, and
she she'll never admit it. She'll always say, well, David's
the expert. Then then you know, all of a sudden
she'll come out with that smell that tastes a little
bit smoky, and you know, so yeah, but you know,
I love wine. Does matter to you if you order
(13:36):
a wine that you might not be happy with that?
Do you know what I have? How does it make
me feel? Actually? I think it can make or break
an evening in my and I really do think it does.
Even though you know that you're going to get great
food in the restaurant wherever you are. For me, if
(13:58):
I have picked the wrong wine, wrong glass of wine,
or the wrong bottle of wine, I wouldn't say it
ruins my evening, but yeah, it does ruin my evenings.
And I get quite emotional about food and wine. You know,
when I'm when I'm eating something great, I want everyone
to try it, you know, And that's unfortunately I'm married
(14:20):
to someone that has eaten the same thing for the
last twenty five years since since I've met Victoria. She
she only eats you know, grilled fish, steam, vegetables. She
will very rarely deviate away from there. The only time
that she's ever probably shared something that's been on my
plate was actually when she was pregnant with Harper, and
(14:42):
it was the most amazing thing. It was. It was
my one of my favorite evenings. I can't remember what
it was, but I know that she's not eating it since.
To be honest, I've been so lucky because in a way,
(15:06):
when I left Manchester and I had to leave Manchester United,
I was obviously devastated at the time, but it's really
really educated me in living in different countries, eating different foods,
trying different things. And when I was playing in Italy
for eleven months, i was on loan at AC Milan,
(15:27):
so I'd train in the morning and in the afternoon.
I decided to take a culinary course in Italian cuisine
and I absolutely loved it. So I did that favorite
lesson or was it in a class. I had a
few private lessons and then it was in a class,
but everybody was very you know, focused on what they
were all doing, so they weren't even bothered that I was.
(15:47):
Obviously at the time, it's a big deal to be
playing for an Italian team. Um, So I did the
culinary course because my kid's favorite food is Italian. So
I wanted to perfect making the perfect ragu. I wanted
to perfect doing the perfect risotto. I always had it
(16:09):
in my head that doing a risotto. Making a risotto
was difficult. Actually it turns out not to be that difficult. So, um,
what did they teach you about making it? Obviously, the
stock is really most important, and literally you're stood there
for twenty minutes kind of making sure that you're keeping
an eye and everything that's not going too dryer, that
(16:30):
it's not going it's not got too much liquid in it.
And then obviously the ending is the part where everything
comes together with the palmers, you know, so that I
I just loved that time because I got to perfect
the perfect well, I think it's the perfect ragu, making
fresh pasta from scratch and obviously the risottos, So that
(16:51):
was one of the things that I loved about living
in Italy, you know, and it's the one thing that
I love about Italians and the Italian food and the
culture because ours, for a start, it's all about family.
It's all about food and the wine, of course, but
whether you go into a small cafe on the side
of the street or you're in the middle of Tuscany
(17:13):
with an old Italian mama making the most amazing pasta,
everything that I ate and I have always eaten in
Italy has always been astonishing. Everything I would say when
you say that it's family, I always tell the story
that I was once in a room in the house
with Richard with his family in Tuscany, and I heard
(17:35):
this huge argument going on downstairs in Italian and I thought, oh, no,
you know what's going on. So I kind of made
my way downstairs, and there were two sisters and they
were in the kitchen and they were having this unbelievable
argument about whether or not with a papa pomadora, which
is a bread soup of just bread and tomatoes. One
(17:56):
wanted to add a bit of water at the end
and the other one didn't. And you know, so it's
not even village to village, family to family, region to region.
It can be sister to sister. You know that there's
the right way to do. And they care so much,
so much, and even when they're not arguing, it sounds
like they're arguing because they're so passionate about it. I
(18:19):
hope we'll cook together more. And they loved having you
in the kid I loved It's good. We'll plan that well.
Thank you, David, You're welcome, Love you too. In the
(18:43):
next episode, you can hear David cooking a pasta in
the River Cafe kitchen. Then we'll continue our conversation about football,
family and food. To visit the online shop of the
River Cafe, go to shop the River Cafe dot co
dot uk. River Cafe Table for is a production of
(19:08):
I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. For more podcasts
from I heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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