April 10, 2023 • 25 mins
One of my most cherished possessions is a River Cafe menu with the word YUM painted on it by Ed Ruscha. Ed is an artist, friend - and cook, but we really bond over words; words as art, words as books, words as recipes, words as love. Our worlds and words converged recently when he had an exhibition at the Tate and The National Gallery - a first for an artist. We celebrated with lunches, dinners and breakfasts together.
Ed has a little garden behind his studio in California, its conditions are dry and dessert like, but he grows the most amazing fruits and vegetables there. He is the first guest on Table 4 to bring his own recipe to read – a cactus omelette. We will discuss art and food, food and YUM.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Adami's Studios. I'm sitting here in LA with Dexter and Edrachey.
Edwar Schey is the artist and Dexter is the dog,
and I hope we're going to hear from them both
in the next half hour. Did you bring the cactus
(00:23):
on that? Yeah? Yeah, there's a small work of art
by my bed that I say hello to every morning
and say good night to every night. I think of
the day it arrived in the River Cafe from Los Angeles,
wrapped in layers of bubble wrap. I knew then unwrapping
(00:43):
it that this was one I would never let out
of my sight. The artist was Edwarchey, and the word
in bright red, says Yum. I've known ed Rachae's work
since the early seventies. I've followed admired his work through
his career, and in two thousand and nineteen, in two
and twenty heat shows at the National Gallery and Tape
(01:05):
Modern and it was then that we got to know
each other well. Dinners at the River Cafe, breakfast at Clarages,
and we became friends. First I fell in love with
the art, and then I fell in love with the artist.
Would you like to read a recipe? Shall I read
your recipe? I'd like to hear yours. You'll be the
(01:27):
first person to read a recipe that is not a
river cafe recipe, And I think that's good. What is
that cactus omelet which I make occasionally? You have to
get no politos little cactus pads that they slice into
little bits, and so says utensils omelet pan or similar
taie pan with rounded bottom, mixing bowl, wire, whisk or fork. Instructions.
(01:53):
Break two eggs in bowls slightly under mix with whisk
or fork. Heat butter in pan and till it bubbles
and begins to turn brown. Add the eggs and let
them sit in the pan until the bottom begins to harden.
As soon as this sets, but while the top is
still moist, add salt and pepper, cottage cheese, sprinkle celery
(02:16):
on top, followed by the no politos let the omelet
set for about one minute over a low fire. Roll
omelet out of pan and onto plate. Where does this
recipe come from? I sort of made it up, yeah,
(02:38):
And I always like the taste of they're kind of
slimy of cactus. You know, no politos, and but they
have a flavor all their own, and I've always liked them. Yeah,
I because you know, where we live, we don't get
cactus cacti. So was it when you came out here
(02:58):
to Yeah? Yeah, did you go in the desert? Well,
Los Angeles. I've talked to artists, I've interviewed to Dabien
and Tracy, but I haven't had an artist or a
painted that about. We talk about food and have food
in their life and food and there are but you
actually painted with food. You use egg yolk, and you
(03:20):
used didn't you. Was that a certain period that you
started painting with with actually food? Yeah? Maybe I was
frustrated with art materials or felt like I had reached
a apex or a stopping off point. And then I
thought about why you can make marks on paper or
(03:44):
on canvas with any number of things. Why does it
have to be pigments? Yeah, And so then I started
using these things like axle grease and caviare and how well,
it's of course egg and it's pretty stable yea, And
and it hardens and it's proven to be pretty pretty
(04:07):
stable over the years. Also, the paintings that you did
with caviar. Still yeah, still still that I've yellowed a
little bit, but yeah, that's what do we call that
entropy or something. Yeah, but you don't do anymore. No,
I haven't done that for a while. But don't give
me any ideas. I think I'm going to give you
(04:28):
an idea. When I came to a studio, Um, you
have an orchard in the bat and I was wanting
to you know, what what does that mean to you
to have food growing in behind your studio. Well, fortunately
I got this building that had a large backyard I
(04:49):
had no real use for, so I sort of divided
the backyard in half and I thought, well, I'll just
put an orchard in here. And I've always wanted to
gross interests and other things two figs, pomegranates, cherries, and
then I've got some raised beds there that that I grow.
(05:10):
I was growing the world's hottest pepper, uh the boot
you're lochia. It's like an Indian uh called ghost pepper. Yeah,
it measures out to be the hottest pepper in the world.
How do you eat it? Well, I mean how do
you eat it? That's a nobody ever has the answer
to that, to make it too powerful, I guess so,
(05:33):
and make it so fine, behind it so fine, and
I think there are people that are still working on
it to get the get the blue ribbon for the
hottest pepper that judges that competition. Yeah, but you cook
a lot to that recipe for an omelet is a
(05:53):
really interesting recipe because it's using an ingredient that is
so local, you know, to go into great depth to
tell how you fry the eggs, you season it, the
heat of the pan. That's a chef's recipe. Well it's
sort of hit and miss, you know, And so that's fine.
Since I'm usually cooking for myself, it doesn't matter. But
the only other thing I really cook is chili, and
(06:16):
I like I like to make chili. I make it
without onions, without beans, and without tomatoes. That's fun to make,
and that takes a few hours to do that, but
it's worth it. When you're painting, how do you eat
and paint generally? And I don't even eat lunch. I
mean I will maybe have a banana or some a
(06:39):
piece of fruit, and that's my lunch. I don't I
don't eat three meals a day like I used to.
But I know it's in our artistic tradition. It's always
been a ceremony with artists to stop working at eleven
forty five, Yeah, and sitting on and I don't drink wine. Yeah,
(07:03):
so and then you know, it's also a tradition to
have wine with lunch. And but in New York in
the kind of sixties seventies, wasn't there the whole thing
where artists would be in their studios old day, very solitary,
and then go to Max's or to you know, to
the culture of kind of being alone and then going
out every night. And were you ever part of that
(07:24):
culture or was it well, yeah, it's the pandemonium of
crowds of people in a place like Max's, Kansas City
or any of those kind of places, and it was
almost ceremonial. You know, you'd go and have great fun
and drink and that was part of life. Did you
(07:44):
live in New York? Did you? Never did live in
New York. No. It was always too complicated or too
expensive for me to live there. And just the idea
of trying to take a two by four across town
was such an issue that made California impossibly convenient. Yeah.
(08:05):
We saw Frank Gary yesterday and we talked about the
camaraderie between For him many more artists and architects. He
just loved the feeling of the la kind of artists
being together here. Was that part of your world as well?
Oh yeah, yeah. Did he tell you that his favorite
restaurant was the Pacific Dining. Yes, he did, and they
(08:26):
closed it, I think, And he loved that place. Did
you ever go there? Oh yeah, I went there with
him too, And mister Chow he was a friend, wasn't it,
Tina Chow? And yeah, oh yeah, he's a great man.
I went here one time and I with a friend
and he said, can I bring a friend along? And
(08:46):
I said yeah, who is it? And he said Groucho
marks No. And so we met at Chow's here and
Groucho comes in and we all sit down and have
a good time. But then the food comes and Graucho
has his food sent in from Nate and Al's delicatessen.
(09:09):
He didn't even have the He said, I've heard about
this place. I've heard about this place, And so he
dined at Chow's restaurant without having its food. That's amazing.
I've heard of people, you know, of course, people bring
their own wine at the River Cafe. People like to
bring their own wine. And once somebody brought their own truffle.
(09:30):
They've been to Italy and they brought a white truffle
and asked us if we would grade it for them
over there pasta But I'd never actually have heard of
anybody actually ordering their own food. But I suppose if
you're gradual marks, Yeah, but did you go to Chowd's
A lot? Who would go there with you? Who? Oh?
Lots of different people. I mean used to go there
with Tim Leary and his wife and they were regulars
(09:53):
there for a good while. And it's so good and
so traditional. I mean they opened in nineteen seventy five
or something like that, and uh, and they established a
menu that they really didn't vary from. Yeah, in London
used to have ye kind of cart that you could
actually make this the noodles. Yeah, yeah, they do that
(10:16):
here too. Yeah we should all. Okay, are you going
out much? Are you trying to staying quietly? I'm happy
to you know. I love loud Hollywood parties, but I
don't miss them one iota. I've been there and done that.
What did you go to the desert? Yeah, I go
to the desert. What do you eat there? You hunt?
(10:37):
I used to do that, but I don't want to
do that anymore. And I have a lot of quail
out there. And is there, Oh, it's out north of
it's east of Big Bear Lake. It's not the kind
of desert that is like palm Springs with palm trees.
No palm trees up there. They have Joshua trees. If
(11:00):
you know what those crazy things look like. Beautiful, They're
very spiky, spiky, and they look They got called Joshua
trees because the pioneers thought they looked like silhouettes of
biblical figures, so they call them Joshua trees. And and
(11:21):
that grows out there. They're almost endangered because of the
global warming. But then I get pinioned pines there and
I harvest some of the nuts. If you've got time
to do that that, well, just get the pine cones
off the trees and very carefully take all the little
(11:42):
seeds out of it. But usually the squirrels get get
them before you do. In order to get a little
handful of pine nuts takes you about an hour, and
then you have to get the sap off your hands,
so wash your hands in gasoline. I don't know, but
they're extremely delicious. Yeah, they're far more delicious than the
(12:07):
ones you actually buy in the market. Where you've kind
of been through hell in this country with a previous
president and the wars and everything. And I have a
(12:28):
beautiful poster that you sent me, which is a treasure
about was enough? Oh Enough? Can you tell me the
story of enough? I don't know where that came from.
It's just well, Norman Lear asked me if I would
do something, and so that was just some incentive to
make some statement about the condition of America and you
(12:51):
know where people sit on the subject him. So expressing
myself in that way in a poster was fun to do.
You know. It was like, enough of this kind of politics.
We've got to move on from this to something better,
and luckily it moved that way. Yeah, maybe it'd be
(13:11):
nice to talk about from the beginning. Tell me about
way you grew up. I was born in Omaha, Nebraska,
very center of the United States, and then we moved
to Oklahoma when I was like five years old. So
then I grew up from there and it was kind
of a cultural wasteland in a lot of ways, food especially,
(13:32):
I mean there was no such thing as an artichoke
or an avocado, barely no such thing as sushi. There
is there now, of course, because it's multi dimensional. But
I remember growing up there and having these kind of foods,
Like about their early nineteen fifties is when pizza came
(13:55):
to fashion, and we didn't call it just pizza. We
call it pizza pie, pizza pie, pizza pie, I like
a big pizza. Yeah, because you originally came from Chicago
or what state, New York. Yeah, we had real Southern
Italian foods. Yeah. I thought Italian food was meat balls
and spaghetti and eggplant parmesana and pizza pie until I
(14:18):
went to Italy thirty years later. Yeah. But go back
to the pizza pie. When when did that came? Well,
that started coming when around the time I was in
high school, and it became a popular go to type
of food, kind of novel and unique. And there were
oh half a dozen places in Oklahoma City that actually
served pizza pie, and one place was called Sussy's. That
(14:44):
was the place you'd always go to. Who would cook
in your house? Was it your mother? Yeah? Did your
father mom Cooke. No, father didn't really cook so much,
but Mom tossed everything together and uh, you know, it
was a really it was all meat and potatoes. I
liked her pies particularly, and she made a cherry pie
(15:06):
that I always liked. Also she made rhubarb pie, which
was another thing. And so that was big. Do you
think the cherries were fresh or did she get them
from the cans? She'd get them from a can or
sometimes when they were there, she would get them fresh.
And the effort was not so much into absolutely fresh
(15:27):
food back then. No, canned food was very big and exciting. Yeah,
and then came frozen food after that, and there's you know,
there's a big debate over those nutritional value of those foods.
Did your mom work? So she would work all day
and then come home. She was a housekeeper and prepared
food for us and and uh no, she didn't have
(15:50):
a job. And so I grew up in the Bible
belt there and we were Catholics, so we were called
mackerel snappers is what people would call us. Meaning you
don't eat meat on Friday, you eat fish on Friday.
So mackerel snappers. But the kind of food that they
(16:11):
served there. The only international food was called Chinese food,
and every Chinese restaurant would always say on the outside
of the building Chinese and American food to alleviate the
fear of keep Chinese restaurants. And so you could get Chinese, yes,
you could get chop suey things like that, and then
(16:34):
you could also get a hamburger. So they were gonna
offer you Chinese food, but also just in case, please
come anyway because we can make a hamburger for you. Yeah. Yeah,
But did you go to restaurants, would your parents take
you out for a meal in a Occasionally we'd go
to barbecue, and that was popular. Then. The one food
(16:54):
that was really hit it big was okra fried okra,
and they grow, yeah, they grow it in a big
way there, and so there's lots of corn that you're
giving almost every day. Yeah. Yeah. Also during the war
we had a victory garden. It was sort of pick
(17:15):
yourself up by your boot straps by growing your own
food and participating in the war effort World War two,
so it was an extension of that that sort of
went to your dinner table and other people would save
metal and that sort of thing to recycle into the
(17:36):
war effort, and so victory garden was it was a
very popular thing then. I wasn't there. Just we'd grow
tomatoes and corn and um celery and various vegetables, and
that was kind of a unified attitude at the time,
(17:57):
to have victory gardens in your backyard. I had a
paper route in Oklahoma, and I delivered my papers at
like four in the morning and then come back and
drink almost a half a gallon of milk and then, oh,
about twelve fourteen something like that. You said that, you
said once said that you thought that Oklahoma was like
(18:18):
a black and white movie. Do you think that? Do
you think back on this day? I still do when
I think back on it. But as I go back there,
occasionally I see that it's more progressive than I allow
my mind to make it be. Yeah, so you know,
it's caught up with the rest of the world. What's
happened to your house there? Do you still happen? Still stands?
(18:40):
You know, when was the first time you went to Europe?
About nineteen sixty one and I went there with my
mother and brother and we we bought a little Citron
two CV automobile in Paris and drove it around Europe
and then time. Yeah, it was her first time too,
(19:03):
So was that like what was it like food wise? Well,
food wise, well, we we were kind of on a budget,
so there wasn't nothing particularly fancy, but um, just the
idea of having, you know, stumbling onto wild strawberries, which
(19:25):
I'd never had before, those tiny, little wild strawberries was great.
That was in France. We drove all over Europe and
for about four or five months, four or five months, yeah, yeah,
we went as far south. We went to Yugoslavia, went
to uh Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, France, British Isles, went
(19:52):
to Ireland try to find my mother's heritage and never
we struck out there. We couldn't find Did you did
you paint or draw? Yeah? I took a little homemade
kit a package that I would carry around and you know,
allow me to do something on about eight by ten format,
(20:14):
and brought paints along with me and worked like that.
And my mother came back to the States after about
two months, and then I stayed over there by myself
for a while. One of the things that I think
(20:38):
is very moving about your studio, apart from the garden
and the trees and of the fruit is. There seems
to be a very strong community there, and that when
you come to London for your shows, when we went
out to dinner afterwards, I think probably was the Tate
and then there was a dinner at the Nashville Galley.
Because you had two shows, you were the first to artists,
(21:00):
contemporary artists to show singularly in the National Gallery. I
was told that, I've found it hard to believe, but
it's true. Yeah. And then I think Bridget Riley maybe
had something yeah recently there. Yeah. Do you bring everybody
with you pretty much? That's so nice. People to work
(21:20):
with me, travel with me. Yeah, it's good. Your animals,
they're dogs. How many do you have any idea of
how many dogs? H Dana has five other dogs besides Dexter,
so you know she's got her handful. I mean she's
got she needs a kennel license. Do you when you
(21:41):
travel do take a dog? He goes with me everything.
So have you have a painting called Dexter? Again, don't
give me any ideas. Can I just tell the story
about Ruby. I I've had such a kind of passion
for the Ruby painting I Ruby meant to me. It
(22:02):
filled me with kind of imagination, and I kept thinking,
who is Ruby? So I just dreamt about who Ruby
could be. I thought she might be a woman that
you were in love with when you were a teenager
in Alcoholma. I thought she'd be your mother's name. I
thought she could be a disappointment, somebody who left you.
And I thought she could be a tragedy of someone
(22:22):
who died. And I just kept thinking about because the
way you wrote the ruby on the painting just means
so much to me. And I've been trying to find
a ruby painting. But when we spent that time together
in London, over days and nights, I tried to I
wanted to find a moment that was quiet where I
could ask you who she was and what she meant
(22:43):
to you? And I dan I was there, and I
thought maybe I should wait, and we were to part
each I should wait. But as I was saying could
buy to you that night, I said to you, Ed,
can I just ask you one question? Who was she?
Who was this Ruby? Who was the inspiration for these beautiful,
beautiful pains? And you said, um, Ruby was a dog.
(23:07):
That's right, that's right. But it was not the inspiration
for that painting or that work. It wasn't. The ruby
idead came long before the dog. Yeah, and so I
don't I'm not really sure where that that a name
came from. It didn't come from a person in my life,
I didn't know. But I liked ruby as a feminine name,
(23:30):
and it's just got a really good sound to it.
And also it has a double meaning too with the
gem ruby. And so it just meant that to me
and kind of was an excuse to make a work.
It's a beautiful work. That's a beautiful, beautiful work. Thank you.
I have one last question. So you've described food as
(23:53):
a journey across Oklahoma to California. You've described it as
an explosion of roles rawberries in France. You've used it
in your work, used actually paint made out of food.
But if you were feeling that you needed food is comfort?
Would you say there's a food you turn to in comfort?
(24:15):
I would say that some kind of soup might be
the answer. It's a kind of traditionally healing kind of food,
so soup of almost any kind could be although chili
might make you hop up and down. Yeah, may may
(24:38):
not be so RESTful, but comfort food might be in
the form of some kind of vegetable soup. Maybe. Yeah,
I got that good. So um, are you staying here
for a bid? Are you go? You? Uh? Actually, I
am going to the desert. Yeah today? Yeah, I hope
I'll see you soon. Yeah. The River Cafe Lookbook is
(25:04):
now available in bookshops and online. It has over one
hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs from the renowned photographer
Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty delicious and easy to
prepare recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics that
have been specially adapted for new cooks. The River Cafe
(25:24):
Lookbook Recipes for cooks of all ages. Ruthie's Table four
is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Adami's Studios. I'm sitting here in LA with Dexter and Edrachey.
Edwar Schey is the artist and Dexter is the dog,
and I hope we're going to hear from them both
in the next half hour. Did you bring the cactus
(00:23):
on that? Yeah? Yeah, there's a small work of art
by my bed that I say hello to every morning
and say good night to every night. I think of
the day it arrived in the River Cafe from Los Angeles,
wrapped in layers of bubble wrap. I knew then unwrapping
(00:43):
it that this was one I would never let out
of my sight. The artist was Edwarchey, and the word
in bright red, says Yum. I've known ed Rachae's work
since the early seventies. I've followed admired his work through
his career, and in two thousand and nineteen, in two
and twenty heat shows at the National Gallery and Tape
(01:05):
Modern and it was then that we got to know
each other well. Dinners at the River Cafe, breakfast at Clarages,
and we became friends. First I fell in love with
the art, and then I fell in love with the artist.
Would you like to read a recipe? Shall I read
your recipe? I'd like to hear yours. You'll be the
(01:27):
first person to read a recipe that is not a
river cafe recipe, And I think that's good. What is
that cactus omelet which I make occasionally? You have to
get no politos little cactus pads that they slice into
little bits, and so says utensils omelet pan or similar
taie pan with rounded bottom, mixing bowl, wire, whisk or fork. Instructions.
(01:53):
Break two eggs in bowls slightly under mix with whisk
or fork. Heat butter in pan and till it bubbles
and begins to turn brown. Add the eggs and let
them sit in the pan until the bottom begins to harden.
As soon as this sets, but while the top is
still moist, add salt and pepper, cottage cheese, sprinkle celery
(02:16):
on top, followed by the no politos let the omelet
set for about one minute over a low fire. Roll
omelet out of pan and onto plate. Where does this
recipe come from? I sort of made it up, yeah,
(02:38):
And I always like the taste of they're kind of
slimy of cactus. You know, no politos, and but they
have a flavor all their own, and I've always liked them. Yeah,
I because you know, where we live, we don't get
cactus cacti. So was it when you came out here
(02:58):
to Yeah? Yeah, did you go in the desert? Well,
Los Angeles. I've talked to artists, I've interviewed to Dabien
and Tracy, but I haven't had an artist or a
painted that about. We talk about food and have food
in their life and food and there are but you
actually painted with food. You use egg yolk, and you
(03:20):
used didn't you. Was that a certain period that you
started painting with with actually food? Yeah? Maybe I was
frustrated with art materials or felt like I had reached
a apex or a stopping off point. And then I
thought about why you can make marks on paper or
(03:44):
on canvas with any number of things. Why does it
have to be pigments? Yeah, And so then I started
using these things like axle grease and caviare and how well,
it's of course egg and it's pretty stable yea, And
and it hardens and it's proven to be pretty pretty
(04:07):
stable over the years. Also, the paintings that you did
with caviar. Still yeah, still still that I've yellowed a
little bit, but yeah, that's what do we call that
entropy or something. Yeah, but you don't do anymore. No,
I haven't done that for a while. But don't give
me any ideas. I think I'm going to give you
(04:28):
an idea. When I came to a studio, Um, you
have an orchard in the bat and I was wanting
to you know, what what does that mean to you
to have food growing in behind your studio. Well, fortunately
I got this building that had a large backyard I
(04:49):
had no real use for, so I sort of divided
the backyard in half and I thought, well, I'll just
put an orchard in here. And I've always wanted to
gross interests and other things two figs, pomegranates, cherries, and
then I've got some raised beds there that that I grow.
(05:10):
I was growing the world's hottest pepper, uh the boot
you're lochia. It's like an Indian uh called ghost pepper. Yeah,
it measures out to be the hottest pepper in the world.
How do you eat it? Well, I mean how do
you eat it? That's a nobody ever has the answer
to that, to make it too powerful, I guess so,
(05:33):
and make it so fine, behind it so fine, and
I think there are people that are still working on
it to get the get the blue ribbon for the
hottest pepper that judges that competition. Yeah, but you cook
a lot to that recipe for an omelet is a
(05:53):
really interesting recipe because it's using an ingredient that is
so local, you know, to go into great depth to
tell how you fry the eggs, you season it, the
heat of the pan. That's a chef's recipe. Well it's
sort of hit and miss, you know, And so that's fine.
Since I'm usually cooking for myself, it doesn't matter. But
the only other thing I really cook is chili, and
(06:16):
I like I like to make chili. I make it
without onions, without beans, and without tomatoes. That's fun to make,
and that takes a few hours to do that, but
it's worth it. When you're painting, how do you eat
and paint generally? And I don't even eat lunch. I
mean I will maybe have a banana or some a
(06:39):
piece of fruit, and that's my lunch. I don't I
don't eat three meals a day like I used to.
But I know it's in our artistic tradition. It's always
been a ceremony with artists to stop working at eleven
forty five, Yeah, and sitting on and I don't drink wine. Yeah,
(07:03):
so and then you know, it's also a tradition to
have wine with lunch. And but in New York in
the kind of sixties seventies, wasn't there the whole thing
where artists would be in their studios old day, very solitary,
and then go to Max's or to you know, to
the culture of kind of being alone and then going
out every night. And were you ever part of that
(07:24):
culture or was it well, yeah, it's the pandemonium of
crowds of people in a place like Max's, Kansas City
or any of those kind of places, and it was
almost ceremonial. You know, you'd go and have great fun
and drink and that was part of life. Did you
(07:44):
live in New York? Did you? Never did live in
New York. No. It was always too complicated or too
expensive for me to live there. And just the idea
of trying to take a two by four across town
was such an issue that made California impossibly convenient. Yeah.
(08:05):
We saw Frank Gary yesterday and we talked about the
camaraderie between For him many more artists and architects. He
just loved the feeling of the la kind of artists
being together here. Was that part of your world as well?
Oh yeah, yeah. Did he tell you that his favorite
restaurant was the Pacific Dining. Yes, he did, and they
(08:26):
closed it, I think, And he loved that place. Did
you ever go there? Oh yeah, I went there with
him too, And mister Chow he was a friend, wasn't it,
Tina Chow? And yeah, oh yeah, he's a great man.
I went here one time and I with a friend
and he said, can I bring a friend along? And
(08:46):
I said yeah, who is it? And he said Groucho
marks No. And so we met at Chow's here and
Groucho comes in and we all sit down and have
a good time. But then the food comes and Graucho
has his food sent in from Nate and Al's delicatessen.
(09:09):
He didn't even have the He said, I've heard about
this place. I've heard about this place, And so he
dined at Chow's restaurant without having its food. That's amazing.
I've heard of people, you know, of course, people bring
their own wine at the River Cafe. People like to
bring their own wine. And once somebody brought their own truffle.
(09:30):
They've been to Italy and they brought a white truffle
and asked us if we would grade it for them
over there pasta But I'd never actually have heard of
anybody actually ordering their own food. But I suppose if
you're gradual marks, Yeah, but did you go to Chowd's
A lot? Who would go there with you? Who? Oh?
Lots of different people. I mean used to go there
with Tim Leary and his wife and they were regulars
(09:53):
there for a good while. And it's so good and
so traditional. I mean they opened in nineteen seventy five
or something like that, and uh, and they established a
menu that they really didn't vary from. Yeah, in London
used to have ye kind of cart that you could
actually make this the noodles. Yeah, yeah, they do that
(10:16):
here too. Yeah we should all. Okay, are you going
out much? Are you trying to staying quietly? I'm happy
to you know. I love loud Hollywood parties, but I
don't miss them one iota. I've been there and done that.
What did you go to the desert? Yeah, I go
to the desert. What do you eat there? You hunt?
(10:37):
I used to do that, but I don't want to
do that anymore. And I have a lot of quail
out there. And is there, Oh, it's out north of
it's east of Big Bear Lake. It's not the kind
of desert that is like palm Springs with palm trees.
No palm trees up there. They have Joshua trees. If
(11:00):
you know what those crazy things look like. Beautiful, They're
very spiky, spiky, and they look They got called Joshua
trees because the pioneers thought they looked like silhouettes of
biblical figures, so they call them Joshua trees. And and
(11:21):
that grows out there. They're almost endangered because of the
global warming. But then I get pinioned pines there and
I harvest some of the nuts. If you've got time
to do that that, well, just get the pine cones
off the trees and very carefully take all the little
(11:42):
seeds out of it. But usually the squirrels get get
them before you do. In order to get a little
handful of pine nuts takes you about an hour, and
then you have to get the sap off your hands,
so wash your hands in gasoline. I don't know, but
they're extremely delicious. Yeah, they're far more delicious than the
(12:07):
ones you actually buy in the market. Where you've kind
of been through hell in this country with a previous
president and the wars and everything. And I have a
(12:28):
beautiful poster that you sent me, which is a treasure
about was enough? Oh Enough? Can you tell me the
story of enough? I don't know where that came from.
It's just well, Norman Lear asked me if I would
do something, and so that was just some incentive to
make some statement about the condition of America and you
(12:51):
know where people sit on the subject him. So expressing
myself in that way in a poster was fun to do.
You know. It was like, enough of this kind of politics.
We've got to move on from this to something better,
and luckily it moved that way. Yeah, maybe it'd be
(13:11):
nice to talk about from the beginning. Tell me about
way you grew up. I was born in Omaha, Nebraska,
very center of the United States, and then we moved
to Oklahoma when I was like five years old. So
then I grew up from there and it was kind
of a cultural wasteland in a lot of ways, food especially,
(13:32):
I mean there was no such thing as an artichoke
or an avocado, barely no such thing as sushi. There
is there now, of course, because it's multi dimensional. But
I remember growing up there and having these kind of foods,
Like about their early nineteen fifties is when pizza came
(13:55):
to fashion, and we didn't call it just pizza. We
call it pizza pie, pizza pie, pizza pie, I like
a big pizza. Yeah, because you originally came from Chicago
or what state, New York. Yeah, we had real Southern
Italian foods. Yeah. I thought Italian food was meat balls
and spaghetti and eggplant parmesana and pizza pie until I
(14:18):
went to Italy thirty years later. Yeah. But go back
to the pizza pie. When when did that came? Well,
that started coming when around the time I was in
high school, and it became a popular go to type
of food, kind of novel and unique. And there were
oh half a dozen places in Oklahoma City that actually
served pizza pie, and one place was called Sussy's. That
(14:44):
was the place you'd always go to. Who would cook
in your house? Was it your mother? Yeah? Did your
father mom Cooke. No, father didn't really cook so much,
but Mom tossed everything together and uh, you know, it
was a really it was all meat and potatoes. I
liked her pies particularly, and she made a cherry pie
(15:06):
that I always liked. Also she made rhubarb pie, which
was another thing. And so that was big. Do you
think the cherries were fresh or did she get them
from the cans? She'd get them from a can or
sometimes when they were there, she would get them fresh.
And the effort was not so much into absolutely fresh
(15:27):
food back then. No, canned food was very big and exciting. Yeah,
and then came frozen food after that, and there's you know,
there's a big debate over those nutritional value of those foods.
Did your mom work? So she would work all day
and then come home. She was a housekeeper and prepared
food for us and and uh no, she didn't have
(15:50):
a job. And so I grew up in the Bible
belt there and we were Catholics, so we were called
mackerel snappers is what people would call us. Meaning you
don't eat meat on Friday, you eat fish on Friday.
So mackerel snappers. But the kind of food that they
(16:11):
served there. The only international food was called Chinese food,
and every Chinese restaurant would always say on the outside
of the building Chinese and American food to alleviate the
fear of keep Chinese restaurants. And so you could get Chinese, yes,
you could get chop suey things like that, and then
(16:34):
you could also get a hamburger. So they were gonna
offer you Chinese food, but also just in case, please
come anyway because we can make a hamburger for you. Yeah. Yeah,
But did you go to restaurants, would your parents take
you out for a meal in a Occasionally we'd go
to barbecue, and that was popular. Then. The one food
(16:54):
that was really hit it big was okra fried okra,
and they grow, yeah, they grow it in a big
way there, and so there's lots of corn that you're
giving almost every day. Yeah. Yeah. Also during the war
we had a victory garden. It was sort of pick
(17:15):
yourself up by your boot straps by growing your own
food and participating in the war effort World War two,
so it was an extension of that that sort of
went to your dinner table and other people would save
metal and that sort of thing to recycle into the
(17:36):
war effort, and so victory garden was it was a
very popular thing then. I wasn't there. Just we'd grow
tomatoes and corn and um celery and various vegetables, and
that was kind of a unified attitude at the time,
(17:57):
to have victory gardens in your backyard. I had a
paper route in Oklahoma, and I delivered my papers at
like four in the morning and then come back and
drink almost a half a gallon of milk and then, oh,
about twelve fourteen something like that. You said that, you
said once said that you thought that Oklahoma was like
(18:18):
a black and white movie. Do you think that? Do
you think back on this day? I still do when
I think back on it. But as I go back there,
occasionally I see that it's more progressive than I allow
my mind to make it be. Yeah, so you know,
it's caught up with the rest of the world. What's
happened to your house there? Do you still happen? Still stands?
(18:40):
You know, when was the first time you went to Europe?
About nineteen sixty one and I went there with my
mother and brother and we we bought a little Citron
two CV automobile in Paris and drove it around Europe
and then time. Yeah, it was her first time too,
(19:03):
So was that like what was it like food wise? Well,
food wise, well, we we were kind of on a budget,
so there wasn't nothing particularly fancy, but um, just the
idea of having, you know, stumbling onto wild strawberries, which
(19:25):
I'd never had before, those tiny, little wild strawberries was great.
That was in France. We drove all over Europe and
for about four or five months, four or five months, yeah, yeah,
we went as far south. We went to Yugoslavia, went
to uh Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, France, British Isles, went
(19:52):
to Ireland try to find my mother's heritage and never
we struck out there. We couldn't find Did you did
you paint or draw? Yeah? I took a little homemade
kit a package that I would carry around and you know,
allow me to do something on about eight by ten format,
(20:14):
and brought paints along with me and worked like that.
And my mother came back to the States after about
two months, and then I stayed over there by myself
for a while. One of the things that I think
(20:38):
is very moving about your studio, apart from the garden
and the trees and of the fruit is. There seems
to be a very strong community there, and that when
you come to London for your shows, when we went
out to dinner afterwards, I think probably was the Tate
and then there was a dinner at the Nashville Galley.
Because you had two shows, you were the first to artists,
(21:00):
contemporary artists to show singularly in the National Gallery. I
was told that, I've found it hard to believe, but
it's true. Yeah. And then I think Bridget Riley maybe
had something yeah recently there. Yeah. Do you bring everybody
with you pretty much? That's so nice. People to work
(21:20):
with me, travel with me. Yeah, it's good. Your animals,
they're dogs. How many do you have any idea of
how many dogs? H Dana has five other dogs besides Dexter,
so you know she's got her handful. I mean she's
got she needs a kennel license. Do you when you
(21:41):
travel do take a dog? He goes with me everything.
So have you have a painting called Dexter? Again, don't
give me any ideas. Can I just tell the story
about Ruby. I I've had such a kind of passion
for the Ruby painting I Ruby meant to me. It
(22:02):
filled me with kind of imagination, and I kept thinking,
who is Ruby? So I just dreamt about who Ruby
could be. I thought she might be a woman that
you were in love with when you were a teenager
in Alcoholma. I thought she'd be your mother's name. I
thought she could be a disappointment, somebody who left you.
And I thought she could be a tragedy of someone
(22:22):
who died. And I just kept thinking about because the
way you wrote the ruby on the painting just means
so much to me. And I've been trying to find
a ruby painting. But when we spent that time together
in London, over days and nights, I tried to I
wanted to find a moment that was quiet where I
could ask you who she was and what she meant
(22:43):
to you? And I dan I was there, and I
thought maybe I should wait, and we were to part
each I should wait. But as I was saying could
buy to you that night, I said to you, Ed,
can I just ask you one question? Who was she?
Who was this Ruby? Who was the inspiration for these beautiful,
beautiful pains? And you said, um, Ruby was a dog.
(23:07):
That's right, that's right. But it was not the inspiration
for that painting or that work. It wasn't. The ruby
idead came long before the dog. Yeah, and so I
don't I'm not really sure where that that a name
came from. It didn't come from a person in my life,
I didn't know. But I liked ruby as a feminine name,
(23:30):
and it's just got a really good sound to it.
And also it has a double meaning too with the
gem ruby. And so it just meant that to me
and kind of was an excuse to make a work.
It's a beautiful work. That's a beautiful, beautiful work. Thank you.
I have one last question. So you've described food as
(23:53):
a journey across Oklahoma to California. You've described it as
an explosion of roles rawberries in France. You've used it
in your work, used actually paint made out of food.
But if you were feeling that you needed food is comfort?
Would you say there's a food you turn to in comfort?
(24:15):
I would say that some kind of soup might be
the answer. It's a kind of traditionally healing kind of food,
so soup of almost any kind could be although chili
might make you hop up and down. Yeah, may may
(24:38):
not be so RESTful, but comfort food might be in
the form of some kind of vegetable soup. Maybe. Yeah,
I got that good. So um, are you staying here
for a bid? Are you go? You? Uh? Actually, I
am going to the desert. Yeah today? Yeah, I hope
I'll see you soon. Yeah. The River Cafe Lookbook is
(25:04):
now available in bookshops and online. It has over one
hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs from the renowned photographer
Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty delicious and easy to
prepare recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics that
have been specially adapted for new cooks. The River Cafe
(25:24):
Lookbook Recipes for cooks of all ages. Ruthie's Table four
is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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