October 26, 2021 • 22 mins
Today, on the sixth episode of Ruthie's Table 4, Emily Blunt gives Ruthie the recipe for the roast chicken she cooked, leading to a proposal of marriage, reveals why her best-loved pasta is cacio e pepe, and endearingly explains why she ran to Burger King before acting with Dame Judi Dench.
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/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. This is River Cafe
Table four with me Ruthie Rogers. I'm River Cafe Table four.
I talked to friends who know the River Cafe well
(00:20):
about food, the food they cook, the food they eat,
the food of their memories. Pennay with zucchini and lemon
zest serve six. This week I have wonderful, beautiful, brilliant,
few adjectives emily plant one kilo medium zucchini, yellow, green
(00:47):
or ridged. In each episode, my guest reads a recipe
they have chosen from one of our cookbooks. Two table
spoons extra virgin olive oil, two grams unsalted butter, one
garlic clove, peeled and thinly sliced, three fifty grams penny.
(01:10):
One bunch of fresh mint leaves, roughly torn, two lemons,
preferably a moufie. Wash and trim the zucchini and cut
into small pieces. And in a large saucepan, heat the
olive oil with a hundred grams of the butter, Add
the zucchini and stir season well, adding the garlic. Cook gently,
(01:35):
stirring from time to time for twenty minutes. Bring a
pot of salted water to the boil, Add the penny
to the water, and cook ten minutes or until al dente.
Drain and add the zucchini, Add the remaining butter and
the mint leaves mixed thoroughly, great lemon zest on top.
(01:58):
Thank you, Emily. Here we are in the River Cafe,
late afternoon, looking at the restaurant, getting ready actually for
the evening service. Can't wait. I'm so happy that you
chose this recime because it is one of my favorites. Actually,
I say that most times the recipe is my favorite,
but this one is. And I was wanting why this
(02:19):
recipe do you cook it? Honestly, it just has three
of my favorite things in it, so any I just
wanted to pick one of your pasta dishes because it
is my ultimate favorite thing and what I crave most.
And did you grow up eating pasta? So the food
of the child, but it was more like spaghetti. You know.
My mom, My mom did well, God bless her. She
(02:40):
had four kids, and I'm sure we were all wanting
different things, and she just had so many kids in
so little time that very often she'd be like, you know,
you get what you get and you don't get upset.
But I do have this lasting memory of her spaghetti
bolonaise and then always wanting just pasta with butter and
cheese as well. So she would always let us have
(03:00):
the pasta with the butter and cheese if we had
the bolonnes first. And I find myself doing it to
my kids, I will bribe them. They've got to have
the sauce pasta and then they can have just the butter.
When kids come to the River Cafe for munch families,
you know, two pasta, butter and cheese. But in fact
it is really delicious. It's actually delicious. Now I have
(03:20):
to be cavil not to shovel it into my mouth
as I'm serving it to them. They love lasagna, they
love I mean, I've always made them all kinds of pasta, sauces,
and I'll sneak all kinds of things in there and
try and get it past them. My oldest one will
try most things, steak chicken. Neither of them want the
fish apart from sushi. It's funny about yeah, I know,
(03:41):
my stepson said fish was about thirty. I think it's
so weird. I don't know why or fish, maybe why
they look or maybe the bone. To be honest, I
think it is more the way they look. They kind
of envision what they and it kind of roastes them out. Yeah,
maybe once increased he was about four, and it was fishing.
It'd stand there all day. We made with this little
(04:02):
fishing rod in the harbor, and in the end, Richard,
my husband, actually went to the market and bought a
fish and we all do put the fish on the hook,
and then I think he never ate a fish again
for a long time. We had a fishing experience in
Martha's Vineyard, where we like to go every summer because
John's from Boston and his whole family is sort of
around there, and it's a magical place. Has been beautiful,
(04:23):
absolutely love it's so bizarre and bohemian special. But we
took the kids fishing and Hazel pulled in a fish
and it flopped around on the deck and she screamed,
never recovered. She was like, it's bleeding. Like it was awful.
It's very real. So did they cook with you? Did
they come? And they do? I make this chicken noodle
soup that they really love. How didn't make that? Well?
(04:44):
I actually use ginger in it, and it has this
kind of richness to it. Either I'll use leftover roast chicken,
or I'll sort of sear or some chicken thigh I
usually like using chicken thighs bonus skinless. They're like a
dream on there. You can kind of put them thing
and it's got carrots and celery and onions and beautiful
chicken stock, wine and those egg noodles, and they just
(05:07):
love it. I always they should always have chicken souper around.
I always have a part of chicken soup because there
is something so sustaining about it. Yeah, it's very Moorish.
It was one of the first things I made for John.
I think that chicken soups. I think it's always interested
the food we cook for an occasion. I was going
to want to do a book called What to Cook
When when You're depressed, when you're broke, when you want
(05:30):
us to do somebody, when you have somebody important coming
to dinner? Did you think about them when you were
cooking for him? Well, it's funny. I guess they just
made something that I knew he would love, Like, I
mean a roast chicken who doesn't love roast chicken, and
the roast chicken I love is in the gardens roast chicken.
It's called it her engagement chicken because I think when
(05:50):
people make it for people, they get engaged or something. Lemon, garlic,
onions up the chicken, thyme, salt and pepper, all that,
and you scatter onions round the chicken, but you pack
them in really tight into the tray and then you
roast them really high about an now and twenty minutes
and they're done and they're perfect. And then when you
take the chickens out, you then kind of so te
(06:11):
in some wine and some butter and into that ununeaque
garlicky mixture. Oh my gods, divine, it's really sticky and yummy,
and then they fell in love. That's it. What were
you growing out? Tell me more about you? Did you
rather work? She had four kids, and so her cooking
(06:31):
was so she was an actress when Fee and I
were very little, and then she just had too many kids.
She had two more after me and feet, and then
I think, you know, really felt she needed to be
home with us. I don't know if she loved cooking,
because it was more of a chore for her. With
kids being like, I don't like Risotto. I don't you know.
I think it's probably like a bit joyless at times.
(06:51):
Did she teach you how to do her recipes? She did,
but she sort of is a bit of a just
bug it all in really, So was it very British,
very British in general. And then definitely every Sunday was
the religion of the Sunday roast. As an American, I'm
really intrigued by the whole British Sunday lunch. Well, it's
like Christmas Dinner, Thanksgiving Sunday. Every Sunday we would either
(07:15):
have roast beef, roast lamb, roast chicken, or roast pork
was one of those, always a roast, and then we
would have roast potatoes with the beef. You'd have Yorkshire puddings,
we'd have everything. We'd have the bread, sauce, we'd have vegetables,
we'd have gravy. I mean, I just have this lasting
memory of my dad's plate, just like swimming and great swimming.
(07:40):
Emily talked about Sunday roast when she was a child.
So when we're roasting meat here, we like to sear
the meat and get a good color on all sides.
And then often we'll put it into the wood oven
and get a dry heat into it to start the
cooking process, and then maybe after turn or fifteen minutes,
we can go in with hard herb, whether it's rosemary,
(08:01):
sage bay, and if it wants a splash of wine
or water. Now, this is the same whether we're making
slow roasted veal, spatchcock, chickens, pot roasted beefhill it. This
is the way that we like to do it. So
(08:23):
when you're growing up with this really important food tradition
in your house of sitting down to dinner that your
mother could what age did you kind of leave Did
you go to university here and stay home or did
you go abroad? Or so I am the only person
in my family who didn't go to university because when
I was about seventeen, I did this play with my
(08:44):
school and an agent came to see the play and
he said, I think you're really good. You should do this.
And I really had a cavalier attitude towards because I
was like, oh, okay, I'm not worrying out. I wasn't
really thinking about being an actress. I was sort of
wanting to go to university and do languages like I
always loved Spanish and French, and my mom's an amazing
linguish yeah, brilliant British speaks like three languages. And so
(09:06):
I was sort of inspired by that and wanted to
do that. And then he said, well, why don't you
give it a go. And I'd also seen from my
mother how tough the industry was, you know, I didn't
have a rose tinted gaze towards it. I'd seen how
damaging it can be. It's so personal, you know. So
I was like, Okay, well I'll give it a go,
(09:28):
but I don't really know if I want to do it.
I can't believe I was talking like that now, because
I truly I am madly in love with it. But anyway,
I tried it. I auditioned. I got my first job
when I was eighteen once once I was out of school,
which was a play with Dame Judy Dench and she
was just divine to me and Sir Peter Hall directed
it and it was just mad. I was just such
a luck. The royal family, it's like it's based on
(09:51):
the Barrymore's, their fictional families called the cabindishes, and yes,
it's quite Soon after that, around eighteen nineteen, I got
my own place and I just cut Yeah. I got
my own place in Parsons Green, and I was so green.
I mean I just like went and looked at it,
and I just liked the look of the colors on
the walls. So I just went with it. And my
mom came over and she was like, is there any
(10:13):
heating in here? And I realized there was no central
heating in the apartment, and I was like, oh, I
just got a case. The walls were really cool. I
think that's a good criteria. It was a happy place.
It just was freezing, and that's very young. Yeah, it
was young. And then did you cook at all? Did
you still want to eat? Yeah? I mean I do.
(10:33):
Remember before I did the play. I mean, you're going
to be horrified to hear this because I haven't had
one since I used to go every night to Burger
King and get a double cheeseburger before I went on stage.
I don't know how I went on stage or two
hours after that. I was going to ask you because
it is intrigue. You know, we all think about how
we work and how we eat and when we when
(10:53):
we work and how we we sort of fit all
that in. And so if you are in the theater
or you weren't there, would you still do that now
that you would eat before going on stage? You would like,
I'm someone who needs to eat all day. I'm not
someone who can have three meals a day. I feel
like I'm usually hungry most of the time, and so
I tried to do sort of four to five smaller
(11:14):
meals throughout the day. But yeah, I couldn't eat a
double cheeseburger with fries now and not want to go
and have a nap. But you would eat That's fine.
So I would get to the theater around I don't know,
I guess we would going at seven thirty. So I
would eat at like six fifteen, and just discussing every night.
Every night. I was obsessed with it. It was my
(11:35):
favorite thing. I get the tube in Pickadilly Circus, I
go to Burger King straight to the theater. I probably
stank of burgers. And Judy Dench noticed that you were
smelling of burly like every night after the show, she
would bring me into her dressing room. And there'll be
so many likes people in there and I was like, what,
(11:57):
like I was a kid. I mean it was amazing.
And Peter Bowls was in it. Do you know him? Remember?
And he took me to for the first tea. You
remember that? I do, I remember it. I mean, I've
never been to a restaurant like that before. It was mad.
Did you get a restaurant with your parents? If I
remember on a Friday night we would go for a
Chinese scratt Crispy Duck pancakes, And I remember just being
(12:21):
obsessed with that kind of thing growing up. But I
feel it's a more common thing for people to take
their kids out cafes and restaurants now. And I think
that you know, as you say, can be the pen
butter and cheese, but sometimes, you know, I was once amaze.
We had an eight year old who ordered a grouse.
They were Italian. But that's incredible because Stanley and Fee
(12:46):
like Stanley who is kids to food, even his little kids,
like they have about five things they really love and
he's like, come on, like, I made a lasagna for
my kids yesterday and Hazel loves it and everything. But Violet,
my little one who's for she was really like no,
I just want the plain lasagna. I just want blanket pastor,
she calls. But I said, come on, you've got to
(13:07):
try it, and then I'll give you the blanket pastor.
And then she looks at it. She goes, it looks
like a cake. I said, there you go, and then
she loved it. What about when you leave them and film? Well,
normally there with me when I work, but it's hard
during school time. And now they're both in school. Like
when they were little, like it kind of dragged them
around anywhere, but now they kind of have to be
(13:27):
a bit more stable. So they're going to stay in
London at school. And I'm doing this six part western,
which I'm completely thrilled by. Its heart racing piece. It's
sort of as violent as it is witty. It's thrill
and it's written by Hugo Blick and it was brought
to me about two years ago. We got delayed because
(13:47):
of COVID, but I truly read the first page and
I was like, I'm going to be doing this. This
is it's so dynamic and arresting and beautiful. You just
know the writing. It's all about the writing for me.
Now I'm just realizing you just cannot make a good
movie out of a bad script. And there's conflict and
intrigue and something different. I mean the other women. There's
(14:09):
a couple of other really cool female parts. There's a
lot of boys. It's like a very but it's partly
because she is presented. Is this aristocratic woman is a
real fish out of water and this rather brutal masculine
world in do you eat on the film? Sit they
do good food or is it? It depends where you are,
And I've been someplace that's not very good. But we're
in Spain, so maybe they might. Yeah, they might do that.
(14:31):
Sometimes I just try and make my own thing, and
I'll bring like crop part and whip something up during
the days, so I've got something waiting for me when
I get home. But I think when I'm working, I
don't tend to eat sort of pasta and bread because
it just makes me so Yeah. So I'm obsessed with rice.
Rice It's one of my favorite things. I love the
(14:54):
taste of it. I love that you can put anything
with it. I love all kinds of rice. I love
that you can soak in stuff like I have this
meso soaked black rice that this chef I know does
for me. I understand that Emily loves rice. So here
at the restaurant, we use two different risotto rice is
one is carna role the other is violona nano rice.
(15:18):
The carna roly we generally use with chicken stock, and
this can go with a variety of things mushrooms, artichokes, greens,
and then the smaller, fatter grain, which is the violano
nano rice, we're used with fish stocks. When I interviewed
Michael Caine, he said that he'd never done a deal
(15:41):
for a movie that was in any place other than
a restaurant. Everything that was decided was decided in his day.
You went to the ivy or two like with your agent,
with your agia, with the producer. Somebody's trying to convince
you to be in a movie, and it was done.
And I think it's interesting how people going back to restaurants,
how people use restaurants. Some people use it to announce
(16:03):
that they want a divorce, so they want to fire someone.
You can do a very private thing in a public space,
do you know, I do see what you're saying about
that people do use restaurants. I think for me in Hollywood,
like everyone meets in restaurants, Like I've met clast members
for the first time in a restaurant. I've met producers, directors.
That's normally how I've met people. It's only recently sort
(16:24):
of over zoom or a phone call that it's very
new to me because I do need to sit with
someone and get a sense of them and get a
sense of the vibe and whether our energy is going
to be good, whether it's going to be copasettic in
a cool experience. And I'm always interested what people eat
and what they want, what they drink, like if they'll
have a glass of wine they won't like So if
(16:46):
it's an evening sit down, I'll definitely have a drink,
you know, if it's someone I've never met before, because
it's a bit nerve wracking as well, But a restaurant
it is that safe, atmospheric, buzzy place where if there's
a lull income versation, it doesn't matter. There's always stuff
around you that you can feed off. You know. Who
There was somebody was going to that said he absolutely
(17:08):
did not like going into a quiet restaurant. That you
need that safety, and I think that's why people do things.
It might be like firing somebody or breaking up because
you can't throw a frying pants said, you know, really
you have there is a kind of behavior. But then
also I think that a lot of people do go
for a first state in the restaurant because it does
tell you something, doesn't It how the person needs, how
(17:31):
they treat the waiter, whether they say thank you when
they've put something down. It's kind of does. It's very true.
And I always aware of how people are with because
I feel sometimes everyone's nice to me, but I always
watch how people are with the p A s on
set and how are you with people working in a restaurant,
Like I'm going to get a real sense of who
people are is how they are with everybody. Did you
ever work in a restaurant? No? But I did work
(17:53):
in a catering company, this amazing friend of my mother's,
gorgeous catering company that she does, and she would fee
and I to be her waitresses. Really it was fun
actually because if food was so good, she'd feed us
like extraordinary food. And I have this lasting memory of
a quail leg canopy with hollandaise over it and on
(18:14):
this little crusty Christina a fee and I used to
just steal them. We used to like pop them like pills.
I mean, we loved them. But I have that memory
of the quail leg. It is interesting, you know, just
this conversation is about memory. You know, you might not
remember so many things about that experience, but the quails
like comes. I do remember turning up one time and
(18:35):
I was wearing these really ugly sandals and I had
a chipped blue nail polish. I was like sixteen, and
she thought I looked so unpresentable. I had to wash
dishes all night. She was like, the best place for you?
I was like, and what about the politics of food?
You think about sustainability or about giving your kids organic
(18:55):
food or arms. Martha's Vineyard has so many good farms,
which is fun. They have the most beautiful produce and
eggs and cheese, And in Brooklyn it's harder. I find
the produce is so much better in the UK. Better here. Yes,
it's so real, Like the carrots are all wonky. They
taste right, like the strawberries. That berries. Everything is just
(19:17):
doesn't taste manufactured. And I think sometimes it's not the same.
Being in the UK has been a bit of a
wake up call for me of how much better I
feel the produce is here? And I think again, I
think that seems to be something that we're all thinking
about our kids, aren't we, I think, And I think
that generation is really interesting, especially as they get older.
What they're eating. Yes, I mean when I have dinner
(19:39):
when my grandchildren are older. Once a vegan, once of vegetarian,
glu free, that's like, you know that. I think the
politics of food are consistent with the politics of everyone. Yes,
do you feel at the restaurant you have to adapt
for people in that way. We're really lucky to be
a time because we are so focused on vegetables. Yes,
so a vegan and tell the egg you know, tegg
(20:02):
you Telly, But they can have a spaghetti with peace.
We do something called faranata. Have you ever had so
the chickpea flower? And so they don't have to have
gluten and you know, you can have a whole meal.
When I get so excited to look at your menu
and just see what's changed, and it changes all the time,
it's just so exciting. So if you were thinking about comfort,
do you have a comfort food? That this could be anything,
(20:25):
and it could be something that you reach for when
you're feeling back to what to eat, when, what to cook? When?
All right, I'll do your comfort. Yeah. Like for me,
one of my favorite things is a toasted bagel with
tons of butter and marmite. It's my favorite thing that
I really think it's cultures heaven. But I will say
(20:47):
the other thing, if I were to, because it's pasta
that I create, is a coucho with peppe. Yeah, the lather.
It's so simple and it's just one of my favorite things.
In the first time I had it was in Rome,
(21:08):
as was shooting a TV series in Rome that was
not a very good I think anyone. And I was
living alone in Rome and I was like twenty years old,
lived there for three months the Armor. It was near
Campbell Fury, and I'd go to all of these little
(21:28):
local places and I noticed that don't go to the
tourist places. And I remember this one Italian restaur where
all the locals went. The vat of wine was just
put on the table. I don't know what wine it was,
it didn't matter, and you get what you get and
they bring you a steak or pastor whatever they have,
and it was just heaven. To eat like that, the
simplicity of it. And I remember going and having couchy
(21:49):
to peppe and people saying this. I think they called
it like the peasant pastor or something. It was sort
of known as being a really sort of low brow pastor.
But I was like, but it's pastive. I think that's
a brilliant fel food because it's the cheese actually pasta
butter and cheese. It's just got a lot of a
little bit of like you just want to eat like
my children, maybe I love to food, food, the memories
(22:12):
of childhood and comfort. Thank you, thank you so much,
thank you, thank you. To visit the online shop of
The River Cafe, go to shop The River Cafe dot
(22:33):
co dot uk. River Cafe Table four is a production
of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. For more
podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. This is River Cafe
Table four with me Ruthie Rogers. I'm River Cafe Table four.
I talked to friends who know the River Cafe well
(00:20):
about food, the food they cook, the food they eat,
the food of their memories. Pennay with zucchini and lemon
zest serve six. This week I have wonderful, beautiful, brilliant,
few adjectives emily plant one kilo medium zucchini, yellow, green
(00:47):
or ridged. In each episode, my guest reads a recipe
they have chosen from one of our cookbooks. Two table
spoons extra virgin olive oil, two grams unsalted butter, one
garlic clove, peeled and thinly sliced, three fifty grams penny.
(01:10):
One bunch of fresh mint leaves, roughly torn, two lemons,
preferably a moufie. Wash and trim the zucchini and cut
into small pieces. And in a large saucepan, heat the
olive oil with a hundred grams of the butter, Add
the zucchini and stir season well, adding the garlic. Cook gently,
(01:35):
stirring from time to time for twenty minutes. Bring a
pot of salted water to the boil, Add the penny
to the water, and cook ten minutes or until al dente.
Drain and add the zucchini, Add the remaining butter and
the mint leaves mixed thoroughly, great lemon zest on top.
(01:58):
Thank you, Emily. Here we are in the River Cafe,
late afternoon, looking at the restaurant, getting ready actually for
the evening service. Can't wait. I'm so happy that you
chose this recime because it is one of my favorites. Actually,
I say that most times the recipe is my favorite,
but this one is. And I was wanting why this
(02:19):
recipe do you cook it? Honestly, it just has three
of my favorite things in it, so any I just
wanted to pick one of your pasta dishes because it
is my ultimate favorite thing and what I crave most.
And did you grow up eating pasta? So the food
of the child, but it was more like spaghetti. You know.
My mom, My mom did well, God bless her. She
(02:40):
had four kids, and I'm sure we were all wanting
different things, and she just had so many kids in
so little time that very often she'd be like, you know,
you get what you get and you don't get upset.
But I do have this lasting memory of her spaghetti
bolonaise and then always wanting just pasta with butter and
cheese as well. So she would always let us have
(03:00):
the pasta with the butter and cheese if we had
the bolonnes first. And I find myself doing it to
my kids, I will bribe them. They've got to have
the sauce pasta and then they can have just the butter.
When kids come to the River Cafe for munch families,
you know, two pasta, butter and cheese. But in fact
it is really delicious. It's actually delicious. Now I have
(03:20):
to be cavil not to shovel it into my mouth
as I'm serving it to them. They love lasagna, they
love I mean, I've always made them all kinds of pasta, sauces,
and I'll sneak all kinds of things in there and
try and get it past them. My oldest one will
try most things, steak chicken. Neither of them want the
fish apart from sushi. It's funny about yeah, I know,
(03:41):
my stepson said fish was about thirty. I think it's
so weird. I don't know why or fish, maybe why
they look or maybe the bone. To be honest, I
think it is more the way they look. They kind
of envision what they and it kind of roastes them out. Yeah,
maybe once increased he was about four, and it was fishing.
It'd stand there all day. We made with this little
(04:02):
fishing rod in the harbor, and in the end, Richard,
my husband, actually went to the market and bought a
fish and we all do put the fish on the hook,
and then I think he never ate a fish again
for a long time. We had a fishing experience in
Martha's Vineyard, where we like to go every summer because
John's from Boston and his whole family is sort of
around there, and it's a magical place. Has been beautiful,
(04:23):
absolutely love it's so bizarre and bohemian special. But we
took the kids fishing and Hazel pulled in a fish
and it flopped around on the deck and she screamed,
never recovered. She was like, it's bleeding. Like it was awful.
It's very real. So did they cook with you? Did
they come? And they do? I make this chicken noodle
soup that they really love. How didn't make that? Well?
(04:44):
I actually use ginger in it, and it has this
kind of richness to it. Either I'll use leftover roast chicken,
or I'll sort of sear or some chicken thigh I
usually like using chicken thighs bonus skinless. They're like a
dream on there. You can kind of put them thing
and it's got carrots and celery and onions and beautiful
chicken stock, wine and those egg noodles, and they just
(05:07):
love it. I always they should always have chicken souper around.
I always have a part of chicken soup because there
is something so sustaining about it. Yeah, it's very Moorish.
It was one of the first things I made for John.
I think that chicken soups. I think it's always interested
the food we cook for an occasion. I was going
to want to do a book called What to Cook
When when You're depressed, when you're broke, when you want
(05:30):
us to do somebody, when you have somebody important coming
to dinner? Did you think about them when you were
cooking for him? Well, it's funny. I guess they just
made something that I knew he would love, Like, I
mean a roast chicken who doesn't love roast chicken, and
the roast chicken I love is in the gardens roast chicken.
It's called it her engagement chicken because I think when
(05:50):
people make it for people, they get engaged or something. Lemon, garlic,
onions up the chicken, thyme, salt and pepper, all that,
and you scatter onions round the chicken, but you pack
them in really tight into the tray and then you
roast them really high about an now and twenty minutes
and they're done and they're perfect. And then when you
take the chickens out, you then kind of so te
(06:11):
in some wine and some butter and into that ununeaque
garlicky mixture. Oh my gods, divine, it's really sticky and yummy,
and then they fell in love. That's it. What were
you growing out? Tell me more about you? Did you
rather work? She had four kids, and so her cooking
(06:31):
was so she was an actress when Fee and I
were very little, and then she just had too many kids.
She had two more after me and feet, and then
I think, you know, really felt she needed to be
home with us. I don't know if she loved cooking,
because it was more of a chore for her. With
kids being like, I don't like Risotto. I don't you know.
I think it's probably like a bit joyless at times.
(06:51):
Did she teach you how to do her recipes? She did,
but she sort of is a bit of a just
bug it all in really, So was it very British,
very British in general. And then definitely every Sunday was
the religion of the Sunday roast. As an American, I'm
really intrigued by the whole British Sunday lunch. Well, it's
like Christmas Dinner, Thanksgiving Sunday. Every Sunday we would either
(07:15):
have roast beef, roast lamb, roast chicken, or roast pork
was one of those, always a roast, and then we
would have roast potatoes with the beef. You'd have Yorkshire puddings,
we'd have everything. We'd have the bread, sauce, we'd have vegetables,
we'd have gravy. I mean, I just have this lasting
memory of my dad's plate, just like swimming and great swimming.
(07:40):
Emily talked about Sunday roast when she was a child.
So when we're roasting meat here, we like to sear
the meat and get a good color on all sides.
And then often we'll put it into the wood oven
and get a dry heat into it to start the
cooking process, and then maybe after turn or fifteen minutes,
we can go in with hard herb, whether it's rosemary,
(08:01):
sage bay, and if it wants a splash of wine
or water. Now, this is the same whether we're making
slow roasted veal, spatchcock, chickens, pot roasted beefhill it. This
is the way that we like to do it. So
(08:23):
when you're growing up with this really important food tradition
in your house of sitting down to dinner that your
mother could what age did you kind of leave Did
you go to university here and stay home or did
you go abroad? Or so I am the only person
in my family who didn't go to university because when
I was about seventeen, I did this play with my
(08:44):
school and an agent came to see the play and
he said, I think you're really good. You should do this.
And I really had a cavalier attitude towards because I
was like, oh, okay, I'm not worrying out. I wasn't
really thinking about being an actress. I was sort of
wanting to go to university and do languages like I
always loved Spanish and French, and my mom's an amazing
linguish yeah, brilliant British speaks like three languages. And so
(09:06):
I was sort of inspired by that and wanted to
do that. And then he said, well, why don't you
give it a go. And I'd also seen from my
mother how tough the industry was, you know, I didn't
have a rose tinted gaze towards it. I'd seen how
damaging it can be. It's so personal, you know. So
I was like, Okay, well I'll give it a go,
(09:28):
but I don't really know if I want to do it.
I can't believe I was talking like that now, because
I truly I am madly in love with it. But anyway,
I tried it. I auditioned. I got my first job
when I was eighteen once once I was out of school,
which was a play with Dame Judy Dench and she
was just divine to me and Sir Peter Hall directed
it and it was just mad. I was just such
a luck. The royal family, it's like it's based on
(09:51):
the Barrymore's, their fictional families called the cabindishes, and yes,
it's quite Soon after that, around eighteen nineteen, I got
my own place and I just cut Yeah. I got
my own place in Parsons Green, and I was so green.
I mean I just like went and looked at it,
and I just liked the look of the colors on
the walls. So I just went with it. And my
mom came over and she was like, is there any
(10:13):
heating in here? And I realized there was no central
heating in the apartment, and I was like, oh, I
just got a case. The walls were really cool. I
think that's a good criteria. It was a happy place.
It just was freezing, and that's very young. Yeah, it
was young. And then did you cook at all? Did
you still want to eat? Yeah? I mean I do.
(10:33):
Remember before I did the play. I mean, you're going
to be horrified to hear this because I haven't had
one since I used to go every night to Burger
King and get a double cheeseburger before I went on stage.
I don't know how I went on stage or two
hours after that. I was going to ask you because
it is intrigue. You know, we all think about how
we work and how we eat and when we when
(10:53):
we work and how we we sort of fit all
that in. And so if you are in the theater
or you weren't there, would you still do that now
that you would eat before going on stage? You would like,
I'm someone who needs to eat all day. I'm not
someone who can have three meals a day. I feel
like I'm usually hungry most of the time, and so
I tried to do sort of four to five smaller
(11:14):
meals throughout the day. But yeah, I couldn't eat a
double cheeseburger with fries now and not want to go
and have a nap. But you would eat That's fine.
So I would get to the theater around I don't know,
I guess we would going at seven thirty. So I
would eat at like six fifteen, and just discussing every night.
Every night. I was obsessed with it. It was my
(11:35):
favorite thing. I get the tube in Pickadilly Circus, I
go to Burger King straight to the theater. I probably
stank of burgers. And Judy Dench noticed that you were
smelling of burly like every night after the show, she
would bring me into her dressing room. And there'll be
so many likes people in there and I was like, what,
(11:57):
like I was a kid. I mean it was amazing.
And Peter Bowls was in it. Do you know him? Remember?
And he took me to for the first tea. You
remember that? I do, I remember it. I mean, I've
never been to a restaurant like that before. It was mad.
Did you get a restaurant with your parents? If I
remember on a Friday night we would go for a
Chinese scratt Crispy Duck pancakes, And I remember just being
(12:21):
obsessed with that kind of thing growing up. But I
feel it's a more common thing for people to take
their kids out cafes and restaurants now. And I think
that you know, as you say, can be the pen
butter and cheese, but sometimes, you know, I was once amaze.
We had an eight year old who ordered a grouse.
They were Italian. But that's incredible because Stanley and Fee
(12:46):
like Stanley who is kids to food, even his little kids,
like they have about five things they really love and
he's like, come on, like, I made a lasagna for
my kids yesterday and Hazel loves it and everything. But Violet,
my little one who's for she was really like no,
I just want the plain lasagna. I just want blanket pastor,
she calls. But I said, come on, you've got to
(13:07):
try it, and then I'll give you the blanket pastor.
And then she looks at it. She goes, it looks
like a cake. I said, there you go, and then
she loved it. What about when you leave them and film? Well,
normally there with me when I work, but it's hard
during school time. And now they're both in school. Like
when they were little, like it kind of dragged them
around anywhere, but now they kind of have to be
(13:27):
a bit more stable. So they're going to stay in
London at school. And I'm doing this six part western,
which I'm completely thrilled by. Its heart racing piece. It's
sort of as violent as it is witty. It's thrill
and it's written by Hugo Blick and it was brought
to me about two years ago. We got delayed because
(13:47):
of COVID, but I truly read the first page and
I was like, I'm going to be doing this. This
is it's so dynamic and arresting and beautiful. You just
know the writing. It's all about the writing for me.
Now I'm just realizing you just cannot make a good
movie out of a bad script. And there's conflict and
intrigue and something different. I mean the other women. There's
(14:09):
a couple of other really cool female parts. There's a
lot of boys. It's like a very but it's partly
because she is presented. Is this aristocratic woman is a
real fish out of water and this rather brutal masculine
world in do you eat on the film? Sit they
do good food or is it? It depends where you are,
And I've been someplace that's not very good. But we're
in Spain, so maybe they might. Yeah, they might do that.
(14:31):
Sometimes I just try and make my own thing, and
I'll bring like crop part and whip something up during
the days, so I've got something waiting for me when
I get home. But I think when I'm working, I
don't tend to eat sort of pasta and bread because
it just makes me so Yeah. So I'm obsessed with rice.
Rice It's one of my favorite things. I love the
(14:54):
taste of it. I love that you can put anything
with it. I love all kinds of rice. I love
that you can soak in stuff like I have this
meso soaked black rice that this chef I know does
for me. I understand that Emily loves rice. So here
at the restaurant, we use two different risotto rice is
one is carna role the other is violona nano rice.
(15:18):
The carna roly we generally use with chicken stock, and
this can go with a variety of things mushrooms, artichokes, greens,
and then the smaller, fatter grain, which is the violano
nano rice, we're used with fish stocks. When I interviewed
Michael Caine, he said that he'd never done a deal
(15:41):
for a movie that was in any place other than
a restaurant. Everything that was decided was decided in his day.
You went to the ivy or two like with your agent,
with your agia, with the producer. Somebody's trying to convince
you to be in a movie, and it was done.
And I think it's interesting how people going back to restaurants,
how people use restaurants. Some people use it to announce
(16:03):
that they want a divorce, so they want to fire someone.
You can do a very private thing in a public space,
do you know, I do see what you're saying about
that people do use restaurants. I think for me in Hollywood,
like everyone meets in restaurants, Like I've met clast members
for the first time in a restaurant. I've met producers, directors.
That's normally how I've met people. It's only recently sort
(16:24):
of over zoom or a phone call that it's very
new to me because I do need to sit with
someone and get a sense of them and get a
sense of the vibe and whether our energy is going
to be good, whether it's going to be copasettic in
a cool experience. And I'm always interested what people eat
and what they want, what they drink, like if they'll
have a glass of wine they won't like So if
(16:46):
it's an evening sit down, I'll definitely have a drink,
you know, if it's someone I've never met before, because
it's a bit nerve wracking as well, But a restaurant
it is that safe, atmospheric, buzzy place where if there's
a lull income versation, it doesn't matter. There's always stuff
around you that you can feed off. You know. Who
There was somebody was going to that said he absolutely
(17:08):
did not like going into a quiet restaurant. That you
need that safety, and I think that's why people do things.
It might be like firing somebody or breaking up because
you can't throw a frying pants said, you know, really
you have there is a kind of behavior. But then
also I think that a lot of people do go
for a first state in the restaurant because it does
tell you something, doesn't It how the person needs, how
(17:31):
they treat the waiter, whether they say thank you when
they've put something down. It's kind of does. It's very true.
And I always aware of how people are with because
I feel sometimes everyone's nice to me, but I always
watch how people are with the p A s on
set and how are you with people working in a restaurant,
Like I'm going to get a real sense of who
people are is how they are with everybody. Did you
ever work in a restaurant? No? But I did work
(17:53):
in a catering company, this amazing friend of my mother's,
gorgeous catering company that she does, and she would fee
and I to be her waitresses. Really it was fun
actually because if food was so good, she'd feed us
like extraordinary food. And I have this lasting memory of
a quail leg canopy with hollandaise over it and on
(18:14):
this little crusty Christina a fee and I used to
just steal them. We used to like pop them like pills.
I mean, we loved them. But I have that memory
of the quail leg. It is interesting, you know, just
this conversation is about memory. You know, you might not
remember so many things about that experience, but the quails
like comes. I do remember turning up one time and
(18:35):
I was wearing these really ugly sandals and I had
a chipped blue nail polish. I was like sixteen, and
she thought I looked so unpresentable. I had to wash
dishes all night. She was like, the best place for you?
I was like, and what about the politics of food?
You think about sustainability or about giving your kids organic
(18:55):
food or arms. Martha's Vineyard has so many good farms,
which is fun. They have the most beautiful produce and
eggs and cheese, And in Brooklyn it's harder. I find
the produce is so much better in the UK. Better here. Yes,
it's so real, Like the carrots are all wonky. They
taste right, like the strawberries. That berries. Everything is just
(19:17):
doesn't taste manufactured. And I think sometimes it's not the same.
Being in the UK has been a bit of a
wake up call for me of how much better I
feel the produce is here? And I think again, I
think that seems to be something that we're all thinking
about our kids, aren't we, I think, And I think
that generation is really interesting, especially as they get older.
What they're eating. Yes, I mean when I have dinner
(19:39):
when my grandchildren are older. Once a vegan, once of vegetarian,
glu free, that's like, you know that. I think the
politics of food are consistent with the politics of everyone. Yes,
do you feel at the restaurant you have to adapt
for people in that way. We're really lucky to be
a time because we are so focused on vegetables. Yes,
so a vegan and tell the egg you know, tegg
(20:02):
you Telly, But they can have a spaghetti with peace.
We do something called faranata. Have you ever had so
the chickpea flower? And so they don't have to have
gluten and you know, you can have a whole meal.
When I get so excited to look at your menu
and just see what's changed, and it changes all the time,
it's just so exciting. So if you were thinking about comfort,
do you have a comfort food? That this could be anything,
(20:25):
and it could be something that you reach for when
you're feeling back to what to eat, when, what to cook? When?
All right, I'll do your comfort. Yeah. Like for me,
one of my favorite things is a toasted bagel with
tons of butter and marmite. It's my favorite thing that
I really think it's cultures heaven. But I will say
(20:47):
the other thing, if I were to, because it's pasta
that I create, is a coucho with peppe. Yeah, the lather.
It's so simple and it's just one of my favorite things.
In the first time I had it was in Rome,
(21:08):
as was shooting a TV series in Rome that was
not a very good I think anyone. And I was
living alone in Rome and I was like twenty years old,
lived there for three months the Armor. It was near
Campbell Fury, and I'd go to all of these little
(21:28):
local places and I noticed that don't go to the
tourist places. And I remember this one Italian restaur where
all the locals went. The vat of wine was just
put on the table. I don't know what wine it was,
it didn't matter, and you get what you get and
they bring you a steak or pastor whatever they have,
and it was just heaven. To eat like that, the
simplicity of it. And I remember going and having couchy
(21:49):
to peppe and people saying this. I think they called
it like the peasant pastor or something. It was sort
of known as being a really sort of low brow pastor.
But I was like, but it's pastive. I think that's
a brilliant fel food because it's the cheese actually pasta
butter and cheese. It's just got a lot of a
little bit of like you just want to eat like
my children, maybe I love to food, food, the memories
(22:12):
of childhood and comfort. Thank you, thank you so much,
thank you, thank you. To visit the online shop of
The River Cafe, go to shop The River Cafe dot
(22:33):
co dot uk. River Cafe Table four is a production
of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. For more
podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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