March 20, 2023 • 40 mins
If you were in London in November 2020, then you might have been, as I was, lucky to see ‘Fly in a League with the Night’ by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at the Tate Britain. A retrospective of 70 of her works from 2003 to the present. Forced to close after two weeks due to the pandemic, the show reopened in November 2022 - the first time the museum has done this.
Lynette is a writer, a painter, and as I discovered, a magical baker. Today, after a visit to the pastry kitchen, we’re here to talk about writing, painting & cooking - all the ingredients to make something beautiful.
For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to:
Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/
For any podcast enquires please contact: willem.olenski@atomizedstudios.tv
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
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. If you were in London in November twenty twenty,
then you might have been as I was lucky to
go to see Fly in League with the Night, an
exhibition of paintings by Lynette Yadam Boochi, artist and writer,
(00:22):
a retrospective of seventy of her works from two thousand
and three to the present. It closed after two weeks
due to the pandemic, but is now on again, the
first time the Tate has shown an exhibition twice. Lynette
is a writer, a painter and also a magical baker.
(00:46):
Today we're sitting here in the River Cafe to talk
about food, words, paint, in other words, all the ingredients
to make something like Lynette beautiful, cell and ed are
you going to read s? The recipe first, and the
recipe of chosen is Polenta almond and lemon cake serves
(01:09):
ten four hundred and fifty grams of unsalted butter, softened
four hundred and fifty grams of granulated sugar, four hundred
and fifty grams ground almonds, two teaspoons vanilla extract, six eggs.
The finely grated zest of four lemons, the juice of
(01:33):
one lemon, two hundred and twenty five grams of polenta,
one and a half teaspoons of baking powder. Preheat the
oven to one hundred and sixty degrees centigrade. Butter and
line a thirty centimeter round and seven point five centimeter
deep cake pan with parchment paper. Beat the butter and
(01:58):
sugar together until pale and light. Stir in the ground
almonds and vanilla. Beat in the eggs one at a time.
Fold in the lemon, zest and juice, the blenta, baking powder,
and salt. Spoon into the prepared pan. Bake for forty
(02:22):
five to fifty minutes, or until the cake is set
and deep brown on top. Serve with crem fresh and berries.
I'd like to talk about being an artist and how
you eat. I think you're here a lot, which is
(02:43):
really nice, A fair bit, yeah, but I find that
I also I generally feel better if I don't eat
out a lot, so I don't. I don't tend to
eat out as much when I'm very, very busy when
I'm working, because it's it's so much. I just just
(03:03):
physically to regulate my own kind of sleep and everything
when I'm trying to get stuff done, having a certain
routine with what you're eating and the time you're eating
at like I can't eat late. Like for example, the
last couple of months, I've been working on a deadline
and um, but there's a dead a show. I have
a show. I have a show at the Googen Him
(03:24):
and Bill Bao the end of my beautiful building. Um, difficult,
complicated building, but wonderful. I like a lot of the
contemporary architecture museums. They're great for architecture, not great for
hanging stuff on the amazing building. Yeah and yeah. So
(03:46):
I've been really busy with that, and I've found that
by sticking with a with a kind of a bit
of a routine in terms of meals and certain times,
I'm just able to get more done and get to
bet at a decent hour. It is solitary. Yeah, you know,
I don't know if you have other people in the
studio with you. You have a jadline now, but other
(04:08):
days when you have a routine that is very structured,
so you can quite try to call you up and
say Lonett, let's go and have lunch. Would you say
I can't, so I probably say yes, yes, but I should,
I should really not answer the phone, but I I
normally so three days of the week, I'll get up
(04:30):
and train with a trainer online and like about sort
of training normally around eight o'clock and then breakfast and
then work. Yeah. Yeah, so and do you work straight
through you I stopped for lunch. What mornings painting wise
or studio wise tend to be a bit slow. I
(04:52):
take a while to get warmed up. Do you find
the solitude of the day something that you treasure and
you liked or do you like nighttime? Are you ready
to see It's funny by nighttime, I'm ready to see people,
But I also feel like during the day it's solitary.
But it's I'm so busy, I'm so in it, I
don't even I kind of forget. I couldn't have anyone there.
(05:14):
So yeah, too much work now. But yeah, And you
know you're going to one of the great cities for
food when you go to Bilbao because Sebastian is right
next door. Yeah, and they're fantastic restaurants there. Yeah, great
culture of food. Yeah. You travel, you find out about
where you're going to look into it first and explore
(05:36):
the food. Yeah, when I sent in the cities that
you've really liked food, really liked, so I think. I
mean I spent three months in Marseilla, three months on
the residency many years ago. The pastries there were out
of this world. I remember, the pastries were incredible there.
That was one. So back and forth to France quite
(05:56):
a lot for many years, and and many trips over
the years to the South of Spain as well, which
I can I have funny memories of eating there because
we always ate so late. Yes, the food I almost
don't remember it because I just remember feeling like we've
eaten too late and I don't feel very well. Yeah,
(06:17):
so at midnight. Yeah nothing. I don't know how people
do it. Indigestion, how you work the next day. Yeah,
I've really never understood it. Um. Yes, although a lot
of trips to the to the US, which of course
is just so much variety. But yeah, I do love
(06:42):
soul food in New York as well, just like going
to Harlem and having soul food and these really kind
of very down to earth, very chill, very relaxed diners
and eateries. There a lot of your friends are so yeah, yeah,
I got yeah, artists, curators, writers, that kind of thing.
(07:05):
Are you having any shows in New York? Not for
the foreseeable. There will be a US tour that I
can't really say much about yet. But a couple of
years time. Yeah, I was Richard. My husband had got
a prize in the University of Virginia and it's called
the Jefferson Prize. And I was washing my hands in
(07:27):
the bathroom and a woman came in and she was
just awarded the prize as well as the first African
American to graduate from law school. And I think it
probably was the sixties. It was horrifically late, and I
said to her. We started talking and I said, what
was harder being a black woman or being a woman
(07:50):
to get this prize? And she said, definitely a woman.
At that time, she said there was racism of course
in the South, that it was vile and it was strong,
but the antagonist for her being a woman. And I
was wondering about in the art world, what your experience,
you know, just to deviate from from food, what was
your experience of being a black woman in Britain as
(08:12):
a painter. I mean to be completely honest, it was.
It was very very odd in you know, because it
wasn't that not that long ago. But when I think
about when I first first was out of art school
completely and working away and kind of oblivious to certain
(08:37):
things because I never expected a career. I never went
into this expecting any kind of success or anything, because
you don't. It's it's a crazy path. It doesn't You're
not guaranteed anything. But thinking back to then, the level
of invisibility I had, like the fact that I remember
(08:59):
being at events and in situations or openings where I
would be completely invisible, like nobody would talk to me,
someone might try and hand me their coat, someone might
ask me to bring them a drink. That that was
my abiding memory of say, the period from two thousand
(09:20):
and three to maybe two twelve eleven, something like that.
And because I wasn't I mean, nobody really knew who
I was or I didn't really have a I mean,
in some way, I couldn't. I couldn't get arrested for
the first ten years of making work, which was actually
really liberating. I don't complain about that because it was
(09:41):
actually a really good time to get things done and
I was working regardless, I didn't really care, and I
had enough going on for me with different projects, really
important shows and things that I was involved in during
that time. That kept me very motivated, and I met
a lot of wonderful people, mostly US who were and
(10:02):
still are really big supporters of mine early on. But
it was in the more general art well and certainly
in the UK, that invisibility, that thing of being invisible,
of people turning their backs on you at dinner, of
not talking to you, of not being included in anything
(10:25):
because not just because people saw you was an issues
based artist or someone who was niche in a way
that they didn't want to engage with. That at some
points was difficult, that would that hurt in a certain way,
But at the time I can't say I really cared,
(10:46):
and that hasn't changed, If anything, it's increased. I really
don't care now. And the same people who would turn
their backs on me and asked me to take their
coats or completely ignore me in the seven two thousand
and six and now prostrating themselves on the floor to me,
which I still don't care about. I still don't care,
(11:09):
and I think that was that was That's been my
abiding mantra is, particularly when things have been really were
really difficult, or reached a crisis point in some way,
I realized, actually, all of this stuff, it doesn't really matter.
That the thing that I've always really cared about was
the work I was doing, the people that I think with,
(11:33):
the people that I respect, the people that I work
with and who have always been big supporters of mine,
and I've been big supporters of theirs, and what we've
done together and built together was That's what matters these
kind of rather that a scene or a career on
(11:54):
art World has never ever mattered, It doesn't matter. It's
just it's it's ever been a concern of mine because
it was never mine. It was never something I was
a part of. So I kind of to answer your
question a very long winded sort of right, I didn't, Yeah,
I don't, I don't. Yeah, does it does it? If
it doesn't matter to you, doesn't matter that it matters
(12:17):
to other people experiencing it. So you know Edward's story
about walking into Vogue and you know, being told to
use the side entrance to deliver or something you know
that matters, and yeah, you know, And so there's a
sort of there is a political aspect to the invisibility
that is wrong. It's wrong, and it could be wrong
(12:39):
as a woman. You know, when you know we noticed,
you know, we know that we go to parties and
a certain kind of person or a young person that's ignored,
or a quiet person that's ignored, or a black person
that's ignored, or you know, somebody wearing the wrong dress.
It and it's great to have the confidence that that
is something that your work can see through. But then
(13:00):
for other people, yeah, you know who are experience, who
don't have that, it's yeah, no, it's really hard. And
I think that's why the things that get you through
when you're younger, or you're not as confident, or you
don't have the kind of agency will be that circle
of people or that circle of support that really even
(13:21):
you know, if it was even if it's your family,
even if it's your your partner or you know, you
need someone to turn to who can say, yeah, I
just saw that. Yeah I get it. I know. And
I think because these things still happen, It's not like
it doesn't happen to me anymore. It still does, you know. Still,
(13:42):
it's that classic thing when people before people know who
you are, they don't respect you. I have a problem
with that. It shouldn't matter who I am. I don't
I'm not someone who goes somewhere I don't believe in.
I don't see myself any differently than I did twenty
years ago. So I'm not going to go in somewhere
and say do you know where I am? Because that's
ridiculous to me. But I shouldn't have to anither anyone else.
(14:03):
And it's it's having it's that sense. I mean a
friend was telling me a story yesterday of something that
happened to them very similar that this, you know, being
followed around a store. I mean that that kind of thing.
You shouldn't have to go in and prove anything in
order to be respected, and that that's the difference. It's
(14:25):
I think, was it Nina Simone? You said, you know,
love us, will leave us alone. It's it's simple. What
do you make when you make cakes? You know, wow, everything,
But my favorite thing to bake is any type of
(14:48):
sponge cake because that was really I learned to bake
from my mum and she was she did a catering
course in the seventies and yeah, she's nurse she's very
busy work nights, as did my dad, both nurses, but
baking for her was just such a joy. She loved
doing it, and I used to love watching. So I
(15:09):
would stand or sit and just watch her do it intensely,
and I always wanted to help, and for many years
she wouldn't let me because I'd messed it up. But
just watching and watching and watching, and those little things
that just stay with you forever, like that. Never ever
ever opened the oven before a certain point, Yeah, because
I could never wait. I was really I wanted to
(15:30):
see it. I want to see it rise on what
was happening. And I would always panic and open the
oven and then it would sink. And it became a
kind of running joke that my cakes would always sink
because I was too impatient, and I'd always turn the
oven up too high. Yeah. Yeah, but a sponge is
really hard to make. Yeah, there's science, it's one of
the easiest, you know, recipes, but actually to make a
(15:51):
good sponge, as a town would your mother was she
was born in Ghana. She was born in Ghana. Yeah. Yeah,
she like, oh, she's amazing, she's wonderful, she does it.
She's she's my my hero. Did she come as a
young child here? No? No, no, she came in her twenties,
as did my dad. Well, my dad was a bit older,
(16:12):
but they came in the nineteen sixty They met and
Gharana married and Garner moved here to work as nurses
settled down and we all came along in the seventies.
There's three of us. I have two older brothers. So
going back to the early days, what was it like
growing up in your household if your parents were both
nurses and they were working. Ye? Did they work nights
and days or ships or did you nights? Yeah? So
(16:34):
there was always one of them home. Would you have
a family? Yeah? All around the table one thing I
mean we did. We did at the weekends more I guess,
and when they were both home than we'd all be
around the table. But weekends, I remember, breakfasts on the
Sunday were real everyone together. Oh omelets. My dad made
(16:56):
a very good omelet, a kind of everything, but the
kitchen sink over which was very good, very very good.
He used to put baked beans into the open instress,
which was bonkers, but yeah, it's really good. Would they
have cooked in Ghana? Do you think or did they really?
You know they both? I think they both always cooked
my dad. I mean we we we ate a lot
(17:19):
of gunny and food when I was a kid, like
foo food which I can't eat now I don't. I
don't like it anymore. I think the traditional way it's
made in Ghanna is with pounded Um. I'm going to
get this wrong. Cassava and plantain together and it's it's
pounded until it becomes like a big sort of Doughey
mass and you have it with with stew or soup
(17:42):
with meat and fish. Um, it's very heavy. And did
you grow up with other friends who were gunny and
it was there a community? Yeah? I mean we had
all of our my parents had a large sort of
network circle of friends. And where where was this in London?
South South? I remembered spending a lot of time in markets, supermarkets, shops.
(18:07):
My my dad used to go and buy his meat
like from the Hellal butchers, like because he was Muslim,
so he would always we always ate Hellal meat. And
one of my abiding memories was in Baalom before it gentrified,
before it became posh, when Balam was still a market
(18:29):
surrounded by some really odd shops here and there. Um,
I love I love Old Ballom. Old Ballam was quite magical,
but mostly because there was this my dad's favorite butcher
was in Ballom, and he would go in and inspect
all of the goats heads, like for the goat's head
souperies to make, and so each he'd be there, the
(18:52):
scull be picking up all these goats heads and it's
like my dad was inspecting the teeth. He's just looking
at the faces, looking at the eye. I just it
was so bonkers, but it became so normal. I mean,
I just were going in and inspecting goats heads with
my dad. Was a main memory of shopping with my dad.
And then we go to the market that was alongside
(19:14):
that butcher's where where they had like the yams, the plantains, everything,
And there was a little guinny and food shop there
as well. I think it's long gone now. That sold
all of the pepper sauce and the dubiously acquired dried
fish that we were entirely short was legal. Yeah, it's
(19:37):
very good though, it's delicious, but I'm not sure. I mean,
it used to be very easy to bring a lot
of things in from Ghana like people I have a
you know, things like snails and you know, the dried
fish and everything, all these things that you can't really
get here. I think it's a lot harder. You know,
there's there's dogs at the airport and stuff to stop
your briefings. Really but yeah, but did you get to Yeah, yeah,
(20:04):
we went back a few times when I was when
I was young, and it was yeah. I mean the
markets there are extraordinary. I mean it's really um a
lot of action, possibly too much action for me, but yeah,
because my auntie actually worked and worked at one of
the markets, and I remember going to visit her there
(20:25):
and just yeah, it was extraordinary, really extraordinary. A lot
of noise, a lot of chaos. Well you only cakes
that you only made, were you allowed? When I was younger,
only cakes? Really, I don't think anyone trusted my cooking.
My my my dad was very particular. He's he passed
away twenty sixteen, but he was very particular about what
(20:46):
he would and wouldn't eat. So he could never get
his head around white sauce. And I think this is
kind of a guinny and male thing. White sauce is
somehow not correct to him. So anything. If I put
anything in front of him that had like a white
sorce I'd seem to remember once trying to give him
I'd made a fish pie or something, and my mom
(21:07):
liked my fish pie. She could eat my fish pie.
My dad just couldn't even look at something with a
white It had to be red or brown. So yeah,
but I did. I as I got older, I did
used to do things. I'd come and deer the roast,
like we'd have like roast lamb or roast chicken, and
(21:29):
then if it burned, it was my fault. So I
used to like watch it religiously, and you know, take
it out and turn it and stuff. Did you paint
as a as a teenager? What did you know that?
I always made things. I always did things with my hands.
I always was always trying to make something, usually out
of cardboard or I mean drawing pictures. I did a
(21:51):
lot of drawing as a teenager. I started painting when
I was on my foundation course encouraged. They did not
encourage it. I mean they could see what I was into.
I think my dad was just baffled by the whole thing.
My mom was far more tolerant in a way. She
used to sit for me a lot. I wish you
(22:13):
could find those paintings. Actually, I don't know. That must
be buried in my parents' house somewhere. I did lots
of paintings of my mum, Drawings of my mum um
pretty accurate, actually, I think. I think at that point
they thought maybe there was something in it, you know,
because I could get a likeness, and school was like, um, yeah, yeah,
(22:35):
there was a I remember my high school, my secondary
school had a very very good art and drama department.
They had converted a whole building into just art drama,
which I remember thinking it was amazing. It was brand
new at the time, and it was the early late eighties,
early nineties, but it was brand new and that was
kind of unheard of around there. And so you went
(22:56):
to Falmouth. I went to Falmouth and then to the
Royal Academy, which was what was the difference was Foalnmouth
was Foalnmouth was very very calm. It's quite far away,
very far, very calm. I loved it. I had a
really good time there. It's amazing to be by the
(23:17):
water to study so in the somewhere that was just
so different to anywhere I'd ever been, so I was
born and raised in London, so it was I didn't
want to go anywhere that was a city because I
felt like I was in the city. You know, this
is London was so important to me. Yeah, it's where
(23:38):
it's kind of the end of the country in Cornwall,
which is I think the most. They do say that
it has more weather than anywhere else in the country.
They have percentage wise, more more of everything, more more weather,
they used to say that, but more weather in Cornwall
than anywhere else in the country. And the climb it
(24:00):
was quite insane, like it would rain, it could rain
non stop for weeks on end, months on end, and
then it could be really tropical as well. It was
like the most tropical point. There were palm trees, sandy beaches.
It really does, or at least it did back then,
feel like paradise. It was still quite sort of cut
off in the way that it felt because we didn't
(24:20):
have mobile phones and stuff yet there wasn't. I mean
a couple of people had one, but no one else did.
I'd been going to pay phones and stuff to make calls,
which seems odd now with one phone in the house. Yeah,
and it just had that nice feeling of being at
the end of the of the earth. To me, it
(24:41):
felt like I was in the middle of nowhere, which
was so liberating. With the tradition of painters, you know, yes, yeah,
and Nicholson, yeah, Yeatrick, Karen and York. Yeah, it was
a community, yeah, tradition. Yeah. And we had very great
We had great tutors, really good teachers who were who
were you know, living down there, very different pace, and
(25:03):
they'd all a lot of them had been in London
and just study, you know, as artists in London and
just thought, no this time to time together. Um a
lot of pasties. They had no money, money, Oh my goodness.
So that the old version, the traditional version was you'd
have this semicircle shaped pastry with a sort of woven
(25:27):
edge that's quite thick, like a twisted edge that's thick
that you could hold onto, and then inside traditionally you
would have half sweet and half savory. And it was
for the miners, I guess, to to be able to
hold the edge, which is the crust that they wouldn't
eat because it was dirty because they're holding it there,
(25:50):
and then they would eat the savory part and then
they would have dessert afterwards. Now, of course they don't
really do them like that anymore, because yeah, it wasn't
ideal to put the sweet and savory into the same
thing and split it. But yeah, we had a little Yeah,
I think that. Um so that's further my step. Someone
who was at the Royal College chargers design airline tableware
(26:13):
that was like a pasty kind of eat the table.
We used a lot of energy because we walked everywhere.
On one level, I was the fittest I've ever been,
probably also the most malnourished. Kind of malnourished, but very fat.
I remember one time we scraped our pennies together to
(26:35):
go for a fancy meal because we thought, well, I
think we know, we didn't even scrape pennies. I think
we We said we were going to use our credit
cards that night, the emergency credit cards that were student
credit cards, so there was a you know, you had
about ten pounds to spend on it anyway, And we
went to a fancy fish restaurant and took one look
at the menu and we were horrified because everything cost
(26:57):
more than ten pounds. And I ordered the prawns because
I thought, oh, this will be you know, it's not
often I get to have prawns too expensive, and they
brought us. I had a plate and the plate it
was twelve pounds. You know this there's a lot of money.
And there were six prawns on it, and I remember
being so upset. We were just so horrified because I
(27:20):
think we all got the prawns and we were all
just like, we're going to be hungry. We can be
really hungry after it, and we can't have anything else.
That's all of our money gone into these prawns. Were
so angry, but we left and I think we had toast.
Was still so hungry and we got back. That has
a very dead strong identity a Cornish food. And so
(27:41):
when you went back to London was it a big
difference food? Did you live at home when you came back?
I did. Yeah, I lived at home for the first
year and a half at the R. So when did
you have your first apartment? Okay, so I shared a
flat with two friends. Yeah, And what did you cut
(28:03):
when you had your own kitchen? What's that like? Well, they,
as I recall, if I remember correctly, they were both vegetarian.
So I kind of fell into step a little bit.
I didn't want to. I felt a bit bad bringing animals. Yeah,
I couldn't deal with the horror in their eyes every
time I get meat out, although I think I did
(28:25):
used to cook chicken from time to time, but yeah,
I don't. I don't remember. Actually, it's strange that period
of time, that was it because we used to eat
at the RA a lot. The RA canteen was amazing
back then at the RA schools canteens incredible. Yes, yeah,
it's the same one, same, the same place under the
in the dungeon under the building, and they had the
(28:47):
most incredible canteen there. We have a common thread. We
have many things in common, you and I, but one
of them is our huge respect for James Baldwin. Yeah,
and he was, you know, from me, a formidable character
and absolutely history. What is it? What was your linked to?
(29:07):
Oh gosh, I I remember living in crouch End. I
was coming to the end of my MFA at the
R and I just I can't. I think I just
stumbled on the fire next time, and I remember sitting
down and reading it in an afternoon on the porch
(29:30):
of the It's very strange flat we lived in and
It was quite an odd design because we were our
sort of porch area was the roof of the place
underneath us, and we were surrounded by um, the backs
of houses, and so he had the sky opening up
above you, but then these backs of houses and then
Alexandra Palace in the distance. It was kind of a
(29:52):
really amazing view. But you're kind of in this amphitheater
as well. So but and normally that bothered me having
the feet that people were watching. But I was so
I remember being so engrossed in this book over the
course of an afternoon that I just sat there and
read the whole thing. And Yeah, that that was really
that stayed with me, That gave me, gave me a
(30:16):
lot of strength. You went upstairs to the pastry kitchen,
what was that like? It's incredible up there. It's huge now,
(30:38):
it's extraordinary to see. It's it's such a simple, tidy,
neat environment to see all these huge, exciting things coming
out of and making others cakes because we're doing an
event tonight. Yeah, they actually had the take so welcome
to the pastry kitchen hidden lair upstairs. My name's Bella
(31:06):
Tubs and I'm the head pastry chef at the River
Cafe cooking and baking. The net is an amazing irons,
but also there's a great baker, so she wanted to
see the lenta, almond and lemon cake. So I'll leave
it to you guys, how do I make a plent cake?
So we cream the equal parts butter and sugar together,
(31:29):
and we tend to add all of our lemon zest
and lemon juice at that point, just to make sure
it's like fully infused into the butter, make sure it's
beautifully light and fluffy before our kitchen. He's over there,
and we'd yeah, just leave the butter and sugar creaming
for at least a good ten minutes before we then
start adding our eggs and are all our dry ingredients.
(31:51):
You can ground the almonds really finely into a beautiful
flower with the plentyin, and then yeah, slowly but surely
add the sort of dry stuff with the eggs. Right,
And so is this because again I was always taught
you fold, you fold the powder in, you fold the flower,
(32:11):
you fold them. Does it make a difference with a
plantiquet because the folding was to keep the air in
or something to keep it. So we use a paddle
in our mixer. So essentially that's the same sort of
process as folding. I think if you were to do
it my hand, sort of very romantic wast speed. Is
it the essence in the oven straight away? So yeah,
(32:34):
we use a paddle and then incorporate all the ingredients together,
line a tin on the base and side, and then
in the oven for an hour and a half at
one fifty and a half one fifty and is that
depending on size. So this is for us, this is it,
And yeah, that will tend to serve about twenty portions
(32:55):
in the restaurant, give or take. But it's lovely to
have a breakfast. It's a really nice cake. You're feeling
very tacative after tea or I'm trying to think of
any other time of day. But yeah, and then we
serve it with this gorgeous Taranos sauce over the blood
oranges and a dollop of creme fresh. It sounds good.
(33:18):
It's the most beautiful cake I think we serve on
in this adulty side of the restaurant and school, just
with the yellows and the sort of burnt oranges. And
this is because a River cafe but up until about
four years ago, we never had a pastry chef. You know,
we never had a pastry kitchen. We just all made cakes.
(33:40):
You know. It's the idea that every chef had to
make a cake, you know, and had to make it
a tart, and it was all part of the thing.
And then, first of all, some of them, I don't know,
I feel like that, but some people are really good
at cooking, you know, beef for lamb or fish or vegetables,
and they don't like making cakes. And then some people
or just love making cakes and don't like doing doing
(34:03):
everything else. So yeah, we and then I guess we
got bigger, and then we had that space. And then
you used to come in the morning and somebody would
be rolling out, you know, pizza dough or pasta filling
and next to a nemesis and alarm to go off.
I have to stop making the tomato sauce and go
take something out of the oven. So we've got very
grown up and very professional had a pastry kitchen. Yeah,
(34:25):
and it's all good, but it's a little bit far
away because sometimes we don't go it up there. And yeah,
so it's a dream, Yeah, it's a dream. To have
that much space, Yeah, to bake it. And it's quite calm,
isn't it. Yeah, when you go up there, they're making Yeah,
they're making all those cakes. Durro so told me that
you you cook with rigor that you when you bake
your cakes, that there's a kind of discipline and a
(34:47):
kind of organization and away. So maybe you were brought
up that way or do you think it's something you've
always Yeah, very much, so, very much so. My dad
was My dad was a kind of cook who would
stand over something and chick cook. And you can send
anything else to be a dereliction of duty. Like you
don't leave your post. You just stand there and stare
at it. If it's boiling an egg, cooking a curry,
(35:09):
you stand there and you don't leave it because it's
going to burn. I've chilled out a bit with that.
But there are certain things you make that you have
you can't leave alone, like porridge, Like I had porridge
this morning. When have you been in doing your painting
all day? And then you do have friends, would you
like to cook it? So the last I did cook
(35:32):
dinner for a bunch of friends a few weeks ago,
and I'm very very indecisive and probably not not the
most confident of cooks. So I cook. I always cook
like five things and the hope that somebody will like
one thing and eat it. So I don't do that.
With your painting, I do pretty much. Yeah, yeah, it's
(35:57):
the same way. Paint really a lot. Just do a
to figure out which one works. So I cooked a
venison pie topped with like mash. So I did that, um,
roast chicken. I forgot what the other thing? Vegetables do
you like? I love cooking kale and carola narrow and
(36:20):
things like that. I kind of almost dick thementt hot
water to drag them out so they're almost raw, which
drives my mom insane because she hates it. She's like,
it's tough, it's just drewey. Why don't you cook? I
was always saying that, Mom, you have to see them
in the goodness. You need this, you know, you're you're
you need you need all these vitamins, and you have
(36:40):
to just get through it because it's good for you.
I don't know if that's true, but I think it's
always always. You know, in England they boil everything. They
used to, Yeah, boil everything for hours. As a friend
of mine used to say, you know when when suddenly
people started working, they say, oh, we only you know, gosh,
we don't have time to cook. So we're only going
(37:02):
to be able to cook the vegetables for half an hour. Yeah,
but then you know, then the Italians do cook them
for a long time. They don't have anything authentic except
for pasta the time. Vegetables are usually cooked for a
long time, but they're usually stewed in olive oil, or
if they're if they're boiled and they're boiled to they're
(37:25):
quite soft, but then a lot of olive oil eleven
after that. Yeah, we talked about food and growing up
ban Ghana and painting and traveling and cooking, and so
I think we also think how food does affect our memories.
And it's been great learning about your life through through
(37:45):
food and your memories. And I suppose the last question
to you, and if you were to say that there
was a food that you might turn to when you
need comfort, So food that not necessarily when you're hungry,
but when you feel that somehow eating something will make
you feel better, Maybe you feel more loved, less tired,
(38:08):
less lonely, less invisible whatever it is. Is there a
food that you would go to for comfort? Yeah? Yeah,
there is actually, and it's it's hard to get right.
So um, you have to buy the right ones and
they have to be the right level of right. Spence
is killing me. They can't be too right and they can't. Okay, okay,
(38:30):
give me quiz. It's something that looks like one thing
but is actually another. It's like a large version of another. Ye,
but did you say you got the outset it? They
look like banana zad Rogers, so zad Rogers, our producers
(38:54):
just tell my my it. Don't even let me get
a story. I don't think so. So um. But the
particularly the the the red what we call the red
plantains to the ripe one because it's and I love
(39:15):
it because it reminds me of my mom and my
dad and being at home and it was always a
real treat and my mom will still cook it when
I go home. But you you, we tend to do
it the lower cholesterol version. So cut them and roast
them in the oven. But like I said, they have
to be at the right point of right. Nothing I
(39:39):
know out of the skin, no oil, nothing, just in
a non stick, a really good non stick pan, because
I'm the wise that you won't get them off, and
then you serve them with peanuts. Oh yeah, peanuts and plantains.
That's it. Okay, yeah, comfort, very comforting. Okay, Dad, tomorrow
morning in the pain kitchen, show us how you do,
(40:05):
and thank you so much for coming on. Thank you.
It's pleasure, thank you, absolute pleasure. The River Cafe Lookbook
is 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
(40:28):
to prepare recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics
that have been specially adapted for new cooks. The River
Cafe Lookbook Recipes for cooks of all ages. Ruthie's Table
four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios. For
(40:49):
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. If you were in London in November twenty twenty,
then you might have been as I was lucky to
go to see Fly in League with the Night, an
exhibition of paintings by Lynette Yadam Boochi, artist and writer,
(00:22):
a retrospective of seventy of her works from two thousand
and three to the present. It closed after two weeks
due to the pandemic, but is now on again, the
first time the Tate has shown an exhibition twice. Lynette
is a writer, a painter and also a magical baker.
(00:46):
Today we're sitting here in the River Cafe to talk
about food, words, paint, in other words, all the ingredients
to make something like Lynette beautiful, cell and ed are
you going to read s? The recipe first, and the
recipe of chosen is Polenta almond and lemon cake serves
(01:09):
ten four hundred and fifty grams of unsalted butter, softened
four hundred and fifty grams of granulated sugar, four hundred
and fifty grams ground almonds, two teaspoons vanilla extract, six eggs.
The finely grated zest of four lemons, the juice of
(01:33):
one lemon, two hundred and twenty five grams of polenta,
one and a half teaspoons of baking powder. Preheat the
oven to one hundred and sixty degrees centigrade. Butter and
line a thirty centimeter round and seven point five centimeter
deep cake pan with parchment paper. Beat the butter and
(01:58):
sugar together until pale and light. Stir in the ground
almonds and vanilla. Beat in the eggs one at a time.
Fold in the lemon, zest and juice, the blenta, baking powder,
and salt. Spoon into the prepared pan. Bake for forty
(02:22):
five to fifty minutes, or until the cake is set
and deep brown on top. Serve with crem fresh and berries.
I'd like to talk about being an artist and how
you eat. I think you're here a lot, which is
(02:43):
really nice, A fair bit, yeah, but I find that
I also I generally feel better if I don't eat
out a lot, so I don't. I don't tend to
eat out as much when I'm very, very busy when
I'm working, because it's it's so much. I just just
(03:03):
physically to regulate my own kind of sleep and everything
when I'm trying to get stuff done, having a certain
routine with what you're eating and the time you're eating
at like I can't eat late. Like for example, the
last couple of months, I've been working on a deadline
and um, but there's a dead a show. I have
a show. I have a show at the Googen Him
(03:24):
and Bill Bao the end of my beautiful building. Um, difficult,
complicated building, but wonderful. I like a lot of the
contemporary architecture museums. They're great for architecture, not great for
hanging stuff on the amazing building. Yeah and yeah. So
(03:46):
I've been really busy with that, and I've found that
by sticking with a with a kind of a bit
of a routine in terms of meals and certain times,
I'm just able to get more done and get to
bet at a decent hour. It is solitary. Yeah, you know,
I don't know if you have other people in the
studio with you. You have a jadline now, but other
(04:08):
days when you have a routine that is very structured,
so you can quite try to call you up and
say Lonett, let's go and have lunch. Would you say
I can't, so I probably say yes, yes, but I should,
I should really not answer the phone, but I I
normally so three days of the week, I'll get up
(04:30):
and train with a trainer online and like about sort
of training normally around eight o'clock and then breakfast and
then work. Yeah. Yeah, so and do you work straight
through you I stopped for lunch. What mornings painting wise
or studio wise tend to be a bit slow. I
(04:52):
take a while to get warmed up. Do you find
the solitude of the day something that you treasure and
you liked or do you like nighttime? Are you ready
to see It's funny by nighttime, I'm ready to see people,
But I also feel like during the day it's solitary.
But it's I'm so busy, I'm so in it, I
don't even I kind of forget. I couldn't have anyone there.
(05:14):
So yeah, too much work now. But yeah, And you
know you're going to one of the great cities for
food when you go to Bilbao because Sebastian is right
next door. Yeah, and they're fantastic restaurants there. Yeah, great
culture of food. Yeah. You travel, you find out about
where you're going to look into it first and explore
(05:36):
the food. Yeah, when I sent in the cities that
you've really liked food, really liked, so I think. I
mean I spent three months in Marseilla, three months on
the residency many years ago. The pastries there were out
of this world. I remember, the pastries were incredible there.
That was one. So back and forth to France quite
(05:56):
a lot for many years, and and many trips over
the years to the South of Spain as well, which
I can I have funny memories of eating there because
we always ate so late. Yes, the food I almost
don't remember it because I just remember feeling like we've
eaten too late and I don't feel very well. Yeah,
(06:17):
so at midnight. Yeah nothing. I don't know how people
do it. Indigestion, how you work the next day. Yeah,
I've really never understood it. Um. Yes, although a lot
of trips to the to the US, which of course
is just so much variety. But yeah, I do love
(06:42):
soul food in New York as well, just like going
to Harlem and having soul food and these really kind
of very down to earth, very chill, very relaxed diners
and eateries. There a lot of your friends are so yeah, yeah,
I got yeah, artists, curators, writers, that kind of thing.
(07:05):
Are you having any shows in New York? Not for
the foreseeable. There will be a US tour that I
can't really say much about yet. But a couple of
years time. Yeah, I was Richard. My husband had got
a prize in the University of Virginia and it's called
the Jefferson Prize. And I was washing my hands in
(07:27):
the bathroom and a woman came in and she was
just awarded the prize as well as the first African
American to graduate from law school. And I think it
probably was the sixties. It was horrifically late, and I
said to her. We started talking and I said, what
was harder being a black woman or being a woman
(07:50):
to get this prize? And she said, definitely a woman.
At that time, she said there was racism of course
in the South, that it was vile and it was strong,
but the antagonist for her being a woman. And I
was wondering about in the art world, what your experience,
you know, just to deviate from from food, what was
your experience of being a black woman in Britain as
(08:12):
a painter. I mean to be completely honest, it was.
It was very very odd in you know, because it
wasn't that not that long ago. But when I think
about when I first first was out of art school
completely and working away and kind of oblivious to certain
(08:37):
things because I never expected a career. I never went
into this expecting any kind of success or anything, because
you don't. It's it's a crazy path. It doesn't You're
not guaranteed anything. But thinking back to then, the level
of invisibility I had, like the fact that I remember
(08:59):
being at events and in situations or openings where I
would be completely invisible, like nobody would talk to me,
someone might try and hand me their coat, someone might
ask me to bring them a drink. That that was
my abiding memory of say, the period from two thousand
(09:20):
and three to maybe two twelve eleven, something like that.
And because I wasn't I mean, nobody really knew who
I was or I didn't really have a I mean,
in some way, I couldn't. I couldn't get arrested for
the first ten years of making work, which was actually
really liberating. I don't complain about that because it was
(09:41):
actually a really good time to get things done and
I was working regardless, I didn't really care, and I
had enough going on for me with different projects, really
important shows and things that I was involved in during
that time. That kept me very motivated, and I met
a lot of wonderful people, mostly US who were and
(10:02):
still are really big supporters of mine early on. But
it was in the more general art well and certainly
in the UK, that invisibility, that thing of being invisible,
of people turning their backs on you at dinner, of
not talking to you, of not being included in anything
(10:25):
because not just because people saw you was an issues
based artist or someone who was niche in a way
that they didn't want to engage with. That at some
points was difficult, that would that hurt in a certain way,
But at the time I can't say I really cared,
(10:46):
and that hasn't changed, If anything, it's increased. I really
don't care now. And the same people who would turn
their backs on me and asked me to take their
coats or completely ignore me in the seven two thousand
and six and now prostrating themselves on the floor to me,
which I still don't care about. I still don't care,
(11:09):
and I think that was that was That's been my
abiding mantra is, particularly when things have been really were
really difficult, or reached a crisis point in some way,
I realized, actually, all of this stuff, it doesn't really matter.
That the thing that I've always really cared about was
the work I was doing, the people that I think with,
(11:33):
the people that I respect, the people that I work
with and who have always been big supporters of mine,
and I've been big supporters of theirs, and what we've
done together and built together was That's what matters these
kind of rather that a scene or a career on
(11:54):
art World has never ever mattered, It doesn't matter. It's
just it's it's ever been a concern of mine because
it was never mine. It was never something I was
a part of. So I kind of to answer your
question a very long winded sort of right, I didn't, Yeah,
I don't, I don't. Yeah, does it does it? If
it doesn't matter to you, doesn't matter that it matters
(12:17):
to other people experiencing it. So you know Edward's story
about walking into Vogue and you know, being told to
use the side entrance to deliver or something you know
that matters, and yeah, you know, And so there's a
sort of there is a political aspect to the invisibility
that is wrong. It's wrong, and it could be wrong
(12:39):
as a woman. You know, when you know we noticed,
you know, we know that we go to parties and
a certain kind of person or a young person that's ignored,
or a quiet person that's ignored, or a black person
that's ignored, or you know, somebody wearing the wrong dress.
It and it's great to have the confidence that that
is something that your work can see through. But then
(13:00):
for other people, yeah, you know who are experience, who
don't have that, it's yeah, no, it's really hard. And
I think that's why the things that get you through
when you're younger, or you're not as confident, or you
don't have the kind of agency will be that circle
of people or that circle of support that really even
(13:21):
you know, if it was even if it's your family,
even if it's your your partner or you know, you
need someone to turn to who can say, yeah, I
just saw that. Yeah I get it. I know. And
I think because these things still happen, It's not like
it doesn't happen to me anymore. It still does, you know. Still,
(13:42):
it's that classic thing when people before people know who
you are, they don't respect you. I have a problem
with that. It shouldn't matter who I am. I don't
I'm not someone who goes somewhere I don't believe in.
I don't see myself any differently than I did twenty
years ago. So I'm not going to go in somewhere
and say do you know where I am? Because that's
ridiculous to me. But I shouldn't have to anither anyone else.
(14:03):
And it's it's having it's that sense. I mean a
friend was telling me a story yesterday of something that
happened to them very similar that this, you know, being
followed around a store. I mean that that kind of thing.
You shouldn't have to go in and prove anything in
order to be respected, and that that's the difference. It's
(14:25):
I think, was it Nina Simone? You said, you know,
love us, will leave us alone. It's it's simple. What
do you make when you make cakes? You know, wow, everything,
But my favorite thing to bake is any type of
(14:48):
sponge cake because that was really I learned to bake
from my mum and she was she did a catering
course in the seventies and yeah, she's nurse she's very
busy work nights, as did my dad, both nurses, but
baking for her was just such a joy. She loved
doing it, and I used to love watching. So I
(15:09):
would stand or sit and just watch her do it intensely,
and I always wanted to help, and for many years
she wouldn't let me because I'd messed it up. But
just watching and watching and watching, and those little things
that just stay with you forever, like that. Never ever
ever opened the oven before a certain point, Yeah, because
I could never wait. I was really I wanted to
(15:30):
see it. I want to see it rise on what
was happening. And I would always panic and open the
oven and then it would sink. And it became a
kind of running joke that my cakes would always sink
because I was too impatient, and I'd always turn the
oven up too high. Yeah. Yeah, but a sponge is
really hard to make. Yeah, there's science, it's one of
the easiest, you know, recipes, but actually to make a
(15:51):
good sponge, as a town would your mother was she
was born in Ghana. She was born in Ghana. Yeah. Yeah,
she like, oh, she's amazing, she's wonderful, she does it.
She's she's my my hero. Did she come as a
young child here? No? No, no, she came in her twenties,
as did my dad. Well, my dad was a bit older,
(16:12):
but they came in the nineteen sixty They met and
Gharana married and Garner moved here to work as nurses
settled down and we all came along in the seventies.
There's three of us. I have two older brothers. So
going back to the early days, what was it like
growing up in your household if your parents were both
nurses and they were working. Ye? Did they work nights
and days or ships or did you nights? Yeah? So
(16:34):
there was always one of them home. Would you have
a family? Yeah? All around the table one thing I
mean we did. We did at the weekends more I guess,
and when they were both home than we'd all be
around the table. But weekends, I remember, breakfasts on the
Sunday were real everyone together. Oh omelets. My dad made
(16:56):
a very good omelet, a kind of everything, but the
kitchen sink over which was very good, very very good.
He used to put baked beans into the open instress,
which was bonkers, but yeah, it's really good. Would they
have cooked in Ghana? Do you think or did they really?
You know they both? I think they both always cooked
my dad. I mean we we we ate a lot
(17:19):
of gunny and food when I was a kid, like
foo food which I can't eat now I don't. I
don't like it anymore. I think the traditional way it's
made in Ghanna is with pounded Um. I'm going to
get this wrong. Cassava and plantain together and it's it's
pounded until it becomes like a big sort of Doughey
mass and you have it with with stew or soup
(17:42):
with meat and fish. Um, it's very heavy. And did
you grow up with other friends who were gunny and
it was there a community? Yeah? I mean we had
all of our my parents had a large sort of
network circle of friends. And where where was this in London?
South South? I remembered spending a lot of time in markets, supermarkets, shops.
(18:07):
My my dad used to go and buy his meat
like from the Hellal butchers, like because he was Muslim,
so he would always we always ate Hellal meat. And
one of my abiding memories was in Baalom before it gentrified,
before it became posh, when Balam was still a market
(18:29):
surrounded by some really odd shops here and there. Um,
I love I love Old Ballom. Old Ballam was quite magical,
but mostly because there was this my dad's favorite butcher
was in Ballom, and he would go in and inspect
all of the goats heads, like for the goat's head
souperies to make, and so each he'd be there, the
(18:52):
scull be picking up all these goats heads and it's
like my dad was inspecting the teeth. He's just looking
at the faces, looking at the eye. I just it
was so bonkers, but it became so normal. I mean,
I just were going in and inspecting goats heads with
my dad. Was a main memory of shopping with my dad.
And then we go to the market that was alongside
(19:14):
that butcher's where where they had like the yams, the plantains, everything,
And there was a little guinny and food shop there
as well. I think it's long gone now. That sold
all of the pepper sauce and the dubiously acquired dried
fish that we were entirely short was legal. Yeah, it's
(19:37):
very good though, it's delicious, but I'm not sure. I mean,
it used to be very easy to bring a lot
of things in from Ghana like people I have a
you know, things like snails and you know, the dried
fish and everything, all these things that you can't really
get here. I think it's a lot harder. You know,
there's there's dogs at the airport and stuff to stop
your briefings. Really but yeah, but did you get to Yeah, yeah,
(20:04):
we went back a few times when I was when
I was young, and it was yeah. I mean the
markets there are extraordinary. I mean it's really um a
lot of action, possibly too much action for me, but yeah,
because my auntie actually worked and worked at one of
the markets, and I remember going to visit her there
(20:25):
and just yeah, it was extraordinary, really extraordinary. A lot
of noise, a lot of chaos. Well you only cakes
that you only made, were you allowed? When I was younger,
only cakes? Really, I don't think anyone trusted my cooking.
My my my dad was very particular. He's he passed
away twenty sixteen, but he was very particular about what
(20:46):
he would and wouldn't eat. So he could never get
his head around white sauce. And I think this is
kind of a guinny and male thing. White sauce is
somehow not correct to him. So anything. If I put
anything in front of him that had like a white
sorce I'd seem to remember once trying to give him
I'd made a fish pie or something, and my mom
(21:07):
liked my fish pie. She could eat my fish pie.
My dad just couldn't even look at something with a
white It had to be red or brown. So yeah,
but I did. I as I got older, I did
used to do things. I'd come and deer the roast,
like we'd have like roast lamb or roast chicken, and
(21:29):
then if it burned, it was my fault. So I
used to like watch it religiously, and you know, take
it out and turn it and stuff. Did you paint
as a as a teenager? What did you know that?
I always made things. I always did things with my hands.
I always was always trying to make something, usually out
of cardboard or I mean drawing pictures. I did a
(21:51):
lot of drawing as a teenager. I started painting when
I was on my foundation course encouraged. They did not
encourage it. I mean they could see what I was into.
I think my dad was just baffled by the whole thing.
My mom was far more tolerant in a way. She
used to sit for me a lot. I wish you
(22:13):
could find those paintings. Actually, I don't know. That must
be buried in my parents' house somewhere. I did lots
of paintings of my mum, Drawings of my mum um
pretty accurate, actually, I think. I think at that point
they thought maybe there was something in it, you know,
because I could get a likeness, and school was like, um, yeah, yeah,
(22:35):
there was a I remember my high school, my secondary
school had a very very good art and drama department.
They had converted a whole building into just art drama,
which I remember thinking it was amazing. It was brand
new at the time, and it was the early late eighties,
early nineties, but it was brand new and that was
kind of unheard of around there. And so you went
(22:56):
to Falmouth. I went to Falmouth and then to the
Royal Academy, which was what was the difference was Foalnmouth
was Foalnmouth was very very calm. It's quite far away,
very far, very calm. I loved it. I had a
really good time there. It's amazing to be by the
(23:17):
water to study so in the somewhere that was just
so different to anywhere I'd ever been, so I was
born and raised in London, so it was I didn't
want to go anywhere that was a city because I
felt like I was in the city. You know, this
is London was so important to me. Yeah, it's where
(23:38):
it's kind of the end of the country in Cornwall,
which is I think the most. They do say that
it has more weather than anywhere else in the country.
They have percentage wise, more more of everything, more more weather,
they used to say that, but more weather in Cornwall
than anywhere else in the country. And the climb it
(24:00):
was quite insane, like it would rain, it could rain
non stop for weeks on end, months on end, and
then it could be really tropical as well. It was
like the most tropical point. There were palm trees, sandy beaches.
It really does, or at least it did back then,
feel like paradise. It was still quite sort of cut
off in the way that it felt because we didn't
(24:20):
have mobile phones and stuff yet there wasn't. I mean
a couple of people had one, but no one else did.
I'd been going to pay phones and stuff to make calls,
which seems odd now with one phone in the house. Yeah,
and it just had that nice feeling of being at
the end of the of the earth. To me, it
(24:41):
felt like I was in the middle of nowhere, which
was so liberating. With the tradition of painters, you know, yes, yeah,
and Nicholson, yeah, Yeatrick, Karen and York. Yeah, it was
a community, yeah, tradition. Yeah. And we had very great
We had great tutors, really good teachers who were who
were you know, living down there, very different pace, and
(25:03):
they'd all a lot of them had been in London
and just study, you know, as artists in London and
just thought, no this time to time together. Um a
lot of pasties. They had no money, money, Oh my goodness.
So that the old version, the traditional version was you'd
have this semicircle shaped pastry with a sort of woven
(25:27):
edge that's quite thick, like a twisted edge that's thick
that you could hold onto, and then inside traditionally you
would have half sweet and half savory. And it was
for the miners, I guess, to to be able to
hold the edge, which is the crust that they wouldn't
eat because it was dirty because they're holding it there,
(25:50):
and then they would eat the savory part and then
they would have dessert afterwards. Now, of course they don't
really do them like that anymore, because yeah, it wasn't
ideal to put the sweet and savory into the same
thing and split it. But yeah, we had a little Yeah,
I think that. Um so that's further my step. Someone
who was at the Royal College chargers design airline tableware
(26:13):
that was like a pasty kind of eat the table.
We used a lot of energy because we walked everywhere.
On one level, I was the fittest I've ever been,
probably also the most malnourished. Kind of malnourished, but very fat.
I remember one time we scraped our pennies together to
(26:35):
go for a fancy meal because we thought, well, I
think we know, we didn't even scrape pennies. I think
we We said we were going to use our credit
cards that night, the emergency credit cards that were student
credit cards, so there was a you know, you had
about ten pounds to spend on it anyway, And we
went to a fancy fish restaurant and took one look
at the menu and we were horrified because everything cost
(26:57):
more than ten pounds. And I ordered the prawns because
I thought, oh, this will be you know, it's not
often I get to have prawns too expensive, and they
brought us. I had a plate and the plate it
was twelve pounds. You know this there's a lot of money.
And there were six prawns on it, and I remember
being so upset. We were just so horrified because I
(27:20):
think we all got the prawns and we were all
just like, we're going to be hungry. We can be
really hungry after it, and we can't have anything else.
That's all of our money gone into these prawns. Were
so angry, but we left and I think we had toast.
Was still so hungry and we got back. That has
a very dead strong identity a Cornish food. And so
(27:41):
when you went back to London was it a big
difference food? Did you live at home when you came back?
I did. Yeah, I lived at home for the first
year and a half at the R. So when did
you have your first apartment? Okay, so I shared a
flat with two friends. Yeah, And what did you cut
(28:03):
when you had your own kitchen? What's that like? Well, they,
as I recall, if I remember correctly, they were both vegetarian.
So I kind of fell into step a little bit.
I didn't want to. I felt a bit bad bringing animals. Yeah,
I couldn't deal with the horror in their eyes every
time I get meat out, although I think I did
(28:25):
used to cook chicken from time to time, but yeah,
I don't. I don't remember. Actually, it's strange that period
of time, that was it because we used to eat
at the RA a lot. The RA canteen was amazing
back then at the RA schools canteens incredible. Yes, yeah,
it's the same one, same, the same place under the
in the dungeon under the building, and they had the
(28:47):
most incredible canteen there. We have a common thread. We
have many things in common, you and I, but one
of them is our huge respect for James Baldwin. Yeah,
and he was, you know, from me, a formidable character
and absolutely history. What is it? What was your linked to?
(29:07):
Oh gosh, I I remember living in crouch End. I
was coming to the end of my MFA at the
R and I just I can't. I think I just
stumbled on the fire next time, and I remember sitting
down and reading it in an afternoon on the porch
(29:30):
of the It's very strange flat we lived in and
It was quite an odd design because we were our
sort of porch area was the roof of the place
underneath us, and we were surrounded by um, the backs
of houses, and so he had the sky opening up
above you, but then these backs of houses and then
Alexandra Palace in the distance. It was kind of a
(29:52):
really amazing view. But you're kind of in this amphitheater
as well. So but and normally that bothered me having
the feet that people were watching. But I was so
I remember being so engrossed in this book over the
course of an afternoon that I just sat there and
read the whole thing. And Yeah, that that was really
that stayed with me, That gave me, gave me a
(30:16):
lot of strength. You went upstairs to the pastry kitchen,
what was that like? It's incredible up there. It's huge now,
(30:38):
it's extraordinary to see. It's it's such a simple, tidy,
neat environment to see all these huge, exciting things coming
out of and making others cakes because we're doing an
event tonight. Yeah, they actually had the take so welcome
to the pastry kitchen hidden lair upstairs. My name's Bella
(31:06):
Tubs and I'm the head pastry chef at the River
Cafe cooking and baking. The net is an amazing irons,
but also there's a great baker, so she wanted to
see the lenta, almond and lemon cake. So I'll leave
it to you guys, how do I make a plent cake?
So we cream the equal parts butter and sugar together,
(31:29):
and we tend to add all of our lemon zest
and lemon juice at that point, just to make sure
it's like fully infused into the butter, make sure it's
beautifully light and fluffy before our kitchen. He's over there,
and we'd yeah, just leave the butter and sugar creaming
for at least a good ten minutes before we then
start adding our eggs and are all our dry ingredients.
(31:51):
You can ground the almonds really finely into a beautiful
flower with the plentyin, and then yeah, slowly but surely
add the sort of dry stuff with the eggs. Right,
And so is this because again I was always taught
you fold, you fold the powder in, you fold the flower,
(32:11):
you fold them. Does it make a difference with a
plantiquet because the folding was to keep the air in
or something to keep it. So we use a paddle
in our mixer. So essentially that's the same sort of
process as folding. I think if you were to do
it my hand, sort of very romantic wast speed. Is
it the essence in the oven straight away? So yeah,
(32:34):
we use a paddle and then incorporate all the ingredients together,
line a tin on the base and side, and then
in the oven for an hour and a half at
one fifty and a half one fifty and is that
depending on size. So this is for us, this is it,
And yeah, that will tend to serve about twenty portions
(32:55):
in the restaurant, give or take. But it's lovely to
have a breakfast. It's a really nice cake. You're feeling
very tacative after tea or I'm trying to think of
any other time of day. But yeah, and then we
serve it with this gorgeous Taranos sauce over the blood
oranges and a dollop of creme fresh. It sounds good.
(33:18):
It's the most beautiful cake I think we serve on
in this adulty side of the restaurant and school, just
with the yellows and the sort of burnt oranges. And
this is because a River cafe but up until about
four years ago, we never had a pastry chef. You know,
we never had a pastry kitchen. We just all made cakes.
(33:40):
You know. It's the idea that every chef had to
make a cake, you know, and had to make it
a tart, and it was all part of the thing.
And then, first of all, some of them, I don't know,
I feel like that, but some people are really good
at cooking, you know, beef for lamb or fish or vegetables,
and they don't like making cakes. And then some people
or just love making cakes and don't like doing doing
(34:03):
everything else. So yeah, we and then I guess we
got bigger, and then we had that space. And then
you used to come in the morning and somebody would
be rolling out, you know, pizza dough or pasta filling
and next to a nemesis and alarm to go off.
I have to stop making the tomato sauce and go
take something out of the oven. So we've got very
grown up and very professional had a pastry kitchen. Yeah,
(34:25):
and it's all good, but it's a little bit far
away because sometimes we don't go it up there. And yeah,
so it's a dream, Yeah, it's a dream. To have
that much space, Yeah, to bake it. And it's quite calm,
isn't it. Yeah, when you go up there, they're making Yeah,
they're making all those cakes. Durro so told me that
you you cook with rigor that you when you bake
your cakes, that there's a kind of discipline and a
(34:47):
kind of organization and away. So maybe you were brought
up that way or do you think it's something you've
always Yeah, very much, so, very much so. My dad
was My dad was a kind of cook who would
stand over something and chick cook. And you can send
anything else to be a dereliction of duty. Like you
don't leave your post. You just stand there and stare
at it. If it's boiling an egg, cooking a curry,
(35:09):
you stand there and you don't leave it because it's
going to burn. I've chilled out a bit with that.
But there are certain things you make that you have
you can't leave alone, like porridge, Like I had porridge
this morning. When have you been in doing your painting
all day? And then you do have friends, would you
like to cook it? So the last I did cook
(35:32):
dinner for a bunch of friends a few weeks ago,
and I'm very very indecisive and probably not not the
most confident of cooks. So I cook. I always cook
like five things and the hope that somebody will like
one thing and eat it. So I don't do that.
With your painting, I do pretty much. Yeah, yeah, it's
(35:57):
the same way. Paint really a lot. Just do a
to figure out which one works. So I cooked a
venison pie topped with like mash. So I did that, um,
roast chicken. I forgot what the other thing? Vegetables do
you like? I love cooking kale and carola narrow and
(36:20):
things like that. I kind of almost dick thementt hot
water to drag them out so they're almost raw, which
drives my mom insane because she hates it. She's like,
it's tough, it's just drewey. Why don't you cook? I
was always saying that, Mom, you have to see them
in the goodness. You need this, you know, you're you're
you need you need all these vitamins, and you have
(36:40):
to just get through it because it's good for you.
I don't know if that's true, but I think it's
always always. You know, in England they boil everything. They
used to, Yeah, boil everything for hours. As a friend
of mine used to say, you know when when suddenly
people started working, they say, oh, we only you know, gosh,
we don't have time to cook. So we're only going
(37:02):
to be able to cook the vegetables for half an hour. Yeah,
but then you know, then the Italians do cook them
for a long time. They don't have anything authentic except
for pasta the time. Vegetables are usually cooked for a
long time, but they're usually stewed in olive oil, or
if they're if they're boiled and they're boiled to they're
(37:25):
quite soft, but then a lot of olive oil eleven
after that. Yeah, we talked about food and growing up
ban Ghana and painting and traveling and cooking, and so
I think we also think how food does affect our memories.
And it's been great learning about your life through through
(37:45):
food and your memories. And I suppose the last question
to you, and if you were to say that there
was a food that you might turn to when you
need comfort, So food that not necessarily when you're hungry,
but when you feel that somehow eating something will make
you feel better, Maybe you feel more loved, less tired,
(38:08):
less lonely, less invisible whatever it is. Is there a
food that you would go to for comfort? Yeah? Yeah,
there is actually, and it's it's hard to get right.
So um, you have to buy the right ones and
they have to be the right level of right. Spence
is killing me. They can't be too right and they can't. Okay, okay,
(38:30):
give me quiz. It's something that looks like one thing
but is actually another. It's like a large version of another. Ye,
but did you say you got the outset it? They
look like banana zad Rogers, so zad Rogers, our producers
(38:54):
just tell my my it. Don't even let me get
a story. I don't think so. So um. But the
particularly the the the red what we call the red
plantains to the ripe one because it's and I love
(39:15):
it because it reminds me of my mom and my
dad and being at home and it was always a
real treat and my mom will still cook it when
I go home. But you you, we tend to do
it the lower cholesterol version. So cut them and roast
them in the oven. But like I said, they have
to be at the right point of right. Nothing I
(39:39):
know out of the skin, no oil, nothing, just in
a non stick, a really good non stick pan, because
I'm the wise that you won't get them off, and
then you serve them with peanuts. Oh yeah, peanuts and plantains.
That's it. Okay, yeah, comfort, very comforting. Okay, Dad, tomorrow
morning in the pain kitchen, show us how you do,
(40:05):
and thank you so much for coming on. Thank you.
It's pleasure, thank you, absolute pleasure. The River Cafe Lookbook
is 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
(40:28):
to prepare recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics
that have been specially adapted for new cooks. The River
Cafe Lookbook Recipes for cooks of all ages. Ruthie's Table
four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios. For
(40:49):
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.