July 24, 2023 • 37 mins
Author of books on Art history, Dutch history, Jewish history, French history, and now Foreign Bodies explores medical history - Simon Schama is one of the broadest and most influential historians of our time. His television series - ‘Civilisation’ ‘ The Story of the Jews’ and ‘The Power of Art’ have reached millions of viewers.
The world knows this about Simon Schama, but I know something else - Simon is passionate about food, obsessed with the quality of ingredients, an excellent cook who thinks nothing better than preparing a meal for his family. What a man.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Ruthie's Table for a production of iHeartRadio and
Adami's Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Last night, I was with my good friends Josh Berger
and Alexander Crapenzano. I said I needed to go and
write the introduction for Simon Sharma, today's guest, knowing he
had taught them both at Harvard twenty years ago. As
good friends do, they did my work for me.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Simon Shama I never missed his class, and the other
thing that I would never want to miss was I
wanted to see what waistcoat and what glasses he would wear,
because he was not only brilliant and articulate and taught
me about architecture and about art and politics in Europe,
but he also taught me how to look good.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I would simply say that Simon was and is an
extraordinary storyteller. So we would all sit in his class,
and I took British Empire with him, and we would
be riveted the way that we would be riveted watching
a thriller a suspense movie, because we would just be
hanging on every word.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Art and politics in Europe. From sixteen sixty to eighteen twenty,
he was the best professor at Harvard, and I was
gutted when he went to Columbia.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Simon is our most renowned historian. His books on the
French Revolution, the Dutch Masters, or most recently, Foreign Bodies,
an Exploration of Pandemics, and the Health of Nations have
changed the way we think. His television series Civilization, The
Story of the Jews, and the Power of Art have
reached millions. I know all this about Simon, but I
(01:41):
know something else. He is a fantastic cook. There is
much to admire and respect and being off of Simon,
all of which I do. But quite simply, he's my
great friend.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Thank you, Ruthie Well. I film my work on this
Earth is done?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, because I were there. I guess when was that?
Was it twenty years ago? I think Joshua was longer
than that because I've been at the Union.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
I think it more like probably more like thirty, because
I moved from Harvard to Columbia in ninety three. But
they're very kind, and I don't.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Think they're kind because it's something I've heard over and
over again. Okay, praise is embarrassing you, So why don't
we go straight to the food and talk about your cooking?
You just made a recipe in the kitchen of the
River Cafe, or you helped watched. I'm not sure which
verb would you like to read the recipe for?
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Yeah, this is Taliarini with broad beans and pancetta, and
you chose to. I think principally because of the broad beans.
One of my nicknames, one of my two nicknames at
school when I was about twelve, was Beanie. And because
I was, I was obsessively. I was obsessively enjoyed all
(02:52):
forms of beans. I really really still do, but I
think I enjoyed broad beans the most.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I love the way they have and I love the
way the color is different, that you get that pale
green color and then you and.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
It's a tope color.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Okay, so read your read this recipe.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Here's here's the recipe. Should I read the ingredients first
as well? Okay? So fifty grams butter, four tbs tablespoons
olive oil, one small trapea onion, finely sliced, two garlic cloves,
finally sliced, one hundred grams of pancetta match stick cut
into match sticks. Four hundred grams very healthy of broad beans,
(03:35):
one hundred milli liters of dry white wine, two hundred
and fifty grams of fine pasta taliarini, a small bunch
of mint and a small bunch of basil, both torn
I think, and fifty grams of peccorino. And yes, what
was going on in the kitchen, very beautiful light. It
(03:56):
helped a bit with you just do a very simple,
lovely braik is of the onion and the garlic. For
about fighting the butter and oil together, which is never
be afraid of doing that until soft, and then the
panchetta matchsticks go in, so everything is braizening together. You
don't want and I was talking to jess whom I
(04:18):
was cooking, You don't This is not a recipe where
you want the pancetta to crisp up. So you you
really wanted gentle braize.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Hi.
Speaker 6 (04:28):
I'm Jessica Philbey, and I work at the River Cafe
and we're here today making broadbean and panchetta sauce with
Simon Sharman. He started with a little bit of choppia
onion in the base, which I just kind of melted down,
and then I put the panchetter.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
In until that already like an idiot I haven't had
my coffee. It's so it's a tiny bit of really
good panta.
Speaker 7 (04:53):
And then a little bit of garlic.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Okay, we never used too much garlic.
Speaker 7 (04:57):
Okay, we don't have to overpower anything.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Right, everything is brazing exactly so you're not fantastic, so
you're not wanting the pants to eat crispye, I get it,
I get it.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 7 (05:12):
And I'm going to add a little at the end
and some fash okay, okay, And then comes the magic
moment of adding the broad beans in their skins and
stir to coat you fling the wine in, and then
the gentle brazing heat goes down even lower.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
And everything marries together. You're you're non stop stirring, but
but only for about five minutes or so, again making
sure the beans don't just completely mush up. And then
you can actually be used a free standing mixer. Processor
recipe here says of course pure but actually what we
(05:56):
did was sort of bash the beans really going to
wait yeah oh yeah, so right A stands next to
the right and then we were just making the sauce.
(06:17):
So the tierini has to obviously talierni like all very
fine pasta. You're cooking it and then almost I don't know,
what do you think, you know, a minute, two minutes
you're really basically changing out almost as soon as the
water has come to a boil. Make sure you keep
a little half a cup of the pasta water. It's
(06:37):
going to carry on cooking when you're adding it to
the sauce. Okay, yes, you add the pasta to the source, not.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
The way around.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Always it's supposed to cook in this source exactly.
Speaker 8 (06:53):
People to do that, because then that whole idea. Also also,
I don't drain pasta.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
I always you have if you have a colander next
to you and you just lift, especially if you just
lift it out over the pot, put it into the
colender with a pair of tongs, and then put it
into the sauce next to it. You don't have to
do that thing of carrying it over to the sink,
draining the pasta, putting it back in the pan. But
you're just and also then you get a bit of
the water from the pasta into the sauce, which kind
(07:21):
of you know. I always said I always loved the
Marcella Hazan when she says toss, toss, toss.
Speaker 8 (07:28):
And then toss again.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And I think that also is that kind of you
know that you can't almost you can't toss pasta enough.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
No, absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I'm interested that you chose a recipe, that the recipe
has pancetta in it, and that brings us to our
next kind of starting at the very beginning of the
Shama household. So because you did grow up in a
kosher home and so was pancetta. But we did an
interview with Otto Lenki the other day and he was
telling us that in Tel Aviv there was a man
who sold pork under the counter like and prohibition.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
But did you have it's called it's called bassar la
vonne in which means literally white flesh. Actually that's the
Hebrew for white flesh. So it's no longer very secretive. No,
it was very kosher, strictly kosher.
Speaker 8 (08:15):
Tell me about your family, Well.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
They were both great storytellers, my mother and father. I
had a sister who was she died hence I was
about twelve years ago now thirteen years older than me,
and I wasn't meant to happen. Particularly my mother started
she had a job as secretary to have an aircraft
corporation executives during the war, and then she was so brilliant,
(08:41):
ferociously organizationally brilliant. She became PA personal assistant, as a basil,
you know, the head of the whole thing, within about
six months.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
So come the end of the war.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
I was born in early nineteen forty five. The war
was going on. I was a massive inconvenience and would
not have happened, I think had it not been for
the fact that when my parents were living, which was
near to the Haveland HQ in Nebworth, and Havlan was
in Welling Garden City in Hertfordshire, and their next door
neighbor was an obstetrician, a rather fancy society obstetrician. I
(09:14):
only know this to be true because he confirmed it
wrote me a lovely letter when I became a young
don at Cambridge, saying, well, you not only would not
have been a dom, but you wouldn't have been any
You wouldn't have been around at all had it not
for my persuading your mother that was a good idea
have this baby. So he told her, he said, well,
if you decide you should have this baby, and you
can have this baby in Morova, in my very fancy
(09:37):
clinic in Maryland and Wilbury Street. And what he did
not realize was that Wilburg Street would be the receiver
of one of the last V two rocket raids. But
it didn't hit the clinic. It missed me and the clinic,
so I was not supposed to happen. Courtesy of both
my mother and Adolf Hitler, you know, nonetheless, actually I
(09:59):
made it through.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
No, not together.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
They weren't in cahoots, so we were fairly stric My
father was what did he do well? He wanted to
be in the theater. He was a very theatrical personality.
He'll be shocked to discover, yes, but it was very
sad he left school at fourteen. Like a lot of
Hackney grammar and a lot of those kids. He was
largely but magnificently self educated. I mean we had not all.
(10:25):
It's a mistake. Actually, I'm going to be really disloyal now.
But if you're part of the German Jewish community that
had come around time with the Nuremberg Laws or later,
your house was full of books. If you're part of
an older ashkar Nazi community, not quite so much. My
father was very unusual in having not only all of Dickens,
all of Shakespeare, all of George Eliot, but he had
(10:46):
things like you know, Manzoni's in translation The Betrothed, He
had all of Honored A. Bozak's comedy men. So and
he would read out loud on Sunday afternoons. So he
wanted to be in the.
Speaker 8 (10:58):
Theater generation and came from another well.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
My father was born in nineteen hundred and one. His
father was born in Botshan in Romania, and my father's
grandfather was born in Ismea in Ottoman, Turkey. So my father, however,
his you know, we went to the theater a lot.
He produced charity shows which ranged because he had lots
(11:24):
of lots of thespian friends, actors and producers, Ralph Richardson,
for example, to her own Guthrie. And he produced from
you know, productions of Macbeth to Oklahoma at the Golden
Green Hypotome.
Speaker 5 (11:36):
So yeah, he did.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
He did so when I was about eight or nine,
I think, So that was really lovely.
Speaker 8 (11:44):
Did he cook?
Speaker 4 (11:45):
No, my mother was an arduous. I feel guilty as
all Jurwish sons do about slagging off my mom as
a cook. She was an enthusiast, and there was something
she could do. She was from a different Jewish tradition.
She was from Lithuania, pure Ashkenazi, so they were soups
(12:06):
she was good at. There was one called Garden of
Eden soup, which was based on lambstock and lambones and ballei,
which was a kind of deep classic Lithuania, which was
actually very good in the middle of winter. And sometimes
white beans as well, butter beans or small white beans.
She went into the kitchen because she actually what happened
(12:27):
to her after the war, she had to abandon her job.
I was there now, and she did not really want
to be back as what was then called housewife. Really,
one scary moment I will never forget is when my
mother she had these old mincers, you know that you
attached you still some restaurants still have them, actually, so
(12:49):
you clamped them onto a table, right exactly, so you've
got a course mince. And when she was mincing up
some beef, she managed to mince the end of one
of her fingers, and so she bled a bit into it.
I looked at this with I must have been like
nine or something, with horror, and I remember her poking
(13:10):
around with the thought trying to find She did wrap
her finger in a bandage, but carried on cooking, and
she never really found a better finger, and she did
produce these clops, you know, the equivalent to a kind
of kosher hamburger. And I looked on with absolute horror.
And my mother said she was good when she made jokes,
which wasn't that often. They were very funny, and she said,
(13:33):
don't tell your father, after all, it's perfectly kosher.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
So I was looking see if.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
My dad suddenly, you know, was chewing suspiciously.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Really, it's quite interesting that women who don't have an
interest in cooking, you know, that they don't have to,
you know that Actually, if there was so many other things,
she might have been.
Speaker 8 (13:54):
Interested that in perhaps.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
But what's interesting, I suppose, is but what did you
actually then eat the meal? Times and pleasure for someone
who loves food so much, did you sit down to
dinner and just wish that it tasted better?
Speaker 8 (14:10):
Or did you not?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Yeah, my mother, there was what my sister and I
called a Friday night Memorial chicken, which was inevitably over roasted,
and in deference to my father's love affair with garlic,
which my mother did not share. There'd be one lonely
clove rattling around there somewhere, so it was always dried
out that we really wished. Chicken suit made from scratch
(14:37):
was actually okay.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
You sit down to dinner every night as a family.
You did, And so she would prepare dinner, your father
would come home, and you and your sister.
Speaker 8 (14:46):
When she was well, the love.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
To contract the one thing I went to before we
leave the family kitchen.
Speaker 8 (14:50):
Now, let's not leave the family kitch.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
We can say the one thing my mother did very well,
which was and it's interesting in English cooking because famously fried,
not poached, gefilterfish, that's a rather horrible graying thing, kosher
form of keneld brochet.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Here.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
The first time that Jewish cooking appears that I know
of in print is Eliza Acton's book Cookery Book, which
is I think is eighteen forty five, and there's a
little add on chapter in the second edition on Jewish cooking,
which is then slightly fancy Safardi, Balkan and Turkish cooking
(15:37):
kind of fried fish patties instead as we'd say codcakes
or something like that, which she describes as being eaten
cold sometimes in the morning, even for breakfast, which we did.
My mother did that very very well. Actually, did they
go to take you to restaurants? Yes, this is the
arbitrary in us of being kosher. If you're really strictly,
(15:59):
strictly super cooked, you would never go to anything except
coacial restaurants that my parents had redefined the torah and
the rules of casual would say, it's fine, providing you
don't have bacon or a don't have meat, which is absurd,
of course. So we went to places like in again
(16:20):
the fifties, the Trocadero, which was so grand and then
owned by our mutual wonderful friend Nigella's family. The Salmon's
and that was magnificent. I remember seeing and not quite
believing the miracle of peanuts sitting in what I thought
was the silver bowl. It was really stainless steel. And
(16:41):
then you went down The Savoy Grille was another place.
Speaker 8 (16:45):
But these for special occasions.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
We're going, yes, yes, yes, the latter we certainly would
go special occasions, Scott's and Simpsons, I think, you know.
And the place was sort of just steaming, though quite grand. Yes,
when my dad was travagunts in that way, if you.
He was very much like Max Biali. Stock and the
producers flaunted baby so yes so clash and turines and
(17:15):
the ceremoniousness of eating fish particularly. We were great dover
sole family fish.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
So eating out and eating at home and eating well
it was a priority.
Speaker 8 (17:28):
Yeah kind of idea that.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Yeah, yes, the family was food. There's no doubt. Whatever
one thought of the food, it was crucial. And we've
my wife and I have always I mean not I
don't want to pat ourselves on the back ingrediously, but
we we we taught our children how to cook from
the time they were quite young, the very good cooks,
(17:52):
both of them, and it was all There were no
TV dinners. I mean, we sat I sound so snobby
and grand here, and of course they'd go off, you know,
if they had an extra late class at school, they
would go off and have a pizza, a hamburg or something.
But overwhelmingly, really that family dinner was crucial because you talked,
and you know, even when they were tight lipped teenager's
(18:16):
still your talk.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
So when you left this home of you know, a food,
of sitting down at the table of your mother cooking
your father with this great character and you went.
Speaker 8 (18:38):
Did you go straight to university when you went?
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Well, I had the second gap year, I had most
of a gap year, and I was actually briefly on
a kind of slightly broken down cruise ship that went
from Marseille to either Alexandria and Haifa, and I would
poke around the kitchens there and sometimes actually even yeah, exactly,
and just was, you know, massively in awe of these
gigantic tururines, some stuff that would be served out to
(19:03):
all classes of passengers. And then working on Kibootz, you
were very close to too close, sometimes too you know,
the way the way food happened. I worked in the
chicken shed on Kibbutz, the so called lull, which was
they weren't bastery chickens, but they were they were sure
not free rereach inside, and my job was to load
(19:25):
them onto the trucks going to the slaughter house.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
Which was not fun.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
In case you didn't know, and I expect you did,
the way to stop a chicken panicking is to turn
it upside down. Yeah, exactly, hold it with the legs.
Say that wasn't great.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Did you seek out when you were in that year
abroad and apart from me, on the kobbootz. Would you
seek out the food of wherever you were, something that
street food.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
I loved Arab food.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Actually, I had a distant relative was a mining engineer
in the Negev Desert, and he rattled around in an
old jeep. He was an incredibly romantic, rather raffish Bohemian figure.
Well Bohemian isn't quite right, but certainly he belonged to
a colorful generation. So he was a very romagic ficure
(20:15):
of me. And he was he spoke Arabic very well.
And we ate a lot of Arab mets actually in Wonderful.
And the year then was ninety sixty two sixty three,
so that was actually, you know, I don't know, maybe
it's you know, the tragic and poisonous enmity that now exists.
(20:37):
We didn't necessarily, I mean, maybe we're kidding ourselves, but
we didn't feel I mean, there were so many, so
many Arab prints of it, so many Bedwin friends actually,
so that was something so long before Wonderful, your Tam
came along and all our friends. Now you know, I
knew that what was called Israeli food was basically Arab
(20:59):
mostly or you were stuck with my mother's kitchen, you know.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
So that's the way.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
It's a revelation, isn't it now that you know people
talk about you know, because I grew up Jewish in
Upstate New York and my parents' family were Ellis Island
immigrants who came and brought the food that they had eaten.
And food was very basic. I'd say. My grandmother actually
was like a Hungarian pastry maker. She rolled out the dough,
(21:25):
she traveled with her rolling pin. But I always tell
the story, but she came to see her first grandson
in Woodstock, where we lived on the countryside, and my
mother said, do you want to see your first grandchild?
And she said, no, let's eat first, you know. And
that was that was the kind of the view of
food in our family.
Speaker 8 (21:42):
But when you went but also Britain was coming around.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
You know, all of the famous story and all of
Jewish history can be wrapped into three short sentences. They
tried to kill us, they failed. Let's eat.
Speaker 8 (21:56):
We are now in Cambridge, right is that was a Cambridge?
Speaker 5 (21:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (21:59):
That was that really hardcore? Was that sixty?
Speaker 5 (22:02):
Well? I was still Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
I arrived at christ culture camebish in ninety sixty three,
and I was still kosher, and it was really bizarre
because I'd stopped.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
Believing in God.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Really basically, I was certainly at least an agnostic, but
somehow I didn't want to. My mother would send food,
including cold chickens sometimes, and I didn't want to offend us.
That was totally irrational. And I had a great professor
who we used to have a kind of a supper seminar,
and who had produced gorgeous, kind of oozy grouse and
(22:36):
things that everybody else. And I would get a kind
of bouncy rubber cheese on from the college. And finally
one of these terrible omelets actually broke me. And famously,
I've told this story a lot, but it is true.
In nineteen sixty five, I went to see the Ipcress
File Len Dayton, and I just did you have a know?
Speaker 5 (22:56):
Lond Dayton? I love.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
We did actually exchange letters, okay, so Michael, of course, yes,
I wrote a piece of the garden called Michael Kaine
taught me to cook. And I not only did he
write spy novels, one of which became the Cross File film,
but he wrote so called cook strips, which were cartoons
(23:18):
for men beginning to cook. You know what is parsley
and how to dice an onion or minced parsley the
proper way, And these were fantastic. And it was when
there was a scene where Michael Kaine says to his
fellow spy Courtney, I'm going to cook you the best
meal you've ever had, and it cuts to her saying,
(23:41):
palm that that was the best meal I've ever had.
Do you always wear your glasses? And he said, yes, Courtney,
except in bed, and she takes the glass up. I thought, okay,
I've got a cook, and I went out and bought
my first little battery to cuisine. There was one gas
ring at the end of the corridor in the student building.
Cry So I made friends with John Bolton, the college cook,
(24:03):
and you lent me the oven, and I made myself
an omelet hot butter, you know, and I instantly knew
and it was, you know, baba was kind of creamy insigh.
I thought, boy, you are hopeless with almost anything at
your hands, but this you instinctively understand and know how
to do.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
You understand timing.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
And heat so and then you can make people happy
by doing it and then I was just absolutely often running.
Speaker 8 (24:31):
And that continued throughout.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
I only really got for myself all right out in
Cambridge and then yeah, and then in tiny spaces when
I became a baby dn I mean, you had just
a kitchen the size of a toilet, really had minute things,
but I was just in love. I bought my first
cookery book other than it was actually Dayton's book of
(24:58):
these cookstrips. I'm not kidding. It was called Uel Garlic Garlic,
and you can still find it. But the first thing
about was Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking. The first serious
thing I made with John Bolton's College album was the
Alsatian Onion Tart. So Elizabeth David course was wonderful to
(25:18):
read and also incredibly forgiving, or you could say, irresponsible
about quantities. And then it was also the period of
Robert Carrier's cards, which were great if you were a
baby cook. Basically they were wonderful. So there were all
sorts of a Jane Grigson, Alan Davidson.
Speaker 8 (25:39):
Everybody first slook.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
Yeah, exactly, yes, exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Oh first, like Arabella boxing, Yes, I absolutely had that,
and it sort of slightly aggravates me because then the
Good Food Guy was in its prime. I was one
of those who would be one of those anonymous inspectors
the Good Food Guide. And when people say, oh, British
Foobish until the nineteen eighties or something, the sixties and
(26:05):
seventies were amazingly brave and adventurous and exhilarating.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
As a historian, how do you teach history? How do
you look at history? How much do you look at history?
And food? You know, when I go to a city,
the first thing I hit is the market, because not
because I want to buy something, but because it tells
you how do they sell the food, how do they
grow it?
Speaker 8 (26:27):
What's a market like? Have people dressed a certain way?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
And if we read your books and we listen to
your lectures, are we learning about are you thinking about it?
Speaker 8 (26:35):
Hopes?
Speaker 5 (26:36):
So I think.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
I think very often it can be quite dramatic. For example,
one thing that happened a regime pre revolutionary France actually
and post revolution in France too, but particularly in eighteenth
Central where they were looking at it divided into a
wheat culture and a rye culture.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
What you mean.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
Wheat wheat flower was only for the aristocracy and the
oat burgeoisie, so people tended to eat rye we think
of as wonderful now, it wasn't so wonderful. And there
were certain amounts of wet France where the rye was
very susceptible to a kind of rot which actually produced ergotism,
which is a hallucinogenic state that in an extreme form, yeah,
(27:20):
would not only give you trips you didn't want, but
also would actually numb your circulation and cause gangreine. And
there were lots of incredibly serious reports about how terrifying
that was. It was anar called the Solonia Sologne where
this was thought to be a terrible proper of the population.
(27:40):
At the other end, of course, you cannot do Dutch
history without food, not only because there are paintings, of course,
but because this extraordinary kind of compressed population has actually
physically literally engineered a landscape both for horticulture and for
fishing and for pasture. And amazingly, this is the best
(28:02):
fed population possibly in the world, but certainly in Europe.
And poems are written to strawberries, and only the naturally
think of having a painter got Andrea and Kuto, who
specializes in asparagus, paints asparagus. So it's a kind of
festival of the stomach, really, and that's fair. That's I
(28:24):
have a whole chapter actually on food, and.
Speaker 8 (28:28):
I think that could be part two of our series.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
I think we should do another one because I think
a friend a funny story. So a friend of mine,
his father married a woman who was a vegan. I
mean she was just and also this is years ago,
and he went into the hospital and well, while he
was in the hospital, he had a painting. You can
only imagine what the painting was like because it had
a lobster in it. But she had the lobster painted
out of the painting he.
Speaker 8 (28:50):
Was in the hospital.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
I mean I thought probably any piece of art that
actually had a lobster.
Speaker 8 (28:55):
And it might be something that you wanted to pay
out anyway, No, no, for a great love, tell.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Me one will Willem Culf has I will show you
one on my phone.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Oh yeah, we have the phone that doesn't care, that doesn't.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
I will take you to lobster art.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
That's your food and art. Yeah, the asparagus, because oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
At the Rex Museum is the famous Andre and Curta,
which is incredibly beautiful painting. Yeah, and then a lot
of the language about. You know. For example, in the
sixteen twenties, this was a tough time. They darts wrap
against it militarily. It was a very hard economic time.
And not only do the paintings become rather monochrome, but
also what actually gets shown in still life paintings are
(29:45):
the what's thought of was the food of our fathers,
in other words, herrying and cheese and bread. And then
when they become a little richer, the country is more
at peace and richer. Then everything glitters with abundant, far
more kind of cherries and berries and sides of beef
and so on.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
And then you see today Edwards having a painting saying
pot vegetables.
Speaker 8 (30:08):
Have you seen that? Yeah? And then of course all
the cakes.
Speaker 4 (30:12):
You know, wonderful pain wonderful painting. People either like or
don't like my writing, but they will all say it
(30:33):
is full of texture, really of sensuousness, I think. And
for example, this last you know, this last book I've written,
which is about some of yes vaccines and so on.
Much of it is set in India, so it was
actually very interested in the hero who's kind of traveling
Vaccinato called vladimahak And who comes out of Ukraine. He
(30:54):
travels thousands of miles around India and he becomes quite
a religious Jew. He's not particularly religious Jew when he
starts his career. But I went to his account books,
which simply have very detailed the archives in Jerusalem about
what he's paying for what, And sure enough he lists
a craving for walnuts and chocolate. He lists actually some
(31:18):
of the food that he's eaten. He eats Brahmin.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
Food, tireli.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
So that was which I don't write about. I do
mention in the chocolate walnuts where he's surrounded by bibonic
plague and cholera and so on. But I suppose actually,
in some sense the kind of world I live in
as a writer. It's not an extension of cooking or
cooking extentsion of that, but they do. They are complementary
(31:44):
for me, I think, and more important really, I make
friends with shopkeepers in America. It's very important. Not the
man who brings fish to the farmer's market. A guy
called Ryan Gool teacher in the week and a fishmonger
on the weekends. And he's very clever and brilliant, and
(32:05):
we lock around together and he will thhone me up
and tell me what's really been landed that morning from
Long Island Sound. But I also known the Italian butcher
Vinni for many many years, and so you know, I
just go to I mean the best of the family.
I go to supermarkets for paper towels and loo rolls,
(32:28):
and I mean I couldn't do without them. But but
essentially the shopping party is fine for me. So early
in the morning, I mean, I won't say like you, darling,
but you know, I am thinking about what well I'm
going to actually be cooking in the.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Yeah, drive into work, I think what would I want
to eat for? You know, the cafe.
Speaker 8 (32:49):
We change the menu for every single meal. But a
question also I wanted to ask.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
You and Staples as well, when the family is growing up, actually,
well one of them is and they still my daughter
and son who was a vegetarian now a lapse vegetarian.
Palpatino is sort of Italian meatloaf. Incredibly simple, but you
have to do everybody out there cooking a casserole not you
don't want to put it on a sheet pan, you
(33:14):
want to put it in a cast role with a
little wine or you've known the mooth, so it kind
of the actual meat loaf is actually brazing with a
little old sprig of time and sage.
Speaker 8 (33:26):
I think you should write a cookbook.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
Yeah, the family we've said this, and the family says,
this is ridiculous. We all have our recipes. You have
most of them.
Speaker 5 (33:34):
Dad, We have to do that. You and I did
do recipes.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
I was food writer partic you for a few years,
so then I was doing recipes. There should you?
Speaker 8 (33:44):
Yeah, I think you should.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I think I definitely think we're looking for do One
I wanted to ask is that when you are writing,
what is your what is your eating? Do you eat
before you when you're writing? Do you sit down and
eat a meal then go and write.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
I'm a morning writer, so I have a very minimal
breakfast nearly always Sheep's yogurt these days, which I love
can be quite voluptuous, but it's not a big breakfast.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
Right. I'm a morning writer. Didn't used to be.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
I used to be more of an evening, late evening.
But I think having kids and lunch is also. But
sometimes you just especially on weekends, really, but I'm probably
not a weekend writer anymore.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
And once was.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
But if you have a big lunch, you're screwed. Basically, well,
your imagination. There's a funny thing, you know, this about
writing is that you write the way you want to write,
and then some fairy dust, if you're lucky, suddenly lands
on your brain and the writing does itself. That magic
moment when a sentence lies down on the page and
(34:45):
the sentence is just right, or at least on second
and third go it's just right. That seldom happens after lunch.
Revision happens after lunch, and I never write during the evening.
Speaker 8 (34:58):
We do want to end.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
First of all, I want to say thank you for
coming this morning. We love having you here. If food
is art, if you're going to convince me that food
is art, if you're going to convince me that you
can have a lobster in a painting, or that you
can eat when you want to share with your children,
when you want to you know, express time, have time
with your mother or your father, or when you're on
(35:19):
a trip, or you're in a kabbutz or wherever you
are that you want to eat.
Speaker 8 (35:23):
You also eat sometimes just for comfort.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
You just need food for comfort, And I just as
I asked everyone, as I asked you, Sir Simon Sharma,
who's here with me today, lucky me? What would be
your I hope you don't need comfort very much. But
if you do need comfort, anyone to find it in food.
Speaker 8 (35:42):
What would you each for?
Speaker 4 (35:44):
I do love this little pasta sauce which I make.
It's so simple. It's tuna and black olives and anchovies,
and sometimes I am half little cherry tomatoes, but sometimes
I just use tomato paste and then the spaghetti or
the fatsuccini kind of cooks in that, so it's very quick.
(36:04):
Your children always loved it.
Speaker 5 (36:06):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
My baby time was by the sea, really, so I
think there is a there is a deep fishy and
I'm an aquarius, you know, a watery person. Say that always?
Oh in a little lemon zest actually at the last minute,
and that's fantastically comforting.
Speaker 8 (36:26):
Well, thank you, Simon, it was a great morning.
Speaker 5 (36:28):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
The River Cafe Look Book 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 to prepare recipes, including a
host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted
for new cooks. The River Cafe Look Book Recipes for
(36:57):
Cooks of All ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production
of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Ruthie's Table for a production of iHeartRadio and
Adami's Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Last night, I was with my good friends Josh Berger
and Alexander Crapenzano. I said I needed to go and
write the introduction for Simon Sharma, today's guest, knowing he
had taught them both at Harvard twenty years ago. As
good friends do, they did my work for me.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Simon Shama I never missed his class, and the other
thing that I would never want to miss was I
wanted to see what waistcoat and what glasses he would wear,
because he was not only brilliant and articulate and taught
me about architecture and about art and politics in Europe,
but he also taught me how to look good.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
I would simply say that Simon was and is an
extraordinary storyteller. So we would all sit in his class,
and I took British Empire with him, and we would
be riveted the way that we would be riveted watching
a thriller a suspense movie, because we would just be
hanging on every word.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Art and politics in Europe. From sixteen sixty to eighteen twenty,
he was the best professor at Harvard, and I was
gutted when he went to Columbia.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Simon is our most renowned historian. His books on the
French Revolution, the Dutch Masters, or most recently, Foreign Bodies,
an Exploration of Pandemics, and the Health of Nations have
changed the way we think. His television series Civilization, The
Story of the Jews, and the Power of Art have
reached millions. I know all this about Simon, but I
(01:41):
know something else. He is a fantastic cook. There is
much to admire and respect and being off of Simon,
all of which I do. But quite simply, he's my
great friend.
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Thank you, Ruthie Well. I film my work on this
Earth is done?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, because I were there. I guess when was that?
Was it twenty years ago? I think Joshua was longer
than that because I've been at the Union.
Speaker 4 (02:06):
I think it more like probably more like thirty, because
I moved from Harvard to Columbia in ninety three. But
they're very kind, and I don't.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Think they're kind because it's something I've heard over and
over again. Okay, praise is embarrassing you, So why don't
we go straight to the food and talk about your cooking?
You just made a recipe in the kitchen of the
River Cafe, or you helped watched. I'm not sure which
verb would you like to read the recipe for?
Speaker 4 (02:32):
Yeah, this is Taliarini with broad beans and pancetta, and
you chose to. I think principally because of the broad beans.
One of my nicknames, one of my two nicknames at
school when I was about twelve, was Beanie. And because
I was, I was obsessively. I was obsessively enjoyed all
(02:52):
forms of beans. I really really still do, but I
think I enjoyed broad beans the most.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I love the way they have and I love the
way the color is different, that you get that pale
green color and then you and.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
It's a tope color.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah yeah, yeah, Okay, so read your read this recipe.
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Here's here's the recipe. Should I read the ingredients first
as well? Okay? So fifty grams butter, four tbs tablespoons
olive oil, one small trapea onion, finely sliced, two garlic cloves,
finally sliced, one hundred grams of pancetta match stick cut
into match sticks. Four hundred grams very healthy of broad beans,
(03:35):
one hundred milli liters of dry white wine, two hundred
and fifty grams of fine pasta taliarini, a small bunch
of mint and a small bunch of basil, both torn
I think, and fifty grams of peccorino. And yes, what
was going on in the kitchen, very beautiful light. It
(03:56):
helped a bit with you just do a very simple,
lovely braik is of the onion and the garlic. For
about fighting the butter and oil together, which is never
be afraid of doing that until soft, and then the
panchetta matchsticks go in, so everything is braizening together. You
don't want and I was talking to jess whom I
(04:18):
was cooking, You don't This is not a recipe where
you want the pancetta to crisp up. So you you
really wanted gentle braize.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Hi.
Speaker 6 (04:28):
I'm Jessica Philbey, and I work at the River Cafe
and we're here today making broadbean and panchetta sauce with
Simon Sharman. He started with a little bit of choppia
onion in the base, which I just kind of melted down,
and then I put the panchetter.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
In until that already like an idiot I haven't had
my coffee. It's so it's a tiny bit of really
good panta.
Speaker 7 (04:53):
And then a little bit of garlic.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
Okay, we never used too much garlic.
Speaker 7 (04:57):
Okay, we don't have to overpower anything.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
Right, everything is brazing exactly so you're not fantastic, so
you're not wanting the pants to eat crispye, I get it,
I get it.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 7 (05:12):
And I'm going to add a little at the end
and some fash okay, okay, And then comes the magic
moment of adding the broad beans in their skins and
stir to coat you fling the wine in, and then
the gentle brazing heat goes down even lower.
Speaker 4 (05:34):
And everything marries together. You're you're non stop stirring, but
but only for about five minutes or so, again making
sure the beans don't just completely mush up. And then
you can actually be used a free standing mixer. Processor
recipe here says of course pure but actually what we
(05:56):
did was sort of bash the beans really going to
wait yeah oh yeah, so right A stands next to
the right and then we were just making the sauce.
(06:17):
So the tierini has to obviously talierni like all very
fine pasta. You're cooking it and then almost I don't know,
what do you think, you know, a minute, two minutes
you're really basically changing out almost as soon as the
water has come to a boil. Make sure you keep
a little half a cup of the pasta water. It's
(06:37):
going to carry on cooking when you're adding it to
the sauce. Okay, yes, you add the pasta to the source, not.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
The way around.
Speaker 4 (06:49):
Always it's supposed to cook in this source exactly.
Speaker 8 (06:53):
People to do that, because then that whole idea. Also also,
I don't drain pasta.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
I always you have if you have a colander next
to you and you just lift, especially if you just
lift it out over the pot, put it into the
colender with a pair of tongs, and then put it
into the sauce next to it. You don't have to
do that thing of carrying it over to the sink,
draining the pasta, putting it back in the pan. But
you're just and also then you get a bit of
the water from the pasta into the sauce, which kind
(07:21):
of you know. I always said I always loved the
Marcella Hazan when she says toss, toss, toss.
Speaker 8 (07:28):
And then toss again.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
And I think that also is that kind of you
know that you can't almost you can't toss pasta enough.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
No, absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I'm interested that you chose a recipe, that the recipe
has pancetta in it, and that brings us to our
next kind of starting at the very beginning of the
Shama household. So because you did grow up in a
kosher home and so was pancetta. But we did an
interview with Otto Lenki the other day and he was
telling us that in Tel Aviv there was a man
who sold pork under the counter like and prohibition.
Speaker 4 (07:59):
But did you have it's called it's called bassar la
vonne in which means literally white flesh. Actually that's the
Hebrew for white flesh. So it's no longer very secretive. No,
it was very kosher, strictly kosher.
Speaker 8 (08:15):
Tell me about your family, Well.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
They were both great storytellers, my mother and father. I
had a sister who was she died hence I was
about twelve years ago now thirteen years older than me,
and I wasn't meant to happen. Particularly my mother started
she had a job as secretary to have an aircraft
corporation executives during the war, and then she was so brilliant,
(08:41):
ferociously organizationally brilliant. She became PA personal assistant, as a basil,
you know, the head of the whole thing, within about
six months.
Speaker 5 (08:49):
So come the end of the war.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
I was born in early nineteen forty five. The war
was going on. I was a massive inconvenience and would
not have happened, I think had it not been for
the fact that when my parents were living, which was
near to the Haveland HQ in Nebworth, and Havlan was
in Welling Garden City in Hertfordshire, and their next door
neighbor was an obstetrician, a rather fancy society obstetrician. I
(09:14):
only know this to be true because he confirmed it
wrote me a lovely letter when I became a young
don at Cambridge, saying, well, you not only would not
have been a dom, but you wouldn't have been any
You wouldn't have been around at all had it not
for my persuading your mother that was a good idea
have this baby. So he told her, he said, well,
if you decide you should have this baby, and you
can have this baby in Morova, in my very fancy
(09:37):
clinic in Maryland and Wilbury Street. And what he did
not realize was that Wilburg Street would be the receiver
of one of the last V two rocket raids. But
it didn't hit the clinic. It missed me and the clinic,
so I was not supposed to happen. Courtesy of both
my mother and Adolf Hitler, you know, nonetheless, actually I
(09:59):
made it through.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
No, not together.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
They weren't in cahoots, so we were fairly stric My
father was what did he do well? He wanted to
be in the theater. He was a very theatrical personality.
He'll be shocked to discover, yes, but it was very
sad he left school at fourteen. Like a lot of
Hackney grammar and a lot of those kids. He was
largely but magnificently self educated. I mean we had not all.
(10:25):
It's a mistake. Actually, I'm going to be really disloyal now.
But if you're part of the German Jewish community that
had come around time with the Nuremberg Laws or later,
your house was full of books. If you're part of
an older ashkar Nazi community, not quite so much. My
father was very unusual in having not only all of Dickens,
all of Shakespeare, all of George Eliot, but he had
(10:46):
things like you know, Manzoni's in translation The Betrothed, He
had all of Honored A. Bozak's comedy men. So and
he would read out loud on Sunday afternoons. So he
wanted to be in the.
Speaker 8 (10:58):
Theater generation and came from another well.
Speaker 4 (11:01):
My father was born in nineteen hundred and one. His
father was born in Botshan in Romania, and my father's
grandfather was born in Ismea in Ottoman, Turkey. So my father, however,
his you know, we went to the theater a lot.
He produced charity shows which ranged because he had lots
(11:24):
of lots of thespian friends, actors and producers, Ralph Richardson,
for example, to her own Guthrie. And he produced from
you know, productions of Macbeth to Oklahoma at the Golden
Green Hypotome.
Speaker 5 (11:36):
So yeah, he did.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
He did so when I was about eight or nine,
I think, So that was really lovely.
Speaker 8 (11:44):
Did he cook?
Speaker 4 (11:45):
No, my mother was an arduous. I feel guilty as
all Jurwish sons do about slagging off my mom as
a cook. She was an enthusiast, and there was something
she could do. She was from a different Jewish tradition.
She was from Lithuania, pure Ashkenazi, so they were soups
(12:06):
she was good at. There was one called Garden of
Eden soup, which was based on lambstock and lambones and ballei,
which was a kind of deep classic Lithuania, which was
actually very good in the middle of winter. And sometimes
white beans as well, butter beans or small white beans.
She went into the kitchen because she actually what happened
(12:27):
to her after the war, she had to abandon her job.
I was there now, and she did not really want
to be back as what was then called housewife. Really,
one scary moment I will never forget is when my
mother she had these old mincers, you know that you
attached you still some restaurants still have them, actually, so
(12:49):
you clamped them onto a table, right exactly, so you've
got a course mince. And when she was mincing up
some beef, she managed to mince the end of one
of her fingers, and so she bled a bit into it.
I looked at this with I must have been like
nine or something, with horror, and I remember her poking
(13:10):
around with the thought trying to find She did wrap
her finger in a bandage, but carried on cooking, and
she never really found a better finger, and she did
produce these clops, you know, the equivalent to a kind
of kosher hamburger. And I looked on with absolute horror.
And my mother said she was good when she made jokes,
which wasn't that often. They were very funny, and she said,
(13:33):
don't tell your father, after all, it's perfectly kosher.
Speaker 5 (13:37):
So I was looking see if.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
My dad suddenly, you know, was chewing suspiciously.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Really, it's quite interesting that women who don't have an
interest in cooking, you know, that they don't have to,
you know that Actually, if there was so many other things,
she might have been.
Speaker 8 (13:54):
Interested that in perhaps.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
But what's interesting, I suppose, is but what did you
actually then eat the meal? Times and pleasure for someone
who loves food so much, did you sit down to
dinner and just wish that it tasted better?
Speaker 8 (14:10):
Or did you not?
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Yeah, my mother, there was what my sister and I
called a Friday night Memorial chicken, which was inevitably over roasted,
and in deference to my father's love affair with garlic,
which my mother did not share. There'd be one lonely
clove rattling around there somewhere, so it was always dried
out that we really wished. Chicken suit made from scratch
(14:37):
was actually okay.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
You sit down to dinner every night as a family.
You did, And so she would prepare dinner, your father
would come home, and you and your sister.
Speaker 8 (14:46):
When she was well, the love.
Speaker 4 (14:47):
To contract the one thing I went to before we
leave the family kitchen.
Speaker 8 (14:50):
Now, let's not leave the family kitch.
Speaker 4 (14:52):
We can say the one thing my mother did very well,
which was and it's interesting in English cooking because famously fried,
not poached, gefilterfish, that's a rather horrible graying thing, kosher
form of keneld brochet.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
Here.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
The first time that Jewish cooking appears that I know
of in print is Eliza Acton's book Cookery Book, which
is I think is eighteen forty five, and there's a
little add on chapter in the second edition on Jewish cooking,
which is then slightly fancy Safardi, Balkan and Turkish cooking
(15:37):
kind of fried fish patties instead as we'd say codcakes
or something like that, which she describes as being eaten
cold sometimes in the morning, even for breakfast, which we did.
My mother did that very very well. Actually, did they
go to take you to restaurants? Yes, this is the
arbitrary in us of being kosher. If you're really strictly,
(15:59):
strictly super cooked, you would never go to anything except
coacial restaurants that my parents had redefined the torah and
the rules of casual would say, it's fine, providing you
don't have bacon or a don't have meat, which is absurd,
of course. So we went to places like in again
(16:20):
the fifties, the Trocadero, which was so grand and then
owned by our mutual wonderful friend Nigella's family. The Salmon's
and that was magnificent. I remember seeing and not quite
believing the miracle of peanuts sitting in what I thought
was the silver bowl. It was really stainless steel. And
(16:41):
then you went down The Savoy Grille was another place.
Speaker 8 (16:45):
But these for special occasions.
Speaker 4 (16:48):
We're going, yes, yes, yes, the latter we certainly would
go special occasions, Scott's and Simpsons, I think, you know.
And the place was sort of just steaming, though quite grand. Yes,
when my dad was travagunts in that way, if you.
He was very much like Max Biali. Stock and the
producers flaunted baby so yes so clash and turines and
(17:15):
the ceremoniousness of eating fish particularly. We were great dover
sole family fish.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
So eating out and eating at home and eating well
it was a priority.
Speaker 8 (17:28):
Yeah kind of idea that.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
Yeah, yes, the family was food. There's no doubt. Whatever
one thought of the food, it was crucial. And we've
my wife and I have always I mean not I
don't want to pat ourselves on the back ingrediously, but
we we we taught our children how to cook from
the time they were quite young, the very good cooks,
(17:52):
both of them, and it was all There were no
TV dinners. I mean, we sat I sound so snobby
and grand here, and of course they'd go off, you know,
if they had an extra late class at school, they
would go off and have a pizza, a hamburg or something.
But overwhelmingly, really that family dinner was crucial because you talked,
and you know, even when they were tight lipped teenager's
(18:16):
still your talk.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
So when you left this home of you know, a food,
of sitting down at the table of your mother cooking
your father with this great character and you went.
Speaker 8 (18:38):
Did you go straight to university when you went?
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Well, I had the second gap year, I had most
of a gap year, and I was actually briefly on
a kind of slightly broken down cruise ship that went
from Marseille to either Alexandria and Haifa, and I would
poke around the kitchens there and sometimes actually even yeah, exactly,
and just was, you know, massively in awe of these
gigantic tururines, some stuff that would be served out to
(19:03):
all classes of passengers. And then working on Kibootz, you
were very close to too close, sometimes too you know,
the way the way food happened. I worked in the
chicken shed on Kibbutz, the so called lull, which was
they weren't bastery chickens, but they were they were sure
not free rereach inside, and my job was to load
(19:25):
them onto the trucks going to the slaughter house.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
Which was not fun.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
In case you didn't know, and I expect you did,
the way to stop a chicken panicking is to turn
it upside down. Yeah, exactly, hold it with the legs.
Say that wasn't great.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Did you seek out when you were in that year
abroad and apart from me, on the kobbootz. Would you
seek out the food of wherever you were, something that
street food.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
I loved Arab food.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Actually, I had a distant relative was a mining engineer
in the Negev Desert, and he rattled around in an
old jeep. He was an incredibly romantic, rather raffish Bohemian figure.
Well Bohemian isn't quite right, but certainly he belonged to
a colorful generation. So he was a very romagic ficure
(20:15):
of me. And he was he spoke Arabic very well.
And we ate a lot of Arab mets actually in Wonderful.
And the year then was ninety sixty two sixty three,
so that was actually, you know, I don't know, maybe
it's you know, the tragic and poisonous enmity that now exists.
(20:37):
We didn't necessarily, I mean, maybe we're kidding ourselves, but
we didn't feel I mean, there were so many, so
many Arab prints of it, so many Bedwin friends actually,
so that was something so long before Wonderful, your Tam
came along and all our friends. Now you know, I
knew that what was called Israeli food was basically Arab
(20:59):
mostly or you were stuck with my mother's kitchen, you know.
Speaker 5 (21:02):
So that's the way.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
It's a revelation, isn't it now that you know people
talk about you know, because I grew up Jewish in
Upstate New York and my parents' family were Ellis Island
immigrants who came and brought the food that they had eaten.
And food was very basic. I'd say. My grandmother actually
was like a Hungarian pastry maker. She rolled out the dough,
(21:25):
she traveled with her rolling pin. But I always tell
the story, but she came to see her first grandson
in Woodstock, where we lived on the countryside, and my
mother said, do you want to see your first grandchild?
And she said, no, let's eat first, you know. And
that was that was the kind of the view of
food in our family.
Speaker 8 (21:42):
But when you went but also Britain was coming around.
Speaker 4 (21:45):
You know, all of the famous story and all of
Jewish history can be wrapped into three short sentences. They
tried to kill us, they failed. Let's eat.
Speaker 8 (21:56):
We are now in Cambridge, right is that was a Cambridge?
Speaker 5 (21:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 8 (21:59):
That was that really hardcore? Was that sixty?
Speaker 5 (22:02):
Well? I was still Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
I arrived at christ culture camebish in ninety sixty three,
and I was still kosher, and it was really bizarre
because I'd stopped.
Speaker 5 (22:09):
Believing in God.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
Really basically, I was certainly at least an agnostic, but
somehow I didn't want to. My mother would send food,
including cold chickens sometimes, and I didn't want to offend us.
That was totally irrational. And I had a great professor
who we used to have a kind of a supper seminar,
and who had produced gorgeous, kind of oozy grouse and
(22:36):
things that everybody else. And I would get a kind
of bouncy rubber cheese on from the college. And finally
one of these terrible omelets actually broke me. And famously,
I've told this story a lot, but it is true.
In nineteen sixty five, I went to see the Ipcress
File Len Dayton, and I just did you have a know?
Speaker 5 (22:56):
Lond Dayton? I love.
Speaker 4 (22:57):
We did actually exchange letters, okay, so Michael, of course, yes,
I wrote a piece of the garden called Michael Kaine
taught me to cook. And I not only did he
write spy novels, one of which became the Cross File film,
but he wrote so called cook strips, which were cartoons
(23:18):
for men beginning to cook. You know what is parsley
and how to dice an onion or minced parsley the
proper way, And these were fantastic. And it was when
there was a scene where Michael Kaine says to his
fellow spy Courtney, I'm going to cook you the best
meal you've ever had, and it cuts to her saying,
(23:41):
palm that that was the best meal I've ever had.
Do you always wear your glasses? And he said, yes, Courtney,
except in bed, and she takes the glass up. I thought, okay,
I've got a cook, and I went out and bought
my first little battery to cuisine. There was one gas
ring at the end of the corridor in the student building.
Cry So I made friends with John Bolton, the college cook,
(24:03):
and you lent me the oven, and I made myself
an omelet hot butter, you know, and I instantly knew
and it was, you know, baba was kind of creamy insigh.
I thought, boy, you are hopeless with almost anything at
your hands, but this you instinctively understand and know how
to do.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
You understand timing.
Speaker 4 (24:24):
And heat so and then you can make people happy
by doing it and then I was just absolutely often running.
Speaker 8 (24:31):
And that continued throughout.
Speaker 5 (24:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:34):
I only really got for myself all right out in
Cambridge and then yeah, and then in tiny spaces when
I became a baby dn I mean, you had just
a kitchen the size of a toilet, really had minute things,
but I was just in love. I bought my first
cookery book other than it was actually Dayton's book of
(24:58):
these cookstrips. I'm not kidding. It was called Uel Garlic Garlic,
and you can still find it. But the first thing
about was Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking. The first serious
thing I made with John Bolton's College album was the
Alsatian Onion Tart. So Elizabeth David course was wonderful to
(25:18):
read and also incredibly forgiving, or you could say, irresponsible
about quantities. And then it was also the period of
Robert Carrier's cards, which were great if you were a
baby cook. Basically they were wonderful. So there were all
sorts of a Jane Grigson, Alan Davidson.
Speaker 8 (25:39):
Everybody first slook.
Speaker 5 (25:41):
Yeah, exactly, yes, exactly.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
Oh first, like Arabella boxing, Yes, I absolutely had that,
and it sort of slightly aggravates me because then the
Good Food Guy was in its prime. I was one
of those who would be one of those anonymous inspectors
the Good Food Guide. And when people say, oh, British
Foobish until the nineteen eighties or something, the sixties and
(26:05):
seventies were amazingly brave and adventurous and exhilarating.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
As a historian, how do you teach history? How do
you look at history? How much do you look at history?
And food? You know, when I go to a city,
the first thing I hit is the market, because not
because I want to buy something, but because it tells
you how do they sell the food, how do they
grow it?
Speaker 8 (26:27):
What's a market like? Have people dressed a certain way?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
And if we read your books and we listen to
your lectures, are we learning about are you thinking about it?
Speaker 8 (26:35):
Hopes?
Speaker 5 (26:36):
So I think.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
I think very often it can be quite dramatic. For example,
one thing that happened a regime pre revolutionary France actually
and post revolution in France too, but particularly in eighteenth
Central where they were looking at it divided into a
wheat culture and a rye culture.
Speaker 5 (26:52):
What you mean.
Speaker 4 (26:55):
Wheat wheat flower was only for the aristocracy and the
oat burgeoisie, so people tended to eat rye we think
of as wonderful now, it wasn't so wonderful. And there
were certain amounts of wet France where the rye was
very susceptible to a kind of rot which actually produced ergotism,
which is a hallucinogenic state that in an extreme form, yeah,
(27:20):
would not only give you trips you didn't want, but
also would actually numb your circulation and cause gangreine. And
there were lots of incredibly serious reports about how terrifying
that was. It was anar called the Solonia Sologne where
this was thought to be a terrible proper of the population.
(27:40):
At the other end, of course, you cannot do Dutch
history without food, not only because there are paintings, of course,
but because this extraordinary kind of compressed population has actually
physically literally engineered a landscape both for horticulture and for
fishing and for pasture. And amazingly, this is the best
(28:02):
fed population possibly in the world, but certainly in Europe.
And poems are written to strawberries, and only the naturally
think of having a painter got Andrea and Kuto, who
specializes in asparagus, paints asparagus. So it's a kind of
festival of the stomach, really, and that's fair. That's I
(28:24):
have a whole chapter actually on food, and.
Speaker 8 (28:28):
I think that could be part two of our series.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
I think we should do another one because I think
a friend a funny story. So a friend of mine,
his father married a woman who was a vegan. I
mean she was just and also this is years ago,
and he went into the hospital and well, while he
was in the hospital, he had a painting. You can
only imagine what the painting was like because it had
a lobster in it. But she had the lobster painted
out of the painting he.
Speaker 8 (28:50):
Was in the hospital.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
I mean I thought probably any piece of art that
actually had a lobster.
Speaker 8 (28:55):
And it might be something that you wanted to pay
out anyway, No, no, for a great love, tell.
Speaker 4 (29:01):
Me one will Willem Culf has I will show you
one on my phone.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Oh yeah, we have the phone that doesn't care, that doesn't.
Speaker 5 (29:14):
I will take you to lobster art.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
That's your food and art. Yeah, the asparagus, because oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
At the Rex Museum is the famous Andre and Curta,
which is incredibly beautiful painting. Yeah, and then a lot
of the language about. You know. For example, in the
sixteen twenties, this was a tough time. They darts wrap
against it militarily. It was a very hard economic time.
And not only do the paintings become rather monochrome, but
also what actually gets shown in still life paintings are
(29:45):
the what's thought of was the food of our fathers,
in other words, herrying and cheese and bread. And then
when they become a little richer, the country is more
at peace and richer. Then everything glitters with abundant, far
more kind of cherries and berries and sides of beef
and so on.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
And then you see today Edwards having a painting saying
pot vegetables.
Speaker 8 (30:08):
Have you seen that? Yeah? And then of course all
the cakes.
Speaker 4 (30:12):
You know, wonderful pain wonderful painting. People either like or
don't like my writing, but they will all say it
(30:33):
is full of texture, really of sensuousness, I think. And
for example, this last you know, this last book I've written,
which is about some of yes vaccines and so on.
Much of it is set in India, so it was
actually very interested in the hero who's kind of traveling
Vaccinato called vladimahak And who comes out of Ukraine. He
(30:54):
travels thousands of miles around India and he becomes quite
a religious Jew. He's not particularly religious Jew when he
starts his career. But I went to his account books,
which simply have very detailed the archives in Jerusalem about
what he's paying for what, And sure enough he lists
a craving for walnuts and chocolate. He lists actually some
(31:18):
of the food that he's eaten. He eats Brahmin.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
Food, tireli.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
So that was which I don't write about. I do
mention in the chocolate walnuts where he's surrounded by bibonic
plague and cholera and so on. But I suppose actually,
in some sense the kind of world I live in
as a writer. It's not an extension of cooking or
cooking extentsion of that, but they do. They are complementary
(31:44):
for me, I think, and more important really, I make
friends with shopkeepers in America. It's very important. Not the
man who brings fish to the farmer's market. A guy
called Ryan Gool teacher in the week and a fishmonger
on the weekends. And he's very clever and brilliant, and
(32:05):
we lock around together and he will thhone me up
and tell me what's really been landed that morning from
Long Island Sound. But I also known the Italian butcher
Vinni for many many years, and so you know, I
just go to I mean the best of the family.
I go to supermarkets for paper towels and loo rolls,
(32:28):
and I mean I couldn't do without them. But but
essentially the shopping party is fine for me. So early
in the morning, I mean, I won't say like you, darling,
but you know, I am thinking about what well I'm
going to actually be cooking in the.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Yeah, drive into work, I think what would I want
to eat for? You know, the cafe.
Speaker 8 (32:49):
We change the menu for every single meal. But a
question also I wanted to ask.
Speaker 4 (32:53):
You and Staples as well, when the family is growing up, actually,
well one of them is and they still my daughter
and son who was a vegetarian now a lapse vegetarian.
Palpatino is sort of Italian meatloaf. Incredibly simple, but you
have to do everybody out there cooking a casserole not you
don't want to put it on a sheet pan, you
(33:14):
want to put it in a cast role with a
little wine or you've known the mooth, so it kind
of the actual meat loaf is actually brazing with a
little old sprig of time and sage.
Speaker 8 (33:26):
I think you should write a cookbook.
Speaker 4 (33:28):
Yeah, the family we've said this, and the family says,
this is ridiculous. We all have our recipes. You have
most of them.
Speaker 5 (33:34):
Dad, We have to do that. You and I did
do recipes.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
I was food writer partic you for a few years,
so then I was doing recipes. There should you?
Speaker 8 (33:44):
Yeah, I think you should.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
I think I definitely think we're looking for do One
I wanted to ask is that when you are writing,
what is your what is your eating? Do you eat
before you when you're writing? Do you sit down and
eat a meal then go and write.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
I'm a morning writer, so I have a very minimal
breakfast nearly always Sheep's yogurt these days, which I love
can be quite voluptuous, but it's not a big breakfast.
Speaker 5 (34:10):
Right. I'm a morning writer. Didn't used to be.
Speaker 4 (34:12):
I used to be more of an evening, late evening.
But I think having kids and lunch is also. But
sometimes you just especially on weekends, really, but I'm probably
not a weekend writer anymore.
Speaker 5 (34:23):
And once was.
Speaker 4 (34:23):
But if you have a big lunch, you're screwed. Basically, well,
your imagination. There's a funny thing, you know, this about
writing is that you write the way you want to write,
and then some fairy dust, if you're lucky, suddenly lands
on your brain and the writing does itself. That magic
moment when a sentence lies down on the page and
(34:45):
the sentence is just right, or at least on second
and third go it's just right. That seldom happens after lunch.
Revision happens after lunch, and I never write during the evening.
Speaker 8 (34:58):
We do want to end.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
First of all, I want to say thank you for
coming this morning. We love having you here. If food
is art, if you're going to convince me that food
is art, if you're going to convince me that you
can have a lobster in a painting, or that you
can eat when you want to share with your children,
when you want to you know, express time, have time
with your mother or your father, or when you're on
(35:19):
a trip, or you're in a kabbutz or wherever you
are that you want to eat.
Speaker 8 (35:23):
You also eat sometimes just for comfort.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
You just need food for comfort, And I just as
I asked everyone, as I asked you, Sir Simon Sharma,
who's here with me today, lucky me? What would be
your I hope you don't need comfort very much. But
if you do need comfort, anyone to find it in food.
Speaker 8 (35:42):
What would you each for?
Speaker 4 (35:44):
I do love this little pasta sauce which I make.
It's so simple. It's tuna and black olives and anchovies,
and sometimes I am half little cherry tomatoes, but sometimes
I just use tomato paste and then the spaghetti or
the fatsuccini kind of cooks in that, so it's very quick.
(36:04):
Your children always loved it.
Speaker 5 (36:06):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
My baby time was by the sea, really, so I
think there is a there is a deep fishy and
I'm an aquarius, you know, a watery person. Say that always?
Oh in a little lemon zest actually at the last minute,
and that's fantastically comforting.
Speaker 8 (36:26):
Well, thank you, Simon, it was a great morning.
Speaker 5 (36:28):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
The River Cafe Look Book 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 to prepare recipes, including a
host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted
for new cooks. The River Cafe Look Book Recipes for
(36:57):
Cooks of All ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production
of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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