March 17, 2025 • 44 mins
What I know about Luca Guadagnino is, of course, the films he's made. But what I know from Luca is how passionate he is about food. Friends tell me Luca has three kitchens at his home in Piemonte, including one elaborately equipped for pastries, and a special room for keeping vinegar and dried herbs from his garden.
Food not only plays a strong role in his home life, but an important role in his films, conveying sensuous desire and transformation. We're here today, in the one kitchen I have in my home, to talk about food, memories, film and family. A beginning to a new friendship, one cook to another.
Ruthie's Table 4, made in partnership with Moncler.
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):
You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Here at Ruthie's Table four, we have something exciting to
tell you. Our new substack has just launched. You will
find all kinds of extra material from the River Cafe,
including recipes, our latest news, and bonus content from the podcast.
If you enjoy listening to this series as much as
I enjoy talking with our guests, visit the River Cafe,
(00:27):
dot substack and subscribe. See you there. What I know
about Luca Guardonino is, of course the films he's made.
But what I know from Luca is how passionate he
is about food. Meetium over lunch just last week at
the River Cafe, we went straight into not what movies
he was making, but what food he was cooking. He
(00:49):
is Italian and he cares, friends tell me. In his
home in Piermonte, Luca has three kitchens, including one elaborately
equipped for pastries and a special room for keeping vinegar
and dried herbs from his garden. It's always full of people,
everyone gathering around the table and kitchen. He genuinely loves
cooking with friends, participating and enjoying the process. Our mutual friend.
(01:14):
Lorcan O'Neil says, Luca has a true instinct for friendship.
Food not only plays a strong role in his home life,
but an important role in his films, conveying sensuous desire
and transformation. The prawns and I Am Love the Peach
and call me by your name, the churros and Challengers.
We're here today in the one kitchen I have in
(01:35):
my home to talk about food and memories, food and film,
food and family. A beginning to a new friendship, one
cook to another.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Wonderful. I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
It's so nice to have you here so fast. We
just saw each other two weeks ago. And you're back
in London. You're going to come back more often.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
The first time in Vaccines I saw you.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Oh, you're going to come back more. When's the next time?
Speaker 1 (01:58):
That's what I h I.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Hope very soon I might be coming back and stay
because I might do a movie in London. I did
a movie last year.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, what was that?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
It's After the Hunt? Yes, starring Julia Roberts and Yes
are you Debuery and Andrew Garfield, l Seviny, Michael Stohlberg.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
And there was a great experience and I love to
be in London. I was great about it, you know,
like first of all, to be in the summer in London.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
It's good for me because I cannot stand the heat,
so I like that the temperature here, okay, and the
quality of water.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
What we don't like about London summer?
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Oh my god, I can trade place.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah. And then what else is the.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Quality of work? Amazing amazing crafts. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I used to say that independent films were used to
be made in Europe, the small films and the big
ones in La, and now it's changing. Everybody wants to
make a movie here La.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I don't think they do any longer, any movies.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
But basically it's like impossible because of the very expensive
nature of the business.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
There Brown, who's the prime minister here fifteen years ago,
maybe he brought in the idea of lowering the tacks
for making citys. You walk into the River Cafe, you know,
you see everybody, you know, Noah and Greta here, you
were here, Julia Roberts is making another film. Yeah, the
(03:19):
Alejandro is here, and jj Abrams is here. It's like
walking into a kind of canteen.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
You know, it's a bit of quality of one nice
and good prices.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
What about in Italy are they making?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Probably Italy that the quality of life is very good
and we have very good craftsman in Italy, but unfortunately
we don't have a very we have a short sighted
politics at play there.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Because the tradition in Rome. I mean it was amazing.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I shot the movie in which is my previous one, Queer,
I fulfill these kind of fantasy of making a movie
entirely shot on stage in China.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Chita voll interior interiorn next theeries.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
I think we had like ten stages. We built in
the back loot, in the front lot. We even there
was a sort of big heel of dirt that we
took over and we created a jungle over there, and
it was fascinating, but almost for the remembrance of things
passed and more than the energy of the now.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Beau just did Felini and ANTONIOI?
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Did they make all their Realini for sure?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
ANTONIOI, I would say maybe not, but Pelini for sure.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So we would love to read. You know, we always
try and start even the beginning of the conversation, because
that's how this podcast started. It was during COVID. The
idea originally it was just to read a recipe every day,
and then the idea was to say, well, how do
you segue from the recipe to this story of your
life through food. So we want to talk about cinema,
(04:51):
and we want to talk about Italy, and we want
to talk about everything, but it's the kind of getting
to understand who we are through our experience memories food, which.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Is everything I think you think it is.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I think so memory of meals, memory of food, memory
of the tight, tactile experience of food, the smells, the texture.
I think it constitutes. And I'm not talking about fancy
food per se. I'm talking about the idea of nourishment
or the deprivation of nourishment. It's really like one of
(05:23):
the things that makes us universally linked as people.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
So I do agree with you completely.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
A memory.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Yeah, when my father was dying, I flew when I
was in twenty twenty, during lockdown, I flew to Sicily
where he was born, in his village, and I walked
toward the building where he grew up, where he was
born and grew up and where I spent a lot
of summers when I was very little, and I could
(05:52):
distinctively remember in my mind and still now I can
the smell of mold and grapes be dried coming from
a storage place in the building. So I went into
the building and I could enter and the smell came
back to me in its physical presence and was incredible.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Is that And your father was drying in a hospital somewhere.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Else, Yeah, he was in Milano.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I could come back home fun and and see him
going to help.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
It. Never smell, nothing helps, Nothing helps, but the smell
that you could feel.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Now it's like a legacy and something that I makes
me have him close, even the memory of that.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
You went to Ethiopia, and I was supposed.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
To be born in Ethiopia, but for I came out earlier,
so like seven months in August, I had to be
a Leo.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
There was no way around it. I'm a cancer also closed. Yeah.
I like cancer women. I don't like men.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I have a friend that went to she went to
La and she called that's the hotel to find her babysitter.
And the baby said, well, I can babysit, but I
need to know the sign of the baby first.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
I agree. Oh, come on, I mean scorpio woman. Impossible,
my mom.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Okay, we'll get back to the side you went. You're
born a Leo in Ethiopia.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yes, and then moved in September.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
You were born in Palermo.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Palermo, and then with you too, Abeba, when I was
two months and I spent the first five years of
my life there.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Can you remember the smells of ethiop Oh yeah, what
were they like?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Well, I mean I can. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
I don't know how to describe a smell, but I
remember very well the smell of the garden. I remember
the smell of the pets we had.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Which was also big turtle. We had a big turtle
as a pet.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
I can remember the smell of the coffee being roasted outside.
I can remember the food and gera and jera is
very tangy smell.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Very good food Ethiopia.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yes, amazing. The sweets of the onions mixed.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
With the with the with the powdery smell of the barberret.
It's Fantasticbara is a mixture of spices that is typical
of the of Ethiopian kitchen. It's very red and it's
used for the door watt, which is a chicken stew
or for the lamb or beef stew called ziguiney.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Wonder why Ethiopia.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
My father was really restless. He met my mother when
he was teaching. He was a professor in Casablanca and
my mother is was living there.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
She was she grew up in Morocco. She's Algerian, but
she grew up in Morocco.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
And then once I was born, he wanted to do
another adventure abroad, so he got a post in a disabeba.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Are you an only child?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
No, I am the last of three.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Three so all three of you went to Etho.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah. Yeah, every now and then I do and you
get the green Yes?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Is that what you keep in your special kitchen?
Speaker 3 (09:02):
I do have a lot of you know that I
have like a collection of spices.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, you have a very large yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
And then I have made with the wonderful people at
Ninfenburg in Munich. They sourced from their archives those jars
made for Apotheke in porcelain. And I asked them how
many sizes you have and they had every sizes because
these Ninfenburg gits four hundred years so they used to
(09:30):
make them for Apoteke. So that for me, like I
don't know ten kilos to ten grains, and I made
two hundreds of them for my kitchen, from ten kilos
to to twenty grames.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
How long does the ten kilos stay good? I mean
do they.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Stay I cook a lot, so if you put ten
kilos of flour, maybe it's gonna last two weeks or
even less.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I think the only youse tried a bit of dried
time and a bit of dried regular or recana. But
I don't think we in narc should we do the freshers.
We don't use you know, kind.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Of cooking we do, yes, but you do use spices.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
You're not marriage close human use core.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
The world of spices is so wide, Yeah, amazing beautiful smells.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
So the recipe that you chose to read today.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Is I chose from all the beauty.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
That was our thirtieth birth birthday.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
So beautiful.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I chose tierini with asparagus and herbs. There's a wonderful
lady on the picture on the left side. Who's this
lady that.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Is FASTI arm it? Who's the manager of the River Cafe.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
The River Cafe is an incredible table. You eat so well,
they're good.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Thank you. We have to eat more. So would you
like to read the recipe, which.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Is a recipe, and then we're going.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
To talk about some fresh pastad.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yeah, I mean you call them tierini and they are
technically called tierine and.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
It's Pimontes pasta.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
And I am, as you said before, I live in Pimonte,
and you the typical way of using tierne is with
truffle when the season is right. It's very thin and
very sturdy kind of pasta. So tierne with asparagus and herbs.
This is for six six hundred and seventy five grains
of thin asparagus pears, which could be also wild asparagus if.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
You can find them.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
We try and get that. It's not so easy.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
My friend Camillo, who is the gardener in my house,
his father who harvests collects from the nature's wild herbs,
brought me wild asparagus.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Last week, so already I have it in the season
now because we just got green asparagus today.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
So everything's really I know, four garlic clothes. I think
this is too much, I would say one.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Can I Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
I am nothing like an Italian teaching me how to cook.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, I really appreciate it. I'm not teaching you. I'm
saying just the balance.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
If I put the proportion of the number the games
of asparagus, I think one garlic cloves would be enough.
Four tablespoons of chopped I love it, chop mix.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Wait till I go see your movie. I'm going to
give you some advice.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I want all the advice.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Four tablespoons chopped mix, fresh herbs, basil, mint, parsley, oregano,
fantastic one millimetery double cream.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
And in England you have the incredible double cream.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
That's one thing we have that fans. We have crimb fresh.
You don't have it at all.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
No, we have like you.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Get those little the cream that's in those packets that's
last for years.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
But even if even the fresh one is not as
thick and good as the one you find here, fair
enough two tablespoons of olive oil, fifty grams of unsalted butter,
two hundred and fifty grams tierine or tale, one hundred
and twenty grams of freshly grated parmesan cheese. Trim or
snap off the tough ends from the asparagu spears. Finally,
(12:48):
chop the asparagus all together with one of the garlic
clothes and the herbs. Bring the cream to the boil
in a saucepan with the rest of the whole garlic clothes,
and simmer until the clothes are soft. Remove from the
heat to discard the galic. So I changed my mind.
It's actually good to have four gathered clothes and.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Then meeting them this way and then throw them away.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
I apologize.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
You know what, Bernard Bertolucci, we used to say only
a sole they don't change their mind.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
I agree, So you see.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
But I have to say that I haven't looked at
that recipe for a long time, so I accepted that
I forgot that we took it out. We do that
quite often when we use the cream, like when we
do for sure the cream.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yes, so we take the aroma. Yeah, I think it's great.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Heat the olive oil and butter in a separate large
saucepan and fry half of the chopplatea sparagus for five minutes,
steering at the rest of the chopping the sparagus, followed
by the flavored cream. Bring to the boil, then reduce
the heat and simmer until the cream begins to thicken,
about six minutes.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Season Remove from the heat and keep warm.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Cook the path in a generous amount of boiling water,
salted and then drain too roughly. Add to the sauce
along with about half of the parmesan, and tossed together
with the remaining parmesan.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Great recipe when you cook.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Do you think when you're in Piedmonte and you're making
me lunch, what would you make If you were saying, ruthy,
I'm going to show you something from.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
The region, I would make you.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Do you like to sweets the SERTs, I would make
you a coppa. The Carama diras, which translates into a
cup of Syra's cream is a ricotta cheese create produced
only in Again and that part of the Pimonte where
I live. And it's super thin and almost like double
(14:33):
cream kind of texture, but it's ricotta. And I found
these in this book. This all ancient aristocratic recipe where
you mix the ricotta with raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, a little
bit of double cream, and then you break some savoyard
(14:53):
biscuits and rum.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
It's super good.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
You getting run the biscuits and rum or do you
add the raum no.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
I and the rum to the cream I think the
it's goods to be broken and put with the cream
makes this crunchy thing that is good nice.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
So what do you think about that recipe? Then you
prove of the garlic, I thought.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Don't improve. I approved the recipe.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
I love the way in which you you thick the sauce,
you make the cream thick. I like the way you
chop the asparagus is because that bleeds into the cream
and makes the cream being riped with the safe the
taste of the which is like sweet and slightly bitter,
(15:36):
which I love.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
And you're really an amazing, incredible palate. So when you're
growing up, just tell me going back from Ethiopia and
you describe the smells and the food and the recipes
which you've stayed with you all your life. But you
went back to and what was that like? There was
did your mother cooked?
Speaker 1 (15:54):
My father? Your father did the cooking, Oh, very much
a lot. What did he make everything? He was cooking
every day and he was cooking a lot, like you,
more than what we needed.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
For three children.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Yeah, but it was a large meals or larger recipes.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
But he was a teacher.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
He was teaching.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
It was coming back home at one, and he was
cooking all day.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
What about your mother?
Speaker 3 (16:19):
My mother was more like shy in the kitchen, probably
because my father was very Yeah, she cooked a lot
of Moroccan in time to time. She told me how
to do crap which is desturded. I love French crab,
French crap.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
What was the technique do you remember?
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah? I think you have to do it so that
once you have.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Created the butter butter, he said, butter with the milk, eggs,
a little bit of sugar, a little bit of butter,
you let it rest for one day near a like
how do you call that radiator?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
So the heat makes that the butter ferment.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Did you ever have farinata?
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Oh? I love much.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
We do it a lot, because.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
I had a great farinata the River Cafe when I
was there.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Yeah, it's really I think we often give people pizzas
to start, but there's something about a farinata.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Which is an incredible.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
It's just chickpea, flour, olive.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Oil, very good nutritive thing, a lot of protein in it.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, is some incredible.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
I mean, we have so many different ways of farinata
in Italy because you have far not in Tuscany, and
then you have panelle in Fiftily. Yeah, you have farinata in,
you have it in Liguria, you have it in and
you have the panell inmo in Sicily, which is chickpeas
flour mixed with water boiled boiled, yes, and then put
(17:53):
on a thin layer, cut in slices and fried. That's
panel panel, which is a typical street fair street food. Yes,
but it's another variation of the farinata.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Imagine estate bottled olive oil chosen and bottled for the
River Cafe, arriving at your door every month. Our subscription
is available for six or twelve months, with each oil
chosen personally by our head chefs and varying with each delivery.
It's a perfect way to bring some River Cafe flavor
into your home or to show someone you really care
(18:34):
for them with the gift. Visit our website shop the
Rivercafe dot co dot uk to place your order. Now,
how long did you live at home for?
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Was it? I think I left home when I was
twenty one.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I left, I went to Palerm, I went to Rome
to study literature.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Did you know that you wanted to do film? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yeah, I always I was I was torn between two
directions for myself. One was to be a director of
indirector and the other one was to be a chef.
I was cooking. I had my little mini pants when
I was in Ethiopic growing up, I had my little
corner in the kitchen where I could do what I wanted.
(19:21):
And I grew more and more into this, and then
when I was like fourteen, I realized that if I
had to go into that direction, I would have probably
abandoned the intellectual part of my bringing because I was
also a very avid reader of.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Books, quite academic.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Yeah, I felt like that between the two, probably I
could have kept being a passionate with food, but I
would have made my life more intellectual.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
And that's why I choose not had a cinema.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Did you have if you had little hands for media?
Speaker 3 (19:57):
I had a camera, Yes, you did either Super eight
my first superade.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
I had it when I was like nine or eight.
Your parents gave it to you, my mother.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
My mother gave me a Super eight, and I started
shooting my little short films with this. You know, like
you could get these eight millimeters little box where you
put into the camera and then you had to ship
it to Germany and wait like two months to get
it back. So I had my camera and I had
my projector, and I started to learn that if you
(20:27):
wanted to not tell a story but communicate something, you
didn't have to just film, but you have to create
a juxtaposition. But I didn't know how to actually cut,
so I started to cut on camera. So I was
doing a shot, and then I was thinking what I
want this to be followed by? And I was shooting
another thing, and I was doing these mini movies about
(20:49):
juxtaposition of things you haven't my mom must have in
some boxes.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yes, you should find them, we should find them, but
you still cook.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Cook.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I became friends with great chefs like yourself, and I
cultivated the cult of food all my life.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
I was for one year and a half.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
I was a gastronomic critic for Vanity Fair Italy.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Oh yeah, every week, reviewed restaurants, yeah, all over the world.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
And it's interesting because at the beginning, of course, it
was like we start, but then I became very consistent
because I was doing once a week for like more
than seventy weeks. For Vanity Fair Italy was a week weekly, Yes,
it's weekly. Wow, And there was a great director, Daniella Amaui.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
She was great.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Then she left and the new director fired me because
he said to me, you know, we don't like criticism,
maybe because we want to be friends with everybody.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
So I said, okay, bye bye, Adrian girl. Yeah I'm gone.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
And actually the conversation started because I sent a review
of a very important restaurant in Bergamo, three star mish Lands.
So now everybody who knows that knows who's the restaurant
still there? Oh yeah, yeah, super important. And I sent
it and they said to me, we can't publish this
because we're friends, and I said yes, but I say,
(22:14):
your friends, but journalis journalists, right, No. Then I made
another review of another restaurant, two Starmish Lanes and it
was another skating review, and they said we can't either.
So I went to see the director the editor of
the magazine and they fired me. We parted ways, but
I made like I made like sixty five seventy reviews.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
I should put them in a book you could put
it was nice.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
But then I started to go to places and people
were like, ah, they were like treating me in a
different way, and that was bad. And sometimes they were
asking me, can you come and review us?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Even if it's a better review, we want the review.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
There is a I wonder you know. I just we
did a podcast recently with Francis Coppola.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
The Divine Francis.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah. Do you see him?
Speaker 3 (22:59):
No, I never met with him. I'm a friend with
his daughter, the wonderful Sofia.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
He's living in London now I would love okay, and
he also you know, you talk about the parallels between
making a movie and making a recipe running a restaurant.
Directing a film, you know how you of course, it's
in one way not very similar at all, but in
many ways it is about creating something, something, perhaps temporary.
(23:26):
The response of the critics, how you do it? Do
you think? I mean, did you find directing films and
writing about food or cooking food?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
I think directing films and cooking or in general running
an enterprise like a restaurant, are very close because the
director is the entrepreneur who is putting together all the elements,
including the ingredients, to make the experience be.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
So I think they're very.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
Close, and I think there is a lot of savvness
in the entrepreneur who knows life and habits and behavior.
So a director should be someone.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Who does know that.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
And when you made your first film, what was your
first film.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
That you actually what we called The Protagonists that I
shot in London with tild the Swinton, and it's a
movie that I'm not very happy with that the Cinema
Tech in Bologna restored. I met with the director of
the cinema Tech, Jan Luca Luka, why you restarted that movie?
Speaker 2 (24:23):
That's bad?
Speaker 1 (24:24):
And it had to be shut up? The movies great.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
And then a few months later it was on movie
which is still and I'm very like, why anyway?
Speaker 1 (24:32):
And it's gonna be.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Your vengeance for the four Garly closes. I have no
I'm kidding.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
I think that it's interesting to think about the way
you've brought food into film. You know, how your films,
As I said in my introduction, the sensuous quality, the
the way that food can transport you into knowing about
a relationship, by the way people eat together, by the
(25:00):
way they feed each other.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
With a zero as people to very few and.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
You cannot surpass unsurpassable elements of our being one is
the biological is important like sleep, it, drink, shite, pee,
those are elements that are constitutional of who we are
as people. And because we are also capable of telling
a story about ourselves, meaning our condition as people, to
(25:30):
discard the elements that constitute our everyday life from the narrative,
it's advertisement, it's a sort of artificial construction. So that's
why I'm very keen that in my storytelling there is
always the possibility of experiencing our universal being, which has
(25:51):
to do with sleeping, waking up, being, shiting, and eating
and sex and having sex. Even though I think that
sex as a cultural.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Artifacts is overrated, so.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Boring, boring to watch, boring in film.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Boring to be discuss it.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah, challenging in film to.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yeah, I mean there is the challenge of filming sex
deals with the undemocratic nature of filmmaking and the inevitable
and absolutely welcome need of democracy in dealing with people
that helps.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
You making the movie.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Translation, if you make a movie as a director, you
always have this totalitarian idea that everything has to be
the way you want. But how can you have that
attitude when you ask two people, maybe two people that
are strangers to each other, to do something intimate, even
if for the fiction of it so it's a compromise,
it's a conversation. It's like, sometimes the compromise brings something
(26:57):
you didn't expect. Sometimes the compromise this troy what you
wanted to do. Sometimes it hurts you or it hurts
the other and it shouldn't.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
We were talking with Francis the other day. We're talking
about erotic film. When you see something erotic in the movie, and.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Remind me to tell you what is the most erotic
cinema scene in my life, in my.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Idea, and I said that one of the most erotic
scenes that I remember, and I'm not gonna remember which
one it was with Daniel day Lewis the Edith Wharton
movie of the Age of when he holds her hand
in the carriage. Do you remember I.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Was going, this is incredible, because I was going to
tell you one scene from Manuel de la Vera, and
this was going to be my second. In the scene
that you describe, which is incredible, he takes the hand
and unbuttoned the glove on the on the wrist and
he opens the glove almost like in a sort of
(27:53):
like vagina shape and kisses it and smells it.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I agree with you, that's one of the.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Most erotic scenes ever shot from a director who knows
everything about human nature. The other scene is in the
great movie La vallea Brown The Valley of Sin, which
is a sort of version of Madame Bovarie, shot by
the greatest director or ever, leave Manuel de Olivera Portuguese,
(28:22):
in which she has this actress, Leonor silvera amazing actress,
playing Madame Beavverie, being tormented by this kind of shock
of eroticism that she's feeling for the man, and she
grabs a flower and she fingers the flower and the
director makes this closeup of the flower cup being fingered
by the finger of Leonora silvera incredible moment.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
So as I've just been help patizen, but as another
scene that I was thinking another way of torture, and
one of the most upsetting torture scenes that I've seen
was in Rome Open City, because you never see it,
You never see the torture. It's behind in a room behind,
and you hear you just hear it. It's fromazing and
(29:05):
now if they probably were doing we think of all
the torture scenes we see in film, whether the guy's
tied up or somebody comes in and throws this and.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
I say something that is going to make me lose
some people that likes my work or myself. I don't
think everybody should make films, only the people who know
how to make them. And you're hitting a very delicate
hot button here, because to represent something like torture, it
takes an ethical and also humanistic wisdom to have to
(29:34):
do it properly. And that's why you mentioned this scene
from one of the greatest movies ever made from one
of the greatest directors I ever leaved, Roberto Rossellini. So
like I agree with you violence spreading on the screen
indiscriminately because it's like a trade and it doesn't come
with an idea of ethics at play from filmmakers sometimes
(29:58):
not now from a long time or in general.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Ramachita Perta, which I.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Watched again, like lasts I haven't seen in London at
the curtain, mayfird they had.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
A red you say re re release.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
It's interesting because historically the movie has been told of
being one of the great example of Italian neo realism,
but in fact is then one of the great melodramas.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
I think more than neo realism. Beautiful movie.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
I thought it was sting, so beautiful. So if we're
going back to the cooking and the food, and your
tell me a scene, because I could say the showsers
and challengers, or we could talk about the peach, or
we could talk about the prawns. For you, which one
would you talk about if I asked you to talk
to me about the film.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
I don't want to be sensationalist. But one scene of
food that I think is very, very successfully made in
my movies, it's when Maren and Sally played by Mark
Rylance and Taylor Russell eat the lady in the house
(31:08):
and bones and all.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
That is a great meal scene.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I would say, can you describe it to someone who
I can describe you to? He is listening to this
and they won't have seen it.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
I think, if I remember properly, you have the character
of Lee of mav Maar, and this girl who is
coping with her own nature. She realizes that she's a
cannibal and cannot stop by being one, and she's in
search of a way not to be like that, and
also in search of someone to share the burden of
this wave being. And she has met the older man Mark.
(31:40):
Sally played by Mark Rylands, the amazing Mark Rylance and
who is like her an eater, someone who has an
impulse of eating, a cannibalistic and cannot stop from refrain from.
And he brings her to a house in a village
in the night and base he tells her that in
(32:01):
the other room a lady is almost dying, an older lady,
and revolves by this. She wants to run away, and
she tells her, you that's your nature. She goes into
another room and spend the night awake and not knowing
what to do, and then she falls asleep. And then
when the first light of the day comes, the lady dies,
(32:26):
and she suddenly smells the impulse to go there.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
She smells what she has.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
To go for, and she opens the door and she
walks in the landing, and we can see part of
the body of the lady, but you see Sally bending
over the woman, already fisting on her and turning towards
Matine and looking at her and kindly inviting her in.
And the scene. I mean, I thought the movie was
(32:53):
going to be like a great successful love story, and
people were really appalled by the nature of the cannibalies
in the movie. But we were very committed to make
it properly. And I would say that both Taylor Russell
and Mark were sublime in the movie. And of course,
(33:14):
my dear dear Timo Tshelamet was incredible in the movie.
Either that's my favorite meal scene that I filmed in
my life.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, it's your favorite.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Yeah, because it's terminal. It's like, what can you go
beyond that?
Speaker 1 (33:27):
You can't? That's it. I haven't seen it.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Bones and All was twenty twenty two and it stars
Timtschelamette and Taylor Russell and Mark Rylance.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
The River Cafe when you said Lunch is now running
from Monday to Thursday. Reserve a booking at www. Rivercafe
dot co dot uk or give us a call. Let's
go back to your kitchen's three kitchens in Piermont, Say so,
tell me about the three kitchens. You have a pastry
(34:03):
kitchen as.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Well to The house I live in is an old
house from nineteenth century, and I renovated it slowly in time.
And I always wanted to be able to have space
to cook properly and to have all the things I
need to cook properly. And I always thought that you
(34:24):
could not cook savory where you cook suite.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Well restaurants, we have a pastry kitchen.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Separated, so that was a rule.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
So I created these two rooms separating them. One is
cream color and one is pitch color. It's all tiles.
Which one is the pitch is the is the pastry
the pastry. Then I have another kitchen outside for if
I do. I have not put the actual gears yet,
(34:55):
but this is going to be for caterings maybe. And
I'm now doing a bakery. Are you in the courtyard, yes,
for yourself, because there is this is like a countryside
home with all the buildings made for heart of a
thing and da da da, And there wasn't an old
brick oven already there. So I'm restoring the brick oven
(35:17):
and making a bakery in order to do bread.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
It's very very different, isn't it making bread making pastries
from making pasta.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Or Oh yeah, all of them are very differently.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
We have a chefs who are great cooks, and they
just I mean once because we always had the system
that we didn't have a pastry kitchen from until about
ten years ago. Maybe when the demand we just everything
we made. You came into work in the river cafe,
you come to work and you don't know what you're
going to cook. You might make a risotta one day,
you might make a sauce another day, or you may
(35:51):
make a chocolate cake. And it was really interesting to
get the consistency and hearing from some chefs saying I
just don't like to bake, you know, I don't want
to make a cake. Or then you have the people
who are in the pastry kitchen saying. Some of them
say they want to come down and learn how to
make a osobuco or you know, girlleds steak, but a
lot of them feel very proprietor about what they're Do
(36:12):
you feel that, Are you happier when you're making a cake?
Speaker 1 (36:15):
To make it? Like? So, I like to be in
the kitchen and nurturing people. I love to do that,
But what I'm.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Really fond of is to be alone in the pastry
and to do complicated things that takes a lot of time, and.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Be alone the solitary. I love the solitary aspect of it.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
One of the things that I love is when in
the in the when I do stolen around Christmas time
and I do like I don't know ten kilos of
stolins still long, and it takes three days, and maybe
you have to be renovating the mix the dough seven
(37:01):
hours in and maybe that's like three o'clock in the morning.
So I go to sleep at ten. I woke up
at two thirty, and then I go and do it.
Then I go another map.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
I love that. That's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
To quote another person, I keep quoting people today. But
Michael Caine said that he loved to cook because it
was the only thing he could do without other people.
It was solitary, he said, gardening and cooking did He said,
you know everything in a life where making a movie
you have so many people around you.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
I don't like when people get into the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
But yeah, I was going to ask you if I
come and stay, I don't. I don't have to cook
with you.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
You you you you you. You would be more than
welcome in the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
No, you don't have to.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
But I don't like when people. You know why I like.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
I like people who knows what I'm doing and they
can understand the dyamic.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I feel the same way when somebody. We have an
open kitchen, and so people are curious and it's very nice,
but you kind of want them to go away a
little bit, you know. I like having people help me.
I love having Louis too.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
I like to host people, but friends they should stay
away from the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
I remember I was a kid. I was like fifteen.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
My best friend Manfredi, Manfredi Romano, we were growing.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Up together, high school together.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
He said to me, come with me for Christmas holidays
to my grandma house in Milano.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I was in Ficily, so I was very exotic for me.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
We went to Leco, this beautiful all mention for like
this large important, like Milanie family. And the second I
stepped into the kitchen, this woman looks at me and
goes like out out and I felt like, oh so ashamed,
but I understood her.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
She was right.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
And when you're working on a film set, when you're
making a movie, do you care about what you feed
the people who are working on the set.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
I must say, I wish, I wish I could be
like Wes Anderson, who famously has incredible catering on his sets.
That what I heard, but I don't. I don't because
it's a Scifian endeavor. Like, first of all, a crew
works so hard that they need to eat a lot.
(39:07):
They need to eat things that makes their energy going.
And I can't think. I mean, I am a control freak.
When I do a movie, I complete control freak. But
if I put my mind also onto that, it becomes
too much, too much.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
So there are people who know how to do it.
And I don't eat much when.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I shoot you down. I was going to ask you
about your own.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I don't eat on set. No, No, I don't.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
At the end of the day, when you shoot something,
unless it's like a complicated many extras or a lot
of action seen, you don't need much.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Many people.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yeah, it's interest because film and food and cooking, and
interior architecture, because you are involved in creating not just
the environment for the table, but for rooms and perhaps
even a hotel.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
I did. I did a hotel in Rome called Palazza Talia.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Where is it.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
It's in the formerly known Collegio del Nazzareno, which is
a very famous building from seventeenth century that being has
school for the elite of Roman children for long and
then now became a hotel. It's basically in the middle
(40:19):
between Piazza Espana and Fontana di trevi.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Yeh of this place.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
I did two suites and all the communal spaces everything.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
What does it look like, I don't know, whimsical, whimsical.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Traumatic as a as a and you enjoy it?
Speaker 1 (40:40):
I did? I did?
Speaker 2 (40:41):
You never thought of doing architecture or design.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
I want to be an architect as well, but that
there was a lot.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Of mathic architecture and mathematics and me, I'm not good
at it.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Would you do another?
Speaker 1 (40:51):
I'm actually doing another. What I can't say?
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Okay, hotel?
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, important, But.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
I think there are maybe the lines that we think
are barriers between film and cooking and architecture design. It's
all maybe at all.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
For me, it's a question of making, you know. I
love to make. I like craftsmanship. I like artists in general.
I like creative people. I am happy when I'm surrounded
by them.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
I like to share.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
But at the same time, I like the beautiful, unique
feeling that you feel when you see something becoming, whether
it's an pasta dish with asparagusis or it's this incredible
fantastic house that I mean, or it's like a scene,
the actual happening of something that becomes a transformation. And
(41:47):
food deals a lot with transformation. It's all about transformation.
So like, I think that is really, really, really at
the end of it. What I love about what I
do that I can witness transformation.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
And if food is transformation, and it is memory, and
it is sharing with your friends or creating something, it
also is comfort. Yeah, when you need comfort, is there
something that you would go to? Would it be a
food of your childhood or something tomato pasta that you
make We're going to make for me. What would be
your comfort food?
Speaker 3 (42:21):
I think my comfort food and I know the answer
very precisely is rice with milk.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Is that sweet?
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Sweet?
Speaker 2 (42:29):
So it's what we call rice, But tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Rice pudding.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
Yeah, I would use round rice tiny short right, what
we call vielano or tondo, and I would wash it
a lot and then I would boil in a lot
of water for like five to seven minutes. I would
drain it and then I would put let's say one
(42:53):
hundred and fifty grams of these rice washed and pre
boiled in a litter of whole milk and two hundred
and fifty grams of double cream and make it go
into the into the stove for like.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
An hour and a half.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
You put cinnamon or I would put I would put
sugar and a lot of vanilla and not cinnamon.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
And I love cinnamon.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
And I would make it cook for like an hour
and a half until you have a good ratio between
the growth of the of the grains and the cream
you need to have.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
That's why the best, like.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
I love you eat it hot cold? Yeah, so you
do eat somethings in that room temperature. I generally like
everything room temperature myself. But something is a good cold.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Well like desrt you can have ice cream at the.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Boy said to me in the restaurant, I, so, would
you like some ice cream? He said, no, it's too cold.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
But not even in a sunny place, in a warm place.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
No. I like pasta has to be hot. But otherwise
what I like about Italian food is there doesn't seem
to be that America. You get my country in the
United States, you get either very.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Hot or very cold, very cold. Everybody, So I quite.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Is it no good or good?
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Not good? Cold? It is not good. You needn temperature
is perfect.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Okay, Well that's what I go for.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Thank you very much, Thank you so much. With you
an thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in
partnership with Montclair
You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Here at Ruthie's Table four, we have something exciting to
tell you. Our new substack has just launched. You will
find all kinds of extra material from the River Cafe,
including recipes, our latest news, and bonus content from the podcast.
If you enjoy listening to this series as much as
I enjoy talking with our guests, visit the River Cafe,
(00:27):
dot substack and subscribe. See you there. What I know
about Luca Guardonino is, of course the films he's made.
But what I know from Luca is how passionate he
is about food. Meetium over lunch just last week at
the River Cafe, we went straight into not what movies
he was making, but what food he was cooking. He
(00:49):
is Italian and he cares, friends tell me. In his
home in Piermonte, Luca has three kitchens, including one elaborately
equipped for pastries and a special room for keeping vinegar
and dried herbs from his garden. It's always full of people,
everyone gathering around the table and kitchen. He genuinely loves
cooking with friends, participating and enjoying the process. Our mutual friend.
(01:14):
Lorcan O'Neil says, Luca has a true instinct for friendship.
Food not only plays a strong role in his home life,
but an important role in his films, conveying sensuous desire
and transformation. The prawns and I Am Love the Peach
and call me by your name, the churros and Challengers.
We're here today in the one kitchen I have in
(01:35):
my home to talk about food and memories, food and film,
food and family. A beginning to a new friendship, one
cook to another.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Wonderful. I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
It's so nice to have you here so fast. We
just saw each other two weeks ago. And you're back
in London. You're going to come back more often.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
The first time in Vaccines I saw you.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Oh, you're going to come back more. When's the next time?
Speaker 1 (01:58):
That's what I h I.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Hope very soon I might be coming back and stay
because I might do a movie in London. I did
a movie last year.
Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, what was that?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
It's After the Hunt? Yes, starring Julia Roberts and Yes
are you Debuery and Andrew Garfield, l Seviny, Michael Stohlberg.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
And there was a great experience and I love to
be in London. I was great about it, you know,
like first of all, to be in the summer in London.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
It's good for me because I cannot stand the heat,
so I like that the temperature here, okay, and the
quality of water.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
What we don't like about London summer?
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Oh my god, I can trade place.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah. And then what else is the.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Quality of work? Amazing amazing crafts. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
I used to say that independent films were used to
be made in Europe, the small films and the big
ones in La, and now it's changing. Everybody wants to
make a movie here La.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
I don't think they do any longer, any movies.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
But basically it's like impossible because of the very expensive
nature of the business.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
There Brown, who's the prime minister here fifteen years ago,
maybe he brought in the idea of lowering the tacks
for making citys. You walk into the River Cafe, you know,
you see everybody, you know, Noah and Greta here, you
were here, Julia Roberts is making another film. Yeah, the
(03:19):
Alejandro is here, and jj Abrams is here. It's like
walking into a kind of canteen.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
You know, it's a bit of quality of one nice
and good prices.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
What about in Italy are they making?
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Probably Italy that the quality of life is very good
and we have very good craftsman in Italy, but unfortunately
we don't have a very we have a short sighted
politics at play there.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Because the tradition in Rome. I mean it was amazing.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
I shot the movie in which is my previous one, Queer,
I fulfill these kind of fantasy of making a movie
entirely shot on stage in China.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Chita voll interior interiorn next theeries.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
I think we had like ten stages. We built in
the back loot, in the front lot. We even there
was a sort of big heel of dirt that we
took over and we created a jungle over there, and
it was fascinating, but almost for the remembrance of things
passed and more than the energy of the now.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Beau just did Felini and ANTONIOI?
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Did they make all their Realini for sure?
Speaker 3 (04:25):
ANTONIOI, I would say maybe not, but Pelini for sure.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
So we would love to read. You know, we always
try and start even the beginning of the conversation, because
that's how this podcast started. It was during COVID. The
idea originally it was just to read a recipe every day,
and then the idea was to say, well, how do
you segue from the recipe to this story of your
life through food. So we want to talk about cinema,
(04:51):
and we want to talk about Italy, and we want
to talk about everything, but it's the kind of getting
to understand who we are through our experience memories food, which.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Is everything I think you think it is.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I think so memory of meals, memory of food, memory
of the tight, tactile experience of food, the smells, the texture.
I think it constitutes. And I'm not talking about fancy
food per se. I'm talking about the idea of nourishment
or the deprivation of nourishment. It's really like one of
(05:23):
the things that makes us universally linked as people.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
So I do agree with you completely.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
A memory.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Yeah, when my father was dying, I flew when I
was in twenty twenty, during lockdown, I flew to Sicily
where he was born, in his village, and I walked
toward the building where he grew up, where he was
born and grew up and where I spent a lot
of summers when I was very little, and I could
(05:52):
distinctively remember in my mind and still now I can
the smell of mold and grapes be dried coming from
a storage place in the building. So I went into
the building and I could enter and the smell came
back to me in its physical presence and was incredible.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Is that And your father was drying in a hospital somewhere.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Else, Yeah, he was in Milano.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
I could come back home fun and and see him
going to help.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
It. Never smell, nothing helps, Nothing helps, but the smell
that you could feel.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Now it's like a legacy and something that I makes
me have him close, even the memory of that.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
You went to Ethiopia, and I was supposed.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
To be born in Ethiopia, but for I came out earlier,
so like seven months in August, I had to be
a Leo.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
There was no way around it. I'm a cancer also closed. Yeah.
I like cancer women. I don't like men.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
I have a friend that went to she went to
La and she called that's the hotel to find her babysitter.
And the baby said, well, I can babysit, but I
need to know the sign of the baby first.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
I agree. Oh, come on, I mean scorpio woman. Impossible,
my mom.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Okay, we'll get back to the side you went. You're
born a Leo in Ethiopia.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yes, and then moved in September.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
You were born in Palermo.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Palermo, and then with you too, Abeba, when I was
two months and I spent the first five years of
my life there.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Can you remember the smells of ethiop Oh yeah, what
were they like?
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Well, I mean I can. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
I don't know how to describe a smell, but I
remember very well the smell of the garden. I remember
the smell of the pets we had.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Which was also big turtle. We had a big turtle
as a pet.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
I can remember the smell of the coffee being roasted outside.
I can remember the food and gera and jera is
very tangy smell.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Very good food Ethiopia.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Yes, amazing. The sweets of the onions mixed.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
With the with the with the powdery smell of the barberret.
It's Fantasticbara is a mixture of spices that is typical
of the of Ethiopian kitchen. It's very red and it's
used for the door watt, which is a chicken stew
or for the lamb or beef stew called ziguiney.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Wonder why Ethiopia.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
My father was really restless. He met my mother when
he was teaching. He was a professor in Casablanca and
my mother is was living there.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
She was she grew up in Morocco. She's Algerian, but
she grew up in Morocco.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
And then once I was born, he wanted to do
another adventure abroad, so he got a post in a disabeba.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Are you an only child?
Speaker 1 (08:48):
No, I am the last of three.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
Three so all three of you went to Etho.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Yeah. Yeah, every now and then I do and you
get the green Yes?
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Is that what you keep in your special kitchen?
Speaker 3 (09:02):
I do have a lot of you know that I
have like a collection of spices.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Yeah, you have a very large yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
And then I have made with the wonderful people at
Ninfenburg in Munich. They sourced from their archives those jars
made for Apotheke in porcelain. And I asked them how
many sizes you have and they had every sizes because
these Ninfenburg gits four hundred years so they used to
(09:30):
make them for Apoteke. So that for me, like I
don't know ten kilos to ten grains, and I made
two hundreds of them for my kitchen, from ten kilos
to to twenty grames.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
How long does the ten kilos stay good? I mean
do they.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
Stay I cook a lot, so if you put ten
kilos of flour, maybe it's gonna last two weeks or
even less.
Speaker 2 (09:51):
I think the only youse tried a bit of dried
time and a bit of dried regular or recana. But
I don't think we in narc should we do the freshers.
We don't use you know, kind.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Of cooking we do, yes, but you do use spices.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
You're not marriage close human use core.
Speaker 3 (10:10):
The world of spices is so wide, Yeah, amazing beautiful smells.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
So the recipe that you chose to read today.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Is I chose from all the beauty.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
That was our thirtieth birth birthday.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
So beautiful.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
I chose tierini with asparagus and herbs. There's a wonderful
lady on the picture on the left side. Who's this
lady that.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Is FASTI arm it? Who's the manager of the River Cafe.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
The River Cafe is an incredible table. You eat so well,
they're good.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
Thank you. We have to eat more. So would you
like to read the recipe, which.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Is a recipe, and then we're going.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
To talk about some fresh pastad.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yeah, I mean you call them tierini and they are
technically called tierine and.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
It's Pimontes pasta.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
And I am, as you said before, I live in Pimonte,
and you the typical way of using tierne is with
truffle when the season is right. It's very thin and
very sturdy kind of pasta. So tierne with asparagus and herbs.
This is for six six hundred and seventy five grains
of thin asparagus pears, which could be also wild asparagus if.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
You can find them.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
We try and get that. It's not so easy.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
My friend Camillo, who is the gardener in my house,
his father who harvests collects from the nature's wild herbs,
brought me wild asparagus.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Last week, so already I have it in the season
now because we just got green asparagus today.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
So everything's really I know, four garlic clothes. I think
this is too much, I would say one.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Can I Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
I am nothing like an Italian teaching me how to cook.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, I really appreciate it. I'm not teaching you. I'm
saying just the balance.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
If I put the proportion of the number the games
of asparagus, I think one garlic cloves would be enough.
Four tablespoons of chopped I love it, chop mix.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Wait till I go see your movie. I'm going to
give you some advice.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I want all the advice.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
Four tablespoons chopped mix, fresh herbs, basil, mint, parsley, oregano,
fantastic one millimetery double cream.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
And in England you have the incredible double cream.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
That's one thing we have that fans. We have crimb fresh.
You don't have it at all.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
No, we have like you.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Get those little the cream that's in those packets that's
last for years.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
But even if even the fresh one is not as
thick and good as the one you find here, fair
enough two tablespoons of olive oil, fifty grams of unsalted butter,
two hundred and fifty grams tierine or tale, one hundred
and twenty grams of freshly grated parmesan cheese. Trim or
snap off the tough ends from the asparagu spears. Finally,
(12:48):
chop the asparagus all together with one of the garlic
clothes and the herbs. Bring the cream to the boil
in a saucepan with the rest of the whole garlic clothes,
and simmer until the clothes are soft. Remove from the
heat to discard the galic. So I changed my mind.
It's actually good to have four gathered clothes and.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Then meeting them this way and then throw them away.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
I apologize.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
You know what, Bernard Bertolucci, we used to say only
a sole they don't change their mind.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
I agree, So you see.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
But I have to say that I haven't looked at
that recipe for a long time, so I accepted that
I forgot that we took it out. We do that
quite often when we use the cream, like when we
do for sure the cream.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yes, so we take the aroma. Yeah, I think it's great.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Heat the olive oil and butter in a separate large
saucepan and fry half of the chopplatea sparagus for five minutes,
steering at the rest of the chopping the sparagus, followed
by the flavored cream. Bring to the boil, then reduce
the heat and simmer until the cream begins to thicken,
about six minutes.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
Season Remove from the heat and keep warm.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Cook the path in a generous amount of boiling water,
salted and then drain too roughly. Add to the sauce
along with about half of the parmesan, and tossed together
with the remaining parmesan.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Great recipe when you cook.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
Do you think when you're in Piedmonte and you're making
me lunch, what would you make If you were saying, ruthy,
I'm going to show you something from.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
The region, I would make you.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Do you like to sweets the SERTs, I would make
you a coppa. The Carama diras, which translates into a
cup of Syra's cream is a ricotta cheese create produced
only in Again and that part of the Pimonte where
I live. And it's super thin and almost like double
(14:33):
cream kind of texture, but it's ricotta. And I found
these in this book. This all ancient aristocratic recipe where
you mix the ricotta with raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, a little
bit of double cream, and then you break some savoyard
(14:53):
biscuits and rum.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
It's super good.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
You getting run the biscuits and rum or do you
add the raum no.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
I and the rum to the cream I think the
it's goods to be broken and put with the cream
makes this crunchy thing that is good nice.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
So what do you think about that recipe? Then you
prove of the garlic, I thought.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Don't improve. I approved the recipe.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
I love the way in which you you thick the sauce,
you make the cream thick. I like the way you
chop the asparagus is because that bleeds into the cream
and makes the cream being riped with the safe the
taste of the which is like sweet and slightly bitter,
(15:36):
which I love.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
And you're really an amazing, incredible palate. So when you're
growing up, just tell me going back from Ethiopia and
you describe the smells and the food and the recipes
which you've stayed with you all your life. But you
went back to and what was that like? There was
did your mother cooked?
Speaker 1 (15:54):
My father? Your father did the cooking, Oh, very much
a lot. What did he make everything? He was cooking
every day and he was cooking a lot, like you,
more than what we needed.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
For three children.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Yeah, but it was a large meals or larger recipes.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
But he was a teacher.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
He was teaching.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
It was coming back home at one, and he was
cooking all day.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
What about your mother?
Speaker 3 (16:19):
My mother was more like shy in the kitchen, probably
because my father was very Yeah, she cooked a lot
of Moroccan in time to time. She told me how
to do crap which is desturded. I love French crab,
French crap.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
What was the technique do you remember?
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah? I think you have to do it so that
once you have.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
Created the butter butter, he said, butter with the milk, eggs,
a little bit of sugar, a little bit of butter,
you let it rest for one day near a like
how do you call that radiator?
Speaker 1 (16:58):
So the heat makes that the butter ferment.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Did you ever have farinata?
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Oh? I love much.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
We do it a lot, because.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
I had a great farinata the River Cafe when I
was there.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Yeah, it's really I think we often give people pizzas
to start, but there's something about a farinata.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Which is an incredible.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
It's just chickpea, flour, olive.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Oil, very good nutritive thing, a lot of protein in it.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah, is some incredible.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
I mean, we have so many different ways of farinata
in Italy because you have far not in Tuscany, and
then you have panelle in Fiftily. Yeah, you have farinata in,
you have it in Liguria, you have it in and
you have the panell inmo in Sicily, which is chickpeas
flour mixed with water boiled boiled, yes, and then put
(17:53):
on a thin layer, cut in slices and fried. That's
panel panel, which is a typical street fair street food. Yes,
but it's another variation of the farinata.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Imagine estate bottled olive oil chosen and bottled for the
River Cafe, arriving at your door every month. Our subscription
is available for six or twelve months, with each oil
chosen personally by our head chefs and varying with each delivery.
It's a perfect way to bring some River Cafe flavor
into your home or to show someone you really care
(18:34):
for them with the gift. Visit our website shop the
Rivercafe dot co dot uk to place your order. Now,
how long did you live at home for?
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Was it? I think I left home when I was
twenty one.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I left, I went to Palerm, I went to Rome
to study literature.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Did you know that you wanted to do film? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yeah, I always I was I was torn between two
directions for myself. One was to be a director of
indirector and the other one was to be a chef.
I was cooking. I had my little mini pants when
I was in Ethiopic growing up, I had my little
corner in the kitchen where I could do what I wanted.
(19:21):
And I grew more and more into this, and then
when I was like fourteen, I realized that if I
had to go into that direction, I would have probably
abandoned the intellectual part of my bringing because I was
also a very avid reader of.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Books, quite academic.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Yeah, I felt like that between the two, probably I
could have kept being a passionate with food, but I
would have made my life more intellectual.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
And that's why I choose not had a cinema.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Did you have if you had little hands for media?
Speaker 3 (19:57):
I had a camera, Yes, you did either Super eight
my first superade.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
I had it when I was like nine or eight.
Your parents gave it to you, my mother.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
My mother gave me a Super eight, and I started
shooting my little short films with this. You know, like
you could get these eight millimeters little box where you
put into the camera and then you had to ship
it to Germany and wait like two months to get
it back. So I had my camera and I had
my projector, and I started to learn that if you
(20:27):
wanted to not tell a story but communicate something, you
didn't have to just film, but you have to create
a juxtaposition. But I didn't know how to actually cut,
so I started to cut on camera. So I was
doing a shot, and then I was thinking what I
want this to be followed by? And I was shooting
another thing, and I was doing these mini movies about
(20:49):
juxtaposition of things you haven't my mom must have in
some boxes.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yes, you should find them, we should find them, but
you still cook.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
Cook.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
I became friends with great chefs like yourself, and I
cultivated the cult of food all my life.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
I was for one year and a half.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
I was a gastronomic critic for Vanity Fair Italy.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Oh yeah, every week, reviewed restaurants, yeah, all over the world.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
And it's interesting because at the beginning, of course, it
was like we start, but then I became very consistent
because I was doing once a week for like more
than seventy weeks. For Vanity Fair Italy was a week weekly, Yes,
it's weekly. Wow, And there was a great director, Daniella Amaui.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
She was great.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Then she left and the new director fired me because
he said to me, you know, we don't like criticism,
maybe because we want to be friends with everybody.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
So I said, okay, bye bye, Adrian girl. Yeah I'm gone.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
And actually the conversation started because I sent a review
of a very important restaurant in Bergamo, three star mish Lands.
So now everybody who knows that knows who's the restaurant
still there? Oh yeah, yeah, super important. And I sent
it and they said to me, we can't publish this
because we're friends, and I said yes, but I say,
(22:14):
your friends, but journalis journalists, right, No. Then I made
another review of another restaurant, two Starmish Lanes and it
was another skating review, and they said we can't either.
So I went to see the director the editor of
the magazine and they fired me. We parted ways, but
I made like I made like sixty five seventy reviews.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
I should put them in a book you could put
it was nice.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
But then I started to go to places and people
were like, ah, they were like treating me in a
different way, and that was bad. And sometimes they were
asking me, can you come and review us?
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Even if it's a better review, we want the review.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
There is a I wonder you know. I just we
did a podcast recently with Francis Coppola.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
The Divine Francis.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah. Do you see him?
Speaker 3 (22:59):
No, I never met with him. I'm a friend with
his daughter, the wonderful Sofia.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
He's living in London now I would love okay, and
he also you know, you talk about the parallels between
making a movie and making a recipe running a restaurant.
Directing a film, you know how you of course, it's
in one way not very similar at all, but in
many ways it is about creating something, something, perhaps temporary.
(23:26):
The response of the critics, how you do it? Do
you think? I mean, did you find directing films and
writing about food or cooking food?
Speaker 3 (23:34):
I think directing films and cooking or in general running
an enterprise like a restaurant, are very close because the
director is the entrepreneur who is putting together all the elements,
including the ingredients, to make the experience be.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
So I think they're very.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
Close, and I think there is a lot of savvness
in the entrepreneur who knows life and habits and behavior.
So a director should be someone.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Who does know that.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
And when you made your first film, what was your
first film.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
That you actually what we called The Protagonists that I
shot in London with tild the Swinton, and it's a
movie that I'm not very happy with that the Cinema
Tech in Bologna restored. I met with the director of
the cinema Tech, Jan Luca Luka, why you restarted that movie?
Speaker 2 (24:23):
That's bad?
Speaker 1 (24:24):
And it had to be shut up? The movies great.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
And then a few months later it was on movie
which is still and I'm very like, why anyway?
Speaker 1 (24:32):
And it's gonna be.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
Your vengeance for the four Garly closes. I have no
I'm kidding.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
I think that it's interesting to think about the way
you've brought food into film. You know, how your films,
As I said in my introduction, the sensuous quality, the
the way that food can transport you into knowing about
a relationship, by the way people eat together, by the
(25:00):
way they feed each other.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
With a zero as people to very few and.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
You cannot surpass unsurpassable elements of our being one is
the biological is important like sleep, it, drink, shite, pee,
those are elements that are constitutional of who we are
as people. And because we are also capable of telling
a story about ourselves, meaning our condition as people, to
(25:30):
discard the elements that constitute our everyday life from the narrative,
it's advertisement, it's a sort of artificial construction. So that's
why I'm very keen that in my storytelling there is
always the possibility of experiencing our universal being, which has
(25:51):
to do with sleeping, waking up, being, shiting, and eating
and sex and having sex. Even though I think that
sex as a cultural.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Artifacts is overrated, so.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Boring, boring to watch, boring in film.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
Boring to be discuss it.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Yeah, challenging in film to.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Yeah, I mean there is the challenge of filming sex
deals with the undemocratic nature of filmmaking and the inevitable
and absolutely welcome need of democracy in dealing with people
that helps.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
You making the movie.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Translation, if you make a movie as a director, you
always have this totalitarian idea that everything has to be
the way you want. But how can you have that
attitude when you ask two people, maybe two people that
are strangers to each other, to do something intimate, even
if for the fiction of it so it's a compromise,
it's a conversation. It's like, sometimes the compromise brings something
(26:57):
you didn't expect. Sometimes the compromise this troy what you
wanted to do. Sometimes it hurts you or it hurts
the other and it shouldn't.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
We were talking with Francis the other day. We're talking
about erotic film. When you see something erotic in the movie, and.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
Remind me to tell you what is the most erotic
cinema scene in my life, in my.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Idea, and I said that one of the most erotic
scenes that I remember, and I'm not gonna remember which
one it was with Daniel day Lewis the Edith Wharton
movie of the Age of when he holds her hand
in the carriage. Do you remember I.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Was going, this is incredible, because I was going to
tell you one scene from Manuel de la Vera, and
this was going to be my second. In the scene
that you describe, which is incredible, he takes the hand
and unbuttoned the glove on the on the wrist and
he opens the glove almost like in a sort of
(27:53):
like vagina shape and kisses it and smells it.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
I agree with you, that's one of the.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Most erotic scenes ever shot from a director who knows
everything about human nature. The other scene is in the
great movie La vallea Brown The Valley of Sin, which
is a sort of version of Madame Bovarie, shot by
the greatest director or ever, leave Manuel de Olivera Portuguese,
(28:22):
in which she has this actress, Leonor silvera amazing actress,
playing Madame Beavverie, being tormented by this kind of shock
of eroticism that she's feeling for the man, and she
grabs a flower and she fingers the flower and the
director makes this closeup of the flower cup being fingered
by the finger of Leonora silvera incredible moment.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
So as I've just been help patizen, but as another
scene that I was thinking another way of torture, and
one of the most upsetting torture scenes that I've seen
was in Rome Open City, because you never see it,
You never see the torture. It's behind in a room behind,
and you hear you just hear it. It's fromazing and
(29:05):
now if they probably were doing we think of all
the torture scenes we see in film, whether the guy's
tied up or somebody comes in and throws this and.
Speaker 3 (29:12):
I say something that is going to make me lose
some people that likes my work or myself. I don't
think everybody should make films, only the people who know
how to make them. And you're hitting a very delicate
hot button here, because to represent something like torture, it
takes an ethical and also humanistic wisdom to have to
(29:34):
do it properly. And that's why you mentioned this scene
from one of the greatest movies ever made from one
of the greatest directors I ever leaved, Roberto Rossellini. So
like I agree with you violence spreading on the screen
indiscriminately because it's like a trade and it doesn't come
with an idea of ethics at play from filmmakers sometimes
(29:58):
not now from a long time or in general.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Ramachita Perta, which I.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
Watched again, like lasts I haven't seen in London at
the curtain, mayfird they had.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
A red you say re re release.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
It's interesting because historically the movie has been told of
being one of the great example of Italian neo realism,
but in fact is then one of the great melodramas.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
I think more than neo realism. Beautiful movie.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
I thought it was sting, so beautiful. So if we're
going back to the cooking and the food, and your
tell me a scene, because I could say the showsers
and challengers, or we could talk about the peach, or
we could talk about the prawns. For you, which one
would you talk about if I asked you to talk
to me about the film.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
I don't want to be sensationalist. But one scene of
food that I think is very, very successfully made in
my movies, it's when Maren and Sally played by Mark
Rylance and Taylor Russell eat the lady in the house
(31:08):
and bones and all.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
That is a great meal scene.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I would say, can you describe it to someone who
I can describe you to? He is listening to this
and they won't have seen it.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
I think, if I remember properly, you have the character
of Lee of mav Maar, and this girl who is
coping with her own nature. She realizes that she's a
cannibal and cannot stop by being one, and she's in
search of a way not to be like that, and
also in search of someone to share the burden of
this wave being. And she has met the older man Mark.
(31:40):
Sally played by Mark Rylands, the amazing Mark Rylance and
who is like her an eater, someone who has an
impulse of eating, a cannibalistic and cannot stop from refrain from.
And he brings her to a house in a village
in the night and base he tells her that in
(32:01):
the other room a lady is almost dying, an older lady,
and revolves by this. She wants to run away, and
she tells her, you that's your nature. She goes into
another room and spend the night awake and not knowing
what to do, and then she falls asleep. And then
when the first light of the day comes, the lady dies,
(32:26):
and she suddenly smells the impulse to go there.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
She smells what she has.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
To go for, and she opens the door and she
walks in the landing, and we can see part of
the body of the lady, but you see Sally bending
over the woman, already fisting on her and turning towards
Matine and looking at her and kindly inviting her in.
And the scene. I mean, I thought the movie was
(32:53):
going to be like a great successful love story, and
people were really appalled by the nature of the cannibalies
in the movie. But we were very committed to make
it properly. And I would say that both Taylor Russell
and Mark were sublime in the movie. And of course,
(33:14):
my dear dear Timo Tshelamet was incredible in the movie.
Either that's my favorite meal scene that I filmed in
my life.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
Yeah, it's your favorite.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
Yeah, because it's terminal. It's like, what can you go
beyond that?
Speaker 1 (33:27):
You can't? That's it. I haven't seen it.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Bones and All was twenty twenty two and it stars
Timtschelamette and Taylor Russell and Mark Rylance.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
The River Cafe when you said Lunch is now running
from Monday to Thursday. Reserve a booking at www. Rivercafe
dot co dot uk or give us a call. Let's
go back to your kitchen's three kitchens in Piermont, Say so,
tell me about the three kitchens. You have a pastry
(34:03):
kitchen as.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Well to The house I live in is an old
house from nineteenth century, and I renovated it slowly in time.
And I always wanted to be able to have space
to cook properly and to have all the things I
need to cook properly. And I always thought that you
(34:24):
could not cook savory where you cook suite.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Well restaurants, we have a pastry kitchen.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Separated, so that was a rule.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
So I created these two rooms separating them. One is
cream color and one is pitch color. It's all tiles.
Which one is the pitch is the is the pastry
the pastry. Then I have another kitchen outside for if
I do. I have not put the actual gears yet,
(34:55):
but this is going to be for caterings maybe. And
I'm now doing a bakery. Are you in the courtyard, yes,
for yourself, because there is this is like a countryside
home with all the buildings made for heart of a
thing and da da da, And there wasn't an old
brick oven already there. So I'm restoring the brick oven
(35:17):
and making a bakery in order to do bread.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
It's very very different, isn't it making bread making pastries
from making pasta.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Or Oh yeah, all of them are very differently.
Speaker 2 (35:29):
We have a chefs who are great cooks, and they
just I mean once because we always had the system
that we didn't have a pastry kitchen from until about
ten years ago. Maybe when the demand we just everything
we made. You came into work in the river cafe,
you come to work and you don't know what you're
going to cook. You might make a risotta one day,
you might make a sauce another day, or you may
(35:51):
make a chocolate cake. And it was really interesting to
get the consistency and hearing from some chefs saying I
just don't like to bake, you know, I don't want
to make a cake. Or then you have the people
who are in the pastry kitchen saying. Some of them
say they want to come down and learn how to
make a osobuco or you know, girlleds steak, but a
lot of them feel very proprietor about what they're Do
(36:12):
you feel that, Are you happier when you're making a cake?
Speaker 1 (36:15):
To make it? Like? So, I like to be in
the kitchen and nurturing people. I love to do that,
But what I'm.
Speaker 3 (36:24):
Really fond of is to be alone in the pastry
and to do complicated things that takes a lot of time, and.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Be alone the solitary. I love the solitary aspect of it.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
One of the things that I love is when in
the in the when I do stolen around Christmas time
and I do like I don't know ten kilos of
stolins still long, and it takes three days, and maybe
you have to be renovating the mix the dough seven
(37:01):
hours in and maybe that's like three o'clock in the morning.
So I go to sleep at ten. I woke up
at two thirty, and then I go and do it.
Then I go another map.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
I love that. That's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
To quote another person, I keep quoting people today. But
Michael Caine said that he loved to cook because it
was the only thing he could do without other people.
It was solitary, he said, gardening and cooking did He said,
you know everything in a life where making a movie
you have so many people around you.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
I don't like when people get into the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (37:32):
But yeah, I was going to ask you if I
come and stay, I don't. I don't have to cook
with you.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
You you you you you. You would be more than
welcome in the kitchen.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
No, you don't have to.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
But I don't like when people. You know why I like.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
I like people who knows what I'm doing and they
can understand the dyamic.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
I feel the same way when somebody. We have an
open kitchen, and so people are curious and it's very nice,
but you kind of want them to go away a
little bit, you know. I like having people help me.
I love having Louis too.
Speaker 3 (38:02):
I like to host people, but friends they should stay
away from the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
I remember I was a kid. I was like fifteen.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
My best friend Manfredi, Manfredi Romano, we were growing.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Up together, high school together.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
He said to me, come with me for Christmas holidays
to my grandma house in Milano.
Speaker 1 (38:18):
I was in Ficily, so I was very exotic for me.
Speaker 3 (38:21):
We went to Leco, this beautiful all mention for like
this large important, like Milanie family. And the second I
stepped into the kitchen, this woman looks at me and
goes like out out and I felt like, oh so ashamed,
but I understood her.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
She was right.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
And when you're working on a film set, when you're
making a movie, do you care about what you feed
the people who are working on the set.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
I must say, I wish, I wish I could be
like Wes Anderson, who famously has incredible catering on his sets.
That what I heard, but I don't. I don't because
it's a Scifian endeavor. Like, first of all, a crew
works so hard that they need to eat a lot.
(39:07):
They need to eat things that makes their energy going.
And I can't think. I mean, I am a control freak.
When I do a movie, I complete control freak. But
if I put my mind also onto that, it becomes
too much, too much.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
So there are people who know how to do it.
And I don't eat much when.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
I shoot you down. I was going to ask you
about your own.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
I don't eat on set. No, No, I don't.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
At the end of the day, when you shoot something,
unless it's like a complicated many extras or a lot
of action seen, you don't need much.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Many people.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
Yeah, it's interest because film and food and cooking, and
interior architecture, because you are involved in creating not just
the environment for the table, but for rooms and perhaps
even a hotel.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
I did. I did a hotel in Rome called Palazza Talia.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
Where is it.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
It's in the formerly known Collegio del Nazzareno, which is
a very famous building from seventeenth century that being has
school for the elite of Roman children for long and
then now became a hotel. It's basically in the middle
(40:19):
between Piazza Espana and Fontana di trevi.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
Yeh of this place.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
I did two suites and all the communal spaces everything.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
What does it look like, I don't know, whimsical, whimsical.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
Traumatic as a as a and you enjoy it?
Speaker 1 (40:40):
I did? I did?
Speaker 2 (40:41):
You never thought of doing architecture or design.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
I want to be an architect as well, but that
there was a lot.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Of mathic architecture and mathematics and me, I'm not good
at it.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
Would you do another?
Speaker 1 (40:51):
I'm actually doing another. What I can't say?
Speaker 2 (40:53):
Okay, hotel?
Speaker 1 (40:54):
Yeah, important, But.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
I think there are maybe the lines that we think
are barriers between film and cooking and architecture design. It's
all maybe at all.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
For me, it's a question of making, you know. I
love to make. I like craftsmanship. I like artists in general.
I like creative people. I am happy when I'm surrounded
by them.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
I like to share.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
But at the same time, I like the beautiful, unique
feeling that you feel when you see something becoming, whether
it's an pasta dish with asparagusis or it's this incredible
fantastic house that I mean, or it's like a scene,
the actual happening of something that becomes a transformation. And
(41:47):
food deals a lot with transformation. It's all about transformation.
So like, I think that is really, really, really at
the end of it. What I love about what I
do that I can witness transformation.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
And if food is transformation, and it is memory, and
it is sharing with your friends or creating something, it
also is comfort. Yeah, when you need comfort, is there
something that you would go to? Would it be a
food of your childhood or something tomato pasta that you
make We're going to make for me. What would be
your comfort food?
Speaker 3 (42:21):
I think my comfort food and I know the answer
very precisely is rice with milk.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Is that sweet?
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Sweet?
Speaker 2 (42:29):
So it's what we call rice, But tell me about it.
Speaker 1 (42:31):
Rice pudding.
Speaker 3 (42:31):
Yeah, I would use round rice tiny short right, what
we call vielano or tondo, and I would wash it
a lot and then I would boil in a lot
of water for like five to seven minutes. I would
drain it and then I would put let's say one
(42:53):
hundred and fifty grams of these rice washed and pre
boiled in a litter of whole milk and two hundred
and fifty grams of double cream and make it go
into the into the stove for like.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
An hour and a half.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
You put cinnamon or I would put I would put
sugar and a lot of vanilla and not cinnamon.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
And I love cinnamon.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
And I would make it cook for like an hour
and a half until you have a good ratio between
the growth of the of the grains and the cream
you need to have.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
That's why the best, like.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
I love you eat it hot cold? Yeah, so you
do eat somethings in that room temperature. I generally like
everything room temperature myself. But something is a good cold.
Speaker 3 (43:39):
Well like desrt you can have ice cream at the.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
Boy said to me in the restaurant, I, so, would
you like some ice cream? He said, no, it's too cold.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
But not even in a sunny place, in a warm place.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
No. I like pasta has to be hot. But otherwise
what I like about Italian food is there doesn't seem
to be that America. You get my country in the
United States, you get either very.
Speaker 1 (44:04):
Hot or very cold, very cold. Everybody, So I quite.
Speaker 2 (44:10):
Is it no good or good?
Speaker 1 (44:11):
Not good? Cold? It is not good. You needn temperature
is perfect.
Speaker 2 (44:14):
Okay, Well that's what I go for.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Thank you very much, Thank you so much. With you
an thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in
partnership with Montclair
Host
Ruth Rogers
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.