December 11, 2023 • 39 mins
Ralph Fiennes, actor, writer, director and one of five children talks to Ruthie about the roles he has played in his long career and the important role food has played in his life. Listen to two good friends talk together.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm Ray Fines, and I'm having an affair with the
River Cafe.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I can honestly not remember where or when I met
Ray Fines. It is often said that the test of
a true friendship is that after being a part for
a long time, you're able to pick up just where
you left off. Rafe and I recorded this podcast a
while ago, and since then we've been apart too much
for my liking. He in Rome filming Conclave in New
(00:31):
York and David Hare's straight lined crazy in Greece The Return,
and in his beloved Suffolk creating a new home with
a beautiful kitchen. Is that Okay, that's a beautiful kitchen.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
It's a good kitchen.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Okay, the beautiful kitchen. But right now we are on
Ruthie's table for to talk about the work he's doing,
what he's been cooking, and then we will have dinner
at the River Cafe, and like the loving close friends,
we are pick up just where we left off.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Chocolate Nemesis ten eggs, five hundred seventy five grams of
caster sugar, six hundred seventy five grams of best quality
dark chocolate, four hundred fifty grams of unsalted butter.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Softened.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Preheat the oven to a hundred thirty degrees centigrade. Whisk
the eggs with a third of the sugar with an
electric mixer until the volume quadruples. This will take at
least ten minutes. Meanwhile, melt the chocolate and butter together
in a heat proof bowl set over a pan of
(01:43):
barely simmering water. Remove from the heat. Heat the remaining
sugar with two hundred fifty milli liters of water in
a small saucepan until the sugar has dissolved to a syrup,
stirring occasionally. Gently pour into the melted chocolate, stirring slowly.
(02:06):
Add the warm chocolate and syrup mixture to the eggs,
Increase the speed, and continue beating until completely combined. The
mixture will lose volume. Pour into the prepared cake tin
and put into a deep baking tray on top of
a tea towel. To prevent the cake tin from moving,
(02:28):
fill the baking tray with hot water so that it
comes at least two thirds up the sides of.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
The cake tin.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Bake foot one and a half to two hours until set.
Test by placing the flat of your hand gently on
the surface of the cake.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Well, I was going to ask you why you chose Nemesis,
but when you said that you were having an affair
with a restaurant, it all made sense because I was
thinking if you seafood as a seduction, you know, and
whether we think that if you were having an affair
(03:07):
with a restaurant, you were having with the woman with
happy part of the seduction.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Well, there's always a sensual connection with food. Food is sensuality.
And as I've grown older, or the last few years especially,
I have found myself cooking more and more and loving
cooking and loving the preparation, that connection to food and
cooking has grown.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Executive highest. You're getting shore to come and just talk
about the Nemesis just for a minute, will you talk
about in our course? Because you have made it for
how many years?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Twenty?
Speaker 4 (04:08):
I was trying to work out while you were reading
the recipe how many Nemesis we might have sold?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Well, how many we sell it? Ye? I think we
do ten thousand a year, so times thirty would be
is that three hundred thousand or say half a million? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Maybe, But you do make it sound quite relaxing when
you're reading it.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
But when you're making it.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Also the chocolate cake that eludes most people. It's probably
one of the most difficult chocolate cakes to get perfect.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Why is that? Do you think? What's what's the secret?
Speaker 4 (04:43):
It used to be a real secret, didn't it? Ruthly
that no one could ever make it? And then when
we did the River Cafe thirty book, we gave a
more real recipe of how to do it.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Is it deliberate withholding an information?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
I say, people say there are quite a few recipes
in the Blue Book that people say it just doesn't work,
And I say, give me break, give us our first
cookbook that you but it is a hard one to make.
And I think the tin was very big and Julian
Barnes famously wrote a piece about the fact that there
(05:18):
was a time in the nineties when you went to
anybody's home for dinner and you'd see this kind of
splodge of chocolate. It was just this splutge of chocolate.
And that was that was the attempt to make the nemesis.
But then when we actually I think it easy, has
an easy nemesis, doesn't it too?
Speaker 4 (05:35):
There's one tried and tested technique to reduce percentage of failure,
I'd say, which is to make sure that you never
take it out of the tin until it's totally cold.
And if it's a little tiny bit warm like lukewarm, splodge, yeah,
you have to pipe.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
That's good.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
That's how a probably topped tip.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And actually, because the chocolate itself has to cool, and
is it the chocolate in the bottom, so I think cool?
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Yeah, yeah, And if you've really have made a mistake,
you probably could just put it in the fridge and
it would set.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
But that's the sort of off the record.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
Don't try that away.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
But the other thing about the Nemesis is that it
has no flowers. Yeah, and really it is like making
a s fle because you beat the eggs so much,
don't you. That's a workout.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Because it has no flour, it appeals to the gluten
free and so therefore it's almost a health food in itself,
a healthy cake.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Except for the sugar and the eggs.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
And ask we have worked out the calorific value of
one slice, but we can't divulge that because I would
never sell another slice.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Was it a thousand calories?
Speaker 4 (06:53):
It's quite a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
It was like a daily half a day's.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Just have a slither. Yeah, it is so good. And
and then obviously the quality of the chocolate.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Chocolate, can you reveal the brand or the chocolate.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
We shop around for chocolate, we would probably buy chocolate
that's seasonal, and going around the world with the season
of chocolate making, we've tried different chocolates and different some
of them.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
We had that Nemesis tasting to remember. It was really hard.
It was there were six Nemess cakes made with six
different types of chocolate, and we were supposed to sort
of taste each one and then and and it wasn't
even that you had to be like pretend you were really,
(07:38):
really really good chef and say, oh, I can really
tell the difference between this chocolate and that, you know,
which we all were. But we could tell some differences.
You could taste it was a bit chalky, or it
was a bit well, some of them were too perfumed.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
And so yeah, yeah, we used to use a chocolate
that we've changed. We changed people's taste change, I think,
and people like maybe as people know more about chocolate,
I think they might not like such sweet chocolates as
maybe twenty years ago.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I think that's what's happening.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I think I sensed that just because what's on offer
on the chocolate shark shops is a lot of higher
percentage chocolate, but seventy five eighty five.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Do you think that we've had chefs that we just
couldn't teach to make a nemesis?
Speaker 4 (08:22):
You?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Do you think everybody can make one?
Speaker 4 (08:24):
I think I think it's part of your sort of
badges of honor that you need to be able to
make a nemesis. It's one of those things that I
genuinely think eludes the average person, Like have you ever
made one?
Speaker 3 (08:37):
No, I've made the chocolate has on that cake which
is in.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
That Yeah, because it has only got four ingredients, you
really need to make sure that those ingredients are the
best quality.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Chocolate, butter, sugar, eggs.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Yeah, but I mean we use buffalo milk butter, which
is also like hi fat. Yeah, and it's white butter
and really neutral and clean, these fine chocolate sugar and
then really beautiful eggs as well.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That's it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
People listening to you, they're going to rush off and
do it.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Make it challenge?
Speaker 2 (09:14):
The challenge one on YouTube didn't you did you make?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
I did?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Incentive is the challenge.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Yeah, but people do phone the restaurant if they're having
trouble with it. I'm not encouraging people to do so, but.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Mobile eight one hundred thousand listeners. I remember people calling
up and saying we ruined their dinner party. I have
a few of those, but not even Actually no, with Nemesis,
it was a woman called me up and she made
this lemon sorbet lemon the lemon ice cream as she said,
you know, it didn't work, and he ruined my dinner party.
(09:49):
And I said, well, I just gave the chef the
recipe and he just made one and it's perfectly fine,
So take that.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
The other thing is you've got to make sure you
volumeize the egg. Yeah, like probably five times a volume,
and then once you've mixed the chocolate into the egg mixture.
But the other thing we do is we hit the
tin really hard. Is a good way to bash out
the air. Otherwise then you just drop it or hit
(10:18):
it really hard on the work surface, and then all
those air bubbles that you've got in there from just
whipping it kind of drop out, and it gives it
that intense, that texture that's quite unique, and that's maybe
why people can't make it, and if it when you
cook it, if it gets a crunchy topping wrong, it
(10:40):
has to have like a just set top. I mean,
the finer details.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
We could have put this in the book never occurred
to it. But they're also I think the cloth and
the tin is a big difference. I don't think we
had that in the first books, putting the cloth and
the you know when you put the band Marie of
the water in the big tin and then you put
that often. I think that's a good thing to do. Okay,
all right, I'll come back. We're going to have dinner tonight,
(11:05):
so we'll come back and have a place of Nemesis
for dessert.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
The skin it was good. Watch it.
Speaker 5 (11:14):
We could do a phone yeah, call us with your problem.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
When you were growing up, what was it like cooking
and eating in the Fines family?
Speaker 1 (11:39):
What was that like? Sometimes quite stressful because there was
eight of us, six children and two parents, and then
then we had it for many years. We also had
a foster brother mixed, so it would have been nine people,
but generally it was.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Eight of us.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
But I have a very as you asked me that, Ruthie,
you have a very strong memory of family meals, specially
Sunday or Saturday, and I have memories two of my
parents sometimes giving a small dinner party, very simple, often
something like spaghetti bolonnaise. And then I remember we all
were tantalized when these grown ups came. So this when
(12:15):
I'd be about eight or nine and these friends came,
and you get the whole sense of this adult world
where people have come, and that we might have put
on some ear ring or lipstick and the men to
brush the hair and thrown a tie on or something
or not, or you know, and I remember it being
tantalized by the adult world.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
And we had this game.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
The eldest four of us called spy on the grown ups,
which we were actually technically had gone to bed, but
we used to love tiptoeing down the stairs, opening the
door and sort of listening, and we'd hear a snippet
of conversation which you probably misheard, me run up the
stairs and report a bit of conversation that we had heard.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I think I did the same. I remember sitting on
the stairs, and you know, we all sometimes so we
now sort of complain about dinner parties, are going to
those kind of dinner parties are going to a dinner party.
But for a child it is so it's so intriguing,
isn't it The adult as you say, the adult world
of manners and food and a different kind. But would
(13:16):
your mother cook very differently? Do you think for the
dinner parties she would cook for nine eight children?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Was very well.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
There was a time when we were finding out, yes
she would, but there was a time when that was
she I think she developed a reluctance just because I
think she felt pressure to be a good cook, and
she thought that thing about you know, I'm going to disappoint.
So I think it was. And for a time we
had my parents are very pushed financially. We were in
Ireland in the early nineteen seventies and there was a
(13:43):
great There was a whole summer where the lunch was
only ever mashed potatoes and nor packet.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Soup, nor packet soup.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah yeah, And we all got very good at making
nor packet soup, mashed potatoes. And in the evening maybe
it would be a macaroni cheese or shepherd's pie or something.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
But you felt satisfied by you never felt, never felt But.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
My parents love food.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
But when you talk about loving food, people often think
you're an indulge. But I think it needn't be the case.
You can just it just can be a really good
piece of cheese and a cracker and fresh tomato, and
that can be pleasurable.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
People ask me why did I learn to cook or
why did I become so interested in cooking? And I
think that at a certain point in your life, if
you like to eat and you can't really afford eating,
you know you want to eat well, so you have
to kind of cook well. And I think that is
something that I think.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
That's key if you love eating, if you love it,
you do you.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Want to cook.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
But again sort of going from the nemesis that you
chose the nemesis because I also you and I have
such a close relationship and connection to Italy. I've had
phone calls from you from the market saying with you,
I've just seen the most incredible leaves of checor or
I've seen mushroom as your role, how am I going
to cook this fungi or whatever was it you saw?
(15:06):
Because you do go to you have his house in
Umbria and not far from mine, and I've had calls
from you from the market. I've had calls from you
while you're cooking, and I've had calls from you after
you've cooked something and said, let me tell you that
what I just cooked last night with it because it
was really good and you might learn something if I
tell you this. What was it like in Umbria, Because
(15:27):
you've been to me in Tuscany, but I haven't been
to your house, So just what's it like food wise?
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Is that you have a big kitchen, simple simple kitchen,
simple stove, but fine, you know, four hobbs in an oven.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
But the big table.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
And actually I have a memory of going to when
you take gone to the house that you take in Italy,
you have lots of vegion, fruits and stuff ripening, already prepared,
waiting to be consumed. And I definitely, I definitely echo
that with a table with bowls full of fruit. And
(16:03):
if it's not if it's very hot, I can't keep
bed out, but tomatoes I will keep out. But if
only it gets very hot, the fridge is a resource.
But no, there's a market in the local town, and
I go to the market. There is the Italian co op.
I have to say, is great, great, well here and
(16:27):
there are others. There was a small butchers which I
would go to.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
So I love.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Is there a restaurant that you go.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
To there is, yes, but it's just outside non Nagelsa.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
It's a trat.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Which is which is a great, simple, really good Umbrian cooking.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
I think I'm cooking. It's about Italy. I would say
that food varies from region to region, but also from
city to city and also from town to town. So
I think that even though you're quite close to me,
they're probably more. Do you have a lot of lentils
there and beans?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yeah, lentile soup yeah, chick piece soup yea.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
And what about when you're you're are you alone there?
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Do you cook?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Do cook in a different way when you're solitary?
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Well, I'm usually when I'm there, mostly there on my
own and I have friends who come visit, and I cook,
but I do more. I'm more engaged with shopping and
cooking when i'm minutely than I am. I think, yeah,
because because I got the time to go out and
properly select food and think about what I'm going to eat.
And I love going to the market. It's great for
(17:36):
people watching and it tells.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
You a lot about the culture, doesn't It tells you
about the people who are selling the food there, what
they're eating, what the you know, the way they shop
the market is a kind.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Of enthusiasm of the people selling the food and they
the lady saying the cheese will cut your piece of cheese. Yeah,
the kind of and also you feel their delight with
their food culture. They're they're kind of excitement about what
they're selling.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
It is very very regional. And I think also when
you come, when we're tasking together, we just sit there,
don't we for hours? You know, talking and eating and
eating some more, and it's all kind of one big
table in one conversation. The River Cafe is excited to
announce the return of our Italian Christmas gift boxes, our
(18:26):
alternative to the traditional hamper. They bring you all of
our favorites from the River Cafe kitchen, the vineyards and
the designers from all over Italy. They're available to pre
order now on shop the River Cafe dot co dot uk.
(18:48):
Tell me about eating and acting. What's the deal there?
Do you eat?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
That's a good question.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I think you need a bit of food for energy,
so to have starved yourself or not have eaten within
three hours before a performance. You can, I think your
sugar level would drop. I mean, but I know I
can't eat a big meal. What do you eat not?
Speaker 2 (19:10):
What about on a film set.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
When we touched breakfast, breakfast? Breakfast? Really they have now
found ways to shorten the day and they have what
I called a running lunch. A lot of films you
can maybe grab twenty minutes to have a sandwich, and
they'll have a running lunch from twelve to two. Maybe
if they do stop, it's half an hour only.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
And so, as I said you were in Rome, I.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Was filming Aroom twice this year.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
I was filming this conclave which you mentioned about a
film recreating the conclave when the cardinals, when the pope
has died and all the cardinals get into the Sistine
Chapel and they are sequestered away from the world. They
have no contact with the outside world at all while
they vote for the new pope, and they have to
(19:55):
keep voting until the required majority is achieved.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Somebody put them to can I can one of them
say I want to be pope and campaigned?
Speaker 1 (20:03):
There's a bit of that in it. There is oh yes, no,
that's a bit. It's it's based on a great book
by Robert Harris and it was written maybe nine years ago.
And it's been directed by Edward Berger, who directed All
Quite on the Western Front, which got a lot of
acclaim the last season.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
He was wonderful director, very very very good, very.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Lovely man, very detailed and very and the best sense
attentive to the actors and the nuances that he wants
them to bring out. I love working with him and
wonderful Stanley Tucci. He loves playing my two We're two,
we're two cardinals who are friends and we hit we
hit a few bumpy patches in our friendship.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
In the film, do.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
You both want to put yourselves up from being pope?
Speaker 1 (20:46):
In different ways? He's a bit more. We're both reluctant
to admit it that we do. And he's brilliant in
the film.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
I have to say, did the Vatican were they involved?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
They they just rise above it. They just know they're
not really involved. But no, they just they.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
And they let you film in the Vatican.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
No, no, no, no, no, There is a whole The
key voting scenes are in the Sistine Chapel in real life,
and there exists. Assistine Chapel set made I believe for
the miniseries The Young Pope, which I think St.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Julie was long Jude.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
So that set of the Sistine Chapel was was mothballed,
and then our production brought it out, cleaned it out,
repainted it, and it's the whole of the first twenty
feet of the Sistine Chapel with the Day of Judgment
at one end as a copy, and they add the
rest with CGI. But I've seen bits of the footage
(21:41):
with the added siagiant. It looks it looks like we're
in the real place.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
And then for me what i'd last like that was
where did you eat in realm?
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Don't ask me the names I've gone.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Okay, just tell me about the food. How did it
feel to be eating the food of realm? For as
long as.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
I'm there, Stanley hipp, you don't make me bring you
up again with you. But Stanley Teacher, you brought a
chunk of us towards the end, a group of us
who were filming, including Edward. It's wonderful restaurant called not
pomer Doughty but Pomme Dory, I believe, and it's an
old family restaurant that was beloved of Pasolini, the director,
(22:17):
and he organized this wonderful meal there late, very late
after a day's filming, and that I think was the
best meal I had. They had put on the special
meal because it was Stanley and they were charming. And
I went back there to that restaurant again when I
returned to Rome later this year in the summer to
make their return and it's just very and you don't
(22:40):
really they kind of give you food you didn't really order.
I mean, you can't order, but they just sort of
present you with what they feel is the best pastor
of the evening.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
And it was very easy.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
And I definitely preferred the more threat or style than
the restaurants, the high flying restaurants.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
I'm not drawn to it so much.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Did you read out a lot? Would you?
Speaker 1 (23:00):
After filming on conclaims?
Speaker 3 (23:03):
I ate out quite a bit, but.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
We're filming day. The filming hours are so long. In
the end, I would go back to my flat and
I cooked something. But in the weekends with you. And
what about Greece, I love oh when Greece and Corse.
We were in cor food for most of it and
we came across a wonderful restaurant which served the most
exquisite lamb that was on the spit.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Oh God the lamb.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Was was just extraordinary, just so circular and tasty, and
Spiros's restaurant it was. It was quite a simple restaurant,
catering for mostly tourists.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
But god, the lamb was.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
What month was spring? May? Oh you we just kept
you in Morocco? Was that also? Don't you think? I agree?
I think Moroccan.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Food that was heaven. Let's take Jeene cooking is one
of the best cooking ways of cooking I think I've
had come across.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah that I was going to ask you about the menu. Yeah,
because you know, here we are a chef, chef Shanza chef,
were going into a restaurant and I remember you calling
me up from there and saying that you were, you know,
learning the skills. A woman from San Francisco came, did
She a.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Chef Dominique Krenn, who I think has a restaurant in
San Francisco called Atelier tren And there's a wonderful chef's
table on her and she's from Brittany originally. She's fantastic
and she came and she designed all the food for
the film, and then she oversaw the initial first few
(24:45):
days of shooting, and then she left a couple of
her chefs with us who oversaw not just the food
and the preparation of the food, but they were looking
at the kitchen staff in our film to make sure
that they behaved in their demeanor and there just their
rhythm of movement, just so anyone looking at it would
believe it was a working kitchen. What was it like
(25:07):
playing it was a work kitchen?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
I thought, I believed it was a working kitchen. No
I did, I definitely did. I mean, you were just
such a fantastic character. But the and that type of
food and the hidden humor. I was saying to William
that Richard and I went to Elbouli in the early days,
you know, that restaurant in Spain, and it was very
much one little tiny piece of food after another, one
(25:30):
olive that exploded in your mouth, and one, you know,
piece of crab that you know you had to pick,
and then that was it. And said they said to us,
after twelve courses, he said, now we're going to finish
with ravioli, with parmesan and butter and sage, and I thought,
at last, we're getting something to eat. And a plate
came and it was just a plate, and so we
(25:51):
just waited and waited and waited, and we said, where
is the ravioli? And they said that basically, it was
a spray. It was a spray that they'd sprayed on
the plate and it had the essence of ravioli with
butter and parmesan. And we had to take our finger
and kind of wipe the plate. And that was a dish,
you know, And I thought, that's okay, exactly.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
The menu is inspired by that.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah. So what was it like being a chef?
Speaker 3 (26:15):
And well, as you saw.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
From the film, I mean, I'm I run the restaurant,
so he doesn't do much cooking at all. He was
seeing it until the very end when he's challenged to
make a good old fashioned cheeseburger, which he does make.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Yea, and I had to cook that.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Did you learn skills just the cheeseburger? You make a
good cheeseburger?
Speaker 3 (26:35):
It was good?
Speaker 6 (26:36):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Is there something that you love about a restaurant or
going I would say that people do very private things
in a public space. Have you used restaurants as a
sort of safety net. Do you think to do something
that's difficult or not.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
If you meet someone in I mean I usually eat
either with one other or on my own, or maybe
after a show with whoever it might have been coming.
I like, I love going on my own to restaurant
with a book and it's a privilege. But to have
a glass of wine and simple food, I love that,
but going with I have been in situations where this
(27:15):
is the meal where you tell son so that you're
not going to do the film, or you tell them
that you can't see them anymore, or you know, and
that's heavy. That's I mean that that in that sense,
when it's a tricky thing, then the restaurant is a
sort of padding, as you say, a safety note. But
it means you don't enjoy it's all. Then then the
(27:36):
food and the service, then that's all a kind of
pathway to get through the difficult thing you've told.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Yourself you've got to do.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
So I like, I like to be in a relaxed
context where it's just the enjoyment of sharing food with
people and of course drink a good you know, I mean,
let's talk about alcohol. I love a drink. Let's have
a drink. You know, I love martini. I love a
Negroni and why I mean, I am not in excess,
(28:05):
but I just love that that little drop in the
kind of anxiety as that. And I hate getting really
off my face.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I hate the after efface, but I just love that
little with the first Do you.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Have a cocktail?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Martine?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
I love a cocktail. We're saying how cocktails. We had
lunch dinner once with some American friends. We say, how
their parents. You know, some Americans have like bars in
their house. You know that was that very bar and
having a cocktail. But how delicious a cocktail is, you know,
and how nice and so as in because when the
last thing I saw was beat the Devil.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, Beat the Devil was a monologue written by David Hare,
who suffered from contracting the COVID very badly. So he
wrote about it in the form of a monologue which
I performed at the Bridge Theater. So it was about
forty five minutes of a man's account of having COVID
very severe symptoms. And it was also an account of
(29:14):
the government's handling of COVID or lack of handling of
COVID when borders remained open and it seemed that no
one had a handle on it. We saw at the
bridge and then but I also did it on the
back of one martini. You did, you sat down next
to me, said, what's you doing? What you're doing doing
(29:36):
this mode? Let me hear it, Let me hear I
can't read this. Forty five minutes doesn't matter. I'll just
hear a little bit.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
You said, you said, because you said, you said, I'll
just do the first five minutes. And so we did
the first five minutes, and I said, you can't stop,
don't stop, and so then another I said, don't stop
because it we just did not want this to stop.
But the the it was forty five minutes of my
sitting there over drive martini to the monologue. And the
(30:04):
next day a friend of mine said to me on
the phone, you know, I was going to come over
at the table and say hello to you, but I
could just see you couldn't get a word at edge
twice Rank was talking and talking and talking. I said,
that was the monologue. If you like listening to Ruthie's
(30:27):
Table four, would you please make sure to rate and
review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
O wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. The last
(30:48):
thing we can talk about is Macbeth. Tell us what's
happening now?
Speaker 1 (30:52):
It's a tour of Macbeth. I think well, I certainly
wanted to and Simon Godin, who's directing, we both felt
that to do it in unusual spaces, not in the
West End, but also take it not to not be London,
not be London centric for all of the tour. But
(31:12):
we said we're in Liverpool from late mid November to
just before Christmas, then we have Christmas break and we
go back to Edinburgh for two weeks. Then we come
to London for six seven weeks in February March, and
then we close in Washington, d C. Simon Godwin is
running all the artistic he's the artistic director of the
Shakespeare Theater in Washington.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
So that's the link.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Where will it be in London.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
It'll be in a warehouse in South London, towards the
rather high the area of London. We're basically we're finding
great big warehouses and we're putting in a module of
a theater and there will be some sort of sense
of walking into a war zone as you take your.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Seat to do more theaters in ross space.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
I think it's I think it's exciting.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
I like going to different unusual spaces to see you
play and any kind of performance.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Even the bridge is great.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yees to go out of the familiar patterns of the
Western velvet seats and red velvet seats was just so
with no need room, so close together. But you know
it's still I've seen fantastic things in the West n
So it's just I also think I toured in this
(32:26):
t s Eliot and four Quartets about two years ago,
and I hadn't I hadn't toured much in England, and
I love touring. I love going to different cities and something.
Maybe it's romantic, but I liked going on the road
a bit.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
We did First Love. I can't remember when that was
ten years ago maybe or more. And do you remember that?
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Are getting very nervous because it was out of a
theatrical context where somehow the whole sort of physical routine
of the theater, the dressing room, of the corridor, the backstage,
and that's all. But this was daylight. I think it
was early summer and I remember at one moment, just
suddenly I have a probably inadvisable habit of slightly running
(33:22):
the lines before you go on stage, and when you're
slightly nervous, you can start to go through the first line,
then you blank, what's that? I know that word? And
then and then it can build and you have to
go rushing back to the script and it's all nerves.
And I had a moment like that here because I
think it was it felt quite exposing with that, because
(33:43):
it was there were no lights, no, it was just
I could see everyone's face.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yes, it's interesting because we did that. We did about
four of them. We did we did it with you
and Ian McKellen, and then I remember we did one
with Judy Detch Do you remember that? And we managed
to see about eighty or one hundred people, and I
thought it would be so nice for the actors to
be in a home with people in a relaxed setting,
(34:07):
and literally we almost couldn't get Judy Dench to come down.
She froze. It's the same exact She sat in my
bedroom and there was like a Judy's feelings and she
said the same thing as you that she did not
suffer from stage fact that there's something about the You.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Know, when you're on stage in the theater, you have lights,
and the lights are on the performer or on oneself,
and they, therefore most of the audience are in darkness.
You can feel yourself cocooned. But if you perform in
daylight and you see the faces, you can in your
neuroses you can read into their face something like, oh,
their board, or they've got a furrowed brow. You immediately
(34:48):
assume that person's looking at their furrowed brow, they must
be confused or irritated. Often they're just concentrating.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
I do that in the rest you know we have
an open kitchen. Yeah, and you're watching as they put
the spurs. And so when I go to restaurant, I
always get a huge smile. This is absolutely delicious.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
So there is that thing about the theater of the restaurant,
the people greeting you and that. And years and years ago,
I worked not in a restaurant. I worked in Brown's
Hotel as a house porter. So I was literally the
lowest of the low with a white coat, and I
changed light bulbs and I hoovered corridors and my polished brass.
(35:32):
But I got to see that real divide between the
machinery of a hotel backstage and the stink of the
kitchen or the washing up where all the all food
has been chucked out.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
But a lot of actors worked as waiters, and I thought, well,
that's probably because it's a theatrical setting. It's drama. And
also I often say to them, you know, no matter
what mood you're in, no matter what your girlfriend said
to you today, or if your boyfriend was you know,
just lost his job, basically you are playing the role.
You know, even if you don't, you're playing the roof
somebody really likes people, who's really happy to see people.
(36:07):
And hopefully you don't have to play that role because
you feel it. If you don't feel it, too bad.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
It is key when someone smiles at you and you
feel that your custom is valued and that the choice
they want to help you. It is a huge difference
between the slightly switched off.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Look, well, you are deeply loved in the restaurant. You
have a house now, a beautiful house, and suffolk I
still haven't seen, but I'm going to come and we're
going to cook together, and so tell me about what
(36:42):
it's like cooking there.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
I like to get very simple food, right, I mean,
I'm not.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
This sounds no way.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I have your cook books to hand and not a lingy,
and I like his recipes a lot. I do too,
And I love his slow cook lamb, which is the
last thing I cooked.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
You marinated for two days. You do a marinated maria
shoulder shoulder.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
And then you circa in all these garlic and lemon
and spices, and you wrap it up in cling film
and let it in this to keep it in the
fridge as long as possible, and then slow cook it
for about five hours.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
It just falls away. Food is so much, but it's
also you know, it's about love, and it's about relaxing.
It's about being with others, being by yourself, thinking about
your family. And I guess it's really about comfort. And
so my last question to you is do you have
a comfort food?
Speaker 1 (37:42):
I don't eat a lot of pasta, but I love pasta,
and that would be a comfort food. I just think
I don't know what it is. It's not I agree
a breakfast is my favorite meal?
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Your favorite meal?
Speaker 1 (37:59):
I love breakfast, No, I love it evening meal. But
there's something about breakfast. I just it's about starting the day.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
It's about.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
I will have some younger with walnuts and a bit
of honey, and then I will have an egg or
two with some toast or a piece of smack salmon.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
The coffee.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
We have to go to Mexico together, because in Mexico
breakfast is the meal. So good.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
So love you lots, and thank you. It was great
to talk to you, Ruthie.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Thank you. Okay, we're done, Yeah, all right, let's go eat.
Speaker 6 (38:44):
Ruthie's Table four is produced by Atami Studios for iHeartRadio.
It's hosted by Ruthie Rogers and it's produced by William Lenski.
This episode was edited by Julia Johnson and mixed by
Nigel Appleton. Our executive producers are faced You and Zad Rogers.
Our production manager is Caitlin Paramore, and our production coordinator
(39:05):
is Bella Selini. This episode had additional contributions by Sean
wynn Owen. Thank you to everyone at the River Cafe
for your help in making this episode.
I'm Ray Fines, and I'm having an affair with the
River Cafe.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
I can honestly not remember where or when I met
Ray Fines. It is often said that the test of
a true friendship is that after being a part for
a long time, you're able to pick up just where
you left off. Rafe and I recorded this podcast a
while ago, and since then we've been apart too much
for my liking. He in Rome filming Conclave in New
(00:31):
York and David Hare's straight lined crazy in Greece The Return,
and in his beloved Suffolk creating a new home with
a beautiful kitchen. Is that Okay, that's a beautiful kitchen.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
It's a good kitchen.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Okay, the beautiful kitchen. But right now we are on
Ruthie's table for to talk about the work he's doing,
what he's been cooking, and then we will have dinner
at the River Cafe, and like the loving close friends,
we are pick up just where we left off.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Chocolate Nemesis ten eggs, five hundred seventy five grams of
caster sugar, six hundred seventy five grams of best quality
dark chocolate, four hundred fifty grams of unsalted butter.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Softened.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Preheat the oven to a hundred thirty degrees centigrade. Whisk
the eggs with a third of the sugar with an
electric mixer until the volume quadruples. This will take at
least ten minutes. Meanwhile, melt the chocolate and butter together
in a heat proof bowl set over a pan of
(01:43):
barely simmering water. Remove from the heat. Heat the remaining
sugar with two hundred fifty milli liters of water in
a small saucepan until the sugar has dissolved to a syrup,
stirring occasionally. Gently pour into the melted chocolate, stirring slowly.
(02:06):
Add the warm chocolate and syrup mixture to the eggs,
Increase the speed, and continue beating until completely combined. The
mixture will lose volume. Pour into the prepared cake tin
and put into a deep baking tray on top of
a tea towel. To prevent the cake tin from moving,
(02:28):
fill the baking tray with hot water so that it
comes at least two thirds up the sides of.
Speaker 3 (02:33):
The cake tin.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Bake foot one and a half to two hours until set.
Test by placing the flat of your hand gently on
the surface of the cake.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
Well, I was going to ask you why you chose Nemesis,
but when you said that you were having an affair
with a restaurant, it all made sense because I was
thinking if you seafood as a seduction, you know, and
whether we think that if you were having an affair
(03:07):
with a restaurant, you were having with the woman with
happy part of the seduction.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Well, there's always a sensual connection with food. Food is sensuality.
And as I've grown older, or the last few years especially,
I have found myself cooking more and more and loving
cooking and loving the preparation, that connection to food and
cooking has grown.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Executive highest. You're getting shore to come and just talk
about the Nemesis just for a minute, will you talk
about in our course? Because you have made it for
how many years?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Twenty?
Speaker 4 (04:08):
I was trying to work out while you were reading
the recipe how many Nemesis we might have sold?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Well, how many we sell it? Ye? I think we
do ten thousand a year, so times thirty would be
is that three hundred thousand or say half a million? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Maybe, But you do make it sound quite relaxing when
you're reading it.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
But when you're making it.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
Also the chocolate cake that eludes most people. It's probably
one of the most difficult chocolate cakes to get perfect.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Why is that? Do you think? What's what's the secret?
Speaker 4 (04:43):
It used to be a real secret, didn't it? Ruthly
that no one could ever make it? And then when
we did the River Cafe thirty book, we gave a
more real recipe of how to do it.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Is it deliberate withholding an information?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
I say, people say there are quite a few recipes
in the Blue Book that people say it just doesn't work,
And I say, give me break, give us our first
cookbook that you but it is a hard one to make.
And I think the tin was very big and Julian
Barnes famously wrote a piece about the fact that there
(05:18):
was a time in the nineties when you went to
anybody's home for dinner and you'd see this kind of
splodge of chocolate. It was just this splutge of chocolate.
And that was that was the attempt to make the nemesis.
But then when we actually I think it easy, has
an easy nemesis, doesn't it too?
Speaker 4 (05:35):
There's one tried and tested technique to reduce percentage of failure,
I'd say, which is to make sure that you never
take it out of the tin until it's totally cold.
And if it's a little tiny bit warm like lukewarm, splodge, yeah,
you have to pipe.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
That's good.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
That's good.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
That's how a probably topped tip.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
And actually, because the chocolate itself has to cool, and
is it the chocolate in the bottom, so I think cool?
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Yeah, yeah, And if you've really have made a mistake,
you probably could just put it in the fridge and
it would set.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
But that's the sort of off the record.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
Don't try that away.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
But the other thing about the Nemesis is that it
has no flowers. Yeah, and really it is like making
a s fle because you beat the eggs so much,
don't you. That's a workout.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
Because it has no flour, it appeals to the gluten
free and so therefore it's almost a health food in itself,
a healthy cake.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Except for the sugar and the eggs.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
And ask we have worked out the calorific value of
one slice, but we can't divulge that because I would
never sell another slice.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Was it a thousand calories?
Speaker 4 (06:53):
It's quite a lot.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
It was like a daily half a day's.
Speaker 4 (06:57):
Just have a slither. Yeah, it is so good. And
and then obviously the quality of the chocolate.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Chocolate, can you reveal the brand or the chocolate.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
We shop around for chocolate, we would probably buy chocolate
that's seasonal, and going around the world with the season
of chocolate making, we've tried different chocolates and different some
of them.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
We had that Nemesis tasting to remember. It was really hard.
It was there were six Nemess cakes made with six
different types of chocolate, and we were supposed to sort
of taste each one and then and and it wasn't
even that you had to be like pretend you were really,
(07:38):
really really good chef and say, oh, I can really
tell the difference between this chocolate and that, you know,
which we all were. But we could tell some differences.
You could taste it was a bit chalky, or it
was a bit well, some of them were too perfumed.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
And so yeah, yeah, we used to use a chocolate
that we've changed. We changed people's taste change, I think,
and people like maybe as people know more about chocolate,
I think they might not like such sweet chocolates as
maybe twenty years ago.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
I think that's what's happening.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
I think I sensed that just because what's on offer
on the chocolate shark shops is a lot of higher
percentage chocolate, but seventy five eighty five.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Do you think that we've had chefs that we just
couldn't teach to make a nemesis?
Speaker 4 (08:22):
You?
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Do you think everybody can make one?
Speaker 4 (08:24):
I think I think it's part of your sort of
badges of honor that you need to be able to
make a nemesis. It's one of those things that I
genuinely think eludes the average person, Like have you ever
made one?
Speaker 3 (08:37):
No, I've made the chocolate has on that cake which
is in.
Speaker 4 (08:40):
That Yeah, because it has only got four ingredients, you
really need to make sure that those ingredients are the
best quality.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Chocolate, butter, sugar, eggs.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Yeah, but I mean we use buffalo milk butter, which
is also like hi fat. Yeah, and it's white butter
and really neutral and clean, these fine chocolate sugar and
then really beautiful eggs as well.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
That's it. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
People listening to you, they're going to rush off and
do it.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Make it challenge?
Speaker 2 (09:14):
The challenge one on YouTube didn't you did you make?
Speaker 1 (09:17):
I did?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Incentive is the challenge.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
Yeah, but people do phone the restaurant if they're having
trouble with it. I'm not encouraging people to do so, but.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Mobile eight one hundred thousand listeners. I remember people calling
up and saying we ruined their dinner party. I have
a few of those, but not even Actually no, with Nemesis,
it was a woman called me up and she made
this lemon sorbet lemon the lemon ice cream as she said,
you know, it didn't work, and he ruined my dinner party.
(09:49):
And I said, well, I just gave the chef the
recipe and he just made one and it's perfectly fine,
So take that.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
The other thing is you've got to make sure you
volumeize the egg. Yeah, like probably five times a volume,
and then once you've mixed the chocolate into the egg mixture.
But the other thing we do is we hit the
tin really hard. Is a good way to bash out
the air. Otherwise then you just drop it or hit
(10:18):
it really hard on the work surface, and then all
those air bubbles that you've got in there from just
whipping it kind of drop out, and it gives it
that intense, that texture that's quite unique, and that's maybe
why people can't make it, and if it when you
cook it, if it gets a crunchy topping wrong, it
(10:40):
has to have like a just set top. I mean,
the finer details.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
We could have put this in the book never occurred
to it. But they're also I think the cloth and
the tin is a big difference. I don't think we
had that in the first books, putting the cloth and
the you know when you put the band Marie of
the water in the big tin and then you put
that often. I think that's a good thing to do. Okay,
all right, I'll come back. We're going to have dinner tonight,
(11:05):
so we'll come back and have a place of Nemesis
for dessert.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
The skin it was good. Watch it.
Speaker 5 (11:14):
We could do a phone yeah, call us with your problem.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
When you were growing up, what was it like cooking
and eating in the Fines family?
Speaker 1 (11:39):
What was that like? Sometimes quite stressful because there was
eight of us, six children and two parents, and then
then we had it for many years. We also had
a foster brother mixed, so it would have been nine people,
but generally it was.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Eight of us.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
But I have a very as you asked me that, Ruthie,
you have a very strong memory of family meals, specially
Sunday or Saturday, and I have memories two of my
parents sometimes giving a small dinner party, very simple, often
something like spaghetti bolonnaise. And then I remember we all
were tantalized when these grown ups came. So this when
(12:15):
I'd be about eight or nine and these friends came,
and you get the whole sense of this adult world
where people have come, and that we might have put
on some ear ring or lipstick and the men to
brush the hair and thrown a tie on or something
or not, or you know, and I remember it being
tantalized by the adult world.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
And we had this game.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
The eldest four of us called spy on the grown ups,
which we were actually technically had gone to bed, but
we used to love tiptoeing down the stairs, opening the
door and sort of listening, and we'd hear a snippet
of conversation which you probably misheard, me run up the
stairs and report a bit of conversation that we had heard.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I think I did the same. I remember sitting on
the stairs, and you know, we all sometimes so we
now sort of complain about dinner parties, are going to
those kind of dinner parties are going to a dinner party.
But for a child it is so it's so intriguing,
isn't it The adult as you say, the adult world
of manners and food and a different kind. But would
(13:16):
your mother cook very differently? Do you think for the
dinner parties she would cook for nine eight children?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Was very well.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
There was a time when we were finding out, yes
she would, but there was a time when that was
she I think she developed a reluctance just because I
think she felt pressure to be a good cook, and
she thought that thing about you know, I'm going to disappoint.
So I think it was. And for a time we
had my parents are very pushed financially. We were in
Ireland in the early nineteen seventies and there was a
(13:43):
great There was a whole summer where the lunch was
only ever mashed potatoes and nor packet.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Soup, nor packet soup.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah yeah, And we all got very good at making
nor packet soup, mashed potatoes. And in the evening maybe
it would be a macaroni cheese or shepherd's pie or something.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
But you felt satisfied by you never felt, never felt But.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
My parents love food.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
But when you talk about loving food, people often think
you're an indulge. But I think it needn't be the case.
You can just it just can be a really good
piece of cheese and a cracker and fresh tomato, and
that can be pleasurable.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
People ask me why did I learn to cook or
why did I become so interested in cooking? And I
think that at a certain point in your life, if
you like to eat and you can't really afford eating,
you know you want to eat well, so you have
to kind of cook well. And I think that is
something that I think.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
That's key if you love eating, if you love it,
you do you.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Want to cook.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
But again sort of going from the nemesis that you
chose the nemesis because I also you and I have
such a close relationship and connection to Italy. I've had
phone calls from you from the market saying with you,
I've just seen the most incredible leaves of checor or
I've seen mushroom as your role, how am I going
to cook this fungi or whatever was it you saw?
(15:06):
Because you do go to you have his house in
Umbria and not far from mine, and I've had calls
from you from the market. I've had calls from you
while you're cooking, and I've had calls from you after
you've cooked something and said, let me tell you that
what I just cooked last night with it because it
was really good and you might learn something if I
tell you this. What was it like in Umbria, Because
(15:27):
you've been to me in Tuscany, but I haven't been
to your house, So just what's it like food wise?
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Is that you have a big kitchen, simple simple kitchen,
simple stove, but fine, you know, four hobbs in an oven.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
But the big table.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
And actually I have a memory of going to when
you take gone to the house that you take in Italy,
you have lots of vegion, fruits and stuff ripening, already prepared,
waiting to be consumed. And I definitely, I definitely echo
that with a table with bowls full of fruit. And
(16:03):
if it's not if it's very hot, I can't keep
bed out, but tomatoes I will keep out. But if
only it gets very hot, the fridge is a resource.
But no, there's a market in the local town, and
I go to the market. There is the Italian co op.
I have to say, is great, great, well here and
(16:27):
there are others. There was a small butchers which I
would go to.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
So I love.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Is there a restaurant that you go.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
To there is, yes, but it's just outside non Nagelsa.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
It's a trat.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Which is which is a great, simple, really good Umbrian cooking.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
I think I'm cooking. It's about Italy. I would say
that food varies from region to region, but also from
city to city and also from town to town. So
I think that even though you're quite close to me,
they're probably more. Do you have a lot of lentils
there and beans?
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yeah, lentile soup yeah, chick piece soup yea.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
And what about when you're you're are you alone there?
Speaker 3 (17:09):
Do you cook?
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Do cook in a different way when you're solitary?
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Well, I'm usually when I'm there, mostly there on my
own and I have friends who come visit, and I cook,
but I do more. I'm more engaged with shopping and
cooking when i'm minutely than I am. I think, yeah,
because because I got the time to go out and
properly select food and think about what I'm going to eat.
And I love going to the market. It's great for
(17:36):
people watching and it tells.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
You a lot about the culture, doesn't It tells you
about the people who are selling the food there, what
they're eating, what the you know, the way they shop
the market is a kind.
Speaker 1 (17:45):
Of enthusiasm of the people selling the food and they
the lady saying the cheese will cut your piece of cheese. Yeah,
the kind of and also you feel their delight with
their food culture. They're they're kind of excitement about what
they're selling.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
It is very very regional. And I think also when
you come, when we're tasking together, we just sit there,
don't we for hours? You know, talking and eating and
eating some more, and it's all kind of one big
table in one conversation. The River Cafe is excited to
announce the return of our Italian Christmas gift boxes, our
(18:26):
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order now on shop the River Cafe dot co dot uk.
(18:48):
Tell me about eating and acting. What's the deal there?
Do you eat?
Speaker 3 (18:52):
That's a good question.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
I think you need a bit of food for energy,
so to have starved yourself or not have eaten within
three hours before a performance. You can, I think your
sugar level would drop. I mean, but I know I
can't eat a big meal. What do you eat not?
Speaker 2 (19:10):
What about on a film set.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
When we touched breakfast, breakfast? Breakfast? Really they have now
found ways to shorten the day and they have what
I called a running lunch. A lot of films you
can maybe grab twenty minutes to have a sandwich, and
they'll have a running lunch from twelve to two. Maybe
if they do stop, it's half an hour only.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
And so, as I said you were in Rome, I.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Was filming Aroom twice this year.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
I was filming this conclave which you mentioned about a
film recreating the conclave when the cardinals, when the pope
has died and all the cardinals get into the Sistine
Chapel and they are sequestered away from the world. They
have no contact with the outside world at all while
they vote for the new pope, and they have to
(19:55):
keep voting until the required majority is achieved.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Somebody put them to can I can one of them
say I want to be pope and campaigned?
Speaker 1 (20:03):
There's a bit of that in it. There is oh yes, no,
that's a bit. It's it's based on a great book
by Robert Harris and it was written maybe nine years ago.
And it's been directed by Edward Berger, who directed All
Quite on the Western Front, which got a lot of
acclaim the last season.
Speaker 3 (20:21):
He was wonderful director, very very very good, very.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Lovely man, very detailed and very and the best sense
attentive to the actors and the nuances that he wants
them to bring out. I love working with him and
wonderful Stanley Tucci. He loves playing my two We're two,
we're two cardinals who are friends and we hit we
hit a few bumpy patches in our friendship.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
In the film, do.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
You both want to put yourselves up from being pope?
Speaker 1 (20:46):
In different ways? He's a bit more. We're both reluctant
to admit it that we do. And he's brilliant in
the film.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
I have to say, did the Vatican were they involved?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
They they just rise above it. They just know they're
not really involved. But no, they just they.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
And they let you film in the Vatican.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
No, no, no, no, no, There is a whole The
key voting scenes are in the Sistine Chapel in real life,
and there exists. Assistine Chapel set made I believe for
the miniseries The Young Pope, which I think St.
Speaker 3 (21:19):
Julie was long Jude.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
So that set of the Sistine Chapel was was mothballed,
and then our production brought it out, cleaned it out,
repainted it, and it's the whole of the first twenty
feet of the Sistine Chapel with the Day of Judgment
at one end as a copy, and they add the
rest with CGI. But I've seen bits of the footage
(21:41):
with the added siagiant. It looks it looks like we're
in the real place.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
And then for me what i'd last like that was
where did you eat in realm?
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Don't ask me the names I've gone.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Okay, just tell me about the food. How did it
feel to be eating the food of realm? For as
long as.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
I'm there, Stanley hipp, you don't make me bring you
up again with you. But Stanley Teacher, you brought a
chunk of us towards the end, a group of us
who were filming, including Edward. It's wonderful restaurant called not
pomer Doughty but Pomme Dory, I believe, and it's an
old family restaurant that was beloved of Pasolini, the director,
(22:17):
and he organized this wonderful meal there late, very late
after a day's filming, and that I think was the
best meal I had. They had put on the special
meal because it was Stanley and they were charming. And
I went back there to that restaurant again when I
returned to Rome later this year in the summer to
make their return and it's just very and you don't
(22:40):
really they kind of give you food you didn't really order.
I mean, you can't order, but they just sort of
present you with what they feel is the best pastor
of the evening.
Speaker 3 (22:48):
And it was very easy.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
And I definitely preferred the more threat or style than
the restaurants, the high flying restaurants.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
I'm not drawn to it so much.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Did you read out a lot? Would you?
Speaker 1 (23:00):
After filming on conclaims?
Speaker 3 (23:03):
I ate out quite a bit, but.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
We're filming day. The filming hours are so long. In
the end, I would go back to my flat and
I cooked something. But in the weekends with you. And
what about Greece, I love oh when Greece and Corse.
We were in cor food for most of it and
we came across a wonderful restaurant which served the most
exquisite lamb that was on the spit.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Oh God the lamb.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Was was just extraordinary, just so circular and tasty, and
Spiros's restaurant it was. It was quite a simple restaurant,
catering for mostly tourists.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
But god, the lamb was.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
What month was spring? May? Oh you we just kept
you in Morocco? Was that also? Don't you think? I agree?
I think Moroccan.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Food that was heaven. Let's take Jeene cooking is one
of the best cooking ways of cooking I think I've
had come across.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah that I was going to ask you about the menu. Yeah,
because you know, here we are a chef, chef Shanza chef,
were going into a restaurant and I remember you calling
me up from there and saying that you were, you know,
learning the skills. A woman from San Francisco came, did
She a.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Chef Dominique Krenn, who I think has a restaurant in
San Francisco called Atelier tren And there's a wonderful chef's
table on her and she's from Brittany originally. She's fantastic
and she came and she designed all the food for
the film, and then she oversaw the initial first few
(24:45):
days of shooting, and then she left a couple of
her chefs with us who oversaw not just the food
and the preparation of the food, but they were looking
at the kitchen staff in our film to make sure
that they behaved in their demeanor and there just their
rhythm of movement, just so anyone looking at it would
believe it was a working kitchen. What was it like
(25:07):
playing it was a work kitchen?
Speaker 2 (25:08):
I thought, I believed it was a working kitchen. No
I did, I definitely did. I mean, you were just
such a fantastic character. But the and that type of
food and the hidden humor. I was saying to William
that Richard and I went to Elbouli in the early days,
you know, that restaurant in Spain, and it was very
much one little tiny piece of food after another, one
(25:30):
olive that exploded in your mouth, and one, you know,
piece of crab that you know you had to pick,
and then that was it. And said they said to us,
after twelve courses, he said, now we're going to finish
with ravioli, with parmesan and butter and sage, and I thought,
at last, we're getting something to eat. And a plate
came and it was just a plate, and so we
(25:51):
just waited and waited and waited, and we said, where
is the ravioli? And they said that basically, it was
a spray. It was a spray that they'd sprayed on
the plate and it had the essence of ravioli with
butter and parmesan. And we had to take our finger
and kind of wipe the plate. And that was a dish,
you know, And I thought, that's okay, exactly.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
The menu is inspired by that.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah. So what was it like being a chef?
Speaker 3 (26:15):
And well, as you saw.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
From the film, I mean, I'm I run the restaurant,
so he doesn't do much cooking at all. He was
seeing it until the very end when he's challenged to
make a good old fashioned cheeseburger, which he does make.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Yea, and I had to cook that.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Did you learn skills just the cheeseburger? You make a
good cheeseburger?
Speaker 3 (26:35):
It was good?
Speaker 6 (26:36):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (26:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Is there something that you love about a restaurant or
going I would say that people do very private things
in a public space. Have you used restaurants as a
sort of safety net. Do you think to do something
that's difficult or not.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
If you meet someone in I mean I usually eat
either with one other or on my own, or maybe
after a show with whoever it might have been coming.
I like, I love going on my own to restaurant
with a book and it's a privilege. But to have
a glass of wine and simple food, I love that,
but going with I have been in situations where this
(27:15):
is the meal where you tell son so that you're
not going to do the film, or you tell them
that you can't see them anymore, or you know, and
that's heavy. That's I mean that that in that sense,
when it's a tricky thing, then the restaurant is a
sort of padding, as you say, a safety note. But
it means you don't enjoy it's all. Then then the
(27:36):
food and the service, then that's all a kind of
pathway to get through the difficult thing you've told.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Yourself you've got to do.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
So I like, I like to be in a relaxed
context where it's just the enjoyment of sharing food with
people and of course drink a good you know, I mean,
let's talk about alcohol. I love a drink. Let's have
a drink. You know, I love martini. I love a
Negroni and why I mean, I am not in excess,
(28:05):
but I just love that that little drop in the
kind of anxiety as that. And I hate getting really
off my face.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
I hate the after efface, but I just love that
little with the first Do you.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Have a cocktail?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
Martine?
Speaker 2 (28:25):
I love a cocktail. We're saying how cocktails. We had
lunch dinner once with some American friends. We say, how
their parents. You know, some Americans have like bars in
their house. You know that was that very bar and
having a cocktail. But how delicious a cocktail is, you know,
and how nice and so as in because when the
last thing I saw was beat the Devil.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, Beat the Devil was a monologue written by David Hare,
who suffered from contracting the COVID very badly. So he
wrote about it in the form of a monologue which
I performed at the Bridge Theater. So it was about
forty five minutes of a man's account of having COVID
very severe symptoms. And it was also an account of
(29:14):
the government's handling of COVID or lack of handling of
COVID when borders remained open and it seemed that no
one had a handle on it. We saw at the
bridge and then but I also did it on the
back of one martini. You did, you sat down next
to me, said, what's you doing? What you're doing doing
(29:36):
this mode? Let me hear it, Let me hear I
can't read this. Forty five minutes doesn't matter. I'll just
hear a little bit.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
You said, you said, because you said, you said, I'll
just do the first five minutes. And so we did
the first five minutes, and I said, you can't stop,
don't stop, and so then another I said, don't stop
because it we just did not want this to stop.
But the the it was forty five minutes of my
sitting there over drive martini to the monologue. And the
(30:04):
next day a friend of mine said to me on
the phone, you know, I was going to come over
at the table and say hello to you, but I
could just see you couldn't get a word at edge
twice Rank was talking and talking and talking. I said,
that was the monologue. If you like listening to Ruthie's
(30:27):
Table four, would you please make sure to rate and
review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
O wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. The last
(30:48):
thing we can talk about is Macbeth. Tell us what's
happening now?
Speaker 1 (30:52):
It's a tour of Macbeth. I think well, I certainly
wanted to and Simon Godin, who's directing, we both felt
that to do it in unusual spaces, not in the
West End, but also take it not to not be London,
not be London centric for all of the tour. But
(31:12):
we said we're in Liverpool from late mid November to
just before Christmas, then we have Christmas break and we
go back to Edinburgh for two weeks. Then we come
to London for six seven weeks in February March, and
then we close in Washington, d C. Simon Godwin is
running all the artistic he's the artistic director of the
Shakespeare Theater in Washington.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
So that's the link.
Speaker 2 (31:35):
Where will it be in London.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
It'll be in a warehouse in South London, towards the
rather high the area of London. We're basically we're finding
great big warehouses and we're putting in a module of
a theater and there will be some sort of sense
of walking into a war zone as you take your.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Seat to do more theaters in ross space.
Speaker 3 (31:57):
I think it's I think it's exciting.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
I like going to different unusual spaces to see you
play and any kind of performance.
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Even the bridge is great.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Yees to go out of the familiar patterns of the
Western velvet seats and red velvet seats was just so
with no need room, so close together. But you know
it's still I've seen fantastic things in the West n
So it's just I also think I toured in this
(32:26):
t s Eliot and four Quartets about two years ago,
and I hadn't I hadn't toured much in England, and
I love touring. I love going to different cities and something.
Maybe it's romantic, but I liked going on the road
a bit.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
We did First Love. I can't remember when that was
ten years ago maybe or more. And do you remember that?
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Are getting very nervous because it was out of a
theatrical context where somehow the whole sort of physical routine
of the theater, the dressing room, of the corridor, the backstage,
and that's all. But this was daylight. I think it
was early summer and I remember at one moment, just
suddenly I have a probably inadvisable habit of slightly running
(33:22):
the lines before you go on stage, and when you're
slightly nervous, you can start to go through the first line,
then you blank, what's that? I know that word? And
then and then it can build and you have to
go rushing back to the script and it's all nerves.
And I had a moment like that here because I
think it was it felt quite exposing with that, because
(33:43):
it was there were no lights, no, it was just
I could see everyone's face.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Yes, it's interesting because we did that. We did about
four of them. We did we did it with you
and Ian McKellen, and then I remember we did one
with Judy Detch Do you remember that? And we managed
to see about eighty or one hundred people, and I
thought it would be so nice for the actors to
be in a home with people in a relaxed setting,
(34:07):
and literally we almost couldn't get Judy Dench to come down.
She froze. It's the same exact She sat in my
bedroom and there was like a Judy's feelings and she
said the same thing as you that she did not
suffer from stage fact that there's something about the You.
Speaker 1 (34:24):
Know, when you're on stage in the theater, you have lights,
and the lights are on the performer or on oneself,
and they, therefore most of the audience are in darkness.
You can feel yourself cocooned. But if you perform in
daylight and you see the faces, you can in your
neuroses you can read into their face something like, oh,
their board, or they've got a furrowed brow. You immediately
(34:48):
assume that person's looking at their furrowed brow, they must
be confused or irritated. Often they're just concentrating.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
I do that in the rest you know we have
an open kitchen. Yeah, and you're watching as they put
the spurs. And so when I go to restaurant, I
always get a huge smile. This is absolutely delicious.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
So there is that thing about the theater of the restaurant,
the people greeting you and that. And years and years ago,
I worked not in a restaurant. I worked in Brown's
Hotel as a house porter. So I was literally the
lowest of the low with a white coat, and I
changed light bulbs and I hoovered corridors and my polished brass.
(35:32):
But I got to see that real divide between the
machinery of a hotel backstage and the stink of the
kitchen or the washing up where all the all food
has been chucked out.
Speaker 2 (35:44):
But a lot of actors worked as waiters, and I thought, well,
that's probably because it's a theatrical setting. It's drama. And
also I often say to them, you know, no matter
what mood you're in, no matter what your girlfriend said
to you today, or if your boyfriend was you know,
just lost his job, basically you are playing the role.
You know, even if you don't, you're playing the roof
somebody really likes people, who's really happy to see people.
(36:07):
And hopefully you don't have to play that role because
you feel it. If you don't feel it, too bad.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
It is key when someone smiles at you and you
feel that your custom is valued and that the choice
they want to help you. It is a huge difference
between the slightly switched off.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
Look, well, you are deeply loved in the restaurant. You
have a house now, a beautiful house, and suffolk I
still haven't seen, but I'm going to come and we're
going to cook together, and so tell me about what
(36:42):
it's like cooking there.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
I like to get very simple food, right, I mean,
I'm not.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
This sounds no way.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I have your cook books to hand and not a lingy,
and I like his recipes a lot. I do too,
And I love his slow cook lamb, which is the
last thing I cooked.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
You marinated for two days. You do a marinated maria
shoulder shoulder.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
And then you circa in all these garlic and lemon
and spices, and you wrap it up in cling film
and let it in this to keep it in the
fridge as long as possible, and then slow cook it
for about five hours.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
It just falls away. Food is so much, but it's
also you know, it's about love, and it's about relaxing.
It's about being with others, being by yourself, thinking about
your family. And I guess it's really about comfort. And
so my last question to you is do you have
a comfort food?
Speaker 1 (37:42):
I don't eat a lot of pasta, but I love pasta,
and that would be a comfort food. I just think
I don't know what it is. It's not I agree
a breakfast is my favorite meal?
Speaker 2 (37:58):
Your favorite meal?
Speaker 1 (37:59):
I love breakfast, No, I love it evening meal. But
there's something about breakfast. I just it's about starting the day.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
It's about.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
I will have some younger with walnuts and a bit
of honey, and then I will have an egg or
two with some toast or a piece of smack salmon.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
The coffee.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
We have to go to Mexico together, because in Mexico
breakfast is the meal. So good.
Speaker 1 (38:29):
So love you lots, and thank you. It was great
to talk to you, Ruthie.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Thank you. Okay, we're done, Yeah, all right, let's go eat.
Speaker 6 (38:44):
Ruthie's Table four is produced by Atami Studios for iHeartRadio.
It's hosted by Ruthie Rogers and it's produced by William Lenski.
This episode was edited by Julia Johnson and mixed by
Nigel Appleton. Our executive producers are faced You and Zad Rogers.
Our production manager is Caitlin Paramore, and our production coordinator
(39:05):
is Bella Selini. This episode had additional contributions by Sean
wynn Owen. Thank you to everyone at the River Cafe
for your help in making this episode.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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