May 1, 2023 • 25 mins
In our previous episode, we spoke to Jamie Oliver about childhood, moving to London and getting started in television. On today’s podcast, we'll be talking about his school-meals campaign, but not before we send him back into the River Cafe Kitchen after a 20-year absence to prepare a River Cafe classic.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yeah, nice see you. Nice to see you. Are you
working tonight?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
No, I'm really sad about cooking and milk apparently.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
If that's okay, I've got a table before. I can't wait.
Where are you sitting us? I haven't done the table
plan yet, Jamie, but you know, tell me where you
want to out of the famous Table four. I think
I'm going to be quite well behaved today, so you
can put me next to Delicate. Delicate is Yeah, I'm
back on the rotor, but as James, not Jamie.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Welcome back to Ruthy's Table four. In the last episode,
we spoke to Jamie Oliver about childhood, moving to London,
and getting started in television. In this episode, we'll be
talking about his school Meals campaign, but not before we
sent him back into the River Cafe kitchen after a
twenty year absence to prepare a River Cafe classic. When
(01:04):
we said to you, as we say to every guest,
choose a recipe from one of the books. I was
really moved when they tell me this morning that you
had chosen pork cooked in milk. And I was wondering
whether you might tell me why you've chosen that recipe.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, I was lucky enough to be taught it by
you and Rose and the idea of cooking meat in
milk it was something that I had never been taught
anywhere or at college, and I hadn't at that point
read anywhere. And really it was very simple ingredients. It
was pork shoulder, which is obviously the cheaper cut of meat,
(01:40):
and it needs slow cooking and that's the fac yeah,
and the connective tissues and these incredible leafy lemons, but
just the zest sage, garlic and some butter, and that
was really it. And sometimes at Christmas you might say
you can put a little nutmeg and if you wish,
and that's it was the most genius meal. And I
(02:02):
remember trying it for the first time, and I'm sure
things slowed down and went in slow motion and it
was like this, like the milk that you pour in
you brown you. Yeah, I mean I just start explaining
the recipe, which I'm going to do now. But the
meat was so unctuous and like lipstickingly delicious, and like
(02:26):
the milk split into essentially way and ricotta sort of
and it was just the most bonkerusly beautiful thing I
think I'd ever eaten.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
There's actually a recipe that I was taught by Richard's mother, Dada, really, and.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
She actually cooked. She cooked, and she said quite a
lot with milk.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
So she would always finish off some meat dish by
taking the gravy and then you know, the juices and
the pan and then adding milk to it and making
this sauce.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So Danny pork and milk, and that's that kind of
old school ritual of the River Cafe.
Speaker 5 (03:03):
I think it's one of the first things.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, Rose and Ruby told me as well. It looks
like the recipe hasn't changed, right, New season's garlic, lovely
sicilian lemons, zest saved in the garden, salt, pepper, and
pork and.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Milk.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
You know, would you like to read the recipes? Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Pork cooked in milk serves eight people. Three kilos of
pork shoulder, two tablespoons of extravergin olive oil, a liter
and a half of full fat milk, fifty grams of butter,
five garlic cloves, peeled and halfed, a small handful of
fresh stage two lemons, rind paired and pith removed. Remove
(03:52):
the rind and most of the fat from the pork
and season the meat. Heat the olive oil in a
thick bottom pan, brown the meat, remove it from the pan,
and pour away the fat.
Speaker 5 (04:08):
So we take the shoulder off the bone first round
it in a little bit of butter, a lotive oil.
The a nice golden brown color of it. Yeah, and
then once it's this color, we then chucked in the garlet.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah. So the the pork is obviously a lovely, beautiful
three range pig, free range and middle white pork. If
people wanted to do this at home, you just get
a whole or a half shoulder, d bone, skin off,
You've left some of the batom.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
You have the mass rendering because that's the flavor and
it helps the crispiness, allows it to go golden brown.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's probably what like three or three kilos pork there,
palk shoulders. Pork shoulders obviously sweet and delicious and needs
longer to cook.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
That is so, and it takes hours and it's just
people that three three bowlder garlet three three or four
volts of fresh garlet or it's gyre garlic.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Then probably less and this has probably brown for what
half an hour? Half an hour and a medium to
low heat. It's really the smell as soon as that
garlic goes in, it's gorgeous.
Speaker 5 (05:13):
Put the stage in because we want to put the
sage out.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
It's about a handful of pips, a handful of its
age lovely. Heat the milk to below boiling point and
set aside. Melt the butter in the original pan, add
the garlic with the sage, and when brown, return the
pork to the pan, add hot milk, bring to the boil,
(05:40):
add the lemon and reduce the heat.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
Beautiful, the beautiful.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
But you've used a speed peeler to take just a
lovely yellow skin off the Sicilian lemons.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
Yeah, that's yeah, five lemons, and we just use that
obviously the flavor the actual meat and also helps split
the milks it goes in, because what happens he is
as it reduces the milk s flips and you end
up with these lovely furs like ricotto. Yeah exactly, and
it just has that amazing flavor and taking the flavor
of the pig.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, absolutely beautiful. I always think this this moment's quite
because you've got the fat from the port, yeah, the
fat from the butter, and then you've got the oils
from the lemon skin. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Yeah, it's like this little trinity.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
To get the milk in now, yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Right, We've got some hot milk just before boiling. Right,
And of course that milk is just cleaning the buttom.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
Of the pan and blazing it and it's getting all
those lovely caramel life juice the pig.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
What do you reckon? Four hours at least? Sometimes that's exciting.
Damn right, damn right. Place the lid on the pan
and simmer slowly for at least three hours. When the
(07:03):
pork is cooked, the milk will have curdled into brown nuggets.
Carefully remove the meat and serve on a plate and
spoon over the sauce. Delicious. I remember you teaching me that.
And there's a simplicity but also a bravery. I think
about the cooking that you've always created here. And you've
(07:26):
got this piece of pork, and you keep turning it
and you want it dark, not just because the pork's dark,
but so you get the sticky bits. And I remember
what I was going about to add the milk, maybe
when it was lightly golden and no, no, no, keep going,
And I remember I remember being nervous, no no, no,
trust me, trust me. But that magic when the milk
interacts with the zest of the lemon, which curdles the
(07:49):
milk on purpose.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Of course, the chemistry of cooking is so interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
The lemon with the juices and then the milk.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
And it's very it's quite a difficult call thing to
get right, isn't it, because if you put too much
milk and it never gets that brown kind of crusty
if you don't put enough milk, and then it kind
of becomes stuck on the bottom. And then also once
you pour the milk into about three quarters of the pork,
you know you don't want to touch it.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
We say, don't touch it, don't move it, you.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Know, because let it just be patiently. And I think
it cooks a long time. But I must say, in
the new world of eating, I haven't had it for
a very long time. So I was really yeah, it's
some something I make very often that I was really
really pleased to see.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
That you chose that.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I tell you what I'd done once and it was
such a kind of powerful dish, I think, like in
a delicious sense, and unexpected I took the liberty of
doing it with chicken in a book years later, and
then it went mad in the New York Times and
they started like redoing it. I'm like, and I think
I even did like a story about it. I said, No,
(08:58):
that's that's learn how the River Cafe with pork. But
of course it is delicious with chicken. It's not the
same as pork, but it's still utterly delicious. And of
course people can get chicken so easily.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
But if you do a spatchco chicken and you kind
of get it quite brown, and then just be brave
and halfway through just pour a lot of milk almost
up to the chicken.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Then in a big pan, then it reduces. Then you
scrape up the really nice with a lemon. Yeah, delicious,
And you.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Would serve it with beautiful polenta, some simple greens and
these chunks of pork and this weird but wonderful kind
of how would you describe it? Like, it's not a gravy,
it's kind.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Of a it's almost like it's gone wrong.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Yeah, what you don't want to happen when you make
ice cream, when you add the eggs to the milk
and then it can curry.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
But the story was so clear, wasn't it. It's just
saved and lemon and garlic. And the only thing I
was nervous about coming in the cab over was reading
(10:10):
this recipe out because I'm like, I've worked out ways
to blag it so it looks like but so is
that just like you? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yeah? And did they not realize what there was?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You had to be literally blind to have any extra
help in my school, and I was pulled out of
class into a class which was a very kindly named
special needs. So imagine eight hundred and eighty boys and
then can I have Jamie please? And mister love it
and and we'd be pulled out and we'd end up
in literally in the attic of the school, learning how
(10:41):
to spell the most basic things. But I think it
was And of course in a boys school you would
never learn to cook because that's for the girls. Then
I mean, like we.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Never cooking lessons for the girls.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Well in the girls schools, yeah, but they certainly you know,
it was just very chovens Is. And it's funny because
I left school with this chip on my shoulder about
like this is not for me, and they're not serving
every child. And I think I've only literally just brushed
the last chip off my shoulder, you know.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
I keep talking about that ad for the Felix Project
which tonight four hundred thousand children in Britain will have
the same meal nothing, you know, and that we're living
this time right now where I find it shocking that
we still can't feed our children. Y. We've been looking
at country's approaches to food and I grew up at
(11:35):
a time when Lyndon Johnson in the late sixties started
the head Start program, and it was that you would
give every child in poverty at breakfast.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
It was breakfast.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
You know, there's a great phrase, no child should be
disadvantaged by his birth. In fact, a lot of children
were disadvantaged by the fact that they went to school hungry,
and so they fed children. They fed children breakfast. You'd
come to school in any child who needed breakfast would have.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
It was a head Start And.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Studies are years later that the children who were on
head Start were not taking welfare, so.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
They flourished out, flourished out of it.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
And that in fact, investment by society to invest in children. Actually,
if you want to be crass about it, save the
money later on.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, I mean there's some sensible countries that invest in it.
And it's funny, like I mean, I know it's a
name drop. But I saw Tony Blayer last week, just
a week before, just because it was a moment of
reflection since because he was the one, he was the
first prime minister that found new money invested in equipment
(12:43):
and training and the money on the plate, and I said,
like Tony, like, we've got to go faster on this.
And actually his position has I mean, he was incredible
to support me when we did it fifteen sixteen years ago,
but he's he's like, I'm even more on this now, Thane,
and it makes more sense than ever. And because of
my position, I've remained a political but currently at the moment,
(13:05):
neither of the two big parties have child health on
the manifesto as something that can be voted for.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
I don't know how you feel, but I don't understand
why we can't feed every single child, whether a parent
makes a million dollars or one dollar, you know that
every child And also the idea that Sam Taylor Johnson
was on and she can remember being put in a
separate line because she was a child that needed school
(13:35):
lunches to be paid for. And I'm sure I don't
know how they do it. Now, what is a society
that does.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
That to you kid?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
I mean it was often a lady of a clipboard
and a name and a token. But you know now
with technology like the card system, which can be incredibly
intelligent if the government just allowed it to get organized,
and that's what happens is little islands of hope. But
the government never really consolidates genius and spreads genius and
facilitated genius. So from that little car that gives you
(14:02):
a free school meal that no other kid needs to
know you're having, you can also ping a text to
a parent saying they had this for lunch, which means
you don't have to cook them the same thing for
dinner if that's the case. Do you know what I mean?
There's just loads of really clever things that can happen.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
And how do you qualify for a free lunch? Do
you know that the salary that.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
You have a household, you have to earn less than
seven four hundred pounds a year that's not as a person,
that's as a household.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
There are households that live on seven thousand pounds a year.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
One point two million of them. Yeah, and then there's
a gap between the free school lunch kids who are
parents that are on Universal credit. So Universal credit is
complex in the sense that it bends and it was
invented to be bendy. So you could have people on
twenty grand per household, which is still not loads of money,
but the average is about thirteen to fourteen. So there's
(14:48):
about six hundred thousand kids that fall into that that
don't get a free school lunch, that would have a
household that earns, you know, sort of ten to fourteen
thousand pounds a year that can't get a free school
lunch one hundred and ninety days of the year. So
you know, every council has a different price per school lunch.
(15:09):
It could be two fifty, it could be three fifty.
But if you've got three kids and that sort of money,
then that totals up per month pretty big, you know.
So there's still gaps and there's lack of consistency, but
also there's been an amazing bit of work done just
recently independently, and they said, if you just gave everyone
a free school lunch over a twenty year period, Britain
(15:32):
would be over forty pounds better off. And they look
at it very surgically around kind of productivity, how you
get through school, how much you would cost the NHS
and conservatively. So what's interesting is all the math says,
invest in the system, treat them all the same, and
from a restaurant point of view, which is essentially what
(15:54):
they are. If you've got a school that's fifty percent
school lunches, that's struggling, genius cooking will happen, but only
about seventy percent because the numbers don't. You can't have
enough people on the line, you can't fix the equipment,
so there is a kind of business.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
So free school lunches definitely would make the food better,
more consistent, and then you know so, but more importantly,
give those young people from poor postcodes, which is essentially
what it is, give them much more hope and the
ability to thrive.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Now because they don't get a free school lunch and
the parents can't afford, they'll get nothing, they'll have nothing.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
To do, and at the moment there is more lunch
cooks than ever saying I'm having to illegally give them
lunches not on the system. And they're teachers paying for
ten or twelve kids a day from some there or
that some budget they can find, so obviously they can't
visually watch kids not have a meal, and like you say,
(16:54):
it could be the only hot medal of the day
and that's not an exaggeration. And then, of course, outside
of the one hundred and ninety day school a year,
there's what we call holiday hunger, which is when you actually,
even in that six to seven weeks summer holiday, if
you measure public health or children, you can see that
there's a massive spike of ill health because they don't
(17:15):
they get stuff, but it's all the wrong stuff. So
that's what Marcus Rashford was working on, which was some
kind of provision in the holidays for these very vulnerable families.
What can we do well, I think keeping the story going,
I mean this year one of the tactics where you
I mean I've been on it constantly since fifteen years ago.
(17:37):
But one of the things we're doing this year, which
I would love you to get involved in any way
you could, is where Actually it's funny when you're like
overwhelmed by a problem, you keep telling the story of
the problem. And then then this genius idea about how
about we do an annual school food awards that's amazing
(17:59):
with real and real incentives, and how about we celebrate
the best up and coming lunch cook and the best
team and the best primary school, secondary school, special school,
the best teacher teaching cooking. So we've got eight different
awards this year that we're going to launch, and we're
doing it with the One Show and actually the Sun,
and we're trying to get as many people behind it,
(18:19):
but hopefully it will give us an opportunity to share
what good looks like, because I definitely haven't done enough
of that in the last fifteen years. I've really only
focused on the darkness. So that's a change attack. These
institutions are incredible, These teachers are amazing, and they haven't
that you know that. I think I've worked through five
or six prime ministers. I've worked through thirteen education secretaries
(18:42):
in fifteen years, sixteen years since school dinners, So imagine
changing the head chef at the River Cafe that many
times in that time. I mean it's I do think
the institution of school can be something so much more
powerful than it already is. People forget it's the biggest
restaurant group, thirty thousand odd schools, over three thousand secondary schools.
(19:05):
It's nearly five million meals a day, eighty five thousand
lunch cooks, which are largely women, which are largely parents
most of the time. So there's an incredible workforce bigger
than the you know, the military, you know, the navy,
you know, like out there cooking for kids every day.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Well, as a child that dyslexia and working as a
nine year old in the kitchen and knowing that your
passion for food that was what was did you ever
waiver from wanting to be a chef to everything? At
one point? Maybe I'd like to be a recent card
drive now, I mean, it wasn't like helicopter pilot.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
It's an interesting one because I think there's so much
noise around what are you doing when you leave school?
What you're doing, what you're doing. I knew I could cook,
so I knew I'd never have to be hungry. There's
always a job, for sure. But like I play with
a lot of Lego, and I know it's random thing
to say, but like that was the building blocks of
(20:25):
not just doing what it tailed you to do. But
then when it's all destroyed, when you can make something
through fantasy, which is much more really like what Richard
would do with architecture, right, And I mean so somehow Lego,
which was my best friend in cooking, sort of I
don't know, they kind of gave me the confidence to
just know that things were going to be all right.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
We've talked about, you know, food as politics and society
and fairness. We've talked about food in your father's kitchen
doing something I still can't remember with the bottles bottling up.
And we've talked about food and the River Cafe and
the friends you made and rose and memories and food
(21:08):
is memory. You know, today we've talked about our memories,
and I think that food is also comfort. Is there
a food or some foods that you would think I
need a bit of comfort right now?
Speaker 3 (21:20):
What shall I eat? Would you cook. Would you buy something?
Would you open it?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Now? I cook something?
Speaker 3 (21:27):
What would you cook?
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Jamie Oliver?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
This is unsurprisingly it's a dish inspired by my time
here at the River Cafe, but it's a bit of
a millunge between two things, right, So it's spaghetti arabiata,
And certainly one of the ways I was taught it,
and I know there's many ways, was to gently heat
(21:50):
oil and put whole fresh chilies in and just let
them kind of just cook beautifully, and you put a
little hole in the chili so it doesn't give over
the aggressive heat. Well, you can make it as hot
as you like, because obviously arabiata means angry, and that
means hot. But it's a really rounded fruit chili flavor.
(22:13):
And then the tomato, beautiful tomatoes go in, and a
little garlic of course in the oil before the tomatoes.
The little hijack on that was. I remember seeing you
and Rose not very often using vodka as a base
to to rosotto. I don't know if it's because there
was no wine close to hand or vermouve, but it
wasn't like you to You had an always had an intention.
(22:36):
I'm sure you used vodka when you make rosotto and
you fry the safri too off, you would add often wine,
but you did vokin. I thought, oh my god, I've
never seen that before. But of course you cook it
all away and you're left with this kind of cleanliness
that's amazing. And then I think you continued to make
some form of like spring rosotto that was just mind
(22:57):
blowing anyway, So I kind of incorporated that hack into
before adding I added the tomatoes into this arabiata, and
you just end up this this and lemons est. So
I'm telling this terribly sorry. Oil and chilies, slowly, slowly, slowly,
don't rush it. Then lemons zest garlic vodka, cook the
(23:20):
vodka away, then in with the tomatoes, and then this
magic sauce happens. And then just simple garlicky pangretata, which
are the crispy bread crumbs and spaghetti, and I will
curl up on a sofa with that, and I don't
need to cry, because I just have. And if I'm
feeling sadder than I need to, I'll just put more
chili in. But that dish can console any heart. But
(23:43):
I also love it because right minus the vodka, it's
really quite cheap. I mean the bread crumbs are cheap,
and the garlic's tiny bit. I mean, it's all, but
it's so delicious. And I do love chili, as you know,
I do. I do.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
Oh you need comfort, you can have your Rabbiet, but
you can also pick up the phone and call me.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Thank you, Okay, thank thank you, Jamie, thank you for
having me. I love you, love you to.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
Everyone.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
That's about it. I love that nice conversation.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
The River Cafe Lookbook is now available in bookshops and online.
It has over one hundred recipes beautifully illustrated with photographs
from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty
delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of
River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks.
(24:53):
The River Cafe Look Book Recipes for cooks of all ages.
Ruthie's Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Adamized Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Yeah, nice see you. Nice to see you. Are you
working tonight?
Speaker 3 (00:11):
No, I'm really sad about cooking and milk apparently.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
If that's okay, I've got a table before. I can't wait.
Where are you sitting us? I haven't done the table
plan yet, Jamie, but you know, tell me where you
want to out of the famous Table four. I think
I'm going to be quite well behaved today, so you
can put me next to Delicate. Delicate is Yeah, I'm
back on the rotor, but as James, not Jamie.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Welcome back to Ruthy's Table four. In the last episode,
we spoke to Jamie Oliver about childhood, moving to London,
and getting started in television. In this episode, we'll be
talking about his school Meals campaign, but not before we
sent him back into the River Cafe kitchen after a
twenty year absence to prepare a River Cafe classic. When
(01:04):
we said to you, as we say to every guest,
choose a recipe from one of the books. I was
really moved when they tell me this morning that you
had chosen pork cooked in milk. And I was wondering
whether you might tell me why you've chosen that recipe.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, I was lucky enough to be taught it by
you and Rose and the idea of cooking meat in
milk it was something that I had never been taught
anywhere or at college, and I hadn't at that point
read anywhere. And really it was very simple ingredients. It
was pork shoulder, which is obviously the cheaper cut of meat,
(01:40):
and it needs slow cooking and that's the fac yeah,
and the connective tissues and these incredible leafy lemons, but
just the zest sage, garlic and some butter, and that
was really it. And sometimes at Christmas you might say
you can put a little nutmeg and if you wish,
and that's it was the most genius meal. And I
(02:02):
remember trying it for the first time, and I'm sure
things slowed down and went in slow motion and it
was like this, like the milk that you pour in
you brown you. Yeah, I mean I just start explaining
the recipe, which I'm going to do now. But the
meat was so unctuous and like lipstickingly delicious, and like
(02:26):
the milk split into essentially way and ricotta sort of
and it was just the most bonkerusly beautiful thing I
think I'd ever eaten.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
There's actually a recipe that I was taught by Richard's mother, Dada, really, and.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
She actually cooked. She cooked, and she said quite a
lot with milk.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
So she would always finish off some meat dish by
taking the gravy and then you know, the juices and
the pan and then adding milk to it and making
this sauce.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So Danny pork and milk, and that's that kind of
old school ritual of the River Cafe.
Speaker 5 (03:03):
I think it's one of the first things.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, Rose and Ruby told me as well. It looks
like the recipe hasn't changed, right, New season's garlic, lovely
sicilian lemons, zest saved in the garden, salt, pepper, and
pork and.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
Milk.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
You know, would you like to read the recipes? Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Pork cooked in milk serves eight people. Three kilos of
pork shoulder, two tablespoons of extravergin olive oil, a liter
and a half of full fat milk, fifty grams of butter,
five garlic cloves, peeled and halfed, a small handful of
fresh stage two lemons, rind paired and pith removed. Remove
(03:52):
the rind and most of the fat from the pork
and season the meat. Heat the olive oil in a
thick bottom pan, brown the meat, remove it from the pan,
and pour away the fat.
Speaker 5 (04:08):
So we take the shoulder off the bone first round
it in a little bit of butter, a lotive oil.
The a nice golden brown color of it. Yeah, and
then once it's this color, we then chucked in the garlet.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Yeah. So the the pork is obviously a lovely, beautiful
three range pig, free range and middle white pork. If
people wanted to do this at home, you just get
a whole or a half shoulder, d bone, skin off,
You've left some of the batom.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
You have the mass rendering because that's the flavor and
it helps the crispiness, allows it to go golden brown.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
It's probably what like three or three kilos pork there,
palk shoulders. Pork shoulders obviously sweet and delicious and needs
longer to cook.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
That is so, and it takes hours and it's just
people that three three bowlder garlet three three or four
volts of fresh garlet or it's gyre garlic.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Then probably less and this has probably brown for what
half an hour? Half an hour and a medium to
low heat. It's really the smell as soon as that
garlic goes in, it's gorgeous.
Speaker 5 (05:13):
Put the stage in because we want to put the
sage out.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
It's about a handful of pips, a handful of its
age lovely. Heat the milk to below boiling point and
set aside. Melt the butter in the original pan, add
the garlic with the sage, and when brown, return the
pork to the pan, add hot milk, bring to the boil,
(05:40):
add the lemon and reduce the heat.
Speaker 5 (05:44):
Beautiful, the beautiful.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
But you've used a speed peeler to take just a
lovely yellow skin off the Sicilian lemons.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
Yeah, that's yeah, five lemons, and we just use that
obviously the flavor the actual meat and also helps split
the milks it goes in, because what happens he is
as it reduces the milk s flips and you end
up with these lovely furs like ricotto. Yeah exactly, and
it just has that amazing flavor and taking the flavor
of the pig.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Yeah, absolutely beautiful. I always think this this moment's quite
because you've got the fat from the port, yeah, the
fat from the butter, and then you've got the oils
from the lemon skin. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Yeah, it's like this little trinity.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 5 (06:26):
To get the milk in now, yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Right, We've got some hot milk just before boiling. Right,
And of course that milk is just cleaning the buttom.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
Of the pan and blazing it and it's getting all
those lovely caramel life juice the pig.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
What do you reckon? Four hours at least? Sometimes that's exciting.
Damn right, damn right. Place the lid on the pan
and simmer slowly for at least three hours. When the
(07:03):
pork is cooked, the milk will have curdled into brown nuggets.
Carefully remove the meat and serve on a plate and
spoon over the sauce. Delicious. I remember you teaching me that.
And there's a simplicity but also a bravery. I think
about the cooking that you've always created here. And you've
(07:26):
got this piece of pork, and you keep turning it
and you want it dark, not just because the pork's dark,
but so you get the sticky bits. And I remember
what I was going about to add the milk, maybe
when it was lightly golden and no, no, no, keep going,
And I remember I remember being nervous, no no, no,
trust me, trust me. But that magic when the milk
interacts with the zest of the lemon, which curdles the
(07:49):
milk on purpose.
Speaker 4 (07:51):
Of course, the chemistry of cooking is so interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
The lemon with the juices and then the milk.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
And it's very it's quite a difficult call thing to
get right, isn't it, because if you put too much
milk and it never gets that brown kind of crusty
if you don't put enough milk, and then it kind
of becomes stuck on the bottom. And then also once
you pour the milk into about three quarters of the pork,
you know you don't want to touch it.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
We say, don't touch it, don't move it, you.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
Know, because let it just be patiently. And I think
it cooks a long time. But I must say, in
the new world of eating, I haven't had it for
a very long time. So I was really yeah, it's
some something I make very often that I was really
really pleased to see.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
That you chose that.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
I tell you what I'd done once and it was
such a kind of powerful dish, I think, like in
a delicious sense, and unexpected I took the liberty of
doing it with chicken in a book years later, and
then it went mad in the New York Times and
they started like redoing it. I'm like, and I think
I even did like a story about it. I said, No,
(08:58):
that's that's learn how the River Cafe with pork. But
of course it is delicious with chicken. It's not the
same as pork, but it's still utterly delicious. And of
course people can get chicken so easily.
Speaker 4 (09:08):
But if you do a spatchco chicken and you kind
of get it quite brown, and then just be brave
and halfway through just pour a lot of milk almost
up to the chicken.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Then in a big pan, then it reduces. Then you
scrape up the really nice with a lemon. Yeah, delicious,
And you.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Would serve it with beautiful polenta, some simple greens and
these chunks of pork and this weird but wonderful kind
of how would you describe it? Like, it's not a gravy,
it's kind.
Speaker 3 (09:37):
Of a it's almost like it's gone wrong.
Speaker 4 (09:41):
Yeah, what you don't want to happen when you make
ice cream, when you add the eggs to the milk
and then it can curry.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
But the story was so clear, wasn't it. It's just
saved and lemon and garlic. And the only thing I
was nervous about coming in the cab over was reading
(10:10):
this recipe out because I'm like, I've worked out ways
to blag it so it looks like but so is
that just like you? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:17):
Yeah? And did they not realize what there was?
Speaker 2 (10:20):
You had to be literally blind to have any extra
help in my school, and I was pulled out of
class into a class which was a very kindly named
special needs. So imagine eight hundred and eighty boys and
then can I have Jamie please? And mister love it
and and we'd be pulled out and we'd end up
in literally in the attic of the school, learning how
(10:41):
to spell the most basic things. But I think it
was And of course in a boys school you would
never learn to cook because that's for the girls. Then
I mean, like we.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Never cooking lessons for the girls.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Well in the girls schools, yeah, but they certainly you know,
it was just very chovens Is. And it's funny because
I left school with this chip on my shoulder about
like this is not for me, and they're not serving
every child. And I think I've only literally just brushed
the last chip off my shoulder, you know.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
I keep talking about that ad for the Felix Project
which tonight four hundred thousand children in Britain will have
the same meal nothing, you know, and that we're living
this time right now where I find it shocking that
we still can't feed our children. Y. We've been looking
at country's approaches to food and I grew up at
(11:35):
a time when Lyndon Johnson in the late sixties started
the head Start program, and it was that you would
give every child in poverty at breakfast.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
It was breakfast.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
You know, there's a great phrase, no child should be
disadvantaged by his birth. In fact, a lot of children
were disadvantaged by the fact that they went to school hungry,
and so they fed children. They fed children breakfast. You'd
come to school in any child who needed breakfast would have.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
It was a head Start And.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Studies are years later that the children who were on
head Start were not taking welfare, so.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
They flourished out, flourished out of it.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
And that in fact, investment by society to invest in children. Actually,
if you want to be crass about it, save the
money later on.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, I mean there's some sensible countries that invest in it.
And it's funny, like I mean, I know it's a
name drop. But I saw Tony Blayer last week, just
a week before, just because it was a moment of
reflection since because he was the one, he was the
first prime minister that found new money invested in equipment
(12:43):
and training and the money on the plate, and I said,
like Tony, like, we've got to go faster on this.
And actually his position has I mean, he was incredible
to support me when we did it fifteen sixteen years ago,
but he's he's like, I'm even more on this now, Thane,
and it makes more sense than ever. And because of
my position, I've remained a political but currently at the moment,
(13:05):
neither of the two big parties have child health on
the manifesto as something that can be voted for.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
I don't know how you feel, but I don't understand
why we can't feed every single child, whether a parent
makes a million dollars or one dollar, you know that
every child And also the idea that Sam Taylor Johnson
was on and she can remember being put in a
separate line because she was a child that needed school
(13:35):
lunches to be paid for. And I'm sure I don't
know how they do it. Now, what is a society
that does.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
That to you kid?
Speaker 2 (13:41):
I mean it was often a lady of a clipboard
and a name and a token. But you know now
with technology like the card system, which can be incredibly
intelligent if the government just allowed it to get organized,
and that's what happens is little islands of hope. But
the government never really consolidates genius and spreads genius and
facilitated genius. So from that little car that gives you
(14:02):
a free school meal that no other kid needs to
know you're having, you can also ping a text to
a parent saying they had this for lunch, which means
you don't have to cook them the same thing for
dinner if that's the case. Do you know what I mean?
There's just loads of really clever things that can happen.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
And how do you qualify for a free lunch? Do
you know that the salary that.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
You have a household, you have to earn less than
seven four hundred pounds a year that's not as a person,
that's as a household.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
There are households that live on seven thousand pounds a year.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
One point two million of them. Yeah, and then there's
a gap between the free school lunch kids who are
parents that are on Universal credit. So Universal credit is
complex in the sense that it bends and it was
invented to be bendy. So you could have people on
twenty grand per household, which is still not loads of money,
but the average is about thirteen to fourteen. So there's
(14:48):
about six hundred thousand kids that fall into that that
don't get a free school lunch, that would have a
household that earns, you know, sort of ten to fourteen
thousand pounds a year that can't get a free school
lunch one hundred and ninety days of the year. So
you know, every council has a different price per school lunch.
(15:09):
It could be two fifty, it could be three fifty.
But if you've got three kids and that sort of money,
then that totals up per month pretty big, you know.
So there's still gaps and there's lack of consistency, but
also there's been an amazing bit of work done just
recently independently, and they said, if you just gave everyone
a free school lunch over a twenty year period, Britain
(15:32):
would be over forty pounds better off. And they look
at it very surgically around kind of productivity, how you
get through school, how much you would cost the NHS
and conservatively. So what's interesting is all the math says,
invest in the system, treat them all the same, and
from a restaurant point of view, which is essentially what
(15:54):
they are. If you've got a school that's fifty percent
school lunches, that's struggling, genius cooking will happen, but only
about seventy percent because the numbers don't. You can't have
enough people on the line, you can't fix the equipment,
so there is a kind of business.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
You know.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
So free school lunches definitely would make the food better,
more consistent, and then you know so, but more importantly,
give those young people from poor postcodes, which is essentially
what it is, give them much more hope and the
ability to thrive.
Speaker 4 (16:27):
Now because they don't get a free school lunch and
the parents can't afford, they'll get nothing, they'll have nothing.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
To do, and at the moment there is more lunch
cooks than ever saying I'm having to illegally give them
lunches not on the system. And they're teachers paying for
ten or twelve kids a day from some there or
that some budget they can find, so obviously they can't
visually watch kids not have a meal, and like you say,
(16:54):
it could be the only hot medal of the day
and that's not an exaggeration. And then, of course, outside
of the one hundred and ninety day school a year,
there's what we call holiday hunger, which is when you actually,
even in that six to seven weeks summer holiday, if
you measure public health or children, you can see that
there's a massive spike of ill health because they don't
(17:15):
they get stuff, but it's all the wrong stuff. So
that's what Marcus Rashford was working on, which was some
kind of provision in the holidays for these very vulnerable families.
What can we do well, I think keeping the story going,
I mean this year one of the tactics where you
I mean I've been on it constantly since fifteen years ago.
(17:37):
But one of the things we're doing this year, which
I would love you to get involved in any way
you could, is where Actually it's funny when you're like
overwhelmed by a problem, you keep telling the story of
the problem. And then then this genius idea about how
about we do an annual school food awards that's amazing
(17:59):
with real and real incentives, and how about we celebrate
the best up and coming lunch cook and the best
team and the best primary school, secondary school, special school,
the best teacher teaching cooking. So we've got eight different
awards this year that we're going to launch, and we're
doing it with the One Show and actually the Sun,
and we're trying to get as many people behind it,
(18:19):
but hopefully it will give us an opportunity to share
what good looks like, because I definitely haven't done enough
of that in the last fifteen years. I've really only
focused on the darkness. So that's a change attack. These
institutions are incredible, These teachers are amazing, and they haven't
that you know that. I think I've worked through five
or six prime ministers. I've worked through thirteen education secretaries
(18:42):
in fifteen years, sixteen years since school dinners, So imagine
changing the head chef at the River Cafe that many
times in that time. I mean it's I do think
the institution of school can be something so much more
powerful than it already is. People forget it's the biggest
restaurant group, thirty thousand odd schools, over three thousand secondary schools.
(19:05):
It's nearly five million meals a day, eighty five thousand
lunch cooks, which are largely women, which are largely parents
most of the time. So there's an incredible workforce bigger
than the you know, the military, you know, the navy,
you know, like out there cooking for kids every day.
Speaker 4 (19:27):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table four, would you
please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Thank you.
Speaker 4 (19:47):
Well, as a child that dyslexia and working as a
nine year old in the kitchen and knowing that your
passion for food that was what was did you ever
waiver from wanting to be a chef to everything? At
one point? Maybe I'd like to be a recent card
drive now, I mean, it wasn't like helicopter pilot.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
It's an interesting one because I think there's so much
noise around what are you doing when you leave school?
What you're doing, what you're doing. I knew I could cook,
so I knew I'd never have to be hungry. There's
always a job, for sure. But like I play with
a lot of Lego, and I know it's random thing
to say, but like that was the building blocks of
(20:25):
not just doing what it tailed you to do. But
then when it's all destroyed, when you can make something
through fantasy, which is much more really like what Richard
would do with architecture, right, And I mean so somehow Lego,
which was my best friend in cooking, sort of I
don't know, they kind of gave me the confidence to
just know that things were going to be all right.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
We've talked about, you know, food as politics and society
and fairness. We've talked about food in your father's kitchen
doing something I still can't remember with the bottles bottling up.
And we've talked about food and the River Cafe and
the friends you made and rose and memories and food
(21:08):
is memory. You know, today we've talked about our memories,
and I think that food is also comfort. Is there
a food or some foods that you would think I
need a bit of comfort right now?
Speaker 3 (21:20):
What shall I eat? Would you cook. Would you buy something?
Would you open it?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Now? I cook something?
Speaker 3 (21:27):
What would you cook?
Speaker 4 (21:28):
Jamie Oliver?
Speaker 2 (21:30):
This is unsurprisingly it's a dish inspired by my time
here at the River Cafe, but it's a bit of
a millunge between two things, right, So it's spaghetti arabiata,
And certainly one of the ways I was taught it,
and I know there's many ways, was to gently heat
(21:50):
oil and put whole fresh chilies in and just let
them kind of just cook beautifully, and you put a
little hole in the chili so it doesn't give over
the aggressive heat. Well, you can make it as hot
as you like, because obviously arabiata means angry, and that
means hot. But it's a really rounded fruit chili flavor.
(22:13):
And then the tomato, beautiful tomatoes go in, and a
little garlic of course in the oil before the tomatoes.
The little hijack on that was. I remember seeing you
and Rose not very often using vodka as a base
to to rosotto. I don't know if it's because there
was no wine close to hand or vermouve, but it
wasn't like you to You had an always had an intention.
(22:36):
I'm sure you used vodka when you make rosotto and
you fry the safri too off, you would add often wine,
but you did vokin. I thought, oh my god, I've
never seen that before. But of course you cook it
all away and you're left with this kind of cleanliness
that's amazing. And then I think you continued to make
some form of like spring rosotto that was just mind
(22:57):
blowing anyway, So I kind of incorporated that hack into
before adding I added the tomatoes into this arabiata, and
you just end up this this and lemons est. So
I'm telling this terribly sorry. Oil and chilies, slowly, slowly, slowly,
don't rush it. Then lemons zest garlic vodka, cook the
(23:20):
vodka away, then in with the tomatoes, and then this
magic sauce happens. And then just simple garlicky pangretata, which
are the crispy bread crumbs and spaghetti, and I will
curl up on a sofa with that, and I don't
need to cry, because I just have. And if I'm
feeling sadder than I need to, I'll just put more
chili in. But that dish can console any heart. But
(23:43):
I also love it because right minus the vodka, it's
really quite cheap. I mean the bread crumbs are cheap,
and the garlic's tiny bit. I mean, it's all, but
it's so delicious. And I do love chili, as you know,
I do. I do.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
Oh you need comfort, you can have your Rabbiet, but
you can also pick up the phone and call me.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Thank you, Okay, thank thank you, Jamie, thank you for
having me. I love you, love you to.
Speaker 5 (24:18):
Everyone.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
That's about it. I love that nice conversation.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
The River Cafe Lookbook is now available in bookshops and online.
It has over one hundred recipes beautifully illustrated with photographs
from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty
delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of
River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks.
(24:53):
The River Cafe Look Book Recipes for cooks of all ages.
Ruthie's Table four is a production of iHeartRadio and Adami Studios.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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