October 5, 2021 • 26 mins
On this week’s episode, Ruthie and Sir Paul McCartney talk about the first time he tasted wine in Paris with John Lennon, what it was like being a vegetarian in the world of rock and roll, and how to cook the perfect roasted aubergines with tomatoes and basil. Here Comes The Sun.
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home.
On Ruthie's Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers.
Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks.
Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation.
For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. I'm sorry, I think
I'm going to sneeze. This is River Cafe Table four.
I always managed to sneeze, like on telephone calls with
me Ruthie Rogers. I don't think I've ever sneezed on
a podcast on River Cafe Table four. I talked to
(00:25):
friends who know the River Cafe well about food, the
food they cook, the food they eat, the food of
their memories. M do you know what I feel? It receding,
Oh no, I wanted to hear Paul McCartney sneeze. That
would have been don't worry, it may come, and when
it comes, I can do up to nine. I warn
(00:45):
you for me. Paul is not just a great musician,
but a great lover of food. And one of my
favorite possessions is a photograph that Paul recently sent me
of him and his grandson with a plate of tomato
pasta they had just cooked. They were both so proud.
(01:07):
Cooking in Liverpool in my working class family was very
much how everyone else at so there was not much variety,
and it was only when I came down to London
when the Beatles came down here to make records and
eventually to live down here. That you would go to
find restaurants and try and you know, navigate your way
(01:32):
through the menu. The eating was pretty much fuel until
I got down to London. I mean, for instance, I
hated wine because well, we never had it. I mean,
the nearest we came to alcoholic beverages was when we
were a little older on a Sunday with the Sunday lunch,
we would have a glass of cider. That was it.
(01:56):
But whenever I tasted wine, I hated it. John and
I hitchhiked to Paris. He got given a fabulous birthday
present by his rich relatives in Scotland, and one of
them gave him a hundred pounds for his birthday. You know,
I mean, I still think that's a reasonable gift. It's
(02:17):
very reasonable. Anyway, So we hitchhiked to Paris and then
we used the money to get food and stuff, and
we thought, oh, we've got to have a wine experience.
We're in France, you know. So we went into a
cafe corner cafe and we sort of sidled up to
(02:37):
the bar and said, do Van ordinaire seview play and
she gave us two glasses of red wine and we
took a sip and thought, oh, that is terrible. It's
like vinegar. Gotta don't know what the fuss is about
all these people going on about wine. They're crazy, We're saying. So.
(03:01):
We never liked wine until we got down to London.
And the first time I ever remember really liking wine
it was with George Martin. My girlfriend at the time
was Jane Asher, and Jane and I went out with
George and his wife, Judy, and we went to a
little restaurant in Charlotte Street called La Yeah. I was
(03:27):
treating so the way so the Wine Way to Simelia
came up to me and said, would you like a wine? Sir?
He leaned in all very intimate, and I sort of
equally whispering. I said, I'd like you to recommend to me.
I don't know much about wine. He said, yes, thank
you very much, leave it to me, and then he
brought back a bottle of Louis Latour's Court at Granci
(03:52):
nineteen fifty nine, and I took a taste of it. Oh,
it was like velvet, and I thought, now I get it.
I see why people go crazy about one. And it
was funny because years after that I thought, Okay, got
on grantee, that's the one I've got an order. And
(04:13):
then years later I thought it was not quite as
good as the one I had, and I realized that
I was now ordering the fifty nine, and this was
now ten twenty years later, whereas he was serving it
at five years. Took a little while for that penny
to drop. This is River Cafe Table four. In each episode,
(04:38):
my guest reads a recipe they've chosen from one of
our cookbooks, and this is the recipe for roast aubergine's
the Americans call eggplant. For any Americans listening, okay, so
you take two aubergines cut into two centimeter thick slices,
eight ripe plum tomatoes cut in half, then a hundred
(05:01):
grams of parmesan grated, two tablespoons of basil leaves torn
into small pieces, extra virgin olive oil. You place the
aubergine in a colander and sprinkle with sea salt. Leave
for half an hour and pat dry. Preheat the oven
(05:23):
to two hundred degrees celsius. Squeeze the juice from the
tomatoes and chop into small pieces. Place the tomatoes in
a bowl, season well with salt and pepper and tossed
with a tablespoonful of olive oil. Then stare in the
parmesan and basil. Brush an ovenproof dish with olive oil.
(05:46):
Place the aubergine slices on the dish, brush with olive
oil and season. Bake for fifteen minutes, then turn them
over and spoon the tomato mixture on top. Return into
the oven for five minutes. Serve warm, or they're also
delicious at room temperature. Thank you, beautiful. Why did you
(06:14):
choose this recipe? It's just one of my favorite dishes.
Being vegetarian. In some restaurants, there's limited options. Not in
the River Cafe, but you know certain restaurants it's a
bit limited, but they often have an eggplant aubergin parmesan.
So I will go for that, and I love it
(06:36):
and I eat it at home. It's just a great dish.
It's comforting room. When you were growing up where there
are a lot of variety of vegetables, did you come
across Are we going to call them eggplant? In this
conversation this week? So many words aren't there for this vegetable.
I remember when I first came to London, I went
into a green grocer and I asked for eggplant, and
(06:57):
he brought me out eggs, and then I said, no,
I don't on eggs, and he brought me out a plant,
you know, And then I realized that they called them
by the French name aubergines, and then in Italian it's melons.
How do you want to refer to them, Let's do
aubergine because that's what okay? So tell me about ober
jeans in liverfore you didn't get them. I've never heard
(07:17):
of them until I came down to London. Yeah, I mean,
vegetables would be potatoes, carrots, onion, and then you would
get broad beans, which we call butter beans. I like
them to this day. I like a nice bottle bean soup.
So yeah, but it was very limited, and that would
(07:39):
be with a piece of meat. It was a pretty
bland menu. Who did the cooking in your house? My mom?
Tell me about your mom. Did she like cooking? Do think?
Or did she see it as a duty to do
she did? She have a job she did. She was
a nurse, so she worked full on and she became
a sister on the ward, and then eventually she became
(08:02):
a midwife. So she was hard working and she enjoyed cooking.
But I'm sure there was a little bit of providing
for your family in there, you know, because in those
days there was no question about it. Really it was
the woman's role. I would do a little bit myself
sometimes because my mom unfortunately died when I was fourteen,
(08:25):
so there was my dad and me and my younger
brother left to look after ourselves. Sometimes I'd get home
from school before my dad would from work, and I'd
have to knock up a little bit of a meal.
I became very good at mashed potatoes. What was your
technique do you remember? Yeah, I mean these days is
(08:47):
probably like over the top and would need to be
a little bit health arised. But then I would mash
them normally with a fork because we didn't have many
cooking implements. Mashed them up till I got all the
lumps out, and I was very keen on that. Then
I would pile in a lot of butter delicious, a
(09:14):
little bit of milk, yeah, and then whip that little
soccer up. And then sometimes you was trying to be exotic.
I put some finely chopped onions raw, which is kind
of nice. I'd say that that is a very sophisticated
way of I mean that is, we always say that
mashed potatoes and frants are really butter with potatoes. You know,
(09:35):
did your mother teach you how to do that? It
was an instinctive. I think I probably just watched her
do it. So I would make that, and then my
dad would leave either some sausages or chops to go
with it. That was basically it. But yeah, you know,
my mom was a proper cook. The only time I
really couldn't eat what she had cooked, and what she
(09:58):
had offered was on the table on a plate. There
was a tongue, and I did not like the look
of this bloody great cow's tongue. It was not persuaded
to eat that. I'm afraid. When you said that your
dad would leave you the sausages of the park so
he would do the shopping. Did he have a night job.
Would he come home for dinner. No, he was a
(10:20):
cotton salesman, so he worked just during the day. He
would leave roughly the same time as we left for school,
so he would sell cotton. It came in from the
port and then he would sell that onto the mills
which were behind Liverpool in Lancashire. That was a big
industry at the time to this day, I know how
(10:41):
to take the staple of some raw cotton? Do you?
How do you do that? You've got a piece of
cotton that's you know, just come off the bush and
being packed, and you take it between your thumbs and
you tease it, and you keep teasing it till you're
all you're left with is the want that won't tease
(11:01):
off that thing that's left. The thread that's left is
called the staple. And you judge the quality of the
cotton on the length of that staple. That's why the
beautiful What year with this have been? What years are
we time? Mid fifties so I was coming to London
(11:26):
a huge exposure to food, into restaurants and going out. Yes, absolutely,
I mean in Liverpool there weren't, to my knowledge, any
real sort of fine restaurants. You had great Chinese food,
great Indian food, but the English cooking was normally done
best at home. You know, you had an anti or
(11:48):
somebody who was like really made a great stew In Liverpool,
there's a stew that's called scouse. It's like an Irish
stew sort of everything in And then years later when
Lynda and I became vegetarian, we went up. My Auntie
was very nice, very kind that you made scouts without
the meat, which Liverpool is called blind scouts. Good. I'm
(12:14):
sure you've written and talked in about this, but how
did the the decision by the two of you? And
and Mary said to me, you must remember that my
father and my mother decided this together. It wasn't my
mother's true we will be vegetarians, said, it was a
joint decision. Which now everybody I have to say is
thinking about the environment or my children and grandchildren are
(12:37):
either not eating meat or fish at all. Goodness, so
thinking about the environment exactly. But what were you thinking
about that? What made you do that? What it was
was we were on the farm in Scotland. We had
a farm in a place called Campbelltown, which is south
down the Argyle Peninsula, south of Glasgow, so we spent
(12:58):
quite a bit of time there. The Beatles break up
got a bit heavy and the business scene and you
just couldn't deal with it, so we decided to just elope.
Even though we were married. We just escaped there and
it was just a sheep farm. We were looking out
of the kitchen window one day and there were lambs.
It was lambing season, early in spring, and the lambs
(13:21):
were gambling around so full of life, and it was like, wow,
this is really cool. And I always say that what
they seemed like they were doing will be about twenty
of them. They'd start at one end of the field
and then it will be as if someone said let's
go and they all go and run to the other
side of the field. Let's go back. So they were
(13:44):
just running up and down, gambling and jumping and everything
we're going, isn't it's cute and great. Then we suddenly
realized we were eating leg of lamb. So that was
when the penny dropped and it was like leg of
leg of lamb. Then it was just we said, you
know what, should we try and not eat meat? Should
we try and go virgie? And in those days, of course,
(14:06):
it was actually difficult, but we decided that we'd make
it a challenge. It just became a fun challenge. Okay,
what do you do? So we gradually begun filling the
hole in the middle of the plate. We keep everything
else and then we just work on things to take
the place of where the meat had been. And it
(14:28):
was quite funny actually, because at Christmas, you know, I
had always loved the role which I had been given
in the family of carving the turkey, and Leondar did
cook the turkey great. She was really good at that.
So suddenly here we were without anything for me to carve.
So she had the brilliant idea of making a macaroni
(14:50):
cheese so that we know it it tastes good, and
then she let it cool and go solid, and then
we put in the fridge overnight, and then the next
day I had this big block that I could into
turkey sized portions. So it was like that. It actually
became very interesting to work out how to do it
(15:12):
because nobody else was bothering, you know. I remember going
with Linda's father one night to Claridge Is and thinking, well, great,
you know they're going to know how to do it.
We said, well, what are you doing? Can you make
some suggestions the way to gave us a very sniffy logan. Anyway,
he came back with a plate of vegetables steamed. That
was the limit of his imagination. But you know, things
(15:35):
started to change really quickly. But I think, Paul, without
interrupting you, that you have to take credit for that change,
and Linda have to take credit for that change, because
you didn't just personally become vegetarian, but you kind of
told the world about what it was like and how
it was like, especially you know, with her books and
her vision created a place. I'll tell you story. Remember
(15:58):
there was that restaurant called Crack. It was like the
only vegetarian restaurant in London, and I thought it was
very cool the way they called it cranks. And I
once went there with Richard the first days that I
met him, and I was so happy to see him
and I kept kissing him and having my arms around him,
and I saw a woman staring at us and getting
very annoyed, and so of course I just did it more.
(16:19):
And she came over to the table and she said,
I think that what you've been doing is appalling, but
that you should be doing it in a vegetarian restaurant
makes it worse. And it was somehow the idea that
you couldn't be sexy and have vegetables. So I think
I think you could say that you and Linda made
(16:41):
vegetables sexy and rock and roll. It was something very important.
It's funny, though, isn't it. It used to come with
the territory that if people were veggie, they were ranks,
and therefore they were boring, and so it gave this
image of the whole thing being really boring. The people
are born, there's no kissing aloud, you know, But that
(17:04):
soon left the arena. Were you unique in the group
of musicians and the other people that were performing at
the in the sixties. Did they have the same explosion
of food and enjoy of food or do you think
you were kind of more passionate about it. I don't know,
you know, I think a lot of them did, a
lot of them jinn't. Some people remained traditional eaters. I mean,
(17:27):
you know, there a couple of people these days who
I know who were from those times who just want
English cooking. You know. It's just like they want life
to stay exactly the same as it was, and I
get it, you know. So it kind of split into
two groups. I suppose, you know, the people who weren't
bothered with all that rubbishy wine and fine food. They
(17:48):
probably still thought it tastes like vinegar. But when you traveled,
when you were on tour and you were suddenly traveling
in other countries, do you remember being in Japan or
China or an exotic place and being confronted with food
that you'd never seen before. Never Japan mainly. I mean,
I haven't actually been to China, but Japan was quite
(18:09):
an experience. I like Japanese food these days because I'm vegetarian.
A lot of it's a bit fishy for me, but
you can work your way around it. I enjoy the
Japanese cuisine. I like sort of Asian fusion. It didn't
really mean that we would have it at home. It
was more when you went to the country, you'd enjoy
(18:30):
the food of that particular country. And you've just done
a book, haven't you tell me about Linda McCartney's family Kitchen. Yeah,
we wanted to take a lot of her cooking ideas
and bring them more up to date with the way
(18:52):
people tend to eat now. It's vegetarian, but we decided
to actually make it vegan. Vegetarians so near to be
you got anyway, I mean, you're only talking about cheese
and dairy products, you know, that you've got so many
substitutes for those these days. So yeah, we just wanted
to get some really tasty, easy to make dishes that
(19:15):
would be good for a family, because I think if
you say to people, well, I'm vegetarian these days actually
is not so shocking. But it used to be people say, oh,
if you're coming to dinner, what can I do? What
can I give you? You know? So that was originally
why Linda got together a cookbook. So it's nice to
have come through it, really, you know, it puts a
(19:36):
perspective on it for us that it was the kind
of thing where you're getting told off becassing in the restaurant,
and nowadays it's just the opposite, you know. I'll tell
you a restaurant I like a lot is ABC V
in New York. ABC is great. I forget the guy's names, Jean, Pierre, George,
John George, and he made ABC which good. What ABC
(20:01):
V is all veggie and so good. I always come
out of it having eaten too much. And the other
thing I like is that the wages, they're all very
invested in the idea and it really is kind of
quite thrilling, you know. And I transport myself through time,
back to the plate, the verge of plow juice through
(20:21):
to modern d I interviewed al Gore and again, like
you not a musician, but a very good politician and
a very good environmentalist. And you know, it's hard to
break the connection between what we are, what our politics are,
with our view unsustainability and how we vote, how we think,
(20:42):
how we judge, and how we eat. You know that
is it's all connected now, isn't it. And I think
that's so interesting. You have a farm. Al Gore has
made his farm, he inherited it in Tennessee, and he's
made it completely sustainable and organic. And the change the
soil tell us about your fine, Yeah, well ours is organic.
(21:02):
Went organic what over twenty years ago? And when I
first bought the farm, there were some fields that my
farm guys would say, well, there's no worms in these fields,
there's no life because basically all you did was you
put on pesticides and then you put a fertilizer in.
So I thought, okay, there's a challenge. You know, we're
(21:25):
going to go organic. So I talked to the Soil Association,
were very good and kind of came and gave us
some clues and we went organic, and the local farmers
would say, oh, you know, you're stupid. You're doing there.
You know, it's no use. Of course, nowadays they get
it and they think, oh it's a good idea. So yeah,
(21:45):
we changed the soil. We grow crops like I like
doing things like spelled wheat, just because it's a little
bit different. Rye, we grow peace. Actually we're just getting
into growing hemp. Do you know the funny thing is
with government regulations, you've got to keep it where people
can't see it. You got all the kids coming in
(22:09):
and robbing. You've left something else out because Stella tell
me that you're making your own. Hell yeah we do.
Through the years, I would hear like a neighbor would
be selling some land that was next door to ours.
So I went to this one and I said, I
hear you're selling that hop garden and he said yeah,
(22:29):
you know anyway, so long story, should I've got it.
And then I thought, well, I've got to start doing hops.
You know, I've got to bring it back because the
region we're in in Sussex was a very big hop
growing area. So I went to a local brewer who's
just in the village near us, and I said, could
you make some beer for me? And so I said,
(22:50):
I'll grow the hops and you put it all together
and organic, it must be organic, and so he did.
And then we were looking for a name for the beer.
And you know, these artists and beers, they've gotta have
crazy names. So I was riding with Linda one day
through our woods and she was behind me, and I
(23:12):
stopped and I said, you're not going to believe what
you're going to see now. She said what I said, Look,
and she caught up with me and it was a stinkhorn.
I don't know if you know what a stinkhorn is.
I have no idea what a stinkhorn. It's a fungus
that is white and erect and very phallic. I mean
(23:33):
it looks like an erect penis. And then beside it,
which is even better, there was another one which was
like a limp penis. So you got this erect thing.
And I'm saying, I'm saying, well, I tell people this.
I said, don't blame me. This is nature. It's not
me being dirty. So that's what r beer is called.
(23:53):
Old stinkhorn. Can we get it? You can? I'll put
you on the list. I send it to friends. I
just send it to f Can we have it in
the river cafe? That would be We don't produce that many.
It's more a personal I'll send you a six pack. Okay,
I'm waiting for it. The connection between you and myself,
as I said, it was music, it was his food.
(24:14):
It was you know when on my Desert Island discs
I played I Will song, do you remember I was
sung by Garrison Kellyer and you came and said, you've
never heard that version. And we played it the memorial
for our son who died, and that was the first
time I heard of your love of that song, which
(24:34):
he was very very lovely to imagine at a memorial,
was very poignant, it was very beautiful. And I think
that if you know, for me, then for Richard and
our family, that was comfort and it was a connection.
And so I guess my last question to you is
if food is something you do politically by what you
choose to eat, if it's socially what you sit down
(24:56):
with your friends and he it's also comfort, isn't it.
There is food that is comfort that we go to
that makes us feel better. What for my last question
would be, Sir Paul McCartney, your comfort food, well, I
like a case of dilla or a questa dilla. It
(25:16):
is a comfort food. It's like a pizza turned inside out.
I love it. In fact, I think I'm having it tonight.
All right, Rothie, thanks a lot. I love you. Do.
Hope it was sensible enough. You were wonderful. You are wonderful.
I'll see you soon. When are you coming in as
soon as I can? Okay, come on, we're waiting for you. Okay.
(25:41):
To visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go
to shop the River Cafe dot co dot uk. River
Cafe Table four is a production of I Heart Radio
and Adam I Studios. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart the app, Apple podcast, or wherever
(26:02):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. I'm sorry, I think
I'm going to sneeze. This is River Cafe Table four.
I always managed to sneeze, like on telephone calls with
me Ruthie Rogers. I don't think I've ever sneezed on
a podcast on River Cafe Table four. I talked to
(00:25):
friends who know the River Cafe well about food, the
food they cook, the food they eat, the food of
their memories. M do you know what I feel? It receding,
Oh no, I wanted to hear Paul McCartney sneeze. That
would have been don't worry, it may come, and when
it comes, I can do up to nine. I warn
(00:45):
you for me. Paul is not just a great musician,
but a great lover of food. And one of my
favorite possessions is a photograph that Paul recently sent me
of him and his grandson with a plate of tomato
pasta they had just cooked. They were both so proud.
(01:07):
Cooking in Liverpool in my working class family was very
much how everyone else at so there was not much variety,
and it was only when I came down to London
when the Beatles came down here to make records and
eventually to live down here. That you would go to
find restaurants and try and you know, navigate your way
(01:32):
through the menu. The eating was pretty much fuel until
I got down to London. I mean, for instance, I
hated wine because well, we never had it. I mean,
the nearest we came to alcoholic beverages was when we
were a little older on a Sunday with the Sunday lunch,
we would have a glass of cider. That was it.
(01:56):
But whenever I tasted wine, I hated it. John and
I hitchhiked to Paris. He got given a fabulous birthday
present by his rich relatives in Scotland, and one of
them gave him a hundred pounds for his birthday. You know,
I mean, I still think that's a reasonable gift. It's
(02:17):
very reasonable. Anyway, So we hitchhiked to Paris and then
we used the money to get food and stuff, and
we thought, oh, we've got to have a wine experience.
We're in France, you know. So we went into a
cafe corner cafe and we sort of sidled up to
(02:37):
the bar and said, do Van ordinaire seview play and
she gave us two glasses of red wine and we
took a sip and thought, oh, that is terrible. It's
like vinegar. Gotta don't know what the fuss is about
all these people going on about wine. They're crazy, We're saying. So.
(03:01):
We never liked wine until we got down to London.
And the first time I ever remember really liking wine
it was with George Martin. My girlfriend at the time
was Jane Asher, and Jane and I went out with
George and his wife, Judy, and we went to a
little restaurant in Charlotte Street called La Yeah. I was
(03:27):
treating so the way so the Wine Way to Simelia
came up to me and said, would you like a wine? Sir?
He leaned in all very intimate, and I sort of
equally whispering. I said, I'd like you to recommend to me.
I don't know much about wine. He said, yes, thank
you very much, leave it to me, and then he
brought back a bottle of Louis Latour's Court at Granci
(03:52):
nineteen fifty nine, and I took a taste of it. Oh,
it was like velvet, and I thought, now I get it.
I see why people go crazy about one. And it
was funny because years after that I thought, Okay, got
on grantee, that's the one I've got an order. And
(04:13):
then years later I thought it was not quite as
good as the one I had, and I realized that
I was now ordering the fifty nine, and this was
now ten twenty years later, whereas he was serving it
at five years. Took a little while for that penny
to drop. This is River Cafe Table four. In each episode,
(04:38):
my guest reads a recipe they've chosen from one of
our cookbooks, and this is the recipe for roast aubergine's
the Americans call eggplant. For any Americans listening, okay, so
you take two aubergines cut into two centimeter thick slices,
eight ripe plum tomatoes cut in half, then a hundred
(05:01):
grams of parmesan grated, two tablespoons of basil leaves torn
into small pieces, extra virgin olive oil. You place the
aubergine in a colander and sprinkle with sea salt. Leave
for half an hour and pat dry. Preheat the oven
(05:23):
to two hundred degrees celsius. Squeeze the juice from the
tomatoes and chop into small pieces. Place the tomatoes in
a bowl, season well with salt and pepper and tossed
with a tablespoonful of olive oil. Then stare in the
parmesan and basil. Brush an ovenproof dish with olive oil.
(05:46):
Place the aubergine slices on the dish, brush with olive
oil and season. Bake for fifteen minutes, then turn them
over and spoon the tomato mixture on top. Return into
the oven for five minutes. Serve warm, or they're also
delicious at room temperature. Thank you, beautiful. Why did you
(06:14):
choose this recipe? It's just one of my favorite dishes.
Being vegetarian. In some restaurants, there's limited options. Not in
the River Cafe, but you know certain restaurants it's a
bit limited, but they often have an eggplant aubergin parmesan.
So I will go for that, and I love it
(06:36):
and I eat it at home. It's just a great dish.
It's comforting room. When you were growing up where there
are a lot of variety of vegetables, did you come
across Are we going to call them eggplant? In this
conversation this week? So many words aren't there for this vegetable.
I remember when I first came to London, I went
into a green grocer and I asked for eggplant, and
(06:57):
he brought me out eggs, and then I said, no,
I don't on eggs, and he brought me out a plant,
you know, And then I realized that they called them
by the French name aubergines, and then in Italian it's melons.
How do you want to refer to them, Let's do
aubergine because that's what okay? So tell me about ober
jeans in liverfore you didn't get them. I've never heard
(07:17):
of them until I came down to London. Yeah, I mean,
vegetables would be potatoes, carrots, onion, and then you would
get broad beans, which we call butter beans. I like
them to this day. I like a nice bottle bean soup.
So yeah, but it was very limited, and that would
(07:39):
be with a piece of meat. It was a pretty
bland menu. Who did the cooking in your house? My mom?
Tell me about your mom. Did she like cooking? Do think?
Or did she see it as a duty to do
she did? She have a job she did. She was
a nurse, so she worked full on and she became
a sister on the ward, and then eventually she became
(08:02):
a midwife. So she was hard working and she enjoyed cooking.
But I'm sure there was a little bit of providing
for your family in there, you know, because in those
days there was no question about it. Really it was
the woman's role. I would do a little bit myself
sometimes because my mom unfortunately died when I was fourteen,
(08:25):
so there was my dad and me and my younger
brother left to look after ourselves. Sometimes I'd get home
from school before my dad would from work, and I'd
have to knock up a little bit of a meal.
I became very good at mashed potatoes. What was your
technique do you remember? Yeah, I mean these days is
(08:47):
probably like over the top and would need to be
a little bit health arised. But then I would mash
them normally with a fork because we didn't have many
cooking implements. Mashed them up till I got all the
lumps out, and I was very keen on that. Then
I would pile in a lot of butter delicious, a
(09:14):
little bit of milk, yeah, and then whip that little
soccer up. And then sometimes you was trying to be exotic.
I put some finely chopped onions raw, which is kind
of nice. I'd say that that is a very sophisticated
way of I mean that is, we always say that
mashed potatoes and frants are really butter with potatoes. You know,
(09:35):
did your mother teach you how to do that? It
was an instinctive. I think I probably just watched her
do it. So I would make that, and then my
dad would leave either some sausages or chops to go
with it. That was basically it. But yeah, you know,
my mom was a proper cook. The only time I
really couldn't eat what she had cooked, and what she
(09:58):
had offered was on the table on a plate. There
was a tongue, and I did not like the look
of this bloody great cow's tongue. It was not persuaded
to eat that. I'm afraid. When you said that your
dad would leave you the sausages of the park so
he would do the shopping. Did he have a night job.
Would he come home for dinner. No, he was a
(10:20):
cotton salesman, so he worked just during the day. He
would leave roughly the same time as we left for school,
so he would sell cotton. It came in from the
port and then he would sell that onto the mills
which were behind Liverpool in Lancashire. That was a big
industry at the time to this day, I know how
(10:41):
to take the staple of some raw cotton? Do you?
How do you do that? You've got a piece of
cotton that's you know, just come off the bush and
being packed, and you take it between your thumbs and
you tease it, and you keep teasing it till you're
all you're left with is the want that won't tease
(11:01):
off that thing that's left. The thread that's left is
called the staple. And you judge the quality of the
cotton on the length of that staple. That's why the
beautiful What year with this have been? What years are
we time? Mid fifties so I was coming to London
(11:26):
a huge exposure to food, into restaurants and going out. Yes, absolutely,
I mean in Liverpool there weren't, to my knowledge, any
real sort of fine restaurants. You had great Chinese food,
great Indian food, but the English cooking was normally done
best at home. You know, you had an anti or
(11:48):
somebody who was like really made a great stew In Liverpool,
there's a stew that's called scouse. It's like an Irish
stew sort of everything in And then years later when
Lynda and I became vegetarian, we went up. My Auntie
was very nice, very kind that you made scouts without
the meat, which Liverpool is called blind scouts. Good. I'm
(12:14):
sure you've written and talked in about this, but how
did the the decision by the two of you? And
and Mary said to me, you must remember that my
father and my mother decided this together. It wasn't my
mother's true we will be vegetarians, said, it was a
joint decision. Which now everybody I have to say is
thinking about the environment or my children and grandchildren are
(12:37):
either not eating meat or fish at all. Goodness, so
thinking about the environment exactly. But what were you thinking
about that? What made you do that? What it was
was we were on the farm in Scotland. We had
a farm in a place called Campbelltown, which is south
down the Argyle Peninsula, south of Glasgow, so we spent
(12:58):
quite a bit of time there. The Beatles break up
got a bit heavy and the business scene and you
just couldn't deal with it, so we decided to just elope.
Even though we were married. We just escaped there and
it was just a sheep farm. We were looking out
of the kitchen window one day and there were lambs.
It was lambing season, early in spring, and the lambs
(13:21):
were gambling around so full of life, and it was like, wow,
this is really cool. And I always say that what
they seemed like they were doing will be about twenty
of them. They'd start at one end of the field
and then it will be as if someone said let's
go and they all go and run to the other
side of the field. Let's go back. So they were
(13:44):
just running up and down, gambling and jumping and everything
we're going, isn't it's cute and great. Then we suddenly
realized we were eating leg of lamb. So that was
when the penny dropped and it was like leg of
leg of lamb. Then it was just we said, you
know what, should we try and not eat meat? Should
we try and go virgie? And in those days, of course,
(14:06):
it was actually difficult, but we decided that we'd make
it a challenge. It just became a fun challenge. Okay,
what do you do? So we gradually begun filling the
hole in the middle of the plate. We keep everything
else and then we just work on things to take
the place of where the meat had been. And it
(14:28):
was quite funny actually, because at Christmas, you know, I
had always loved the role which I had been given
in the family of carving the turkey, and Leondar did
cook the turkey great. She was really good at that.
So suddenly here we were without anything for me to carve.
So she had the brilliant idea of making a macaroni
(14:50):
cheese so that we know it it tastes good, and
then she let it cool and go solid, and then
we put in the fridge overnight, and then the next
day I had this big block that I could into
turkey sized portions. So it was like that. It actually
became very interesting to work out how to do it
(15:12):
because nobody else was bothering, you know. I remember going
with Linda's father one night to Claridge Is and thinking, well, great,
you know they're going to know how to do it.
We said, well, what are you doing? Can you make
some suggestions the way to gave us a very sniffy logan. Anyway,
he came back with a plate of vegetables steamed. That
was the limit of his imagination. But you know, things
(15:35):
started to change really quickly. But I think, Paul, without
interrupting you, that you have to take credit for that change,
and Linda have to take credit for that change, because
you didn't just personally become vegetarian, but you kind of
told the world about what it was like and how
it was like, especially you know, with her books and
her vision created a place. I'll tell you story. Remember
(15:58):
there was that restaurant called Crack. It was like the
only vegetarian restaurant in London, and I thought it was
very cool the way they called it cranks. And I
once went there with Richard the first days that I
met him, and I was so happy to see him
and I kept kissing him and having my arms around him,
and I saw a woman staring at us and getting
very annoyed, and so of course I just did it more.
(16:19):
And she came over to the table and she said,
I think that what you've been doing is appalling, but
that you should be doing it in a vegetarian restaurant
makes it worse. And it was somehow the idea that
you couldn't be sexy and have vegetables. So I think
I think you could say that you and Linda made
(16:41):
vegetables sexy and rock and roll. It was something very important.
It's funny, though, isn't it. It used to come with
the territory that if people were veggie, they were ranks,
and therefore they were boring, and so it gave this
image of the whole thing being really boring. The people
are born, there's no kissing aloud, you know, But that
(17:04):
soon left the arena. Were you unique in the group
of musicians and the other people that were performing at
the in the sixties. Did they have the same explosion
of food and enjoy of food or do you think
you were kind of more passionate about it. I don't know,
you know, I think a lot of them did, a
lot of them jinn't. Some people remained traditional eaters. I mean,
(17:27):
you know, there a couple of people these days who
I know who were from those times who just want
English cooking. You know. It's just like they want life
to stay exactly the same as it was, and I
get it, you know. So it kind of split into
two groups. I suppose, you know, the people who weren't
bothered with all that rubbishy wine and fine food. They
(17:48):
probably still thought it tastes like vinegar. But when you traveled,
when you were on tour and you were suddenly traveling
in other countries, do you remember being in Japan or
China or an exotic place and being confronted with food
that you'd never seen before. Never Japan mainly. I mean,
I haven't actually been to China, but Japan was quite
(18:09):
an experience. I like Japanese food these days because I'm vegetarian.
A lot of it's a bit fishy for me, but
you can work your way around it. I enjoy the
Japanese cuisine. I like sort of Asian fusion. It didn't
really mean that we would have it at home. It
was more when you went to the country, you'd enjoy
(18:30):
the food of that particular country. And you've just done
a book, haven't you tell me about Linda McCartney's family Kitchen. Yeah,
we wanted to take a lot of her cooking ideas
and bring them more up to date with the way
(18:52):
people tend to eat now. It's vegetarian, but we decided
to actually make it vegan. Vegetarians so near to be
you got anyway, I mean, you're only talking about cheese
and dairy products, you know, that you've got so many
substitutes for those these days. So yeah, we just wanted
to get some really tasty, easy to make dishes that
(19:15):
would be good for a family, because I think if
you say to people, well, I'm vegetarian these days actually
is not so shocking. But it used to be people say, oh,
if you're coming to dinner, what can I do? What
can I give you? You know? So that was originally
why Linda got together a cookbook. So it's nice to
have come through it, really, you know, it puts a
(19:36):
perspective on it for us that it was the kind
of thing where you're getting told off becassing in the restaurant,
and nowadays it's just the opposite, you know. I'll tell
you a restaurant I like a lot is ABC V
in New York. ABC is great. I forget the guy's names, Jean, Pierre, George,
John George, and he made ABC which good. What ABC
(20:01):
V is all veggie and so good. I always come
out of it having eaten too much. And the other
thing I like is that the wages, they're all very
invested in the idea and it really is kind of
quite thrilling, you know. And I transport myself through time,
back to the plate, the verge of plow juice through
(20:21):
to modern d I interviewed al Gore and again, like
you not a musician, but a very good politician and
a very good environmentalist. And you know, it's hard to
break the connection between what we are, what our politics are,
with our view unsustainability and how we vote, how we think,
(20:42):
how we judge, and how we eat. You know that
is it's all connected now, isn't it. And I think
that's so interesting. You have a farm. Al Gore has
made his farm, he inherited it in Tennessee, and he's
made it completely sustainable and organic. And the change the
soil tell us about your fine, Yeah, well ours is organic.
(21:02):
Went organic what over twenty years ago? And when I
first bought the farm, there were some fields that my
farm guys would say, well, there's no worms in these fields,
there's no life because basically all you did was you
put on pesticides and then you put a fertilizer in.
So I thought, okay, there's a challenge. You know, we're
(21:25):
going to go organic. So I talked to the Soil Association,
were very good and kind of came and gave us
some clues and we went organic, and the local farmers
would say, oh, you know, you're stupid. You're doing there.
You know, it's no use. Of course, nowadays they get
it and they think, oh it's a good idea. So yeah,
(21:45):
we changed the soil. We grow crops like I like
doing things like spelled wheat, just because it's a little
bit different. Rye, we grow peace. Actually we're just getting
into growing hemp. Do you know the funny thing is
with government regulations, you've got to keep it where people
can't see it. You got all the kids coming in
(22:09):
and robbing. You've left something else out because Stella tell
me that you're making your own. Hell yeah we do.
Through the years, I would hear like a neighbor would
be selling some land that was next door to ours.
So I went to this one and I said, I
hear you're selling that hop garden and he said yeah,
(22:29):
you know anyway, so long story, should I've got it.
And then I thought, well, I've got to start doing hops.
You know, I've got to bring it back because the
region we're in in Sussex was a very big hop
growing area. So I went to a local brewer who's
just in the village near us, and I said, could
you make some beer for me? And so I said,
(22:50):
I'll grow the hops and you put it all together
and organic, it must be organic, and so he did.
And then we were looking for a name for the beer.
And you know, these artists and beers, they've gotta have
crazy names. So I was riding with Linda one day
through our woods and she was behind me, and I
(23:12):
stopped and I said, you're not going to believe what
you're going to see now. She said what I said, Look,
and she caught up with me and it was a stinkhorn.
I don't know if you know what a stinkhorn is.
I have no idea what a stinkhorn. It's a fungus
that is white and erect and very phallic. I mean
(23:33):
it looks like an erect penis. And then beside it,
which is even better, there was another one which was
like a limp penis. So you got this erect thing.
And I'm saying, I'm saying, well, I tell people this.
I said, don't blame me. This is nature. It's not
me being dirty. So that's what r beer is called.
(23:53):
Old stinkhorn. Can we get it? You can? I'll put
you on the list. I send it to friends. I
just send it to f Can we have it in
the river cafe? That would be We don't produce that many.
It's more a personal I'll send you a six pack. Okay,
I'm waiting for it. The connection between you and myself,
as I said, it was music, it was his food.
(24:14):
It was you know when on my Desert Island discs
I played I Will song, do you remember I was
sung by Garrison Kellyer and you came and said, you've
never heard that version. And we played it the memorial
for our son who died, and that was the first
time I heard of your love of that song, which
(24:34):
he was very very lovely to imagine at a memorial,
was very poignant, it was very beautiful. And I think
that if you know, for me, then for Richard and
our family, that was comfort and it was a connection.
And so I guess my last question to you is
if food is something you do politically by what you
choose to eat, if it's socially what you sit down
(24:56):
with your friends and he it's also comfort, isn't it.
There is food that is comfort that we go to
that makes us feel better. What for my last question
would be, Sir Paul McCartney, your comfort food, well, I
like a case of dilla or a questa dilla. It
(25:16):
is a comfort food. It's like a pizza turned inside out.
I love it. In fact, I think I'm having it tonight.
All right, Rothie, thanks a lot. I love you. Do.
Hope it was sensible enough. You were wonderful. You are wonderful.
I'll see you soon. When are you coming in as
soon as I can? Okay, come on, we're waiting for you. Okay.
(25:41):
To visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go
to shop the River Cafe dot co dot uk. River
Cafe Table four is a production of I Heart Radio
and Adam I Studios. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart the app, Apple podcast, or wherever
(26:02):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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