January 4, 2022 • 26 mins
Salman Rushdie tells his stories writing beautiful prose, inspired by his Indian and British upbringing.
Ruthie Rogers tells her stories through cooking, inspired by her travels in Italy.
Listen to them share their stories on episode 15 of Ruthie's Table 4.
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.
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. In his most recent book,
A Beautiful Clear Collection of Essays, Language of Truth, Psalmon Rushtie,
my friend writes in his first line that before books,
there were stories, and that children asked for stories as
(00:22):
they ask for food, stories and food, food and stories,
food and family. Psalmon has been a member of our
family for over thirty years. When we were planning dinners
when Salmon was coming, I would be thinking about what
to eat, and my husband, Richard and my son Rue
would be planning to make sure that the ping pong
(00:44):
bulls and the bats were in top condition. For Salmon
was one of the few people who could beat Richard
at the game. When I was once falsely quoted as
saying to Rue, why did you let Salmon win? Some
almost didn't speak to me for over a year. But
speaking is what we're going to do today. That's what
(01:06):
we're here for. Hi, someone, hello Rothie. So it's nice
we're here in the River Cafe and a rainy day
for change. But would you like to read the recipe? Yes,
this is a recipe for marinated grilled lamb serve six
The ingredients five garlic cloves, peeled and crushed, two tablespoons
(01:29):
chopped fresh rosemary leaves, a good pinch of coarsely ground
black pepper, one leg of spring lamb, boned and butterflied,
two tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, three tablespoons of olive oil,
and one tablespoon of sea salt. Mixed together. The garlic, rosemary,
and black pepper. Rub into the cut side of the meat.
(01:54):
Place the lamb in a shallow dish and pour over
the lemon juice and olive oil. Turn over a couple
of times, then cover and leave to marinate at room
temperature overnight or for at least four hours, turning occasionally.
Removed from the marinade and pat dry. Season and carefully
place on a hot grill. Brown on one side until
(02:16):
very dark, then turnover, lower the heat and continue to
cook for at least eight minutes on each side. Serve
with salsa verde or fresh horseradish sauce. Thank you so
when I asked you to choose a recipe, you didn't
even take a breath, You didn't pause, You just said
immediately grilled marinated lamb. As wondering why, Well, you know,
(02:40):
in my family we've always been big carnivores. We eat
a lot of meat, so I know, you know, meat
is unfashionable in some quarters these days. But it was
always going to be a meat recipe. And I'm just thinking,
which was the thing that I always chose what I
came to each and it was always that it's the
menu today, so you and I think, interestingly enough, it
(03:03):
was actually on the very first menu of the very
first day, which had like four things on the menu
about average price of five pounds, and one of them
is grilled marinated lamb. There you are, you see, go
right back to the beginning here, and remember, I think
that's probably when we met, was just before the River
Cafe opened, maybe early eighties. And so, but I'd really
like to start with with with Mumbai. We were born there,
(03:25):
and whether your memories of food and memories born and
raised there, and my memory of food is home cooking,
my mother's kitchen and the kind of flavors that came
out of that. My mother didn't like very highly spiced food.
She didn't like chilies, so the food was always quite mild.
In fact, my sister Samine and I grew up on
(03:50):
this food. So your mother was the cook, she coll
she cooked, but she also I mean we had, you know,
a cook, and she would always train the cook in
the food of the household. And one of the things
I've always thought about India is that in middle class kitchens,
kitchens which which employe cooks, there's always a copybook, as
(04:11):
it's called, hanging on a hook, and in that book
are the recipes of the family. And I've always thought
if somebody could just go and gather the recipes in
those coffee books, that would be the greatest Indian cookbook
of all. Do you remember your grandmother? Was your mother's
mother a cook? Yeah, my mother's mother was not a cook.
My mother's mother sort of shouted at cook's Yeah in
(04:33):
what way do you think she knew what she wanted?
But well, yeah, she was a grubby old lady. I
don't know. I wouldn't have liked to be cooking at
her kitchen. And what about your mother and her? But
my mother was very a gentle person, you know. And
I also had an i nanny from South India, came
from Mangalore, which has its own very distinctive cooking. Her
kind of pickles, and chutney has got into Midnight Studren
(04:55):
because I grew up on those. There was a particular
green chutney which is which is famously in the book.
It was just a lot of green things chopped up
with a lot of chilies. It was very particular South
Indian recipe that that arrived in our house through her
going South Indian. I Mary menaises. She was called lived
(05:15):
to a hundred and two, spoke seven languages, and was illiterate.
There's a line somewhere in Midnight Children Were where the
character the narrator talks about stirring feelings into food. And
I always believe that that if you're in a good mood,
the food tastes one way, and if you're in a
bad mood, the food tastes another way. You know, that
(05:37):
sense of emotion, your own emotion getting into the cooking.
You know, it's something I always thought. Did your mother
put the emotion into cooking? Yeah? I mean she actually
she wasn't like a great chef, but she enjoyed it. Yea,
she enjoyed it, so the food was enjoyable. What about
your father, my father, you have a Fridday never never,
(06:00):
I don't think so, yeah, because I do talk to
a lot of men who were discouraged from going into
the kitchen, you know, So that yeah, well, I mean
I wasn't discouraged, but I was only thirteen when I
left home to go to boarding schools. So and then
food was a whole other thing. Yeah, but that that
did you go before we leave Mumbai? Did you when
(06:20):
you were growing up in Mumbai? Was food? Would you
go to the markets because it must have been a
very rich culture of Well, there's, first of all, there's
there's this wonderful Coboard market in what is now called
South Bombay but was then just called Bombay, a place
called Crawford Market where you can buy everything from like
hair dryers to live chickens. And Crawford Market was incredibly
(06:44):
exciting place to go, thronging with life, very noisy and
as I say, with everything you could imagine buying, including
lots and lots of food and fruit, fruit and vegetables
and chickens. And you were allowed to go there. There
was no I went very often. Did you travel throughout
India to be did your parents taken My father's family
(07:06):
was originally from Delhi, although they my parents had moved
to Bombay before I was born, but he had still
had a lot of connections and he had business in Delhi,
and sometimes I would go with him and stay in
a hotel in Delhi and sort of mess around while
he did his work. Did you go to restaurants there? Yeah?
And I mean and Delhi of course is the heart
(07:26):
of North Indian cuisine, so that what's more cooking is
it's called the cooking that is left behind by the
Mongal Empire, right, And how does that differ from southern
It's richer, you know, it uses a lot of yogurt
and ghee and stuff like that. And it's also I mean,
the further south in India you go, the more vegetarian
(07:46):
the cuisine becomes. From the further north you go, the
more beat orients it goes. And that's just the difference
between between Muslim culture in the north, where the where
the Muslim conquerors were there for hundreds of years, and
the Hindu culture of the south. She is largely vegetarian.
And when you came, as you said, you said you
were thirteen when you left. Did your whole family come
to London? No, I just got sent to boarding. Well,
(08:10):
so I'm sure that there's a lot we could explore
in the difference between as a thirteen year old going
to England. But food wise subjects, well, where would you
go on that subject? I mean, the food was kind
of inedible, you know, it was it was a dreadful
school food. But it, like they said, when we got
(08:31):
overcooked beef burger patties, that was the highlight of the week. Yeah,
did you mind or did you just get used to it?
You know? I just I mean, I didn't like much
about school, and the food was certainly part of what
I didn't like. I was quite isolated, but I really
didn't like boarding school. And actually when I left, I mean,
I had got my my place at Cambridge, but I
(08:53):
didn't want to go. I said to my parents, I said,
just let me go to university here. It's it's finally
there's good universities here. I go it. My father had
been to King's College, Cambridge and I had got in,
and so he was very keen that I should follow him.
And in the end I went, And actually I'm very
glad I went because it was a very different experience
(09:14):
than school. You know, I had a much better time
going from Cambridge to London, you had your own apartment.
Well no, I mean my college friends and I there
were five of us who rented a place just off
(09:38):
the New King's Road, on the corner of the Wandsworth
Bridge Road in the New King's Road, five bedroom house,
five pounds each. Those were the days. And what did
you eat there? And there was a kitchen's who we
would all pile in and make spaghetti. You know. So
(10:00):
London in the sixties, working in an advertising agency, you
weren't part of the Martini lunch of no no, no,
no no. I mean I worked in two or three
different agencies for a long time at Ogilvie Maia. But
in those days Ogilvie's was kind of more or less
on Waterloo Bridge. I mean, if you were to go
all the way down the strand and turn right to
(10:23):
walk over Waterloo Bridge was just there. There wasn't much
I mean there you would you would walk into Covent
Garden if you wanted to get something to eat. Um. So,
I mean I've always remembered the day when the fruit
and vegetable market closed in Covent Garden. Yeah, because what
happened is it must have been in the early seventies,
(10:44):
you know. But what happened was that the entire neighborhood,
the streets were full of rats because the rats all
had nothing to eat, you know, and they swarmed. I
mean it was amazing. You would walk on the strand,
which with its usual crowds, that rat severywhere, and the
rats headed over the bridge and I think they found
(11:04):
their way to nine Elms. That's where that's where the
new cover guard. Yeah, but it was an extraordinary day.
The rats took over London and did they did? Did
you ever meet David Ogilvie. I was just in his
presence on one occasion. But I was working full time
(11:28):
to begin with. But then I managed to get a
job which was either two or three days a week,
and and that gave me either four or five days
a week to stay home. And right, do you have
a discipline? I mean, my idea, which is probably very
bad in terms of how one should eat, is that
you should work hungry. Okay, tell me about that. In
(11:48):
other words, you know, if if if I've had a
nice meal, I can't write, just I get slow and sleepy,
you know. And so my view is work first. You
don't like to tell me about you're working day and food. Well,
I mean I just in the morning, I have virtually
nothing other than a cup of coffee and sometimes I
have some fruit juice with it, but that's not much
(12:11):
more than that really, And then then I go to work,
you know, for how long. How long depends where I
am in the writing process. Because in the early stages
of writing a book, when when it's making something out
of nothing, then you know, two or three hours a day,
and really you're burned out and you start writing things
that you know you're not going to use. But in
(12:33):
the later part of a book, when you're writing a
final version, I work all the time. I work like
twelve hours a day, and you don't start to eat.
Then I do sometimes because that the hardest thing is
the blank page. Once you've got a version there, no
matter how approximate it is, working on that is less
(12:54):
difficult than the first act of invention. And then sometimes
I do, yeah, I do sometimes have a bit of lunch.
Do you like to go out, Yes, I like to
go out, you know, living in New York, that's what
everybody does. I do before the pandemic, it's what it's
what everybody did and now again it's beginning to be
what everybody try to do restaurants. When you walk in
a room in a restaurant, what do you like to see?
(13:17):
Do you have a feeling about, well, the kind of
restaurant you want to be in, Well, you know, the
grand old restaurants. So once we just have a great
feeling in them. You know, if you if you walk
into Industrine or Balthazar or the Waverley End, you think
this is a place you want to be. This is
another one of those places. But also I think what's
interesting about places like that, Like Industry has been there
(13:38):
since the mid nineties, and the food has never dropped
in quality, you know, and it's a it's obviously not
anymore what it used to be, which is like the
hottest ticket in town. But they've never allowed the food
to become ordinary. When I talked to Michael Caine, he
said that he had never done it. A movie deal
(13:59):
that didn't take place in a restaurant, and it was
always over at lunch. In Hollywood, you go out to
lunch and to discuss the deal for the movie. And
then I don't know if that's still goes on, but
did you do it with your publishers and agent with
yeah over food. I remember when I was looking for
an American agent, being taken out for a very swanky
(14:20):
lunch at the Russian tea room by a very powerful
agent whose name I won't mentioned, and she was so
kind of grand at me that it was actually off
putting you. And meanwhile, there was this other agent that
was wooing me who had an office which was one
and a half rooms. It was like him and a
secretary and a xerox machine. But he was so dynamic
(14:43):
and energetic. I thought, I want that one, not the
fact that you know. And that's how I came to
a point Andrew whiley and it's the best decision I
ever made. You learned a lot about somebody in a restaurant.
It teaches you. Did they did they thank the waiter? Yes?
They do? They share their food? Do they eat quickly?
And I think that's why people go for dates in
a restaurant, don't you know why? It tells you if
(15:08):
people have good manners, you know, And that used to
be something when we were kids, that we were taught,
you know, how to behave I'm not sure people are
quite taught that in the same way now, and some
people have it naturally, you know. And I think it's
incredibly appealing when somebody has good manners, as you say,
when they're polite to the white stuff, or conversely, if
(15:30):
they're rude to the white stuff, you never want to
see them again. If they're rude, forget about it. It's over.
And I'm always shocked when I see that happening. So
I think good manners and and you know you are
what you eat, aren't you. So it's it's very interesting
to say about food is seduction? Would you ever want
to seduce a woman through food? Or watch it? I
don't think that works? It does, And I've found out
(15:52):
from interviewing other people that they can remember the first
meal they cooked woo a woman, you know what they
have they tried to or go to restaurant to see
you know what about happened the other way round? Or
the two people who've cooked meals for me in order
to and that that work? Did that work? Yeah? And
(16:13):
dates and restaurants, do you think that I'm not sure that.
I'm not sure that a restaurant is a great place
for a first date. Yeah, it's I think it's more
interesting too, to do something else. I go for a walk, something,
something with less pressure on it, you know, and maybe
go out. And you know, when you've worked out that
you might enjoy spending the time together, because one of
(16:36):
the worst things in the world is to sit in
a restaurant and knowing after ten minutes that you that
you really want to leave. Yes, so I think it's
a good second date. And what about right now? Who's
cooking in your how are you cooking? Are you cooking
or I'm not going? You know, I mean I have
a partner and she's And also, you know, New York
is New York. You can order in, and especially in
(16:58):
this pandemic, a lot of restaurants as a survival method,
you know, restaurants which never delivered are now delivering, and
you want to do that because you want to help
these places survive. I've read every one of your novels,
(17:23):
and I got to know you through your novels. And
a really pivotal book in my life was The Jaguar
Smile because as an American Nicaraguan so close, it was
so intensely political and resonated. And what tell me about
going to Nicaragua? Look what happened was it. In the
mid eighties, when the Contra War began, I became kind
(17:46):
of involved with the thing here called the Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign,
was involved in protesting against the way in which the
then American administration was siding with the contra us in
in order to try and crush this tiny country, you know.
And then I was at a literally festival in New
(18:07):
York in fact, and I met various Nicaraguan writers and
the one who had been invited there and they said
they invited me. So I went as a kind of
guest of the writer's union, I guess, you know, And
and I went. I thought I would probably write something,
but I thought it would probably be a newspaper article
or something. And instead what happened is I got I
(18:27):
kind of fell in love with the place, and I
got obsessed with its tragedy and and came back and
end up ended up writing something. It's a short book,
but it's but it's a book leg thing. And and
one of the things that talking of food, that was
heartbreaking was how great the shortage as well. I mean,
I remember staying in this in this guesthouse is or
(18:51):
government guesthouse that was made available to me and in
the morning going down to breakfast, and there were, you know,
two boil eggs. And I said, I had this interpreter
who was always there with me because my Spanish not
very good. Um, and I said to her, look, you
know I don't I don't really eat a big breakfast.
And she said to me, you know you should eat
(19:13):
these eggs because they were the only eggs in the
market today. They've been provided for you eat the dam eggs.
And I just was one indication of how impoverished we
went to remember meeting a farmer who said that it
(19:33):
was so hard for him to make any money that
when he wanted to service his tractor he had to
sell a cow. That's not the thing you can do
very long, you know, because you run out of cows.
So it was horrifying how badly off people were, and
(19:53):
then how kind of in a way pro American they were.
You know, they were the things it everybody loved. Everybody
loved Major League Baseball, you know, the Carib's crazy about baseball.
But the thing is that the dictatorship which preceded the Sandinistas,
the Somosa dictatorship, had been entirely in the thrall of
(20:14):
the United States and the tragedy of Nicaragua is that
the Sandinista revolution spawned another dictatorship, you know, so so
that now we have the Ortega brothers, Daniel Ortega, who's
as bad as any Samosa. I mean, I did on
one occasion actually had dinner at the house of Daniel
Ortega with the whole Sandinista leadership, and there there was
(20:39):
kind of a being explained to me that the banquet food,
you know, but the banquet food felt a little revolting
given what I had experienced in the rest of the country.
What was it, do you remember? Well? It was great,
heaping dishes of beef, things that nobody in the country
could dream of. You. And the funny thing is that
(21:00):
I thought, Okay, they know that I'm here to write,
so they know that they're on the record. But I thought,
if I put a tape recorder on the table, it
will completely change the conversation and everybody will speak to
the tape recorder. So but I thought, I need to
make a record of this is you know, six of
the nine man UNDERSTA directorate is around the table. So
(21:22):
what I did, as I invented a stomach upset. Oh
back to food. Yeah, I said, I'm sorry my stomach,
and I would go to the bathroom at scribble crazy
in my pocket and then I come back and sit
down and listen for her that time, so I really
have to go again, rush back to the bathroom, and
that's how I managed to keep some kind of a
(21:42):
record of the dinner. But yeah, it was a very
intense experience. Nicaragua. You know, it's the first It's such
a beautiful country and in such terrible shape. When you
travel to well Nicaragua, to write, to Italy, to Spain,
to India to where there you go, do you think
about the food that you're going to eat in that? Yeah,
(22:04):
I mean I remember, you know, like just before the
pandemic a few months afore, I was able to go
to a literary event in in Wahaka and Mexico, and
they eat amazing stuff. They eat grasshoppers. Yes, you got
this whole plateful of fried grasshoppers, and I did it.
I've never been to been to Hong Kong. I've been
(22:25):
to Hong Kong, but so long ago that it was
still British at the time. That's my big hole is
the far east of Asia, you know, the Japan, Vietnam,
China very high on my list of places I'd like
to go. Food does a lot to tell you where
you are. I mean, one of the things that is
sensational about Italy is that it's impossible to have a
bad meal, you know, just impossible. And I think the
(22:46):
same is truth of places like Paris, that you don't
have to go to fancy restaurants. You know, you could
sit at a corner brasserie and have something delicious. You know,
that kind of culture of food is exciting. Have you
ever written about food? Did you ever write a few?
Not exactly. I once had to do a thing for
(23:06):
for British Vogue a couple of years. It's exactly what
you were saying about traveling. So they asked me for
like favorite places in different countries and so on side. Yeah,
I wrote about sort of half a dozen restaurants in
different places. No more. I was lucky. Did you go
to Andagen? Yes? I did that. He was a bit
(23:30):
of a fan of mine. So I got a reservation,
which is not easy, and then I had to eat
this course meal in two hours. It's a temple of food.
Do people come up to you and restaurants sometimes find that. Okay, sometimes, yeah,
but I mean it's not very often. Yeah. Yeah. Growing
(23:50):
up in a house where your mother had her book
and your grandmother had the cook and growing up with
food and you have a sister is is not only
a cook, but she's written books and she's very respected
in the food world. So tell me what that feels like. Yeah,
I think it was sort of it happened by accident,
because you know, she's all sorts of things. I mean,
(24:11):
she's a very good lawyer. You know, she's she's worked
in community relations all of her life, etcetera. And then
I think it's really what we What she wanted to
do was in some way capture home cooking. And I
egged her on because I knew that she was a
very good cook, and she found the book very difficult
(24:33):
to do. It took her a long time. Anyway, What
came out of this agonized process, it was a kind
of something close to a classic. I think, you know
some in Rushane's Indian Cookery it's called and and she
really did capture the flames. I mean, not all the
recipes are memories of my mother's kitchen, but but that's
where the book started, and then she added stuff of
(24:55):
her own, so it turns out she's ridiculously colleges. It's
food and memories, you know, as we started out, food
and stories, food and family, food and comfort because food
is comfort, isn't it? And so if I were to
ask you is ask everyone that my last question. If
(25:16):
you have a comfort food, what would it be? Well,
I mean my comfort food is is always going to
be Indian food. So it's it's something very simple, not
not at all complicated. I'm very happy with yellow doll
and white rice. One of the bad habits I have,
which you're not supposed to do, is to have bread
at the same time as rice. You're supposed to have either.
(25:36):
All you know, if you're having dol and rice, you
shouldn't also have a chapati or etcetera. But I do so,
so that's my bad behaving comfort comfort food. Yes, thank you, someone,
I love you. Thank you. This holiday season. If you
(26:02):
can't come to the River Cafe, the River Cafe will
come to you. Our beautiful gift boxes are full of
ingredients we cook with and design objects we have in
our homes. River Cafe olive oil, tuscan chocolates, Venetian glasses
of Florentine Christmas cake made in our pastry kitchen, and more.
We ship them everywhere. To find out more or to
(26:25):
place your order, visit shop the River Cafe dot co
dot uk. River Cafe table for is a production of
I Heart Radio and Atomize Studios. For more podcasts from
I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. In his most recent book,
A Beautiful Clear Collection of Essays, Language of Truth, Psalmon Rushtie,
my friend writes in his first line that before books,
there were stories, and that children asked for stories as
(00:22):
they ask for food, stories and food, food and stories,
food and family. Psalmon has been a member of our
family for over thirty years. When we were planning dinners
when Salmon was coming, I would be thinking about what
to eat, and my husband, Richard and my son Rue
would be planning to make sure that the ping pong
(00:44):
bulls and the bats were in top condition. For Salmon
was one of the few people who could beat Richard
at the game. When I was once falsely quoted as
saying to Rue, why did you let Salmon win? Some
almost didn't speak to me for over a year. But
speaking is what we're going to do today. That's what
(01:06):
we're here for. Hi, someone, hello Rothie. So it's nice
we're here in the River Cafe and a rainy day
for change. But would you like to read the recipe? Yes,
this is a recipe for marinated grilled lamb serve six
The ingredients five garlic cloves, peeled and crushed, two tablespoons
(01:29):
chopped fresh rosemary leaves, a good pinch of coarsely ground
black pepper, one leg of spring lamb, boned and butterflied,
two tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, three tablespoons of olive oil,
and one tablespoon of sea salt. Mixed together. The garlic, rosemary,
and black pepper. Rub into the cut side of the meat.
(01:54):
Place the lamb in a shallow dish and pour over
the lemon juice and olive oil. Turn over a couple
of times, then cover and leave to marinate at room
temperature overnight or for at least four hours, turning occasionally.
Removed from the marinade and pat dry. Season and carefully
place on a hot grill. Brown on one side until
(02:16):
very dark, then turnover, lower the heat and continue to
cook for at least eight minutes on each side. Serve
with salsa verde or fresh horseradish sauce. Thank you so
when I asked you to choose a recipe, you didn't
even take a breath, You didn't pause, You just said
immediately grilled marinated lamb. As wondering why, Well, you know,
(02:40):
in my family we've always been big carnivores. We eat
a lot of meat, so I know, you know, meat
is unfashionable in some quarters these days. But it was
always going to be a meat recipe. And I'm just thinking,
which was the thing that I always chose what I
came to each and it was always that it's the
menu today, so you and I think, interestingly enough, it
(03:03):
was actually on the very first menu of the very
first day, which had like four things on the menu
about average price of five pounds, and one of them
is grilled marinated lamb. There you are, you see, go
right back to the beginning here, and remember, I think
that's probably when we met, was just before the River
Cafe opened, maybe early eighties. And so, but I'd really
like to start with with with Mumbai. We were born there,
(03:25):
and whether your memories of food and memories born and
raised there, and my memory of food is home cooking,
my mother's kitchen and the kind of flavors that came
out of that. My mother didn't like very highly spiced food.
She didn't like chilies, so the food was always quite mild.
In fact, my sister Samine and I grew up on
(03:50):
this food. So your mother was the cook, she coll
she cooked, but she also I mean we had, you know,
a cook, and she would always train the cook in
the food of the household. And one of the things
I've always thought about India is that in middle class kitchens,
kitchens which which employe cooks, there's always a copybook, as
(04:11):
it's called, hanging on a hook, and in that book
are the recipes of the family. And I've always thought
if somebody could just go and gather the recipes in
those coffee books, that would be the greatest Indian cookbook
of all. Do you remember your grandmother? Was your mother's
mother a cook? Yeah, my mother's mother was not a cook.
My mother's mother sort of shouted at cook's Yeah in
(04:33):
what way do you think she knew what she wanted?
But well, yeah, she was a grubby old lady. I
don't know. I wouldn't have liked to be cooking at
her kitchen. And what about your mother and her? But
my mother was very a gentle person, you know. And
I also had an i nanny from South India, came
from Mangalore, which has its own very distinctive cooking. Her
kind of pickles, and chutney has got into Midnight Studren
(04:55):
because I grew up on those. There was a particular
green chutney which is which is famously in the book.
It was just a lot of green things chopped up
with a lot of chilies. It was very particular South
Indian recipe that that arrived in our house through her
going South Indian. I Mary menaises. She was called lived
(05:15):
to a hundred and two, spoke seven languages, and was illiterate.
There's a line somewhere in Midnight Children Were where the
character the narrator talks about stirring feelings into food. And
I always believe that that if you're in a good mood,
the food tastes one way, and if you're in a
bad mood, the food tastes another way. You know, that
(05:37):
sense of emotion, your own emotion getting into the cooking.
You know, it's something I always thought. Did your mother
put the emotion into cooking? Yeah? I mean she actually
she wasn't like a great chef, but she enjoyed it. Yea,
she enjoyed it, so the food was enjoyable. What about
your father, my father, you have a Fridday never never,
(06:00):
I don't think so, yeah, because I do talk to
a lot of men who were discouraged from going into
the kitchen, you know, So that yeah, well, I mean
I wasn't discouraged, but I was only thirteen when I
left home to go to boarding schools. So and then
food was a whole other thing. Yeah, but that that
did you go before we leave Mumbai? Did you when
(06:20):
you were growing up in Mumbai? Was food? Would you
go to the markets because it must have been a
very rich culture of Well, there's, first of all, there's
there's this wonderful Coboard market in what is now called
South Bombay but was then just called Bombay, a place
called Crawford Market where you can buy everything from like
hair dryers to live chickens. And Crawford Market was incredibly
(06:44):
exciting place to go, thronging with life, very noisy and
as I say, with everything you could imagine buying, including
lots and lots of food and fruit, fruit and vegetables
and chickens. And you were allowed to go there. There
was no I went very often. Did you travel throughout
India to be did your parents taken My father's family
(07:06):
was originally from Delhi, although they my parents had moved
to Bombay before I was born, but he had still
had a lot of connections and he had business in Delhi,
and sometimes I would go with him and stay in
a hotel in Delhi and sort of mess around while
he did his work. Did you go to restaurants there? Yeah?
And I mean and Delhi of course is the heart
(07:26):
of North Indian cuisine, so that what's more cooking is
it's called the cooking that is left behind by the
Mongal Empire, right, And how does that differ from southern
It's richer, you know, it uses a lot of yogurt
and ghee and stuff like that. And it's also I mean,
the further south in India you go, the more vegetarian
(07:46):
the cuisine becomes. From the further north you go, the
more beat orients it goes. And that's just the difference
between between Muslim culture in the north, where the where
the Muslim conquerors were there for hundreds of years, and
the Hindu culture of the south. She is largely vegetarian.
And when you came, as you said, you said you
were thirteen when you left. Did your whole family come
to London? No, I just got sent to boarding. Well,
(08:10):
so I'm sure that there's a lot we could explore
in the difference between as a thirteen year old going
to England. But food wise subjects, well, where would you
go on that subject? I mean, the food was kind
of inedible, you know, it was it was a dreadful
school food. But it, like they said, when we got
(08:31):
overcooked beef burger patties, that was the highlight of the week. Yeah,
did you mind or did you just get used to it?
You know? I just I mean, I didn't like much
about school, and the food was certainly part of what
I didn't like. I was quite isolated, but I really
didn't like boarding school. And actually when I left, I mean,
I had got my my place at Cambridge, but I
(08:53):
didn't want to go. I said to my parents, I said,
just let me go to university here. It's it's finally
there's good universities here. I go it. My father had
been to King's College, Cambridge and I had got in,
and so he was very keen that I should follow him.
And in the end I went, And actually I'm very
glad I went because it was a very different experience
(09:14):
than school. You know, I had a much better time
going from Cambridge to London, you had your own apartment.
Well no, I mean my college friends and I there
were five of us who rented a place just off
(09:38):
the New King's Road, on the corner of the Wandsworth
Bridge Road in the New King's Road, five bedroom house,
five pounds each. Those were the days. And what did
you eat there? And there was a kitchen's who we
would all pile in and make spaghetti. You know. So
(10:00):
London in the sixties, working in an advertising agency, you
weren't part of the Martini lunch of no no, no,
no no. I mean I worked in two or three
different agencies for a long time at Ogilvie Maia. But
in those days Ogilvie's was kind of more or less
on Waterloo Bridge. I mean, if you were to go
all the way down the strand and turn right to
(10:23):
walk over Waterloo Bridge was just there. There wasn't much
I mean there you would you would walk into Covent
Garden if you wanted to get something to eat. Um. So,
I mean I've always remembered the day when the fruit
and vegetable market closed in Covent Garden. Yeah, because what
happened is it must have been in the early seventies,
(10:44):
you know. But what happened was that the entire neighborhood,
the streets were full of rats because the rats all
had nothing to eat, you know, and they swarmed. I
mean it was amazing. You would walk on the strand,
which with its usual crowds, that rat severywhere, and the
rats headed over the bridge and I think they found
(11:04):
their way to nine Elms. That's where that's where the
new cover guard. Yeah, but it was an extraordinary day.
The rats took over London and did they did? Did
you ever meet David Ogilvie. I was just in his
presence on one occasion. But I was working full time
(11:28):
to begin with. But then I managed to get a
job which was either two or three days a week,
and and that gave me either four or five days
a week to stay home. And right, do you have
a discipline? I mean, my idea, which is probably very
bad in terms of how one should eat, is that
you should work hungry. Okay, tell me about that. In
(11:48):
other words, you know, if if if I've had a
nice meal, I can't write, just I get slow and sleepy,
you know. And so my view is work first. You
don't like to tell me about you're working day and food. Well,
I mean I just in the morning, I have virtually
nothing other than a cup of coffee and sometimes I
have some fruit juice with it, but that's not much
(12:11):
more than that really, And then then I go to work,
you know, for how long. How long depends where I
am in the writing process. Because in the early stages
of writing a book, when when it's making something out
of nothing, then you know, two or three hours a day,
and really you're burned out and you start writing things
that you know you're not going to use. But in
(12:33):
the later part of a book, when you're writing a
final version, I work all the time. I work like
twelve hours a day, and you don't start to eat.
Then I do sometimes because that the hardest thing is
the blank page. Once you've got a version there, no
matter how approximate it is, working on that is less
(12:54):
difficult than the first act of invention. And then sometimes
I do, yeah, I do sometimes have a bit of lunch.
Do you like to go out, Yes, I like to
go out, you know, living in New York, that's what
everybody does. I do before the pandemic, it's what it's
what everybody did and now again it's beginning to be
what everybody try to do restaurants. When you walk in
a room in a restaurant, what do you like to see?
(13:17):
Do you have a feeling about, well, the kind of
restaurant you want to be in, Well, you know, the
grand old restaurants. So once we just have a great
feeling in them. You know, if you if you walk
into Industrine or Balthazar or the Waverley End, you think
this is a place you want to be. This is
another one of those places. But also I think what's
interesting about places like that, Like Industry has been there
(13:38):
since the mid nineties, and the food has never dropped
in quality, you know, and it's a it's obviously not
anymore what it used to be, which is like the
hottest ticket in town. But they've never allowed the food
to become ordinary. When I talked to Michael Caine, he
said that he had never done it. A movie deal
(13:59):
that didn't take place in a restaurant, and it was
always over at lunch. In Hollywood, you go out to
lunch and to discuss the deal for the movie. And
then I don't know if that's still goes on, but
did you do it with your publishers and agent with
yeah over food. I remember when I was looking for
an American agent, being taken out for a very swanky
(14:20):
lunch at the Russian tea room by a very powerful
agent whose name I won't mentioned, and she was so
kind of grand at me that it was actually off
putting you. And meanwhile, there was this other agent that
was wooing me who had an office which was one
and a half rooms. It was like him and a
secretary and a xerox machine. But he was so dynamic
(14:43):
and energetic. I thought, I want that one, not the
fact that you know. And that's how I came to
a point Andrew whiley and it's the best decision I
ever made. You learned a lot about somebody in a restaurant.
It teaches you. Did they did they thank the waiter? Yes?
They do? They share their food? Do they eat quickly?
And I think that's why people go for dates in
a restaurant, don't you know why? It tells you if
(15:08):
people have good manners, you know, And that used to
be something when we were kids, that we were taught,
you know, how to behave I'm not sure people are
quite taught that in the same way now, and some
people have it naturally, you know. And I think it's
incredibly appealing when somebody has good manners, as you say,
when they're polite to the white stuff, or conversely, if
(15:30):
they're rude to the white stuff, you never want to
see them again. If they're rude, forget about it. It's over.
And I'm always shocked when I see that happening. So
I think good manners and and you know you are
what you eat, aren't you. So it's it's very interesting
to say about food is seduction? Would you ever want
to seduce a woman through food? Or watch it? I
don't think that works? It does, And I've found out
(15:52):
from interviewing other people that they can remember the first
meal they cooked woo a woman, you know what they
have they tried to or go to restaurant to see
you know what about happened the other way round? Or
the two people who've cooked meals for me in order
to and that that work? Did that work? Yeah? And
(16:13):
dates and restaurants, do you think that I'm not sure that.
I'm not sure that a restaurant is a great place
for a first date. Yeah, it's I think it's more
interesting too, to do something else. I go for a walk, something,
something with less pressure on it, you know, and maybe
go out. And you know, when you've worked out that
you might enjoy spending the time together, because one of
(16:36):
the worst things in the world is to sit in
a restaurant and knowing after ten minutes that you that
you really want to leave. Yes, so I think it's
a good second date. And what about right now? Who's
cooking in your how are you cooking? Are you cooking
or I'm not going? You know, I mean I have
a partner and she's And also, you know, New York
is New York. You can order in, and especially in
(16:58):
this pandemic, a lot of restaurants as a survival method,
you know, restaurants which never delivered are now delivering, and
you want to do that because you want to help
these places survive. I've read every one of your novels,
(17:23):
and I got to know you through your novels. And
a really pivotal book in my life was The Jaguar
Smile because as an American Nicaraguan so close, it was
so intensely political and resonated. And what tell me about
going to Nicaragua? Look what happened was it. In the
mid eighties, when the Contra War began, I became kind
(17:46):
of involved with the thing here called the Nicaraguan Solidarity Campaign,
was involved in protesting against the way in which the
then American administration was siding with the contra us in
in order to try and crush this tiny country, you know.
And then I was at a literally festival in New
(18:07):
York in fact, and I met various Nicaraguan writers and
the one who had been invited there and they said
they invited me. So I went as a kind of
guest of the writer's union, I guess, you know, And
and I went. I thought I would probably write something,
but I thought it would probably be a newspaper article
or something. And instead what happened is I got I
(18:27):
kind of fell in love with the place, and I
got obsessed with its tragedy and and came back and
end up ended up writing something. It's a short book,
but it's but it's a book leg thing. And and
one of the things that talking of food, that was
heartbreaking was how great the shortage as well. I mean,
I remember staying in this in this guesthouse is or
(18:51):
government guesthouse that was made available to me and in
the morning going down to breakfast, and there were, you know,
two boil eggs. And I said, I had this interpreter
who was always there with me because my Spanish not
very good. Um, and I said to her, look, you
know I don't I don't really eat a big breakfast.
And she said to me, you know you should eat
(19:13):
these eggs because they were the only eggs in the
market today. They've been provided for you eat the dam eggs.
And I just was one indication of how impoverished we
went to remember meeting a farmer who said that it
(19:33):
was so hard for him to make any money that
when he wanted to service his tractor he had to
sell a cow. That's not the thing you can do
very long, you know, because you run out of cows.
So it was horrifying how badly off people were, and
(19:53):
then how kind of in a way pro American they were.
You know, they were the things it everybody loved. Everybody
loved Major League Baseball, you know, the Carib's crazy about baseball.
But the thing is that the dictatorship which preceded the Sandinistas,
the Somosa dictatorship, had been entirely in the thrall of
(20:14):
the United States and the tragedy of Nicaragua is that
the Sandinista revolution spawned another dictatorship, you know, so so
that now we have the Ortega brothers, Daniel Ortega, who's
as bad as any Samosa. I mean, I did on
one occasion actually had dinner at the house of Daniel
Ortega with the whole Sandinista leadership, and there there was
(20:39):
kind of a being explained to me that the banquet food,
you know, but the banquet food felt a little revolting
given what I had experienced in the rest of the country.
What was it, do you remember? Well? It was great,
heaping dishes of beef, things that nobody in the country
could dream of. You. And the funny thing is that
(21:00):
I thought, Okay, they know that I'm here to write,
so they know that they're on the record. But I thought,
if I put a tape recorder on the table, it
will completely change the conversation and everybody will speak to
the tape recorder. So but I thought, I need to
make a record of this is you know, six of
the nine man UNDERSTA directorate is around the table. So
(21:22):
what I did, as I invented a stomach upset. Oh
back to food. Yeah, I said, I'm sorry my stomach,
and I would go to the bathroom at scribble crazy
in my pocket and then I come back and sit
down and listen for her that time, so I really
have to go again, rush back to the bathroom, and
that's how I managed to keep some kind of a
(21:42):
record of the dinner. But yeah, it was a very
intense experience. Nicaragua. You know, it's the first It's such
a beautiful country and in such terrible shape. When you
travel to well Nicaragua, to write, to Italy, to Spain,
to India to where there you go, do you think
about the food that you're going to eat in that? Yeah,
(22:04):
I mean I remember, you know, like just before the
pandemic a few months afore, I was able to go
to a literary event in in Wahaka and Mexico, and
they eat amazing stuff. They eat grasshoppers. Yes, you got
this whole plateful of fried grasshoppers, and I did it.
I've never been to been to Hong Kong. I've been
(22:25):
to Hong Kong, but so long ago that it was
still British at the time. That's my big hole is
the far east of Asia, you know, the Japan, Vietnam,
China very high on my list of places I'd like
to go. Food does a lot to tell you where
you are. I mean, one of the things that is
sensational about Italy is that it's impossible to have a
bad meal, you know, just impossible. And I think the
(22:46):
same is truth of places like Paris, that you don't
have to go to fancy restaurants. You know, you could
sit at a corner brasserie and have something delicious. You know,
that kind of culture of food is exciting. Have you
ever written about food? Did you ever write a few?
Not exactly. I once had to do a thing for
(23:06):
for British Vogue a couple of years. It's exactly what
you were saying about traveling. So they asked me for
like favorite places in different countries and so on side. Yeah,
I wrote about sort of half a dozen restaurants in
different places. No more. I was lucky. Did you go
to Andagen? Yes? I did that. He was a bit
(23:30):
of a fan of mine. So I got a reservation,
which is not easy, and then I had to eat
this course meal in two hours. It's a temple of food.
Do people come up to you and restaurants sometimes find that. Okay, sometimes, yeah,
but I mean it's not very often. Yeah. Yeah. Growing
(23:50):
up in a house where your mother had her book
and your grandmother had the cook and growing up with
food and you have a sister is is not only
a cook, but she's written books and she's very respected
in the food world. So tell me what that feels like. Yeah,
I think it was sort of it happened by accident,
because you know, she's all sorts of things. I mean,
(24:11):
she's a very good lawyer. You know, she's she's worked
in community relations all of her life, etcetera. And then
I think it's really what we What she wanted to
do was in some way capture home cooking. And I
egged her on because I knew that she was a
very good cook, and she found the book very difficult
(24:33):
to do. It took her a long time. Anyway, What
came out of this agonized process, it was a kind
of something close to a classic. I think, you know
some in Rushane's Indian Cookery it's called and and she
really did capture the flames. I mean, not all the
recipes are memories of my mother's kitchen, but but that's
where the book started, and then she added stuff of
(24:55):
her own, so it turns out she's ridiculously colleges. It's
food and memories, you know, as we started out, food
and stories, food and family, food and comfort because food
is comfort, isn't it? And so if I were to
ask you is ask everyone that my last question. If
(25:16):
you have a comfort food, what would it be? Well,
I mean my comfort food is is always going to
be Indian food. So it's it's something very simple, not
not at all complicated. I'm very happy with yellow doll
and white rice. One of the bad habits I have,
which you're not supposed to do, is to have bread
at the same time as rice. You're supposed to have either.
(25:36):
All you know, if you're having dol and rice, you
shouldn't also have a chapati or etcetera. But I do so,
so that's my bad behaving comfort comfort food. Yes, thank you, someone,
I love you. Thank you. This holiday season. If you
(26:02):
can't come to the River Cafe, the River Cafe will
come to you. Our beautiful gift boxes are full of
ingredients we cook with and design objects we have in
our homes. River Cafe olive oil, tuscan chocolates, Venetian glasses
of Florentine Christmas cake made in our pastry kitchen, and more.
We ship them everywhere. To find out more or to
(26:25):
place your order, visit shop the River Cafe dot co
dot uk. River Cafe table for is a production of
I Heart Radio and Atomize Studios. For more podcasts from
I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Host
Ruth Rogers
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