May 15, 2023 • 39 mins
Yotam Ottolenghi and I were introduced years ago by a mutual friend, Ari Sharpio. “Ruthie,” he said, “you’ve got to meet this guy. You think the same way.”
Yotam and I believe in the people we work with, valuing them and their creativity. We also share a food geography. Mine, an Italian landscape of the Renaissance, his farther east, a beautiful Biblical landscape of desert and sea.
We both live and work in London—a city far from where we were born. As a chef, cookbook author, and restaurateur, Yotam has pioneered a new approach to Middle Eastern cooking, while changing the way we shop and eat with his inviting gourmet markets. Sitting here in The River Cafe today, we will talk about separation and connection, Eastern and Western, food, family, friends and thinking the same way.
Listen to Ruthie’s Table 4: Yotam Ottolenghi today.
Please rate & review the podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify, IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to:
Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/ruthiestable4
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/
For any podcast enquires please contact: willem.olenski@atomizedstudios.tv
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favourite shows.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Adami's Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Last night, after dinner in the River Cafe, I sat
with the chefs. Usually we talk about the evening service,
what happened, who came, what we cooked. But this time,
knowing he was coming to the kitchen today, we spoke
about our guest, Yotam Ottolenghi. They've all the chef's read
his books, they've all eaten in his restaurants, and like me,
(00:34):
love his food. In short, they were thrilled he was coming.
Yatama and I were introduced years ago by a mutual friend,
Ari Shapiro Ruthie. He said, you've got to meet this guy.
You think the same way, and you will adore him.
Yatim and I share a lot. Most of all, we
(00:55):
believe in the people we work with, valuing them and
their creativity. We also share a kind of geography. Mine
is an Italian landscape with cities of the Renaissance. His
is further east, desert mountains and biblical We both live
and work in culture is far from where we were born.
Today we will talk about separation and connection, Eastern and
(01:19):
Western family and friends. Would you like to read a
recipe uniquely, I would say, not from one of our cookbooks,
but from one of yours.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I was looking forward to reading a recipe from one
of your cookbooks because they're just so much shorter. Famously,
al Telengy recipes are very long, so I worked hard
to find a short recipe.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
In the twenty minutes.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Yeah right, and it's only going to have like twelve
ingredients and not like twenty four. But this is from
one of my most recent books, called The Alto Lengthy
Test Kitchen Shelf Love. It's a butterbean recipe, so it's
called one jar of butter beans with preserves, lemon, chili
and herb oil. Five garlic cloves, finely chopped, two mild
red chilies, finely chopped, seeds in all, two tablespoons coriander
(02:09):
seeds finely crushed with a pestable mortar. Three preserved lemons,
inner parts discarded and skin finally sliced. One and a
half tablespoons roughly chopped thyme leaves, four rosemary sprigs, one
tablespoon to milo paste, one hundred and seventy meals olive oil.
One jar of butter beans seven hundred grams two large
(02:32):
vine tomatoes, roughly grated and skin discarded, flaked sea salt,
and black pepper. Put the first eight ingredients and one
in quarter teaspoons of flaked salt into a medium saute
pan on a medium low heat and steer everything together.
Heat gently for twenty five minutes until very fragrant but
(02:53):
not at all brown. If the oil gets too hot,
turn the heat down too low. Stir in the butter beans,
then turn the heat, eat up to medium and cook
for ten minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to
infuse for at least an hour or longer if time allows. Meanwhile,
mix the greater tomatoes with a third of a teaspoon
of flakes sea salt and a good grind of pepper
(03:15):
to serve poor the butter beans. Mixture into a shallow
bowl and spoon over the greater tomatoes. Mixing it in places.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Sounds like a recipe that I would definitely want to make.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
It sounds a bit like a river feb I.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Actually I did read that. Your first word was was
it Therali word for Hebrew word for soup?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Well, it is the kind of the little dumplings that
go into the soup, so it has the word soup
in it. Yeah, it was it something I think my
mum used to spread on the table while we were
waiting for the food, and I just used to kind
of grab them and eat them.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
And So going back then, starting at the very very beginning,
tell me about your early childhood in terms of food
as well.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
What you know. Yeah, so I grew up in Jerusalem
and the food in Jerusalem.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
At that point, can I just ask you were your
parents born in.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Israel or My parents were born in Europe just before
the Second World War and they immigrated with their parents
as little kids just before the war in nineteen thirty nine.
My mother was from a German family, so they were
German Jews, and my father were they were an Italian
family from Florence.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Really.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, so my dad was born in Florence and they
met in Israel and they so, yeah, they met in
Israel years later, yeah, yeah, and Jerusalem was so I
grew up in a very kind of a non traditional
Jewish home, very secular food wise, Like we had pork,
which nobody was unheard of. You know. My mom had
(04:51):
that butcher in Jerusalem, the one and only one that
sold pork, but it was under the counter in the
brown bag.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yes, she.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Used to come in by a ham and we used
to get ham sandwiches for school. But you know, we
were not allowed to say what's in our sandwiches and
we were not allowed to share it with friends. So
the cover story was that it was Turkey, where it
was a very pink turkey.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Great woman, very woman to come from Germany. She was
from Germany, so she probably had pork in Germany. I
was not going to give that up.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Yeah, yeah, there were various secular you know, and so
she just had to have four. But it was you know,
the stories about these things they sound quite you know, inocus,
but actually there was quite. It was a big deal.
So that butcher and when people found out that he
was selling pork, you know, his shop was vandalized and
you'd have like people puld like like glue in his locks,
(05:47):
so he couldn't open the shop the next day, et cetera.
It was in Jerusalem. Food is not a neutral stance,
you know, like all those decisions, all those things that happened,
those political implications, what year with this have been? So
this was so I was born in sixty eight, so
we're talking about the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So as late as that.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely. So the food culture of the
city was the food of the immigrants from wherever they came,
the Jewish immigrants, but also the Palestinian population, which was
so had such a rich, wonderful culinary history. And I
feel that I grew up in this world in which
we ate very European food. At home, my father was
cooking traditionally Italian dishes, and my mom was kind of
(06:30):
an international cook, but with a very Germanic approach to cooking.
But outside, you know, when we went out, we used
to have Palestinian food, Arabic food, and that's the mix
that I grew up having, and I always thought that
I was quite lucky to have had been exposed to
all those kind of foods from quite a young age.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Could your father find ingredients that he wanted for Italian.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Cooking, Yeah he could, so, first of all, they've had
they used to have food, like like I remember my grandparents,
because they couldn't really separate themselves from their Italian background,
so they used to have food sent to them, so
we had to. We used to get like anchovy paste
and olive oil and biscuits and cookies and things, so
(07:12):
they always get these packages of Italian produce that arrived
in Parmesan. So they lived about an hour from where
we lived in Jerusalem. They lived in the suburb of
Tel Aviv, and I used to come to their house
as a kid with my dad and the smell was
just completely different. It smelled of Italy in so many ways.
So they kept the Italian connection going on. And they
(07:33):
used to travel in the summer because they had a
house in the hills outside Florence that we used to
go to when I was growing up, So we had
a lot of a lot of that. So in between
the Italian and the Palestinian and the German influences, I've
had all that.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Because I often think that I often say that in
my history as as an interviewer, that many of the people,
especially immigrants, talk more about their grandparents food than their parents.
That if you've moved from your culture to another culture,
the mother is probably tried and adapt So if you
have a family from Ghana coming from Ghana to London,
(08:11):
the mother would try and kind of still remember her
food she grew up with, but would try to adapt,
and the children completely adapted and would have the food
of their friends. But the grandparents, when he went to
their house, they would cook the Danaan food or the
Italian food. And my mother in law left Italy for
London pre war, and her father, who's kind of Florentine
(08:35):
site aristocrat, would send her candied oranges every month. You
know that she craved those kind of Italian the Italian
food of your culture totally.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
And the only difference is that in Israel at the time,
there wasn't like a cuisine as such. It was because
it was just so early on and it was just
so new and so young, so a national cuisine has
not evolved. There was a place Senian, the Palestinian food
was extremely evolved, but what people would call Israeli food
is something that evolved later. But when I was growing up,
(09:08):
there was the food that Polish Jews would would have cooked,
or Russian Jews, or Libyan Jews, or Moroccan Jews or
Iraqi Jews. Those each one had their own cuisine. But
I always like to say, like in Jerusalem was like
survival of the fittest, you know, like the best food
from every culture would surface and we have Yeah, that's
really great, so.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
You would have the Sephardic and you would have so you'd.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Have a Sephardics, you know, salads and like and messies,
and you'd have like the bubkas that would come from
the Ashkenazi food and and in some ways like some
restaurants in Jerusalem these days, that then when you go,
that's what's featured, you know, like the best of every
culture that makes up the city.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Because in America, definitely my family where they were Hungarian
and Russian Jews, and my hunger and grandmother was a
great pastry cook, you know, she made all the strudles
and all that, but I remember not really liking all
that sort of can filter fish and multi course that
that meat they cooked for hours and I'm going to
(10:11):
get in trouble for this.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I always you're in good company. It's fine, the Eastern
European food. I always say, like, you know, there is
this Israeli chef called Aras Komorowski. He's a baker and
he's become quite well known because he's outspoken. He's one
of the founders of the modern way of cooking. And
he always says in Israeli only you filter fish. If
(10:32):
your grandmother is still alive.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
That's funny, and I guess they are, but those grandmothers
might not be here for very long now.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah, but I also think there's good things you can
do with and I always say, there's no bad cuisines.
It's just about how people cook those foods. And there's
when I go and people say, oh, how could you
would you like about British cooking, I said, like, there's
so many things here, and the desserts are like some
of the best desserts in the world, and you know that,
(11:04):
And I think it's it really is about what you
do with it.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Not I agree. So going back again, it seems like
you had a household where food was really important, but
your father and your mother cooked.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yeah, both my parents cooked. My father because of this
Italian sensibilities, he used to cook in a way that
doesn't remind me of the way I cook now. So
it was quite minimal, great ingredients, cooked with care and attention.
And he used to make polenta and he's just to
(11:35):
stand there and stir it, you know, for forty five
minutes or an hour until it was just right, and
at the cheese, but everything very kind of moderately and
with a lot of attention and was so different from
the way I ended up cooking, which is this kind
of quite a maximalist way of cooking quite a lot
of ingredients more in I think, more keen to maybe
(11:58):
how they cook in North Africa or in Asia, South
Asia or Southeast Asia, in the sense that quite a
lot of spices, cook them down, create something, which is
kind of a base for sauce. He didn't cook like that.
He cooked much more the Italian way, but he was
a professor of chemistry at the university, so he had
a really kind of a deep understanding of ingredients. Intuitive.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
But I would say that a recipe, I don't know
if you agree, is part science and part poetry. Yes,
you know, everybody likes the image of the Italian that
throws something in and does something there and does something that.
But actually they're very precise, I think.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Very precise. But he loved food. But there's certain things
he just like all Italians, he loved his foods the most,
and he just looked like there are certain combinations that
he would just not have, Like he said, sweet in
savory food. No, because he was from northern Italy. You
know that's maybe in Sicily you'd find there Pulia, but
(12:54):
not in the North. So if you'd have like something Moroccan,
you know, like a tagine with prunes or whatever, I
wouldn't touch that.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
And your mother did she cook German sy Then.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
My mom cooked German food. She was more of an
international cook, you know. She had these international cookbooks of
the fifties, you know, and she would try like a
Malaysian curry or delicious caspachio. But she also was a
foody in the sense that for her food was very important.
The most important meal of the day in our house
(13:24):
was breakfast, and we had this kind of spread of food. Again,
not very tally. You went to school mostly on the weekend,
but even before I went to school, there was like
freshly sliced vegetables, fresh vegetables and some cheese and brine,
you know, like feta style and fresh bread and egg.
And this is still what I do for my kids,
Like before they go to school, I give them this
(13:46):
massive breastfast and Carl, my husband, looks at me and says, like,
is that really breakfast? You know, but they love it.
It really is delicious. But the whole concept of breakfast
is like people different cultures do it very different.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
My grandchildren have Chinese and they have chicken soup for
breakfast serves. They can think of nothing nicer than having
a bowl of soup. You know, I agree, and why not?
You know, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
When I came here and I saw that grilled tomato
and beans and sausage, I thought like, what, I'm an abomination.
I do like it now you okay?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
And so growing up in your do you have brothers
and sisters?
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I have one sister.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah, And so the family meal would be sitting. Did
your mother work yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah, my mom was a teacher. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
So you would sit down to breakfast, fantastic breakfast, and
then most dinners, would you have dinner together?
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah? We would also have dinner together. Yeah. Breakfast was
the main time you could trust that everybody would be there.
My parents worked a lot of dinner, not always, but
we also had dinners together.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Do you have memories of the kitchen?
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Yeah? We So we had. The kitchen I was growing
up with was a long kind of gally kitchen with
a dining table and chair at the very end. It
wasn't fancy at all. It was very particle. But there's
always cooking going on and it was Yeah. I remember,
I remember a cupboard where everything was was stored, and
I remember that I was alway used to climb up
(15:11):
the counter. I couldn't reach to get chocolate. There was
a box and she didn't mind. I don't know. She
always she never told us off, but we was. We
just come and had that cooking children.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Well, you need to start in the morning.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
They do all the fish hungary and all the butchery.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
So we start off with the meat and fish.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
While I'm writing the menu, watch the level of butchery,
like we get a we get a whole pig or.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yeah, yeah, or a whole you know being saloon on
the bone or yeah, the legs of lamb and all
and the whole fish fully scale with all the scales
and everything that's gotten gill and scale fish and do
all the proper you know stuff that's skillful stuff that
I suppose some we're busy kitchen, but we have a
(16:05):
lot of chefs.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
And we do all that.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
We don't have stations stations, so anyone can do everything anything.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
By the end of probably take about four years to
learn all the sections. Well, not everyone here can look
on every section past the section is quite hard hard.
A lot of people be learning that section, so the
person on it today it's sort.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Of learning as well. We're teaching them how to you know, and.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Thank you at all?
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Did your parents take you to restaurants? Did you go out?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, so we didn't have We didn't have great restaurants
in Jerusalem in the sense in the way we have now.
So this whole, this whole revolution in food has not
happened yet, so we ate when we ate out. We
used to go to Palestinian restaurants. So the war just
happened not long before the nineteen sixty seven war in
(16:58):
which Israel occupied East Jerusalem. So in some ways, this
is before the pre traumatic times. You know, it was
all very new and obviously it was complicated, but it
was relatively peaceful. So I remember we used to go
travel a lot into the West Bank. We used to
go to Annapolis to Jericho to have bron to have meals.
(17:22):
So we used to go to Jericho and have like
incredibly little meals. Oh, we would have these spreads of
delicious things that you find, some of them you'd know
and some of them you wouldn't, So from you know,
like hummus or in labana, you know, the strain yogurt,
but you'd also have like local herbs that be sauteed
in garlic and olive oil. They have incredible so they
(17:44):
have wonderful oranges, so you'd have orange juice freshly squeezed
a bit like Seville's, like they have some of them
that are cooking and some of them mostly for juicing
because it's so hot and humid, it's like perfect for
citrus and lamb on the grain. Also they have with
cooked lamb on open grill and rice dishes like my cluba,
(18:05):
like upside down rice cakes and bulgar salads. And it
was an amazing wonderful olive oil. Wonderful olive oil, and
great freshly baked breads, pizza breads and all and other
variations on that fiend. Because of Palestine cook their bread
in a taboon, which is that you know that kind
(18:25):
of ceramic oven, earthenware oven. So all that was there,
and I really have really really strong memory of driving
down to Jericho and just having all these wonderful foods
and coming back, but also in Jerusalem, I have such
strong memories of the of these flavors.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Did you ever think that you would like to do that.
Did you ever think you'd want to be a chef?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
No, I didn't really think I would want to be
I really loved eating so much so that like my
dad always used to make fun of me, used to
call me golozzo, which is like it's that in word
for like greedy, because I was greedy and I had
to make them like take me to restaurants on my
There was one restaurant and restaurant in Jerusalem that served
(19:09):
as seafood, like shrimps and squid in that and it
was in East Jerusalem and the Arab part because they
were Christian era, I mean, Muslims can eat seafood as well.
And we'd go there and have like a plate of
like prawns and like butter and garlic and lemon, you know,
like and I just thought it was the most delicious
(19:31):
thing I've ever had. It was so exotic and so yeah.
So I had all really all that wonderful food. But
I never thought I was going to become No. I
kind of just assumed I'm going to follow in my parents'
path an academic, you know, go to university study, which
(19:51):
I did. I went to university and I studied and
Tel Aviv University. In the late nineties, I studied university,
I moved to Tel Aviv.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
So what did you eat?
Speaker 3 (20:02):
So my first apartment that I had with my boyfriend
at the time, we live by Caramel Market, which is
the main food and vegetable market, so it really was
an apartment really close to the market. And this was
when the first time I started to cook because I
was at university, like and so many students, like you know,
food was not forthcoming anymore, as I had to cook,
(20:25):
and I fell in love with cooking through the market.
So on Friday I would go and buy fresh herbs
and vegetables and cheese that I had this incredible cheese standard.
They had all the Balkan cheeses, you know those sitting
in brine, you know, the different.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Types of feta and many different there.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Many different types of I used the word feta, but
it's the Bulgarian cheeses. It's a whole range of young
cheeses that they vary in saltiness and texture from something
which is more like a ricotta to something much firmer. Yeah,
you have like really really bland like with unsalted cheeses
that would you be used for one use, and then
(21:05):
things that are crumblier like more like every coota, and
some are much smoother, like other Greek cheeses, And so
you'd have the whole.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
The whole range, and would you entertain.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yeah, we would have other student friends came over and
I would make like you know, I remember making, you know,
just starting to understand what the like marinating a chicken
and grilling it and making a salad to go with,
like very baby steps in the kitchen. But I did
fall in love with cooking through that. But I was
still I was still in university. I still didn't think
it's going to be a career for me. So I
(21:38):
finished a master's degree in comparative literature and philosophy, and
I just decided it's not for me.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
The academic life.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
I just thought it was very insular, you know. I
thought like I was speaking to like seven people who
knew what I was talking about, and then the rest
of the world knew nothing and wasn't really remotely interested,
and it just felt esoteric. And it's like and then
the opposite happened when I started cooking, because all of
a sudden, everybody is interested, right, and that dichotomy between
(22:14):
somewhere where you really have no one to share your
passions with the world in which you can everybody is
interested was such a eye opener for me, and I realized, yes,
I want to try and engage in this conversation, and
I'm in that conversation. When I came to London in
nineteen ninety seven, I haven't made up my mind who
(22:34):
I wanted to be and what I wanted to do.
But I thought, like, I'm going to take a year off,
and I went to the Court on Blue and yeah,
and I took a course there in Marleybone, Yeah, yeah,
Marlivau Lane. Yeah. And I did a course there and
I thought, Okay, maybe there's something for me there, but
I wasn't at sure I did. I did pastry and
(22:58):
savory cooking for three months and then I started working
in the evenings. I worked at the Capitol Restaurant and yeah, yeah,
behind Harrod I was. It was really good. They had
a mission and star and I was an assistant to
the pastry chef there. I was working with her right
into pastry, right into pastry. Well, I didn't know anything,
(23:19):
so they always throw you into pastry if you don't
know anything because you know nobody's way. So I loved that.
And then I met Roly Lee and I started working
at Kensington Place. Yeah that was in ninety eight. Yeah,
And I worked for him for a couple of years
(23:41):
and I learned a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
So by that time you kind of knew.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
That this was a career, but that Yeah, I was
a pastry chef, yeah, and I always I was with
Roly I did mostly pastry as well. I was running
the pastry kitchen at some point, and then I realized,
I'm want to specialize in pastry. And then I went
to work for Gale a baker and spice.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
What do you think you liked about pastry?
Speaker 3 (24:04):
I loved how that just the fact that you got
to play with your go for I love that. And
the magic that happens when you bake. I still I
still love that, how one thing turns to another thing.
You know, you take a chicken, you put in the oven,
you get a chicken. But when you take a cake
and you put in the oven, you get something completely different.
It's it's not the same thing. And I still love
(24:27):
that magic. So I really specialized in baking, and even
when we opened up to lengthy years later, I was
I was still baking. Yeah, when I went to your
kitchen now, it really reminded me of the way we
work at Baker and Spice. Like Gaye would come back
from the market with like strawberries and apricots and quinces
and she said, like, there you go, like six boxes.
(24:49):
Do something with them. There wasn't a plan, and there
wasn't a there wasn't a recipe or a plan for
the day. It was just like these things arrived because
she saw them and they looked great, and we just
had to work what we have.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Amazing times you could do that.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
And then and then my good friend, my ex partner,
Noam Barr, came back from traveling the world and he said, like,
let's do something together. And he studied business and I
was a Baker and Spice at the time, and he
said like he said, like, let's let's open a shop.
And we decided to do it. And it took about
(25:25):
a year to make it all happen. And Sammy Sammy Tamimi,
who's our other partner, I wasn't quite ready to join us,
so we started the process without him. And it was
supposed to be just a bakery in which I would
be baking. And then when Sammy joined at the very
last minute. This was in two thousand and two when
(25:45):
we opened on Lidbury Road in notting Hill, he joined
us and we decided we're going to have two sides
to our offering, which would be freshly made salads and
savory food mirrored by amount of cakes and fruit are colors,
(26:09):
and we just thought, like the same thing that you
were doing in restaurants, we thought we can do the
same kind of philosophy apply it in in a takeout environment.
You know, we will just cook things freshly every single
day and sell it until we run out. And that
was still the idea that these these tiny kitchens produce
(26:30):
a lot of food and people come in and instead
of cooking themselves, we put the food and the cakes
out there and they come and buy them. But there
was there was nothing made off site. There's nothing. We
don't buy anything and we just cook it all there
for you.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I think what you brought to us to London to
food was a sense of exotic which was also so accessible.
You know that you had ingredients of perhaps the words
we couldn't pronounce, so we had a dish that was
named something we'd never heard of, or we could go
in and try one of your beautiful salads and take
(27:17):
it home and eat it. Or it just celebrates so
much a kind of a joy of ingredients of cooking.
Would you call this Middle Eastern?
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Do you like that phrase or think so? I don't
think it's Middle Eastern. There's been Eastern sensibilities in what
we do. So even when Sammy and I started cooking
and serving food, it wasn't until like when we published
the book Jerusalem, in which we talked about our heritage
and background Sami's Palestinian background in Jerusalem, my Jewish background
(27:50):
in Jerusalem. Only that then people started saying, oh, Middle
Eastern ottelengis and Middle Eastern restaurants because before we yeah,
we used to have tahini and sumac and all those things,
but we also used to use miso and soy and
pomegranates and chili and cumin, which are not specific to
this region. But there's something about this kind of little
(28:12):
strip of the that goes from all the way from
Tunisia and Morocco and North Africa all the way through
the Middle East and then through South Asia all the
way to Southeast Asia, and it has a certain language
that I think we use. Sometimes you find something in
Mexico that speaks the same language, but it's a kind
of some sunny temperament. It's Chile's it's garlic, it's citrus,
(28:36):
it's these kind of intense flavors. So of course the
Middle East has them, but there's other places that have them,
and we just love to borrow from all those parts
of the world and use it and build on it.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
To travel.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Yeah, I travel less now, but I used to travel.
My children are seven and ten. They're still quite young,
and so I chose to travel less when they were
born because I realized that every time I traveled, if
I couldn't take them with me, I would miss them
too much.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
But I find it necessary to go to Italy. You know,
it's a kind of we go, we go to taste
the new oil. But for me, going back to the
source is very important, you know, to actually go to
somebody's house in Rome or in Piso, or in Milan.
There's a kind of sense of also. It kind of
(29:27):
makes me feel we are you know, the connection is strong,
and those roots are very important, you know, the identity too.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Well, I have that in Israel. So yeah, because my
mom's we go to visit her a few times a year,
and she lives outside a village in our village called
Abu Goosh, which is on the way from Tel Aviv
to Trusiam, and whenever we arrive, we go and as
soon as we'd arrive with the kids, we go and
eat in the local restaurants and we have those platters
(29:56):
of Palestinian food that I love so much, and then
we go to the green grove certain by the local vegetables,
and I reconnect and I love that and I find
it very familiar in a way that I don't find
anywhere else. You know, everything is very familiar.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
It's amazing. I'd like to know what you feel about
the food scene or the culture of food in Israel
right now is something that I'm made aware of all
the time, either by friends of mine who go there,
friends of mine who live there, and chefs that come
into the restaurant from you know, I can see them.
You know, there's the table of eight Israelis and they've
(30:34):
come and there they order everything on the menu or
they're tasting. And in London there are more restaurants how
did this happen?
Speaker 3 (30:44):
I don't have a really good explanation, but I'm seeing
it everywhere, Like you say, in London, there's some fantastic
Israeli restaurants. In America, they're really really flourishing, and in
Israel itself. And what I find interesting is this thing
has not existed fifteen or twenty years ago. When I
was living in Israel, there wasn't an original cuisine, and
(31:05):
those great restaurants, the good restaurants that you could find were,
you know, the restaurants of immigrants that have just arrived, right.
But this didn't formulate, and I think so when I looked.
I did a show for the BBC years ago called
Jerusalem on a Plate, and I took the director around
and showed him, you know, this is this this cuisine
and that cuisine, and then I was trying to formulate
(31:27):
actually what was going on there I really understand. And
the one thing that occurred to me is that it
was just all so new and fresh, and nobody felt
that they were kind of like committed to one way
of cooking. There was something very liberating about this sense
that everything is possible, you know, like, which is a
very Israeli thing. First of all, like you know, there
(31:48):
isn't that there's a lais say fair kind of like
whatever attitude, which helps. But also nobody felt nothing had
and I haven't seen it. I haven't been to another
country that is just so recently informed. But there's that
possibility of just like working with all those options, is
created these cuisines, and people travel in Israel or they
(32:09):
go to Israeli restaurants here and they realize that there's
something very original about it. And I think it has
to do with the fact that it's not indebted to
one part of the world, one teh wir one cuisine.
It's kind of it's a magpie of cuisines and then
it comes together really nice.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Is it strongly Ara based?
Speaker 3 (32:27):
I think there is a lot, and that's not being
acknowledged enough. There is a very very strong underlying Palestinian
tradition of cooking that underscores this, and often people don't
talk about it enough for political reasons, and they don't
mention that often enough. I always have to say that
I don't think it's a bad thing that Palestinian cooking
(32:49):
has become so much part of what is perceived as
Israeli cooking. But it's really important to tell that story,
to tell that fact, because that's very much basis of
so many of those dishes, not all of them, many
of them belong to Jewish diasporas of other cultures, but
Palestinian is really a massive factor there in the way
(33:11):
the news really.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Chef's cook I think that's something that we're all looking
at right now, is acknowledging the history and to recognize
where these roots come from.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
I think what I had understood intuitively when I started
publishing cookbooks is that the best thing you can do
is just put it all on paper, you know, like,
where does this come from? Because first of all, I
think it adds depth to a recipe if you can
tell a story. But I think it's also really important
to be able to acknowledge the people who were even
(33:40):
if it's an individual, not necessarily a culture. You know,
to say, oh, that's this person, that idea came from
this person or from that person, because it's just the
right thing to do. But also it really helps to
create a much more a deeper sense to the recipe,
to the dish that you're eating, if you know where
it comes from.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Writing books.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Yeah, all of my last few books are all co written,
so I've collaborated with someone. That's what allows the books
to stay fresh, the fact that they featured other voices,
not just mine.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
What is your most recent book?
Speaker 3 (34:19):
So my most recent book is The Extra Good Things
from the Auto Lengthy Test Kitchen. So it comes out
of the Auto Lengthy Test Kitchen, and I've written it
together with Norm Rudd, who's yeah, she's half Baheranian, half English,
so she's got that kind of what I have, which
is this kind of mix of culture, and it is
a book that tries to feature what we call extra
(34:42):
good things are condiments, are things that marinades and dressings
and sprinkles and things that are derivatives of a recipe
that you could kind of keep to one side and
use another day. Because often in our food we have
a dressing or sauce marinad. And what we're trying to
do is at tea people how people used to cook
in the old days, So they would instead of cooking
(35:04):
starting from scratch, every time you're go into the kitchen,
you'd have like a pot of sauer kraut or kimchi
or flavored oil or just something that is useful already
is halfway through it to a meal. So every recipe
has a takeout, something that you could keep on a
shelf or in the fridge that you could use for
for future.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I always like, first, you know, to follow a recipe really,
really precisely and really do it, and then you know,
to spontaneously change. And I also think when you talk
about the number of ingredients. I had a friend who
had six children and one summer she was taking They
were all under the age of sort of shed twins,
under the age of ten. I said, are you taking
(35:42):
all the kids to Martha's Vintage? She said no, because
I'm just going to take four of them, because you know,
it's really hard to stay with a friend when you
have six kids, but if you only have four, you
could stay with anybody, you know. And it was so relegive,
you know, to the idea that suddly, you know, so simple,
because you did book with ten ingredients, didn't you.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, well I did simple. It has some ingredients. Some
recipes have ten or yeah, which is like nothing, which
for me is not exactly ingredients. Yeah, I know, And
people say, you know that, why do you need so
many ingredients? And so many exciting areas. I said, you
don't need anything. It's a choice, you know. But there
is this expectation these days that every recipe is for everyone,
(36:22):
and people can I substitute this if I don't like that,
And I always have to say, yes, you can, But
why don't you just choose another recipe?
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeaybe exactly. But and you're cooking? Are you cooking at home?
Do you have time to.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Cook less than I used to, which is a shame.
I cook mostly on the weekend, so we or we
uh as parents to young kids, I wouldn't say young parents.
We don't entertain much during the week, but on the
weekend we have people over and then there will we
do big weekend meals.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
It's a question that I ask everyone if there's a
food we know, people that we turn to for comfort
and places we go for comfort. But if there's something
that you would want to eat apart from your mother's
chocolate being hidden, I can never get rid of that
image on the top shelf, is there a food that
you've reached for when you really need comfort?
Speaker 3 (37:13):
So I have to say that from all the things
that I've had, it's things that my father used to
cook or my Italian grandmother she used to make. And
it's not just because I'm at the River cafam saying,
as she used to make ki ala romana. Ah yeah, yeah,
And it's the one smell that I have as you know,
(37:34):
people talk too much about you know, those you know,
moments of childhood, but this is really one that stands
so strong in my mind, in my head, that is
there thinly spread semolina and yoki on a tray, dotted
with butter and cheese, and it would go under the
grail and all and since they did get grete cheese
(37:55):
from Italy and they had parmigiano, and she would put
that under the graill and it would just make and
that kind of semolina soft, you know, milky with a
grated cheese milk and cheese on top. It's just it's
just such a child with favor and that is definitely
the one that brings the most comfort to me. And
I've never managed to do it as not even remotely
(38:15):
as good as she does.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
I know, well, we'll try and make it for if
I know, we would have put it on the menu.
It on the menu sometimes, yeah, yeah, especially we have
it on very often when we have white truffles, because
it's one of those delicious recipes, which it's still just
without white truffles, but it does take because it's like
it's almost like a cheese fla and they are so delicious.
(38:40):
So we're going to go ahead and have lunch in
the River Cafe now without Jacky Romana. But the next
time we do, we'll definitely have Thank you, Yes, let's
do it.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Thank you so much, very much, great.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Down the River Cafe book is now available in bookshops
and online. It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated
with photographs from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book
has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a
(39:14):
host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted
for new cooks. The River Cafe Lookbook Recipes for Cooks
of All ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production of
iHeart Radio and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(39:35):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Ruthie's Table four, a production of iHeartRadio and
Adami's Studios.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Last night, after dinner in the River Cafe, I sat
with the chefs. Usually we talk about the evening service,
what happened, who came, what we cooked. But this time,
knowing he was coming to the kitchen today, we spoke
about our guest, Yotam Ottolenghi. They've all the chef's read
his books, they've all eaten in his restaurants, and like me,
(00:34):
love his food. In short, they were thrilled he was coming.
Yatama and I were introduced years ago by a mutual friend,
Ari Shapiro Ruthie. He said, you've got to meet this guy.
You think the same way, and you will adore him.
Yatim and I share a lot. Most of all, we
(00:55):
believe in the people we work with, valuing them and
their creativity. We also share a kind of geography. Mine
is an Italian landscape with cities of the Renaissance. His
is further east, desert mountains and biblical We both live
and work in culture is far from where we were born.
Today we will talk about separation and connection, Eastern and
(01:19):
Western family and friends. Would you like to read a
recipe uniquely, I would say, not from one of our cookbooks,
but from one of yours.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I was looking forward to reading a recipe from one
of your cookbooks because they're just so much shorter. Famously,
al Telengy recipes are very long, so I worked hard
to find a short recipe.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
In the twenty minutes.
Speaker 3 (01:45):
Yeah right, and it's only going to have like twelve
ingredients and not like twenty four. But this is from
one of my most recent books, called The Alto Lengthy
Test Kitchen Shelf Love. It's a butterbean recipe, so it's
called one jar of butter beans with preserves, lemon, chili
and herb oil. Five garlic cloves, finely chopped, two mild
red chilies, finely chopped, seeds in all, two tablespoons coriander
(02:09):
seeds finely crushed with a pestable mortar. Three preserved lemons,
inner parts discarded and skin finally sliced. One and a
half tablespoons roughly chopped thyme leaves, four rosemary sprigs, one
tablespoon to milo paste, one hundred and seventy meals olive oil.
One jar of butter beans seven hundred grams two large
(02:32):
vine tomatoes, roughly grated and skin discarded, flaked sea salt,
and black pepper. Put the first eight ingredients and one
in quarter teaspoons of flaked salt into a medium saute
pan on a medium low heat and steer everything together.
Heat gently for twenty five minutes until very fragrant but
(02:53):
not at all brown. If the oil gets too hot,
turn the heat down too low. Stir in the butter beans,
then turn the heat, eat up to medium and cook
for ten minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to
infuse for at least an hour or longer if time allows. Meanwhile,
mix the greater tomatoes with a third of a teaspoon
of flakes sea salt and a good grind of pepper
(03:15):
to serve poor the butter beans. Mixture into a shallow
bowl and spoon over the greater tomatoes. Mixing it in places.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Sounds like a recipe that I would definitely want to make.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
It sounds a bit like a river feb I.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Actually I did read that. Your first word was was
it Therali word for Hebrew word for soup?
Speaker 3 (03:35):
Well, it is the kind of the little dumplings that
go into the soup, so it has the word soup
in it. Yeah, it was it something I think my
mum used to spread on the table while we were
waiting for the food, and I just used to kind
of grab them and eat them.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
And So going back then, starting at the very very beginning,
tell me about your early childhood in terms of food
as well.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
What you know. Yeah, so I grew up in Jerusalem
and the food in Jerusalem.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
At that point, can I just ask you were your
parents born in.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Israel or My parents were born in Europe just before
the Second World War and they immigrated with their parents
as little kids just before the war in nineteen thirty nine.
My mother was from a German family, so they were
German Jews, and my father were they were an Italian
family from Florence.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Really.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah, so my dad was born in Florence and they
met in Israel and they so, yeah, they met in
Israel years later, yeah, yeah, and Jerusalem was so I
grew up in a very kind of a non traditional
Jewish home, very secular food wise, Like we had pork,
which nobody was unheard of. You know. My mom had
(04:51):
that butcher in Jerusalem, the one and only one that
sold pork, but it was under the counter in the
brown bag.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Yes, she.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Used to come in by a ham and we used
to get ham sandwiches for school. But you know, we
were not allowed to say what's in our sandwiches and
we were not allowed to share it with friends. So
the cover story was that it was Turkey, where it
was a very pink turkey.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Great woman, very woman to come from Germany. She was
from Germany, so she probably had pork in Germany. I
was not going to give that up.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Yeah, yeah, there were various secular you know, and so
she just had to have four. But it was you know,
the stories about these things they sound quite you know, inocus,
but actually there was quite. It was a big deal.
So that butcher and when people found out that he
was selling pork, you know, his shop was vandalized and
you'd have like people puld like like glue in his locks,
(05:47):
so he couldn't open the shop the next day, et cetera.
It was in Jerusalem. Food is not a neutral stance,
you know, like all those decisions, all those things that happened,
those political implications, what year with this have been? So
this was so I was born in sixty eight, so
we're talking about the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
So as late as that.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, completely. So the food culture of the
city was the food of the immigrants from wherever they came,
the Jewish immigrants, but also the Palestinian population, which was
so had such a rich, wonderful culinary history. And I
feel that I grew up in this world in which
we ate very European food. At home, my father was
cooking traditionally Italian dishes, and my mom was kind of
(06:30):
an international cook, but with a very Germanic approach to cooking.
But outside, you know, when we went out, we used
to have Palestinian food, Arabic food, and that's the mix
that I grew up having, and I always thought that
I was quite lucky to have had been exposed to
all those kind of foods from quite a young age.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Could your father find ingredients that he wanted for Italian.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Cooking, Yeah he could, so, first of all, they've had
they used to have food, like like I remember my grandparents,
because they couldn't really separate themselves from their Italian background,
so they used to have food sent to them, so
we had to. We used to get like anchovy paste
and olive oil and biscuits and cookies and things, so
(07:12):
they always get these packages of Italian produce that arrived
in Parmesan. So they lived about an hour from where
we lived in Jerusalem. They lived in the suburb of
Tel Aviv, and I used to come to their house
as a kid with my dad and the smell was
just completely different. It smelled of Italy in so many ways.
So they kept the Italian connection going on. And they
(07:33):
used to travel in the summer because they had a
house in the hills outside Florence that we used to
go to when I was growing up, So we had
a lot of a lot of that. So in between
the Italian and the Palestinian and the German influences, I've
had all that.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Because I often think that I often say that in
my history as as an interviewer, that many of the people,
especially immigrants, talk more about their grandparents food than their parents.
That if you've moved from your culture to another culture,
the mother is probably tried and adapt So if you
have a family from Ghana coming from Ghana to London,
(08:11):
the mother would try and kind of still remember her
food she grew up with, but would try to adapt,
and the children completely adapted and would have the food
of their friends. But the grandparents, when he went to
their house, they would cook the Danaan food or the
Italian food. And my mother in law left Italy for
London pre war, and her father, who's kind of Florentine
(08:35):
site aristocrat, would send her candied oranges every month. You
know that she craved those kind of Italian the Italian
food of your culture totally.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
And the only difference is that in Israel at the time,
there wasn't like a cuisine as such. It was because
it was just so early on and it was just
so new and so young, so a national cuisine has
not evolved. There was a place Senian, the Palestinian food
was extremely evolved, but what people would call Israeli food
is something that evolved later. But when I was growing up,
(09:08):
there was the food that Polish Jews would would have cooked,
or Russian Jews, or Libyan Jews, or Moroccan Jews or
Iraqi Jews. Those each one had their own cuisine. But
I always like to say, like in Jerusalem was like
survival of the fittest, you know, like the best food
from every culture would surface and we have Yeah, that's
really great, so.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
You would have the Sephardic and you would have so you'd.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Have a Sephardics, you know, salads and like and messies,
and you'd have like the bubkas that would come from
the Ashkenazi food and and in some ways like some
restaurants in Jerusalem these days, that then when you go,
that's what's featured, you know, like the best of every
culture that makes up the city.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Because in America, definitely my family where they were Hungarian
and Russian Jews, and my hunger and grandmother was a
great pastry cook, you know, she made all the strudles
and all that, but I remember not really liking all
that sort of can filter fish and multi course that
that meat they cooked for hours and I'm going to
(10:11):
get in trouble for this.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I always you're in good company. It's fine, the Eastern
European food. I always say, like, you know, there is
this Israeli chef called Aras Komorowski. He's a baker and
he's become quite well known because he's outspoken. He's one
of the founders of the modern way of cooking. And
he always says in Israeli only you filter fish. If
(10:32):
your grandmother is still alive.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
That's funny, and I guess they are, but those grandmothers
might not be here for very long now.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Yeah, but I also think there's good things you can
do with and I always say, there's no bad cuisines.
It's just about how people cook those foods. And there's
when I go and people say, oh, how could you
would you like about British cooking, I said, like, there's
so many things here, and the desserts are like some
of the best desserts in the world, and you know that,
(11:04):
And I think it's it really is about what you
do with it.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Not I agree. So going back again, it seems like
you had a household where food was really important, but
your father and your mother cooked.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Yeah, both my parents cooked. My father because of this
Italian sensibilities, he used to cook in a way that
doesn't remind me of the way I cook now. So
it was quite minimal, great ingredients, cooked with care and attention.
And he used to make polenta and he's just to
(11:35):
stand there and stir it, you know, for forty five
minutes or an hour until it was just right, and
at the cheese, but everything very kind of moderately and
with a lot of attention and was so different from
the way I ended up cooking, which is this kind
of quite a maximalist way of cooking quite a lot
of ingredients more in I think, more keen to maybe
(11:58):
how they cook in North Africa or in Asia, South
Asia or Southeast Asia, in the sense that quite a
lot of spices, cook them down, create something, which is
kind of a base for sauce. He didn't cook like that.
He cooked much more the Italian way, but he was
a professor of chemistry at the university, so he had
a really kind of a deep understanding of ingredients. Intuitive.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
But I would say that a recipe, I don't know
if you agree, is part science and part poetry. Yes,
you know, everybody likes the image of the Italian that
throws something in and does something there and does something that.
But actually they're very precise, I think.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Very precise. But he loved food. But there's certain things
he just like all Italians, he loved his foods the most,
and he just looked like there are certain combinations that
he would just not have, Like he said, sweet in
savory food. No, because he was from northern Italy. You
know that's maybe in Sicily you'd find there Pulia, but
(12:54):
not in the North. So if you'd have like something Moroccan,
you know, like a tagine with prunes or whatever, I
wouldn't touch that.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
And your mother did she cook German sy Then.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
My mom cooked German food. She was more of an
international cook, you know. She had these international cookbooks of
the fifties, you know, and she would try like a
Malaysian curry or delicious caspachio. But she also was a
foody in the sense that for her food was very important.
The most important meal of the day in our house
(13:24):
was breakfast, and we had this kind of spread of food. Again,
not very tally. You went to school mostly on the weekend,
but even before I went to school, there was like
freshly sliced vegetables, fresh vegetables and some cheese and brine,
you know, like feta style and fresh bread and egg.
And this is still what I do for my kids,
Like before they go to school, I give them this
(13:46):
massive breastfast and Carl, my husband, looks at me and says, like,
is that really breakfast? You know, but they love it.
It really is delicious. But the whole concept of breakfast
is like people different cultures do it very different.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
My grandchildren have Chinese and they have chicken soup for
breakfast serves. They can think of nothing nicer than having
a bowl of soup. You know, I agree, and why not?
You know, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
When I came here and I saw that grilled tomato
and beans and sausage, I thought like, what, I'm an abomination.
I do like it now you okay?
Speaker 2 (14:18):
And so growing up in your do you have brothers
and sisters?
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I have one sister.
Speaker 2 (14:23):
Yeah, And so the family meal would be sitting. Did
your mother work yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah, my mom was a teacher. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
So you would sit down to breakfast, fantastic breakfast, and
then most dinners, would you have dinner together?
Speaker 3 (14:35):
Yeah? We would also have dinner together. Yeah. Breakfast was
the main time you could trust that everybody would be there.
My parents worked a lot of dinner, not always, but
we also had dinners together.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Do you have memories of the kitchen?
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Yeah? We So we had. The kitchen I was growing
up with was a long kind of gally kitchen with
a dining table and chair at the very end. It
wasn't fancy at all. It was very particle. But there's
always cooking going on and it was Yeah. I remember,
I remember a cupboard where everything was was stored, and
I remember that I was alway used to climb up
(15:11):
the counter. I couldn't reach to get chocolate. There was
a box and she didn't mind. I don't know. She
always she never told us off, but we was. We
just come and had that cooking children.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Well, you need to start in the morning.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
They do all the fish hungary and all the butchery.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
So we start off with the meat and fish.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
While I'm writing the menu, watch the level of butchery,
like we get a we get a whole pig or.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yeah, yeah, or a whole you know being saloon on
the bone or yeah, the legs of lamb and all
and the whole fish fully scale with all the scales
and everything that's gotten gill and scale fish and do
all the proper you know stuff that's skillful stuff that
I suppose some we're busy kitchen, but we have a
(16:05):
lot of chefs.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
And we do all that.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
We don't have stations stations, so anyone can do everything anything.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
By the end of probably take about four years to
learn all the sections. Well, not everyone here can look
on every section past the section is quite hard hard.
A lot of people be learning that section, so the
person on it today it's sort.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Of learning as well. We're teaching them how to you know, and.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Thank you at all?
Speaker 2 (16:34):
Did your parents take you to restaurants? Did you go out?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
Yeah, so we didn't have We didn't have great restaurants
in Jerusalem in the sense in the way we have now.
So this whole, this whole revolution in food has not
happened yet, so we ate when we ate out. We
used to go to Palestinian restaurants. So the war just
happened not long before the nineteen sixty seven war in
(16:58):
which Israel occupied East Jerusalem. So in some ways, this
is before the pre traumatic times. You know, it was
all very new and obviously it was complicated, but it
was relatively peaceful. So I remember we used to go
travel a lot into the West Bank. We used to
go to Annapolis to Jericho to have bron to have meals.
(17:22):
So we used to go to Jericho and have like
incredibly little meals. Oh, we would have these spreads of
delicious things that you find, some of them you'd know
and some of them you wouldn't, So from you know,
like hummus or in labana, you know, the strain yogurt,
but you'd also have like local herbs that be sauteed
in garlic and olive oil. They have incredible so they
(17:44):
have wonderful oranges, so you'd have orange juice freshly squeezed
a bit like Seville's, like they have some of them
that are cooking and some of them mostly for juicing
because it's so hot and humid, it's like perfect for
citrus and lamb on the grain. Also they have with
cooked lamb on open grill and rice dishes like my cluba,
(18:05):
like upside down rice cakes and bulgar salads. And it
was an amazing wonderful olive oil. Wonderful olive oil, and
great freshly baked breads, pizza breads and all and other
variations on that fiend. Because of Palestine cook their bread
in a taboon, which is that you know that kind
(18:25):
of ceramic oven, earthenware oven. So all that was there,
and I really have really really strong memory of driving
down to Jericho and just having all these wonderful foods
and coming back, but also in Jerusalem, I have such
strong memories of the of these flavors.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Did you ever think that you would like to do that.
Did you ever think you'd want to be a chef?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
No, I didn't really think I would want to be
I really loved eating so much so that like my
dad always used to make fun of me, used to
call me golozzo, which is like it's that in word
for like greedy, because I was greedy and I had
to make them like take me to restaurants on my
There was one restaurant and restaurant in Jerusalem that served
(19:09):
as seafood, like shrimps and squid in that and it
was in East Jerusalem and the Arab part because they
were Christian era, I mean, Muslims can eat seafood as well.
And we'd go there and have like a plate of
like prawns and like butter and garlic and lemon, you know,
like and I just thought it was the most delicious
(19:31):
thing I've ever had. It was so exotic and so yeah.
So I had all really all that wonderful food. But
I never thought I was going to become No. I
kind of just assumed I'm going to follow in my parents'
path an academic, you know, go to university study, which
(19:51):
I did. I went to university and I studied and
Tel Aviv University. In the late nineties, I studied university,
I moved to Tel Aviv.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
So what did you eat?
Speaker 3 (20:02):
So my first apartment that I had with my boyfriend
at the time, we live by Caramel Market, which is
the main food and vegetable market, so it really was
an apartment really close to the market. And this was
when the first time I started to cook because I
was at university, like and so many students, like you know,
food was not forthcoming anymore, as I had to cook,
(20:25):
and I fell in love with cooking through the market.
So on Friday I would go and buy fresh herbs
and vegetables and cheese that I had this incredible cheese standard.
They had all the Balkan cheeses, you know those sitting
in brine, you know, the different.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Types of feta and many different there.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
Many different types of I used the word feta, but
it's the Bulgarian cheeses. It's a whole range of young
cheeses that they vary in saltiness and texture from something
which is more like a ricotta to something much firmer. Yeah,
you have like really really bland like with unsalted cheeses
that would you be used for one use, and then
(21:05):
things that are crumblier like more like every coota, and
some are much smoother, like other Greek cheeses, And so
you'd have the whole.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
The whole range, and would you entertain.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yeah, we would have other student friends came over and
I would make like you know, I remember making, you know,
just starting to understand what the like marinating a chicken
and grilling it and making a salad to go with,
like very baby steps in the kitchen. But I did
fall in love with cooking through that. But I was
still I was still in university. I still didn't think
it's going to be a career for me. So I
(21:38):
finished a master's degree in comparative literature and philosophy, and
I just decided it's not for me.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
The academic life.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
I just thought it was very insular, you know. I
thought like I was speaking to like seven people who
knew what I was talking about, and then the rest
of the world knew nothing and wasn't really remotely interested,
and it just felt esoteric. And it's like and then
the opposite happened when I started cooking, because all of
a sudden, everybody is interested, right, and that dichotomy between
(22:14):
somewhere where you really have no one to share your
passions with the world in which you can everybody is
interested was such a eye opener for me, and I realized, yes,
I want to try and engage in this conversation, and
I'm in that conversation. When I came to London in
nineteen ninety seven, I haven't made up my mind who
(22:34):
I wanted to be and what I wanted to do.
But I thought, like, I'm going to take a year off,
and I went to the Court on Blue and yeah,
and I took a course there in Marleybone, Yeah, yeah,
Marlivau Lane. Yeah. And I did a course there and
I thought, Okay, maybe there's something for me there, but
I wasn't at sure I did. I did pastry and
(22:58):
savory cooking for three months and then I started working
in the evenings. I worked at the Capitol Restaurant and yeah, yeah,
behind Harrod I was. It was really good. They had
a mission and star and I was an assistant to
the pastry chef there. I was working with her right
into pastry, right into pastry. Well, I didn't know anything,
(23:19):
so they always throw you into pastry if you don't
know anything because you know nobody's way. So I loved that.
And then I met Roly Lee and I started working
at Kensington Place. Yeah that was in ninety eight. Yeah,
And I worked for him for a couple of years
(23:41):
and I learned a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
So by that time you kind of knew.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
That this was a career, but that Yeah, I was
a pastry chef, yeah, and I always I was with
Roly I did mostly pastry as well. I was running
the pastry kitchen at some point, and then I realized,
I'm want to specialize in pastry. And then I went
to work for Gale a baker and spice.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
What do you think you liked about pastry?
Speaker 3 (24:04):
I loved how that just the fact that you got
to play with your go for I love that. And
the magic that happens when you bake. I still I
still love that, how one thing turns to another thing.
You know, you take a chicken, you put in the oven,
you get a chicken. But when you take a cake
and you put in the oven, you get something completely different.
It's it's not the same thing. And I still love
(24:27):
that magic. So I really specialized in baking, and even
when we opened up to lengthy years later, I was
I was still baking. Yeah, when I went to your
kitchen now, it really reminded me of the way we
work at Baker and Spice. Like Gaye would come back
from the market with like strawberries and apricots and quinces
and she said, like, there you go, like six boxes.
(24:49):
Do something with them. There wasn't a plan, and there
wasn't a there wasn't a recipe or a plan for
the day. It was just like these things arrived because
she saw them and they looked great, and we just
had to work what we have.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
Amazing times you could do that.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
And then and then my good friend, my ex partner,
Noam Barr, came back from traveling the world and he said, like,
let's do something together. And he studied business and I
was a Baker and Spice at the time, and he
said like he said, like, let's let's open a shop.
And we decided to do it. And it took about
(25:25):
a year to make it all happen. And Sammy Sammy Tamimi,
who's our other partner, I wasn't quite ready to join us,
so we started the process without him. And it was
supposed to be just a bakery in which I would
be baking. And then when Sammy joined at the very
last minute. This was in two thousand and two when
(25:45):
we opened on Lidbury Road in notting Hill, he joined
us and we decided we're going to have two sides
to our offering, which would be freshly made salads and
savory food mirrored by amount of cakes and fruit are colors,
(26:09):
and we just thought, like the same thing that you
were doing in restaurants, we thought we can do the
same kind of philosophy apply it in in a takeout environment.
You know, we will just cook things freshly every single
day and sell it until we run out. And that
was still the idea that these these tiny kitchens produce
(26:30):
a lot of food and people come in and instead
of cooking themselves, we put the food and the cakes
out there and they come and buy them. But there
was there was nothing made off site. There's nothing. We
don't buy anything and we just cook it all there
for you.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I think what you brought to us to London to
food was a sense of exotic which was also so accessible.
You know that you had ingredients of perhaps the words
we couldn't pronounce, so we had a dish that was
named something we'd never heard of, or we could go
in and try one of your beautiful salads and take
(27:17):
it home and eat it. Or it just celebrates so
much a kind of a joy of ingredients of cooking.
Would you call this Middle Eastern?
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Do you like that phrase or think so? I don't
think it's Middle Eastern. There's been Eastern sensibilities in what
we do. So even when Sammy and I started cooking
and serving food, it wasn't until like when we published
the book Jerusalem, in which we talked about our heritage
and background Sami's Palestinian background in Jerusalem, my Jewish background
(27:50):
in Jerusalem. Only that then people started saying, oh, Middle
Eastern ottelengis and Middle Eastern restaurants because before we yeah,
we used to have tahini and sumac and all those things,
but we also used to use miso and soy and
pomegranates and chili and cumin, which are not specific to
this region. But there's something about this kind of little
(28:12):
strip of the that goes from all the way from
Tunisia and Morocco and North Africa all the way through
the Middle East and then through South Asia all the
way to Southeast Asia, and it has a certain language
that I think we use. Sometimes you find something in
Mexico that speaks the same language, but it's a kind
of some sunny temperament. It's Chile's it's garlic, it's citrus,
(28:36):
it's these kind of intense flavors. So of course the
Middle East has them, but there's other places that have them,
and we just love to borrow from all those parts
of the world and use it and build on it.
Speaker 2 (28:49):
To travel.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Yeah, I travel less now, but I used to travel.
My children are seven and ten. They're still quite young,
and so I chose to travel less when they were
born because I realized that every time I traveled, if
I couldn't take them with me, I would miss them
too much.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
But I find it necessary to go to Italy. You know,
it's a kind of we go, we go to taste
the new oil. But for me, going back to the
source is very important, you know, to actually go to
somebody's house in Rome or in Piso, or in Milan.
There's a kind of sense of also. It kind of
(29:27):
makes me feel we are you know, the connection is strong,
and those roots are very important, you know, the identity too.
Speaker 3 (29:34):
Well, I have that in Israel. So yeah, because my
mom's we go to visit her a few times a year,
and she lives outside a village in our village called
Abu Goosh, which is on the way from Tel Aviv
to Trusiam, and whenever we arrive, we go and as
soon as we'd arrive with the kids, we go and
eat in the local restaurants and we have those platters
(29:56):
of Palestinian food that I love so much, and then
we go to the green grove certain by the local vegetables,
and I reconnect and I love that and I find
it very familiar in a way that I don't find
anywhere else. You know, everything is very familiar.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
It's amazing. I'd like to know what you feel about
the food scene or the culture of food in Israel
right now is something that I'm made aware of all
the time, either by friends of mine who go there,
friends of mine who live there, and chefs that come
into the restaurant from you know, I can see them.
You know, there's the table of eight Israelis and they've
(30:34):
come and there they order everything on the menu or
they're tasting. And in London there are more restaurants how
did this happen?
Speaker 3 (30:44):
I don't have a really good explanation, but I'm seeing
it everywhere, Like you say, in London, there's some fantastic
Israeli restaurants. In America, they're really really flourishing, and in
Israel itself. And what I find interesting is this thing
has not existed fifteen or twenty years ago. When I
was living in Israel, there wasn't an original cuisine, and
(31:05):
those great restaurants, the good restaurants that you could find were,
you know, the restaurants of immigrants that have just arrived, right.
But this didn't formulate, and I think so when I looked.
I did a show for the BBC years ago called
Jerusalem on a Plate, and I took the director around
and showed him, you know, this is this this cuisine
and that cuisine, and then I was trying to formulate
(31:27):
actually what was going on there I really understand. And
the one thing that occurred to me is that it
was just all so new and fresh, and nobody felt
that they were kind of like committed to one way
of cooking. There was something very liberating about this sense
that everything is possible, you know, like, which is a
very Israeli thing. First of all, like you know, there
(31:48):
isn't that there's a lais say fair kind of like
whatever attitude, which helps. But also nobody felt nothing had
and I haven't seen it. I haven't been to another
country that is just so recently informed. But there's that
possibility of just like working with all those options, is
created these cuisines, and people travel in Israel or they
(32:09):
go to Israeli restaurants here and they realize that there's
something very original about it. And I think it has
to do with the fact that it's not indebted to
one part of the world, one teh wir one cuisine.
It's kind of it's a magpie of cuisines and then
it comes together really nice.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Is it strongly Ara based?
Speaker 3 (32:27):
I think there is a lot, and that's not being
acknowledged enough. There is a very very strong underlying Palestinian
tradition of cooking that underscores this, and often people don't
talk about it enough for political reasons, and they don't
mention that often enough. I always have to say that
I don't think it's a bad thing that Palestinian cooking
(32:49):
has become so much part of what is perceived as
Israeli cooking. But it's really important to tell that story,
to tell that fact, because that's very much basis of
so many of those dishes, not all of them, many
of them belong to Jewish diasporas of other cultures, but
Palestinian is really a massive factor there in the way
(33:11):
the news really.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Chef's cook I think that's something that we're all looking
at right now, is acknowledging the history and to recognize
where these roots come from.
Speaker 3 (33:19):
I think what I had understood intuitively when I started
publishing cookbooks is that the best thing you can do
is just put it all on paper, you know, like,
where does this come from? Because first of all, I
think it adds depth to a recipe if you can
tell a story. But I think it's also really important
to be able to acknowledge the people who were even
(33:40):
if it's an individual, not necessarily a culture. You know,
to say, oh, that's this person, that idea came from
this person or from that person, because it's just the
right thing to do. But also it really helps to
create a much more a deeper sense to the recipe,
to the dish that you're eating, if you know where
it comes from.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
Writing books.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Yeah, all of my last few books are all co written,
so I've collaborated with someone. That's what allows the books
to stay fresh, the fact that they featured other voices,
not just mine.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
What is your most recent book?
Speaker 3 (34:19):
So my most recent book is The Extra Good Things
from the Auto Lengthy Test Kitchen. So it comes out
of the Auto Lengthy Test Kitchen, and I've written it
together with Norm Rudd, who's yeah, she's half Baheranian, half English,
so she's got that kind of what I have, which
is this kind of mix of culture, and it is
a book that tries to feature what we call extra
(34:42):
good things are condiments, are things that marinades and dressings
and sprinkles and things that are derivatives of a recipe
that you could kind of keep to one side and
use another day. Because often in our food we have
a dressing or sauce marinad. And what we're trying to
do is at tea people how people used to cook
in the old days, So they would instead of cooking
(35:04):
starting from scratch, every time you're go into the kitchen,
you'd have like a pot of sauer kraut or kimchi
or flavored oil or just something that is useful already
is halfway through it to a meal. So every recipe
has a takeout, something that you could keep on a
shelf or in the fridge that you could use for
for future.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I always like, first, you know, to follow a recipe really,
really precisely and really do it, and then you know,
to spontaneously change. And I also think when you talk
about the number of ingredients. I had a friend who
had six children and one summer she was taking They
were all under the age of sort of shed twins,
under the age of ten. I said, are you taking
(35:42):
all the kids to Martha's Vintage? She said no, because
I'm just going to take four of them, because you know,
it's really hard to stay with a friend when you
have six kids, but if you only have four, you
could stay with anybody, you know. And it was so relegive,
you know, to the idea that suddly, you know, so simple,
because you did book with ten ingredients, didn't you.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
Yeah, well I did simple. It has some ingredients. Some
recipes have ten or yeah, which is like nothing, which
for me is not exactly ingredients. Yeah, I know, And
people say, you know that, why do you need so
many ingredients? And so many exciting areas. I said, you
don't need anything. It's a choice, you know. But there
is this expectation these days that every recipe is for everyone,
(36:22):
and people can I substitute this if I don't like that,
And I always have to say, yes, you can, But
why don't you just choose another recipe?
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeaybe exactly. But and you're cooking? Are you cooking at home?
Do you have time to.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Cook less than I used to, which is a shame.
I cook mostly on the weekend, so we or we
uh as parents to young kids, I wouldn't say young parents.
We don't entertain much during the week, but on the
weekend we have people over and then there will we
do big weekend meals.
Speaker 2 (36:52):
It's a question that I ask everyone if there's a
food we know, people that we turn to for comfort
and places we go for comfort. But if there's something
that you would want to eat apart from your mother's
chocolate being hidden, I can never get rid of that
image on the top shelf, is there a food that
you've reached for when you really need comfort?
Speaker 3 (37:13):
So I have to say that from all the things
that I've had, it's things that my father used to
cook or my Italian grandmother she used to make. And
it's not just because I'm at the River cafam saying,
as she used to make ki ala romana. Ah yeah, yeah,
And it's the one smell that I have as you know,
(37:34):
people talk too much about you know, those you know,
moments of childhood, but this is really one that stands
so strong in my mind, in my head, that is
there thinly spread semolina and yoki on a tray, dotted
with butter and cheese, and it would go under the
grail and all and since they did get grete cheese
(37:55):
from Italy and they had parmigiano, and she would put
that under the graill and it would just make and
that kind of semolina soft, you know, milky with a
grated cheese milk and cheese on top. It's just it's
just such a child with favor and that is definitely
the one that brings the most comfort to me. And
I've never managed to do it as not even remotely
(38:15):
as good as she does.
Speaker 2 (38:17):
I know, well, we'll try and make it for if
I know, we would have put it on the menu.
It on the menu sometimes, yeah, yeah, especially we have
it on very often when we have white truffles, because
it's one of those delicious recipes, which it's still just
without white truffles, but it does take because it's like
it's almost like a cheese fla and they are so delicious.
(38:40):
So we're going to go ahead and have lunch in
the River Cafe now without Jacky Romana. But the next
time we do, we'll definitely have Thank you, Yes, let's
do it.
Speaker 3 (38:51):
Thank you so much, very much, great.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
Down the River Cafe book is now available in bookshops
and online. It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated
with photographs from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book
has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a
(39:14):
host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted
for new cooks. The River Cafe Lookbook Recipes for Cooks
of All ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production of
iHeart Radio and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
(39:35):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.