December 18, 2023 • 44 mins
Trudie Styler, film producer, actress, activist and farmer, joins Ruthie to talk about their shared connection of the food, wine and history of Tuscany.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
This now is getting very official.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yeah, you're on the red chair, have a sea Oh
my headphones?
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Yeah? Yeah, you headphones?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Okay, do I put my hands onto it?
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Yes, of course, Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I've always lived with and loved only connect Im Foster's
epigraph in his novel Howard's End expressing the moral importance
of connections between people, and this is one of the
reasons I'm so happy to have Trudy Styler, producer, actress, activist,
farmer here today, for she and I are connected. Trudy
(00:51):
and I are both passionate about the landscape, wine. Trudy
has her own vineyard, food and history of southern Tuscany
where every summer we fill our houses with our children,
our children's friends, and our friend's children, occupying every bed
and making space for yet another chair around the big table.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
So here we are.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Trudy has stories to tell, a recipe for grouse she's chosen,
and knowledge about all that she produces. Trudy is a
woman I admire, a woman I adore. What a connection.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Hello Ruth, Hello.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Judy, I'm crying. Okay, it's been a long time since
I've seen.
Speaker 5 (01:29):
I know you chose of all the recipes in all
our books.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
The grouse.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yes, I'm very excited about roast grouse from the River Cafe.
One grouse, plucked and cleaned, and two hundred and fifty
mills of Aliatico di Pulia. So preheat the oven to
two hundred and thirty s, place the grouse in a
roasting tin, and roast for twenty to thirty minutes. Depending
(01:57):
on the size and how rare you like your grouse,
we saw them slightly pink. The easiest way to test
for dumbness is to pull the leg away from the
body at the thigh. Remove from the oven and leave
the bird to rest for two to three minutes. Remove
and untie the string. Heat the roasting tin over a
medium high heat. Add the remaining wine and.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Reduce by half.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Return the bird to the tin and turn to coat
it in the juices.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Then serve.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
This is delicious, served with braised gaboloniro.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Can I introduce Sean.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
We know and who is the executive brilliant chef at
the River Cafe, and she knows more about grouse than
probably either of us or even a grouse, don't you, Sean, Yes,
and everything else. So we can talk with Sean as well,
what do you think about grass?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Is it your of the game birds? Is it your favorite? Sean?
Speaker 6 (02:56):
I think it's when you get them in August September,
before they've become high and really aged. You can they're
very perfumed and that you can really taste you know,
what the grouse feed on for example, you know, like
heathers and little berries, and you can almost imagine the
hills that they've they've eaten off, and you can really
(03:16):
taste it in the flesh.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, I can't wait because this really is the bird
that I have never and I don't ask me why
I've never tasted grouse, but I haven't. So when I
saw it on the menu, this is for me today.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Yeah brave? Yeah, yeah, it's good. And when you cook it?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Where do you think if you were, if truly wanted
to go home and cook a grass, would you say
to be brave as well?
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Would you think?
Speaker 6 (03:41):
I think in English restaurants or like people cook the
game very pink, But I think in the way we
cook at the River Cafe. If you think of dishes
like a rosta misto in Italy, where things might go
on an open fire and cook for for longer you
can cook the meat slightly more.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
We also put brisketter and really for just for the juices.
Speaker 6 (04:05):
Today we're doing it with a massive big tomato, like
a Sorrento tomato and a bit of brunello actually, and
cook all that with the grouse. And tomato works with
the grouse at this time of year, because the grouse
isn't too strong.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Why does it get more pungent as it goes on India?
Speaker 6 (04:24):
So I think if it's hung so once it's being shot,
that they'll hang them for a while and they seem
to get more punchy. And I'm sure that's why they
would have served them in gentlemen's clubs followed by cigars.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Because Richard, my husband, used to come in and always
embarrassingly to me, I always say, I'd like a grouse
to the wage it and I'd like it.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
Really well hung, a well hung grouse, which could have
another connotation like okay, but he liked it. He liked it.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
When a friend of mine wants to tell me that
Peter Rice tell me that he was sent to grouse
and it was over the holiday, and so it just
sat in the post office of some Irish small town
and then he went home and cooked it and it
was just he said, it was the best grouse he's
ever had, but just been probably about to disintegrate it
was so old. So this recipe for grouse seems to
(05:19):
not be something that you might have eaten in your childhood,
because I know that you had a very very different
kind of childhood, probably from your children's, And so maybe
we should go back to the very early days. What
was it like growing up in your family food wise?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well, I was born in the Midlands, in the West Midlands,
that little village called Stokebriar, near to a town called Bromsgrove,
near to the county of Worcestershire, and so we were
brought up on a council house estate in Worcestershire, where
sort of being post war I was born in the
mid fifties, there was still this feeling of people had
(05:59):
to come serve and preserve. My mum could go to
the butcher's just once a week for the roast on
the Sunday roast, and then the Sunday roast was made
to stretch, you know, throughout the week, and she was
very inventive with how she could stretch it. And in
fact I became a lover of awful, which I preferred
over the Sunday roast, just because it was just very flavorful.
(06:23):
And so we would have liver, liver and onions and
kidneys that she'd sote with some mushrooms, and then we
would have do you know what fagots are or savory
ducks because my mother was from the.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
North, fews about faggots.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
What are faggots?
Speaker 4 (06:40):
So fagots were sausage.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
So no, it was using up the rest of the
joint that hadn't been used on the Sunday, so you
could use cooked meats or if you hadn't gotten enough
to stretch for three kids in our cades and mom
and dad, then she would buy some sausages.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And then raw on you.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Lots of raw onions were used, and I got the
job of being her apprentice to mince everything up, and
then she would buy a pigs bladder, and then the
cooked meats and raw sausage meat with the onions, salt
and pepper wrapped up in the bladder the pigs bladder
(07:21):
and into the oven it went and was utterly delicious.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
The way to describe her. To take that effort, you know,
to do that. She could have easily made kind of
cold beef sandwiches or done lots of other things that
they've leftover joint that she actually did that work was
going to get the pigs bladder and to make the
faggots shows.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
But I think it was really you know, at the time,
living in rural England, you had a butcher who had
every part of the animal and nothing was ever wasted
because you know, now we have you know, so called superfoods.
I live in New York and so oh, let's have
bone broth, you know, But we were having bone broth
(08:06):
because my mum made stock from big animals bones, and
she would make soups from her stock.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
And that was very typical of the time.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I think. Did you sit down for dinner as a
family every night? Did she work during.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
The day, Yes, she worked at school. She was the
school dinner's lady.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
Have you had faggots?
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Did you ever make them?
Speaker 1 (08:27):
No?
Speaker 6 (08:28):
But my mum the same had that kind of post
war kind of do you think with faggots? And I
vaguely remember having gravy on?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Did she also cook one big roast and then do
that with it?
Speaker 5 (08:41):
My mom did yeah.
Speaker 6 (08:42):
And then in Welsh actually the day Thursday actually translates
into liver day, and that was the day you just
have liver.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I love liver, but I like very pale, real liver, really.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Really, but bring on the blood sheep's liver.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
I think would be normal for.
Speaker 5 (09:07):
Us to have lambs.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yes, Lambs liver was the sort of the po one, yes,
and pigs. Pigs liver was the cheapest one. Lambs liver
was actually very tasty, yeah, very yes, and bigger yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But also I have to say that before you know,
it was just as if you look at Italian food,
you know, the food of Tuscany, and one to particularly,
you'll make a miniestrone on a you know one day,
and then you'll make rebalta and then you know you'll
have tomatoes, and then you make you know, using the
bread as a way of extending the food again, no waste,
(09:41):
you know, everything is always used, was it?
Speaker 5 (09:44):
You're only your mother who cooked?
Speaker 3 (09:46):
We all, I.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Mean, we were three girls in my family and dad
worked in a lamp shade factory and he was also
the school caretaker, and I was also co opted to
help him, which was always much more fun than helping
mom sort of like because I got the washing up jobs,
but with Dad I got to change into my overalls
(10:08):
and sweep the playground with him. And in the summer
we were given permission from the headmistress to go into
the orchard which was part of our playing ground fields
and was full of plums and apples, and we would
put the ladders up against the trees and we would
take home literally boxes of apples, and as we both
(10:30):
rode bikes, we'd have to sort of do copious journeys
to get the apples back. So we'd wrap up the
apples in newspaper or brown paper, it's usually newspapers. We
had the Daily Express every day, so we had piles
of Daily Express papers and they would all go under
my bed, So under my bed I would have throughout
(10:51):
the winter my little pals piles of our apples.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
They smell and.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yes, yes I did like an apple. And then we
would sort of start to use them through the winter
bit by bit. But still by March they were going strong.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
Why wouldn't they go off?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Because having them in a dark place, they didn't go off,
but they did get a bit wrinkled, but it didn't
stop being able to make, you know, baked apples, and
she made so many apples. She made toffee apples for
Walls Road when Yeah, in November, November fifth, Bonfire night,
(11:33):
she made all the kids in our street toffee apples
from the the purloined with permission apples that were under
my bed.
Speaker 6 (11:43):
We used to get sent out BlackBerry picking with a
big tupple thing and my mom would be like, you
can't come home till it's full, and then she'd make
obviously chutney jam and then apple crumble apple pie. Because
you've got your in your We've got the.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
Suet, haven't you, Rucy?
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yes, I don't know. Have you come across a Torah
suet in your No.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
I grew up in upstate New York.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
You have to remember what truly arrived in the River
Cafe with a basket, a beautiful basket. And I would
like you to tell Sean and I what's in this basket?
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yes, so Rucy. This it's called the original, a Torah
shredded beef suet for fluffy dumplings, pastries, puddings and pies.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
And I'm going to throw up. Yeah, but that's right.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
That's a classic.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
So this this is my appointment to His majesty, And actually.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I really like the packaging, if I'm allowed to say that,
because it does look of its time, didn't it beautiful?
Speaker 1 (12:52):
So fluffy dumplings were one of the first things that
my mum taught me to make, and they couldn't be
simpler to make because it's three ingredients. It's a tora
beef suit, which is lard really sort of like made
from a cow.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
They've shredded it for you.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
It doesn't have to be refrigerated.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
You just this is no I just keep it in
the pantry.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
And so you have say, eight ounces of a tora suit,
eight ounces of self raising flower, pinch of salt water,
combine the lot, and then as your chicken casserole or
chicken stew is bubbling away nicely, you put them in
at the last twenty minutes, and so the gravies go
(13:32):
into the dumplings, but the dumplings are rising because of
the self raising flower. They actually sort of like provided
much needed carbs for kids in the growing up late
fifties sixties, So if you couldn't afford potatoes at the time,
this was a very sort of cheap fare but.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
You make that.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, yeah, you let them put them in soup, in
stews and soups, and yes, it's a And of course
I live in New York too now, so I have
chicken soup and mulcible I know. I mean, I was
going to say that, I'm sure every culture has their dumpling.
Chinese food has dumplings, and Jewish food that I grew
up with. My grandmother always made mats of ale, so
(14:13):
mars is that cracker, and there would be chicken soup
and mulciles. These are probably better have you cooked with sup?
Speaker 6 (14:21):
I mean that is really familiar to me as well.
My mum and my grandma used to make dumplings.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
It was such the most delicious.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Thing, really.
Speaker 6 (14:30):
Yeah, but it does sort of slightly explain. It's just
pure saturated fat, isn't it. Like nowadays they probably have
a health warning on them, like too many dumps.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
And eight hundred and sixteen calories in one hundred grams
of this.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
So yeah, they're so yummy.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
Yeah, but then you could use that to make pudding
as well, can't you.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
So you can make.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Puddings.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
They're good, and so grow up food was it was
clearly important there was a value to sitting down and
having a meal.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, I don't think my mom had it in her
to open cans of things and make pies. I mean
Steingh talks about his mum making frey bentoss pies from
cans of beef cubes and then making a pastry case,
you know, and that's pretty inventive. But my mother was
(15:26):
just what she'd say, it was a scratch cook. She
would begin with the stock, and she'd begin at the
beginning and then and the end of it was that
we would sit down, even in a council house, with
an embroidered tablecloth that she'd embroidered, and sit together.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
It was important to her. Did you ever go to
a restaurant? No, you'd never been in a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
No. We went to a restaurant once with my nana
that works cook grandmother, and she brought us to sort
of was like a Lion's tea house in Cheshire and
that was the first, my first memory of being in
a restaurant.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Six seven something like that.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
And I saw somebody eating or looked like a plate
of worms to me, and it was they were these long,
long strands and it was red and I could not
believe my eyes. It's like, are they eating worms with
all that red sauce? Is that the worm's blood?
Speaker 5 (16:35):
And I think back.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
To that image spaghetti, Yes it was spaghetti, and declaring
I'll never eat that in my life, only to now
sort of like spaghetti. Iliolio pepperoncino is actually my favorite
thing and it served every day in our house in
Italy because I just love it so much I could
(16:58):
I could eat it all day long.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
And you said that.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
You had an accident you had to get through, which
has sounded very scary and very disabling.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
I was only two and a half, so i'd toddled
out of the house. My mum was bathing my younger sister,
and I went down the stairs and the little girl
from over the street had called me to see if
I could if I could come over to her place,
and did I want to have a sweet tea? So
(17:33):
I said, oh yes, And she was only about five herself,
I think, and she took me over to their house.
She got me a suite, and I think her mother
thought that I was going to be escorted back to.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Our house and I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
So I was crossing the road and a fifteen year
old kid had jumped into a baker's van. The baker
was delivering his bread, and the kid had jumped into
this lovely big van and knocked it from neutral into
(18:13):
first and took the hand break off, and the truck
started to The van started to roll down the hill
the same time that I was on the ground, and
luckily the wheels missed me, otherwise I wouldn't be telling
the story now. But the exhaust pipe caught me at
(18:33):
the back of my head and dragged me along the street.
So I sort of like really taking off quite a
lot of the left hand side of my face.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Do you memory of that?
Speaker 4 (18:45):
No, don't have a memory of it. What I do
have a memory of.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Because it must be sort of deep in my cellular
system of being fearful of the road, So yes, being
I think growing up, you know, kids can be a
bit cruel to children who look a bit different. And
I did look a bit different as a youngster, you know,
(19:10):
I had the very livid marks on my face. But
mum got a job as the school as dinner's lady,
and she's sort of like she was very formidable looking
at my mom. She was about fifteen and a half
stone and like nobody was going to mask with Pauline Styler,
so she protected me from a lot of you know,
unfair remarks that would being made.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Did you know The River Cafe has a shop. It's
full of our favorite foods and designs.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
We have cookbooks and.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Then in napkins, kitchen ware, toad bags with our signatures,
glasses from Venice, chocolates from Turin. You can find us
right next door to the River Cafe in London or
online at shop The River Cafe dot c UK. So
(20:03):
you grew up in a house that valued food, picking
apples and with your father it seems like a very close,
you know, childhood with a very severe trauma. What was
it like when you left home? You know when you
decided to be an actor?
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Right, yeah, I decided to be an actor. Well, things
weren't so good when I decided to be an actor
with my dad and me, because he was very fearful
of you know what is that nobody in Walls Road
has become an actor. And it was just an upsetting
time because I was headstrong seventeen year old who you
know had been had been to a grammar school and
(20:42):
had a great education and loved literature and loved everything
to do with the performing arts. And I think it's
a way to sort of like express myself too, that
I felt that all those years of not knowing who
I was was expressed.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Through a character.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
And so it was very it's a big passion to become,
to become somebody in the performing arts.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
What was his ambition for you?
Speaker 6 (21:10):
Do you know?
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Did he want you to go to university?
Speaker 4 (21:12):
Now?
Speaker 1 (21:12):
He wanted me to have a safe job that guaranteed
a paycheck, and the Harris Brushworks was the paintbrush factory.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
That was the closest to us.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
That he wanted me to get a job in the
typing pool and make use of my grammar school education
by an office job. Yeah, I've suddenly my life changed
profoundly being an actor, the student actor, going to Bristol,
learning the arts, getting a job sort of like going
(21:44):
off to Manchester, so exploring areas in England and then
eventually the Rawal Shakespeare Company in London. And I had
a season at the Warehouse when it was the don
Mar was the RS's.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Other home other than the Old Witch.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
And then they moved to the Barbicane and put all
the blaze into the barbecane, So you know, the horizons
just being opened and opened and opened with these life experiences,
and then you know, sort of then if we're talking
food and wine, sort of trying new new things. Traveling
(22:26):
to Morocco was a big change of scenery for me
when I was eighteen, hitch hikings through the country with
my boyfriend and staying there for three months. It was
sort of like an amazing experience of the first time
I'd had Middle Eastern food.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
So you know, all these.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Sights and sounds and smells or evocative, aren't they to
the country's palette and what they are like? And so
you begin to be inclusive in your own diet of
so many different flavors and tastes that you acquire with
the years that go by.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I think it's exposure, isn't it. And I always think
that one of the defining things for our families. You know,
I know that my grandparents were immigrants from Russia and Hungary,
so their vision was very small. So my father and
mother were a product of that and grew and grew.
But when I think about what my children are exposed
(23:29):
to in terms of travel experiences, food, restaurants and exposure
factor is so much greater than what I had. But
did your father hold it against you?
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Did you see him? Was he a friend or did.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
He We took a while to become close. But when
Sting and I bought Lake House, it's a farm that
we've had in Wiltshire for thirty two years now, we'd
had two kids, he came and visited and then I
found my dad again, because you know, he was a
(24:06):
man of the country. I loved the country and we
would go through the grounds and I'd say, Harry, what
shall we Well after we fell out, I never called
him dad again.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
He was Harry to me.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And I'm proud to say I've got a beautiful grandson
who's named after him. But we became house, you know,
and that was important that and I didn't need him
as my dad anymore because I'd sort of found my
place in life without my parents. But he became a
(24:39):
really important component of steering and guiding me with how
to create a really good organic farm and made me
sort of feel more more courageous about us having this
sort of diverse farm, and it was an organic farm
and Soil Association were like pastically helpful and Dad was
(25:02):
always coming over and giving me his you know, his
ten cents worth of you know, you know, just plant
different varietals and of apples and of potatoes and uh,
you know. He We've had like even in our very
modest garden in the Midlands, we because we were in
(25:26):
middle House, we sort of had this double lot and
so we grew a fantastic amount of of veggies and
Dad was very proficient with that and didn't use any
fertilizers or anything. You know. It was what we were
always rapturous when we saw so many worms in the garden.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Even with lake House, your first home that you did
an organic garden. Was that a family decision? It was
something that you no, I think.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
I think it's to do with my very early childhood
of I'm not afraid of the soil. I know that
if the soil is good, good things will come from
good soil, bad things will come from bad soil. So
when you know, having lake House, creating an organic farm
was sort of easy because it was England. Getting to Pellagio.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
And I was going to ask you how Tuscany and
so culture Mary so Pelagio.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
I didn't I certainly planted a veggie garden so many tomatoes,
because that was sort of like hugely satisfying that these
brilliant tomatoes just grow and thrive in the heat, and
you can smell the heat in them and the sweetness
that comes from them. But taking on Palagio, which just
(26:45):
was a whole different animals than taking on lake House.
But what I did decide, after two years of just
having vegetable gardens and seeing that we've got rather wonderful olives,
that probably just I should learn a bit about the vineyard.
And so with that started to get the hands into
(27:07):
the soil.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
It was a vineyard when you bought the house.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
There was a very broken down vineyard, not really tended
that world, no drainage really, what.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
Was the wine like?
Speaker 1 (27:17):
The wine was well, it was being sold into the
community at that point. But I was having my neck
adjusted at a chiropractice and I said, that's where is
that picture? It was a picture of a marvelous vineyard.
And I said, what is that vineyard doing on your wall, Stefan?
And he said, oh, that's my vineyard. And I said, oh,
(27:40):
can I come of see it? And I said how
are you doing this? And he said, well, this guy
called Alan York and he does biodynamic wine, and would
you like to meet him. I said, absolutely, cut to
Alan York coming to Pellagio. And so for the first
seven years we worked together Alan and I and I
(28:03):
had the great pleasure to learn a lot from Alan.
And two thousand and two we planted a lot of
varietals and so.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
We placed all the vineyards with your own, your own grapes.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
We kept some and we created more. In two thousand
and seven we had our first vintage for Sister Moon
and when we dance, and then.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
We have to say that the wine name after the songs.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
So a lot of the wines are named after sting songs.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Message in a battle.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
Message in a bottle.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Moon when we died, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And I bought you today my favorite, which is a
white Vermentino. Actually it's called back, it's called bach sella boca.
We made this in twenty twenty when we were full on,
you know, pandemic and wearing male. Nobody seemed to be
kissing anybody. So I said, let's call this kisses on
(29:04):
the mouth and hope for the day to come back.
And so that's that's the Vermontino. This is a canti
reserver called when we dancels me.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Do you do that? Yeah? I do them. I love
that label. It's beautiful.
Speaker 5 (29:21):
Why don't you describe it?
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Because nobody can see it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
So the picture of us of a lady dressed as catwoman,
and she's in point shoes, ballet point shoes, and she
is very nimbly walking across the top of two wine bottles,
perfectly balanced. Because I think that wines should be balanced,
and food should be balanced, and in all things in
(29:47):
life we aim to be balanced.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I always think when we do the olive oil trip
to taste the new olive oil and the wine in November,
it you know, we have a romance about wine. We
have a romance about olive oil. We see these beautiful
bottles of the product. But you know, in the end
or in the beginning, it is agriculture. It is a farm.
It is about the weather. And when you talk to
them about what olive oil were going to have and
(30:11):
when it's going to taste like, they'll talk about a
bug that they had, you know, or they'll talk about
this year. You know, everyone is very, very worried about
the fact that the heat of the summer has going
to mean that both wine and olive oil production is
going to be very endangered for this year. Are you
involved to the extent that you are concerned about whether.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
We're quite lucky where we are because we we have
a cooler evenings. There wasn't one evening I don't know
about for you, Lucie, but we so we had those
insufferable forty one degree days, but in the evenings, you know,
we went it went down to you know, maybe in
the late seventies, and that is the best news for
(30:55):
the vines because they recover themselves. And it wasn't morning
without the sort of being a sort of feeling of dewey,
sort of mourning.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
And how can we talk about the olive oil? Is
that olive oil that I see in there?
Speaker 4 (31:08):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Okay, nice nice part? Is it all from your yes? Absolutely,
don't mix it with other no.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
So it's extra virgin, biological means organic, and the olives
of front Oyo, Mariolo and Licino.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
So we do you want to Why don't you talk
about the wine trip and the olive oil trip because
this is a big deal in the River Cafe that
we've done since almost the day Rose and I started
but when we did it the first years, there were
like five of us or four of us actually Rose
and myself.
Speaker 6 (31:43):
And now every October we take anyone that's worked at
the restaurant, for any of the chefs, if worked for
a year or above a year, we take them to
Tuscany to do big olive oil tastings and wine tastings
at the main wineries that we that we kind of
buy from, but I mean, we can always swing by
(32:04):
if you're around.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
It's a very special relationship that we have to meet
the people who grow the olive oil, who produced the wine,
who live It's all mostly in Tuscany, although now we've
we've extended to Piermonte and Pulia. It's now probably about
six producers that we go to that are really like family.
You taste the wine, you taste the olive oil, and
(32:29):
you learn and what it is for the people who've
worked here, who've been cooking you know this food, who've
been making the brusquetoes or frying cavalon you know, cavalonaro
or whatever they've been working. They haven't it's a bit
back to our children. It's it's about exposure, and some
of them have never been to Italy or have ever been,
certainly to Tuscany and have certainly never sat down at
(32:52):
a table where the food was cooked in the kitchen
and the ingredients were grown in the garden in Tuscany.
And so it's a really important trip for us that
they do this. We go for about four days, don't
we And you.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Do it sort of after presumably the grapes have been harvested,
and then during the time of the vendemia of the
of the olives. Yeah, so we're talking November.
Speaker 6 (33:18):
No beginning of November, usually early early November, and then
and what I think what it shows the chefs often
is the fact that you'll only get maybe two bottles
of oil of one tree, and people just chug oil
in until they've been to Tuscany and Sunday they're like,
this is it's insane the amount of trees that you
(33:39):
need to produce bottles of oil. And they suddenly have
more respect for, you know, the ingredients, and.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
They're inspired when they come back, and they they're so
proud of having been.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
Don't you think it's yeah, just to sit on the
bus going up the mountains and down the mountains after
drinking a pint of oil.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I'm here with Joseph to Velli. We just were talking
to this truly style and we've just been cooking lunch
in the restaurant, and so did you do a grouse today?
Speaker 7 (34:09):
We did grouse today. We'd had them for a few days.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
That was quite nice, and tell me about it.
Speaker 7 (34:14):
So today we cook grouse in red wine, which one
we use the canty. You know, grouse is a very
traditional thing. You have these kind of old fashioned London
restaurants that serve grouse with sweet little sauce and game
chips and all this stuff, which is lovely but really
quite different to what we do, which is we just
(34:34):
put it in the wood oven and it gets kind
of heat from all over in some wine, and this
kind of becomes this kind of self sourcing bird. Very
often we put a piece of bread, a bit of
brisquader underneath the grouse and that kind of soaks up
the flavor and the wine and you know, a little
olive oil and you've got the most wonderful dish.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
If you were telling somebody at home who doesn't have
a wood of it wants to have a grouse, what
advice or what tips would you give to the person
cooking a grouse at home.
Speaker 7 (35:07):
Rest it a little bit in the pan that you
cook it in, you know, maybe cooking in a pan
with some wine. It doesn't have to be wine, actually,
it could be anything. Sometimes we might have a little
brandy and a little bit of tomatoes.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Is also quite nice.
Speaker 7 (35:19):
Olive oil or butter definitely inside the grouse. It's nice
to put a little bit of oil or a little
bit of butter because that gets hot and then it
cooks from the inside out as well. So I'd say
that's a pretty good tip actually, and then you know,
we bring it to the front of the oven. But
I would say, you know, after a little while of roasting,
just leave it on the side.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
please make sure to rape and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Thank you. Tell us about what you were doing in Naples.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Two and a half years ago, I was asked would
I like to direct a documentary about Naples. I said, well,
I don't know Naples, and they said exactly, so we
would like as sort of like a foreign pair of
eyes on a city they don't know anything about, and
what do you think of it? And this two and
(36:31):
a half year journey has been this revelatory really in
the humanity that is there as well as the art
and the extraordinary food that you can be served in Naples.
I can honestly say there was not one bad restaurant
that I visited and with a camera or without a
(36:52):
camera that didn't sort of like give you just wonderful
food that is just so just the quality as just
couldn't be bettered anywhere. And so this feeling of this
city that is ignored and passed over started to give
(37:14):
way to a city that i'd rather sort of started
to fall in love with. And I would visit certain
people that I thought were interesting for me to interview
and what they were doing, and got to hear their
stories and listen to them. And so I've covered a
sort of like a big spectrum of what Naples is
(37:39):
and what it was looking at through the eyes of
two nonagenarians of the Second World War, which was brutal
for the Neapolitans.
Speaker 4 (37:49):
I even have a rapper.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Give us the three thousand years of its history in
three minutes to sort of like just put things in perspective,
how can I see it? So I was going to
the Roman film and which I'm very happy about, and
then it'll have a theatrical release in Italy.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
Title it's called it's called posentrare.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
An ode to Naples, so means may I enter, may
I come in? I would ask permission to people who
lived in these very sort of modest homes on the
street level, and they didn't even have windows. Some of
them they had just shutters, and so the shutters are
open in the day to give daylight. But I would
(38:33):
tap on their shutters and say pas, and they'd say
massi the falls road, who welcome, And before I knew it,
there was an espresso delicious on the table and biscotti,
and then we've become friends in minutes, and I would
hear their stories. And the thing about the Neapolitans are there,
(38:56):
it's it's actually no accident of Felini or even though
he didn't really make any movies in Napoli that I
can name, but he always cast out of Naples because
they are the most telegenic natural just they will give
their all in front of the camera and their most
incredible faces from the you know the amount of DNA
(39:20):
mixtures that that I alluded to three thousand years of
history in these twelve conquests, so that the DNA is
as in their words, very contaminated. And they don't use
that word as a pejorative. They use it as absolute
pride in who they are.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
You tell me that you are going to now have
a new home in New York. As there a way
that you would bring the kitchen to New York, or
you can forge in Central Park? You know, I once
did a dinner with Alice Walters in New York, and
I tell you, I know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to call Alice and say, Alice, what are
you cooking? We're doing a charity bed for Edible school Yard.
(39:58):
And I said, where are you gonna? You know, we've
ordered this from here and that from here, and the
vegetbles from here. What what who have you ordered your
vegetables from? And she said, oh, Ruthie, I am going
to forage in Central Park for our food.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
Did she find little alat by the wrist?
Speaker 2 (40:17):
She found salad leaves, and she found some herbs, and
she found probably she probably didn't find anything.
Speaker 5 (40:23):
She made me feel really inferior.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
What will you do for food in New York?
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Do you think, well, we go you know it's of
course it's no, you just can't compare it. But we've
got really good farmers markets. And I go go there
on a Sunday and take the little grandchildren along now,
and they like to carry them to baskets and get
(40:52):
some fruits and veggies put in. But I like supporting
the folks who've come in from the different areas and
traveled three or four hours.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
I mean, I grew up in upstate New York and
there was corn in the summer and sort of you know,
I don't know, cabbage and whatever in the winter. And
now you see these farmers in this market.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Did we go there together? I kept remember if we went.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
We were there to Union Square and they have like
five different kinds of rugelo. They have, you know, all
these tomatoes and they're growing them in Long Island and
it's very it's very inspiring.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
I think, yeah, yeah, no, I like to you eat
that much in restaurants? Do I eat out in restaurants? Yeah?
A couple of nights a week, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
And you've described food being part of your family values.
Your grandmother's cooking, your father's picking the blackberries, your apples
under your bed, you know, buying, living in houses, producing wine,
producing olive oil, honey, having children and grandchildren to cook
for and to take to the market. So food is
all that, and in a life of ever changing times,
(41:59):
we have also food which is comfort. So I suppose
my last question to you, one that I've asked everyone
since Kirsty Young told me, Ruthy have one question for everybody.
And the question we ask is if you needed food
for comfort, for comfort, not because you're hungry, but because
you need comfort. What is there food in your past,
(42:22):
or in your future, or just that you love that.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
You would go to when you need comfort from food.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
Yes, I brought you.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
My ultimate comfort food in my basket this morning. Ruth
Torah shredded beef suet to make the most fluffy dumplings.
Speaker 5 (42:42):
I'm really looking forward.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Will you make some for me? I'm coming, I'm going
to make you. I can't wait. I'm going to have
a fluffy dumpling.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
And until then, you can make the Okay, we'll make Yeah,
we'll come with the stew at the soup.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
But we can make it. We can make a great
chicken soup.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
So thank you Sean, thank thank you to this is
such a good, good error and we will connect.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Yeah, yes, please, thank.
Speaker 6 (43:07):
You, so Hungary.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
Listen to.
Speaker 7 (43:27):
Ruthie's Table four is produced by Atamei Studios for iHeartRadio.
It's hosted by Ruthie Rogers and it's produced by William Lensky.
This episode was edited by Julia Johnson and mixed by
Nigel Appleton.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Our executive producers are Fay Stewart and Zad Rogers.
Speaker 7 (43:44):
Our production manager is Caitlin Paramore, and our production coordinator
is Bella Selini. This episode had additional contributions by Sean
win Owen.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Thank you to everyone at The River Cafe for your
help in making this episode.
This now is getting very official.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yeah, you're on the red chair, have a sea Oh
my headphones?
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Yeah? Yeah, you headphones?
Speaker 1 (00:19):
Okay, do I put my hands onto it?
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Yes, of course, Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
I've always lived with and loved only connect Im Foster's
epigraph in his novel Howard's End expressing the moral importance
of connections between people, and this is one of the
reasons I'm so happy to have Trudy Styler, producer, actress, activist,
farmer here today, for she and I are connected. Trudy
(00:51):
and I are both passionate about the landscape, wine. Trudy
has her own vineyard, food and history of southern Tuscany
where every summer we fill our houses with our children,
our children's friends, and our friend's children, occupying every bed
and making space for yet another chair around the big table.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
So here we are.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Trudy has stories to tell, a recipe for grouse she's chosen,
and knowledge about all that she produces. Trudy is a
woman I admire, a woman I adore. What a connection.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
Hello Ruth, Hello.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Judy, I'm crying. Okay, it's been a long time since
I've seen.
Speaker 5 (01:29):
I know you chose of all the recipes in all
our books.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
The grouse.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yes, I'm very excited about roast grouse from the River Cafe.
One grouse, plucked and cleaned, and two hundred and fifty
mills of Aliatico di Pulia. So preheat the oven to
two hundred and thirty s, place the grouse in a
roasting tin, and roast for twenty to thirty minutes. Depending
(01:57):
on the size and how rare you like your grouse,
we saw them slightly pink. The easiest way to test
for dumbness is to pull the leg away from the
body at the thigh. Remove from the oven and leave
the bird to rest for two to three minutes. Remove
and untie the string. Heat the roasting tin over a
medium high heat. Add the remaining wine and.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
Reduce by half.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
Return the bird to the tin and turn to coat
it in the juices.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
Then serve.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
This is delicious, served with braised gaboloniro.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Can I introduce Sean.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
We know and who is the executive brilliant chef at
the River Cafe, and she knows more about grouse than
probably either of us or even a grouse, don't you, Sean, Yes,
and everything else. So we can talk with Sean as well,
what do you think about grass?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Is it your of the game birds? Is it your favorite? Sean?
Speaker 6 (02:56):
I think it's when you get them in August September,
before they've become high and really aged. You can they're
very perfumed and that you can really taste you know,
what the grouse feed on for example, you know, like
heathers and little berries, and you can almost imagine the
hills that they've they've eaten off, and you can really
(03:16):
taste it in the flesh.
Speaker 4 (03:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Well, I can't wait because this really is the bird
that I have never and I don't ask me why
I've never tasted grouse, but I haven't. So when I
saw it on the menu, this is for me today.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Yeah brave? Yeah, yeah, it's good. And when you cook it?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Where do you think if you were, if truly wanted
to go home and cook a grass, would you say
to be brave as well?
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Would you think?
Speaker 6 (03:41):
I think in English restaurants or like people cook the
game very pink, But I think in the way we
cook at the River Cafe. If you think of dishes
like a rosta misto in Italy, where things might go
on an open fire and cook for for longer you
can cook the meat slightly more.
Speaker 5 (04:00):
We also put brisketter and really for just for the juices.
Speaker 6 (04:05):
Today we're doing it with a massive big tomato, like
a Sorrento tomato and a bit of brunello actually, and
cook all that with the grouse. And tomato works with
the grouse at this time of year, because the grouse
isn't too strong.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Why does it get more pungent as it goes on India?
Speaker 6 (04:24):
So I think if it's hung so once it's being shot,
that they'll hang them for a while and they seem
to get more punchy. And I'm sure that's why they
would have served them in gentlemen's clubs followed by cigars.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Because Richard, my husband, used to come in and always
embarrassingly to me, I always say, I'd like a grouse
to the wage it and I'd like it.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
Really well hung, a well hung grouse, which could have
another connotation like okay, but he liked it. He liked it.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
When a friend of mine wants to tell me that
Peter Rice tell me that he was sent to grouse
and it was over the holiday, and so it just
sat in the post office of some Irish small town
and then he went home and cooked it and it
was just he said, it was the best grouse he's
ever had, but just been probably about to disintegrate it
was so old. So this recipe for grouse seems to
(05:19):
not be something that you might have eaten in your childhood,
because I know that you had a very very different
kind of childhood, probably from your children's, And so maybe
we should go back to the very early days. What
was it like growing up in your family food wise?
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well, I was born in the Midlands, in the West Midlands,
that little village called Stokebriar, near to a town called Bromsgrove,
near to the county of Worcestershire, and so we were
brought up on a council house estate in Worcestershire, where
sort of being post war I was born in the
mid fifties, there was still this feeling of people had
(05:59):
to come serve and preserve. My mum could go to
the butcher's just once a week for the roast on
the Sunday roast, and then the Sunday roast was made
to stretch, you know, throughout the week, and she was
very inventive with how she could stretch it. And in
fact I became a lover of awful, which I preferred
over the Sunday roast, just because it was just very flavorful.
(06:23):
And so we would have liver, liver and onions and
kidneys that she'd sote with some mushrooms, and then we
would have do you know what fagots are or savory
ducks because my mother was from the.
Speaker 5 (06:37):
North, fews about faggots.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
What are faggots?
Speaker 4 (06:40):
So fagots were sausage.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
So no, it was using up the rest of the
joint that hadn't been used on the Sunday, so you
could use cooked meats or if you hadn't gotten enough
to stretch for three kids in our cades and mom
and dad, then she would buy some sausages.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And then raw on you.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Lots of raw onions were used, and I got the
job of being her apprentice to mince everything up, and
then she would buy a pigs bladder, and then the
cooked meats and raw sausage meat with the onions, salt
and pepper wrapped up in the bladder the pigs bladder
(07:21):
and into the oven it went and was utterly delicious.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
The way to describe her. To take that effort, you know,
to do that. She could have easily made kind of
cold beef sandwiches or done lots of other things that
they've leftover joint that she actually did that work was
going to get the pigs bladder and to make the
faggots shows.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
But I think it was really you know, at the time,
living in rural England, you had a butcher who had
every part of the animal and nothing was ever wasted
because you know, now we have you know, so called superfoods.
I live in New York and so oh, let's have
bone broth, you know, But we were having bone broth
(08:06):
because my mum made stock from big animals bones, and
she would make soups from her stock.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
And that was very typical of the time.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
I think. Did you sit down for dinner as a
family every night? Did she work during.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
The day, Yes, she worked at school. She was the
school dinner's lady.
Speaker 5 (08:24):
Have you had faggots?
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yes?
Speaker 5 (08:26):
Did you ever make them?
Speaker 1 (08:27):
No?
Speaker 6 (08:28):
But my mum the same had that kind of post
war kind of do you think with faggots? And I
vaguely remember having gravy on?
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Did she also cook one big roast and then do
that with it?
Speaker 5 (08:41):
My mom did yeah.
Speaker 6 (08:42):
And then in Welsh actually the day Thursday actually translates
into liver day, and that was the day you just
have liver.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I love liver, but I like very pale, real liver, really.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Really, but bring on the blood sheep's liver.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
I think would be normal for.
Speaker 5 (09:07):
Us to have lambs.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yes, Lambs liver was the sort of the po one, yes,
and pigs. Pigs liver was the cheapest one. Lambs liver
was actually very tasty, yeah, very yes, and bigger yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:20):
But also I have to say that before you know,
it was just as if you look at Italian food,
you know, the food of Tuscany, and one to particularly,
you'll make a miniestrone on a you know one day,
and then you'll make rebalta and then you know you'll
have tomatoes, and then you make you know, using the
bread as a way of extending the food again, no waste,
(09:41):
you know, everything is always used, was it?
Speaker 5 (09:44):
You're only your mother who cooked?
Speaker 3 (09:46):
We all, I.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Mean, we were three girls in my family and dad
worked in a lamp shade factory and he was also
the school caretaker, and I was also co opted to
help him, which was always much more fun than helping
mom sort of like because I got the washing up jobs,
but with Dad I got to change into my overalls
(10:08):
and sweep the playground with him. And in the summer
we were given permission from the headmistress to go into
the orchard which was part of our playing ground fields
and was full of plums and apples, and we would
put the ladders up against the trees and we would
take home literally boxes of apples, and as we both
(10:30):
rode bikes, we'd have to sort of do copious journeys
to get the apples back. So we'd wrap up the
apples in newspaper or brown paper, it's usually newspapers. We
had the Daily Express every day, so we had piles
of Daily Express papers and they would all go under
my bed, So under my bed I would have throughout
(10:51):
the winter my little pals piles of our apples.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
They smell and.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Yes, yes I did like an apple. And then we
would sort of start to use them through the winter
bit by bit. But still by March they were going strong.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
Why wouldn't they go off?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Because having them in a dark place, they didn't go off,
but they did get a bit wrinkled, but it didn't
stop being able to make, you know, baked apples, and
she made so many apples. She made toffee apples for
Walls Road when Yeah, in November, November fifth, Bonfire night,
(11:33):
she made all the kids in our street toffee apples
from the the purloined with permission apples that were under
my bed.
Speaker 6 (11:43):
We used to get sent out BlackBerry picking with a
big tupple thing and my mom would be like, you
can't come home till it's full, and then she'd make
obviously chutney jam and then apple crumble apple pie. Because
you've got your in your We've got the.
Speaker 4 (12:01):
Suet, haven't you, Rucy?
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Yes, I don't know. Have you come across a Torah
suet in your No.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
I grew up in upstate New York.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
You have to remember what truly arrived in the River
Cafe with a basket, a beautiful basket. And I would
like you to tell Sean and I what's in this basket?
Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yes, so Rucy. This it's called the original, a Torah
shredded beef suet for fluffy dumplings, pastries, puddings and pies.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
And I'm going to throw up. Yeah, but that's right.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
That's a classic.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
So this this is my appointment to His majesty, And actually.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
I really like the packaging, if I'm allowed to say that,
because it does look of its time, didn't it beautiful?
Speaker 1 (12:52):
So fluffy dumplings were one of the first things that
my mum taught me to make, and they couldn't be
simpler to make because it's three ingredients. It's a tora
beef suit, which is lard really sort of like made
from a cow.
Speaker 4 (13:05):
They've shredded it for you.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
It doesn't have to be refrigerated.
Speaker 4 (13:08):
You just this is no I just keep it in
the pantry.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
And so you have say, eight ounces of a tora suit,
eight ounces of self raising flower, pinch of salt water,
combine the lot, and then as your chicken casserole or
chicken stew is bubbling away nicely, you put them in
at the last twenty minutes, and so the gravies go
(13:32):
into the dumplings, but the dumplings are rising because of
the self raising flower. They actually sort of like provided
much needed carbs for kids in the growing up late
fifties sixties, So if you couldn't afford potatoes at the time,
this was a very sort of cheap fare but.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
You make that.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, yeah, you let them put them in soup, in
stews and soups, and yes, it's a And of course
I live in New York too now, so I have
chicken soup and mulcible I know. I mean, I was
going to say that, I'm sure every culture has their dumpling.
Chinese food has dumplings, and Jewish food that I grew
up with. My grandmother always made mats of ale, so
(14:13):
mars is that cracker, and there would be chicken soup
and mulciles. These are probably better have you cooked with sup?
Speaker 6 (14:21):
I mean that is really familiar to me as well.
My mum and my grandma used to make dumplings.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
It was such the most delicious.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Thing, really.
Speaker 6 (14:30):
Yeah, but it does sort of slightly explain. It's just
pure saturated fat, isn't it. Like nowadays they probably have
a health warning on them, like too many dumps.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
And eight hundred and sixteen calories in one hundred grams
of this.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
So yeah, they're so yummy.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
Yeah, but then you could use that to make pudding
as well, can't you.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
So you can make.
Speaker 4 (14:58):
Puddings.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
They're good, and so grow up food was it was
clearly important there was a value to sitting down and
having a meal.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, I don't think my mom had it in her
to open cans of things and make pies. I mean
Steingh talks about his mum making frey bentoss pies from
cans of beef cubes and then making a pastry case,
you know, and that's pretty inventive. But my mother was
(15:26):
just what she'd say, it was a scratch cook. She
would begin with the stock, and she'd begin at the
beginning and then and the end of it was that
we would sit down, even in a council house, with
an embroidered tablecloth that she'd embroidered, and sit together.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
It was important to her. Did you ever go to
a restaurant? No, you'd never been in a restaurant.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
No. We went to a restaurant once with my nana
that works cook grandmother, and she brought us to sort
of was like a Lion's tea house in Cheshire and
that was the first, my first memory of being in
a restaurant.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Six seven something like that.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
And I saw somebody eating or looked like a plate
of worms to me, and it was they were these long,
long strands and it was red and I could not
believe my eyes. It's like, are they eating worms with
all that red sauce? Is that the worm's blood?
Speaker 5 (16:35):
And I think back.
Speaker 1 (16:36):
To that image spaghetti, Yes it was spaghetti, and declaring
I'll never eat that in my life, only to now
sort of like spaghetti. Iliolio pepperoncino is actually my favorite
thing and it served every day in our house in
Italy because I just love it so much I could
(16:58):
I could eat it all day long.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
And you said that.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
You had an accident you had to get through, which
has sounded very scary and very disabling.
Speaker 1 (17:13):
I was only two and a half, so i'd toddled
out of the house. My mum was bathing my younger sister,
and I went down the stairs and the little girl
from over the street had called me to see if
I could if I could come over to her place,
and did I want to have a sweet tea? So
(17:33):
I said, oh yes, And she was only about five herself,
I think, and she took me over to their house.
She got me a suite, and I think her mother
thought that I was going to be escorted back to.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Our house and I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
So I was crossing the road and a fifteen year
old kid had jumped into a baker's van. The baker
was delivering his bread, and the kid had jumped into
this lovely big van and knocked it from neutral into
(18:13):
first and took the hand break off, and the truck
started to The van started to roll down the hill
the same time that I was on the ground, and
luckily the wheels missed me, otherwise I wouldn't be telling
the story now. But the exhaust pipe caught me at
(18:33):
the back of my head and dragged me along the street.
So I sort of like really taking off quite a
lot of the left hand side of my face.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Do you memory of that?
Speaker 4 (18:45):
No, don't have a memory of it. What I do
have a memory of.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
Because it must be sort of deep in my cellular
system of being fearful of the road, So yes, being
I think growing up, you know, kids can be a
bit cruel to children who look a bit different. And
I did look a bit different as a youngster, you know,
(19:10):
I had the very livid marks on my face. But
mum got a job as the school as dinner's lady,
and she's sort of like she was very formidable looking
at my mom. She was about fifteen and a half
stone and like nobody was going to mask with Pauline Styler,
so she protected me from a lot of you know,
unfair remarks that would being made.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Did you know The River Cafe has a shop. It's
full of our favorite foods and designs.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
We have cookbooks and.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Then in napkins, kitchen ware, toad bags with our signatures,
glasses from Venice, chocolates from Turin. You can find us
right next door to the River Cafe in London or
online at shop The River Cafe dot c UK. So
(20:03):
you grew up in a house that valued food, picking
apples and with your father it seems like a very close,
you know, childhood with a very severe trauma. What was
it like when you left home? You know when you
decided to be an actor?
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Right, yeah, I decided to be an actor. Well, things
weren't so good when I decided to be an actor
with my dad and me, because he was very fearful
of you know what is that nobody in Walls Road
has become an actor. And it was just an upsetting
time because I was headstrong seventeen year old who you
know had been had been to a grammar school and
(20:42):
had a great education and loved literature and loved everything
to do with the performing arts. And I think it's
a way to sort of like express myself too, that
I felt that all those years of not knowing who
I was was expressed.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Through a character.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
And so it was very it's a big passion to become,
to become somebody in the performing arts.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
What was his ambition for you?
Speaker 6 (21:10):
Do you know?
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Did he want you to go to university?
Speaker 4 (21:12):
Now?
Speaker 1 (21:12):
He wanted me to have a safe job that guaranteed
a paycheck, and the Harris Brushworks was the paintbrush factory.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
That was the closest to us.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
That he wanted me to get a job in the
typing pool and make use of my grammar school education
by an office job. Yeah, I've suddenly my life changed
profoundly being an actor, the student actor, going to Bristol,
learning the arts, getting a job sort of like going
(21:44):
off to Manchester, so exploring areas in England and then
eventually the Rawal Shakespeare Company in London. And I had
a season at the Warehouse when it was the don
Mar was the RS's.
Speaker 4 (22:01):
Other home other than the Old Witch.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
And then they moved to the Barbicane and put all
the blaze into the barbecane, So you know, the horizons
just being opened and opened and opened with these life experiences,
and then you know, sort of then if we're talking
food and wine, sort of trying new new things. Traveling
(22:26):
to Morocco was a big change of scenery for me
when I was eighteen, hitch hikings through the country with
my boyfriend and staying there for three months. It was
sort of like an amazing experience of the first time
I'd had Middle Eastern food.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
So you know, all these.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Sights and sounds and smells or evocative, aren't they to
the country's palette and what they are like? And so
you begin to be inclusive in your own diet of
so many different flavors and tastes that you acquire with
the years that go by.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I think it's exposure, isn't it. And I always think
that one of the defining things for our families. You know,
I know that my grandparents were immigrants from Russia and Hungary,
so their vision was very small. So my father and
mother were a product of that and grew and grew.
But when I think about what my children are exposed
(23:29):
to in terms of travel experiences, food, restaurants and exposure
factor is so much greater than what I had. But
did your father hold it against you?
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Did you see him? Was he a friend or did.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
He We took a while to become close. But when
Sting and I bought Lake House, it's a farm that
we've had in Wiltshire for thirty two years now, we'd
had two kids, he came and visited and then I
found my dad again, because you know, he was a
(24:06):
man of the country. I loved the country and we
would go through the grounds and I'd say, Harry, what
shall we Well after we fell out, I never called
him dad again.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
He was Harry to me.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
And I'm proud to say I've got a beautiful grandson
who's named after him. But we became house, you know,
and that was important that and I didn't need him
as my dad anymore because I'd sort of found my
place in life without my parents. But he became a
(24:39):
really important component of steering and guiding me with how
to create a really good organic farm and made me
sort of feel more more courageous about us having this
sort of diverse farm, and it was an organic farm
and Soil Association were like pastically helpful and Dad was
(25:02):
always coming over and giving me his you know, his
ten cents worth of you know, you know, just plant
different varietals and of apples and of potatoes and uh,
you know. He We've had like even in our very
modest garden in the Midlands, we because we were in
(25:26):
middle House, we sort of had this double lot and
so we grew a fantastic amount of of veggies and
Dad was very proficient with that and didn't use any
fertilizers or anything. You know. It was what we were
always rapturous when we saw so many worms in the garden.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Even with lake House, your first home that you did
an organic garden. Was that a family decision? It was
something that you no, I think.
Speaker 1 (25:54):
I think it's to do with my very early childhood
of I'm not afraid of the soil. I know that
if the soil is good, good things will come from
good soil, bad things will come from bad soil. So
when you know, having lake House, creating an organic farm
was sort of easy because it was England. Getting to Pellagio.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
And I was going to ask you how Tuscany and
so culture Mary so Pelagio.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
I didn't I certainly planted a veggie garden so many tomatoes,
because that was sort of like hugely satisfying that these
brilliant tomatoes just grow and thrive in the heat, and
you can smell the heat in them and the sweetness
that comes from them. But taking on Palagio, which just
(26:45):
was a whole different animals than taking on lake House.
But what I did decide, after two years of just
having vegetable gardens and seeing that we've got rather wonderful olives,
that probably just I should learn a bit about the vineyard.
And so with that started to get the hands into
(27:07):
the soil.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
It was a vineyard when you bought the house.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
There was a very broken down vineyard, not really tended
that world, no drainage really, what.
Speaker 5 (27:16):
Was the wine like?
Speaker 1 (27:17):
The wine was well, it was being sold into the
community at that point. But I was having my neck
adjusted at a chiropractice and I said, that's where is
that picture? It was a picture of a marvelous vineyard.
And I said, what is that vineyard doing on your wall, Stefan?
And he said, oh, that's my vineyard. And I said, oh,
(27:40):
can I come of see it? And I said how
are you doing this? And he said, well, this guy
called Alan York and he does biodynamic wine, and would
you like to meet him. I said, absolutely, cut to
Alan York coming to Pellagio. And so for the first
seven years we worked together Alan and I and I
(28:03):
had the great pleasure to learn a lot from Alan.
And two thousand and two we planted a lot of
varietals and so.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
We placed all the vineyards with your own, your own grapes.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
We kept some and we created more. In two thousand
and seven we had our first vintage for Sister Moon
and when we dance, and then.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
We have to say that the wine name after the songs.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
So a lot of the wines are named after sting songs.
Speaker 5 (28:37):
Message in a battle.
Speaker 4 (28:38):
Message in a bottle.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Moon when we died, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
And I bought you today my favorite, which is a
white Vermentino. Actually it's called back, it's called bach sella boca.
We made this in twenty twenty when we were full on,
you know, pandemic and wearing male. Nobody seemed to be
kissing anybody. So I said, let's call this kisses on
(29:04):
the mouth and hope for the day to come back.
And so that's that's the Vermontino. This is a canti
reserver called when we dancels me.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Do you do that? Yeah? I do them. I love
that label. It's beautiful.
Speaker 5 (29:21):
Why don't you describe it?
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Because nobody can see it.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
So the picture of us of a lady dressed as catwoman,
and she's in point shoes, ballet point shoes, and she
is very nimbly walking across the top of two wine bottles,
perfectly balanced. Because I think that wines should be balanced,
and food should be balanced, and in all things in
(29:47):
life we aim to be balanced.
Speaker 2 (29:49):
I always think when we do the olive oil trip
to taste the new olive oil and the wine in November,
it you know, we have a romance about wine. We
have a romance about olive oil. We see these beautiful
bottles of the product. But you know, in the end
or in the beginning, it is agriculture. It is a farm.
It is about the weather. And when you talk to
them about what olive oil were going to have and
(30:11):
when it's going to taste like, they'll talk about a
bug that they had, you know, or they'll talk about
this year. You know, everyone is very, very worried about
the fact that the heat of the summer has going
to mean that both wine and olive oil production is
going to be very endangered for this year. Are you
involved to the extent that you are concerned about whether.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
We're quite lucky where we are because we we have
a cooler evenings. There wasn't one evening I don't know
about for you, Lucie, but we so we had those
insufferable forty one degree days, but in the evenings, you know,
we went it went down to you know, maybe in
the late seventies, and that is the best news for
(30:55):
the vines because they recover themselves. And it wasn't morning
without the sort of being a sort of feeling of dewey,
sort of mourning.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
And how can we talk about the olive oil? Is
that olive oil that I see in there?
Speaker 4 (31:08):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Okay, nice nice part? Is it all from your yes? Absolutely,
don't mix it with other no.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
So it's extra virgin, biological means organic, and the olives
of front Oyo, Mariolo and Licino.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
So we do you want to Why don't you talk
about the wine trip and the olive oil trip because
this is a big deal in the River Cafe that
we've done since almost the day Rose and I started
but when we did it the first years, there were
like five of us or four of us actually Rose
and myself.
Speaker 6 (31:43):
And now every October we take anyone that's worked at
the restaurant, for any of the chefs, if worked for
a year or above a year, we take them to
Tuscany to do big olive oil tastings and wine tastings
at the main wineries that we that we kind of
buy from, but I mean, we can always swing by
(32:04):
if you're around.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
It's a very special relationship that we have to meet
the people who grow the olive oil, who produced the wine,
who live It's all mostly in Tuscany, although now we've
we've extended to Piermonte and Pulia. It's now probably about
six producers that we go to that are really like family.
You taste the wine, you taste the olive oil, and
(32:29):
you learn and what it is for the people who've
worked here, who've been cooking you know this food, who've
been making the brusquetoes or frying cavalon you know, cavalonaro
or whatever they've been working. They haven't it's a bit
back to our children. It's it's about exposure, and some
of them have never been to Italy or have ever been,
certainly to Tuscany and have certainly never sat down at
(32:52):
a table where the food was cooked in the kitchen
and the ingredients were grown in the garden in Tuscany.
And so it's a really important trip for us that
they do this. We go for about four days, don't
we And you.
Speaker 1 (33:06):
Do it sort of after presumably the grapes have been harvested,
and then during the time of the vendemia of the
of the olives. Yeah, so we're talking November.
Speaker 6 (33:18):
No beginning of November, usually early early November, and then
and what I think what it shows the chefs often
is the fact that you'll only get maybe two bottles
of oil of one tree, and people just chug oil
in until they've been to Tuscany and Sunday they're like,
this is it's insane the amount of trees that you
(33:39):
need to produce bottles of oil. And they suddenly have
more respect for, you know, the ingredients, and.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
They're inspired when they come back, and they they're so
proud of having been.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
Don't you think it's yeah, just to sit on the
bus going up the mountains and down the mountains after
drinking a pint of oil.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I'm here with Joseph to Velli. We just were talking
to this truly style and we've just been cooking lunch
in the restaurant, and so did you do a grouse today?
Speaker 7 (34:09):
We did grouse today. We'd had them for a few days.
Speaker 3 (34:11):
That was quite nice, and tell me about it.
Speaker 7 (34:14):
So today we cook grouse in red wine, which one
we use the canty. You know, grouse is a very
traditional thing. You have these kind of old fashioned London
restaurants that serve grouse with sweet little sauce and game
chips and all this stuff, which is lovely but really
quite different to what we do, which is we just
(34:34):
put it in the wood oven and it gets kind
of heat from all over in some wine, and this
kind of becomes this kind of self sourcing bird. Very
often we put a piece of bread, a bit of
brisquader underneath the grouse and that kind of soaks up
the flavor and the wine and you know, a little
olive oil and you've got the most wonderful dish.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
If you were telling somebody at home who doesn't have
a wood of it wants to have a grouse, what
advice or what tips would you give to the person
cooking a grouse at home.
Speaker 7 (35:07):
Rest it a little bit in the pan that you
cook it in, you know, maybe cooking in a pan
with some wine. It doesn't have to be wine, actually,
it could be anything. Sometimes we might have a little
brandy and a little bit of tomatoes.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Is also quite nice.
Speaker 7 (35:19):
Olive oil or butter definitely inside the grouse. It's nice
to put a little bit of oil or a little
bit of butter because that gets hot and then it
cooks from the inside out as well. So I'd say
that's a pretty good tip actually, and then you know,
we bring it to the front of the oven. But
I would say, you know, after a little while of roasting,
just leave it on the side.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
please make sure to rape and review the podcast on
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Thank you. Tell us about what you were doing in Naples.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Two and a half years ago, I was asked would
I like to direct a documentary about Naples. I said, well,
I don't know Naples, and they said exactly, so we
would like as sort of like a foreign pair of
eyes on a city they don't know anything about, and
what do you think of it? And this two and
(36:31):
a half year journey has been this revelatory really in
the humanity that is there as well as the art
and the extraordinary food that you can be served in Naples.
I can honestly say there was not one bad restaurant
that I visited and with a camera or without a
(36:52):
camera that didn't sort of like give you just wonderful
food that is just so just the quality as just
couldn't be bettered anywhere. And so this feeling of this
city that is ignored and passed over started to give
(37:14):
way to a city that i'd rather sort of started
to fall in love with. And I would visit certain
people that I thought were interesting for me to interview
and what they were doing, and got to hear their
stories and listen to them. And so I've covered a
sort of like a big spectrum of what Naples is
(37:39):
and what it was looking at through the eyes of
two nonagenarians of the Second World War, which was brutal
for the Neapolitans.
Speaker 4 (37:49):
I even have a rapper.
Speaker 1 (37:51):
Give us the three thousand years of its history in
three minutes to sort of like just put things in perspective,
how can I see it? So I was going to
the Roman film and which I'm very happy about, and
then it'll have a theatrical release in Italy.
Speaker 4 (38:07):
Title it's called it's called posentrare.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
An ode to Naples, so means may I enter, may
I come in? I would ask permission to people who
lived in these very sort of modest homes on the
street level, and they didn't even have windows. Some of
them they had just shutters, and so the shutters are
open in the day to give daylight. But I would
(38:33):
tap on their shutters and say pas, and they'd say
massi the falls road, who welcome, And before I knew it,
there was an espresso delicious on the table and biscotti,
and then we've become friends in minutes, and I would
hear their stories. And the thing about the Neapolitans are there,
(38:56):
it's it's actually no accident of Felini or even though
he didn't really make any movies in Napoli that I
can name, but he always cast out of Naples because
they are the most telegenic natural just they will give
their all in front of the camera and their most
incredible faces from the you know the amount of DNA
(39:20):
mixtures that that I alluded to three thousand years of
history in these twelve conquests, so that the DNA is
as in their words, very contaminated. And they don't use
that word as a pejorative. They use it as absolute
pride in who they are.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
You tell me that you are going to now have
a new home in New York. As there a way
that you would bring the kitchen to New York, or
you can forge in Central Park? You know, I once
did a dinner with Alice Walters in New York, and
I tell you, I know what I'm going to do.
I'm going to call Alice and say, Alice, what are
you cooking? We're doing a charity bed for Edible school Yard.
(39:58):
And I said, where are you gonna? You know, we've
ordered this from here and that from here, and the
vegetbles from here. What what who have you ordered your
vegetables from? And she said, oh, Ruthie, I am going
to forage in Central Park for our food.
Speaker 4 (40:13):
Did she find little alat by the wrist?
Speaker 2 (40:17):
She found salad leaves, and she found some herbs, and
she found probably she probably didn't find anything.
Speaker 5 (40:23):
She made me feel really inferior.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
What will you do for food in New York?
Speaker 1 (40:30):
Do you think, well, we go you know it's of
course it's no, you just can't compare it. But we've
got really good farmers markets. And I go go there
on a Sunday and take the little grandchildren along now,
and they like to carry them to baskets and get
(40:52):
some fruits and veggies put in. But I like supporting
the folks who've come in from the different areas and
traveled three or four hours.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
I mean, I grew up in upstate New York and
there was corn in the summer and sort of you know,
I don't know, cabbage and whatever in the winter. And
now you see these farmers in this market.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Did we go there together? I kept remember if we went.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
We were there to Union Square and they have like
five different kinds of rugelo. They have, you know, all
these tomatoes and they're growing them in Long Island and
it's very it's very inspiring.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
I think, yeah, yeah, no, I like to you eat
that much in restaurants? Do I eat out in restaurants? Yeah?
A couple of nights a week, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
And you've described food being part of your family values.
Your grandmother's cooking, your father's picking the blackberries, your apples
under your bed, you know, buying, living in houses, producing wine,
producing olive oil, honey, having children and grandchildren to cook
for and to take to the market. So food is
all that, and in a life of ever changing times,
(41:59):
we have also food which is comfort. So I suppose
my last question to you, one that I've asked everyone
since Kirsty Young told me, Ruthy have one question for everybody.
And the question we ask is if you needed food
for comfort, for comfort, not because you're hungry, but because
you need comfort. What is there food in your past,
(42:22):
or in your future, or just that you love that.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
You would go to when you need comfort from food.
Speaker 4 (42:28):
Yes, I brought you.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
My ultimate comfort food in my basket this morning. Ruth
Torah shredded beef suet to make the most fluffy dumplings.
Speaker 5 (42:42):
I'm really looking forward.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Will you make some for me? I'm coming, I'm going
to make you. I can't wait. I'm going to have
a fluffy dumpling.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
And until then, you can make the Okay, we'll make Yeah,
we'll come with the stew at the soup.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
But we can make it. We can make a great
chicken soup.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
So thank you Sean, thank thank you to this is
such a good, good error and we will connect.
Speaker 4 (43:05):
Yeah, yes, please, thank.
Speaker 6 (43:07):
You, so Hungary.
Speaker 3 (43:13):
Listen to.
Speaker 7 (43:27):
Ruthie's Table four is produced by Atamei Studios for iHeartRadio.
It's hosted by Ruthie Rogers and it's produced by William Lensky.
This episode was edited by Julia Johnson and mixed by
Nigel Appleton.
Speaker 2 (43:40):
Our executive producers are Fay Stewart and Zad Rogers.
Speaker 7 (43:44):
Our production manager is Caitlin Paramore, and our production coordinator
is Bella Selini. This episode had additional contributions by Sean
win Owen.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Thank you to everyone at The River Cafe for your
help in making this episode.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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