Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware - Ruthie Rogers

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

We have the ‘Baroness of the Riverside’ on the podcast this week, the legendary Ruthie Rogers of the River Cafe in London. I made Ruthie Marbella chicken for lunch, and she brought a delicious trio of River Cafe puds for us to taste - including the iconic Chocolate Nemesis! Ruthie knows absolutely everyone and we loved hearing all her stories of the incredible people she has cooked for. We also learned she was taught all her cooking tricks from her grandma, she was born in Woodstock, New York, she developed a podcast in lockdown, and she is our only guest who has ever asked what season of the year her last supper would take place in! We could listen and talk to Ruthie all day! Ruthie’s podcast ‘Table 4’ is available everywhere now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is now streaming on Paramount+. He is much more impressive than the hedgehog I fought previously. Dude, I'm standing right here. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is now streaming on Paramount+. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches,

and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today starting at $19 per month at ZenSurance.com. Be protected. Be Zen. Hello and welcome to Table Mothers. I'm Jessie Ware and I'm here with Lenny looking very gorgeous. I'm not looking gorgeous. You are and it's like you knew that I had olives in the recipe today because you are dressed as a green... Green goddess. Green olive I was going to say. Green olive. Yeah sure, green goddess. Let's go with that. So I'm on cooking duty today and I'm not nervous, I wasn't nervous until I've thought about

it and I thought oh my god I'm such an idiot for doing a pesto when we have probably the queen of British Italian restaurants. We have Ruth Rogers coming over. I don't know whether I should be calling her Ruthie or Ruth. You were like why are you calling her Ruthie? That's the name of her podcast but I always have known her as Ruth Rogers. So Ruth Rogers, Baroness Ruth Rogers of the Riverside, I think that's her like title. Well that's an amazing title. Do you get that like because you're... Well she's an honoree, she must be an honoree, yeah.

But the Riverside bit is like, you know, she has the River Cafe. They didn't, like, just for good measure. I don't know, darling. We'll ask her how you get your name. So, like, if you became the right honourable or whatever, the Baroness of Manners... I'll be the Baroness of Clapham South. Well, you wouldn't take the title, though, would you? No, I wouldn't. Anyway, we have Ruth Rogers coming over to eat with us, to chat, and to talk everything.

River Cafe, I'm really excited to meet her. It's like many other people, one of my favorite restaurants in London. Took my husband there for his 40th this year, last year. Did you have a white peach Bellini? Of course. Well, it depends what's seasonal. Yeah. But- I remember we went there for Hannah's graduation.

It was gorgeous. It's one of those places where you go for something special. But what I love about it is that it isn't stuffy. So it's got like really great energy and just lovely people. Ruthie is bringing the pudding. I wonder if it is the chocolate nemesis. Ruthie is bringing the pudding. I wonder if it is the chocolate nemesis. That's River Cafe, isn't it? I've got all her cookbooks. They're gorgeous and they're simple recipes, but just with delicious ingredients.

Well, I have made, Hannah, I think my sister was like, why have you done this for Ruthie Rogers? I've done Marbella chicken. Why are you, but why, why? Well first of all, Marbella's in Spain. So, yeah, but I wasn't gonna go to Italy, mum. Her whole association is Italy.

But I wasn't gonna go there. It's a bit ersat, isn't it? What's ersat? It means it's contrived, it's not kind of a pure recipe. Like pesto rice. Do you think this is a really bad idea? What I've done. I'm not saying a thing. Well, you know what?

I love my bear chicken and I love our little pesto rice that we do it and I made fresh pesto. Don't let it go dry. I'm not gonna let it go dry. I've got a timer on because last time I made it with Emma and Richard, it was dry. Yes, I'm aware of that, mum. Thank you, no pressure.

Look at you sitting there. Anyway, I'm making my bear chicken, which I really like and now I feel like you Whatever. Maybe I won't call it my bear chicken Fuck it. I'm proud of my bear chicken. I love it. It's delicious haven't made it for a few years and It's tasty. Do you agree that you still enjoy the taste of my bear chicken? I don't know because I haven't made it for so long I'm thrilled that I'm about to give it to somebody who's retained a Michelin star since 1998. It ain't Michelin star darling. No but why would she want Michelin? Like why? No.

Jesus oh whatever my husband will enjoy it later. I'm sure it'll be delicious darling. Yeah I'm sure it will too. It's been marinating for 24 hours. Yeah. I've made homemade pesto to go in our rice. Good. As Martin goes. Oregano. Yes. From the garden, thank you very much. Have you got oregano in your garden? Yes.

You're kidding. Anyway, Ruthie Rogers coming on to talk about our podcast, to talk about food, and I'm going to be feeding her Marbella chicken with a master of rice. Now Ruthie, are we calling you Ruthie or Ruth? I think Ruthie. Does that mean we're on friendly terms? You're always Ruth Rogers down with like NBA Ruth Rogers. Did they say that? That sounds so serious. Ruth is a kind of biblical serious name. So I think what's quite nice is to put the IE at the end of it.

And I think Richard always called me Ruthie. So now I just try and when they, even when, you know, on a legal document, I try and say Ruthie, it's just a nice name. Oh really? I try, but then they send it back and say, you have to change it back to Ruthie. Well Ruthie, it's a pleasure to have you.

You've come in with your dear family friend Sophia from Oregon who's sitting here. And listens to your podcast every single day. In Oregon. In Oregon! Hello Oregon! There you go, we travel. How was your weekend? What a weekend.

I came back from New York. I was working on a book in New York. And I got back on Friday and it was, coming back, you know, January in London, sometimes can be a bit grim and gray, but I had a great weekend and got back into the River Cafe. It was wonderful. Buzzing? It was buzzing. Well, not always. You know, like every other restaurant, you have your quiet times and your not quiet times.

And so I went, I got back on Friday morning and had dinner with friends on Friday night there. And, uh, yeah, I see some of my children. New York, it's interesting. I love, I have to say, I do love, you know, when I go to New York to have the kind of food you don't have in here, so I don't go for the Italian or the French so much, though they're really good Italian restaurants. I go to Minetta Tavern, which is owned by Keith McNally or Balthazar. Keith McNally? I follow him on Instagram. And I'm terrified if I ever offended one of his waiters, he would come for me. He would come for you. He would.

But I wouldn't offend you one of his waiters. And he wouldn't do that. No. And he also, he really loves the people who work for him. Yeah. You know, and he, so he has Mineta Tavern, which is basically very American steaks and, you know, roasted chicken and great oysters. And he really cares about food. And it's also a great atmosphere.

And I like Balthazar, which is a great kind of event place. And for breakfast I go to Saint Ambrose. Because I, Saint Ambrose. It's a Milanese cafe which opened in, it's on the Upper East Side, but it's like being in Milan. You walk in and there are all the cakes and the pastries and then you go in the back and you can have a risotto.

I don't usually go there except for breakfast. So I don't know about the food. I like going to the Carlisle when I'm uptown again. The Carlisle. That bar. Oh my God. The Berman's Bar. The best Cosmolens ever. I wanna sing in the Carlisle one day. Why don again. The Carlisle. That bar. Oh my god. The Berman's Bar.

The best Cosmogony's ever. I want to sing in the Carlisle one day. Why don't you? I would love to. Yeah, what I love about the Carlisle is you go down there and you see somebody who's even older than me kind of come downstairs. You're not old. I'm very old.

Dark glasses on. Yeah. And they live in the Carlisle or something and they come down they say what would you like and they'll say I'll have my regular. Yeah and they all know what you're drinking and the snacks are really great there and the cocktails are the best. Yeah really good and that bar is great and also the murals on the wall you know by Bendelman's yeah. And the floor that black and white I love it.

And where else do we eat? But then mostly, you know, when I travel, either to New York or to LA, I eat a lot in people's homes, you know. So it's nice just to eat, even in New York. And they say, yeah, really, you can find that. People are big cooks, people have a lot more takeaway. And yeah, I find it quite quite astonishing people aren't big cuts.

We went to the have you been to Bar Piti? Yes I love it. It's my favorite. I love it. And also the Waverly Inn I really like. Graydon Carter you know who as the editor of Vanity Fair he bought the Waverly Inn and I think it's really good. Yeah. Because that's kind of, you know, and I like having the kind of food that you have in America, you know, in the States. It's so, it's a kind of fun to eat that kind of food. Yeah, it is.

Ruthie, do you fancy having a bit of food? Very little. That's fine because I had a late breakfast. Okay. So just really, or I don't have to have any food. Well I'd love for you to have a little bit. I would love to have some. But I'm also very aware that you are you and I have done Marbella chicken. Great. Okay fine. Fantastic. Fine. Because it's hard to know what to cook for you. I was just asked if you, and I'm sure you get this, oh I couldn't, you know, what do you feel?

I say, people say, I couldn't cook for you or I'm scared to cook for you or whatever. And I say, I'm the easiest person to cook for because I'm so appreciative of somebody actually cooking for me. If you were at home though, making just an easy Sunday lunch, what would you, would you make an attempt, would you, would it be like the River Conference? Yeah, yeah it would. Yeah. It's my language. Yeah. So I don't go home and then make something.

I make French food. So we have an onion soup. I love the flottant. It's a dessert where you make the... You whip the egg whites and then you poach them in milk. And then use the milk to make the custard. And then you make the custard. Oh, it's the floating island.

Yeah, floating island. Yeah, so I use the French. Floating island or it's called O'Fallaneige. And so we do... And that's what you're going to do like when you get... No. No, that's for when... No, no, no.

Oh, you said for a Sunday lunch, if I was cooking, you know, at home. But I cook Italian food. We have a lot of pasta. We have, you know, my, our go-to pasta, we just say is, you know, at home, but I cook Italian food. We have a lot of pasta. We have, you know, my, our go-to pasta, we just say is, you know, pasta with tomato sauce, you know, with all the various pastas you can have. I always go back to the simple ones. And what would be, what would be your pasta of choice? I do a Tagliarini pasta, I do a kind of thin. I really like the Cipriani brand of pasta.

I don't know if you use them. They're horrendously expensive, but they're really well done. And they come in boxes. And so the Tagliarini is really good. And you're not just going to ask one of the chefs, you're just not going to do that. You know what? I'm just going to take some of the pasta from River Cafe. No, I don't take, I really try not, I don't, I end up taking food.

But if I know I'm doing something and I want the River Cafe to cook the food there, then I will, but I don't really take food home from there that's like, you know, been cooked. I mean, sometimes on a Saturday or Sunday if I'm home, I'll say if there's any vegetables or cooked beans, something that I might not do, but generally I don't take food home. I think I've got all your cookbooks.

The blue one is one of my favorites. That was our very first, that was our first baby. And I love the silver one as well. What do you love about it? I just like, I like the simplicity of it, that it's good ingredients, but not so complicated that you can't manage it. Although we were talking about chocolate nemesis

and whether that was everybody's nemesis trying to make it. Julian Barnes wrote a piece, and it was really funny, you should really, you should google it. He wrote a piece about the nemesis and it was something like, you know, there was a time in the 90s when you walked into any house and any dinner party that was being given and you saw this splodge of chocolate.

Because it was like nobody could make it work. No one could make it work. I say to people now, I say, you know, give me a break. It was our first cookbook, you know, which is very professional. But it did work, but it's very big. And then in all the following books I think the easy book has one easy nemesis and certainly the 30 has it yeah yeah but

also they are it is an easy cake to make but I think we just did it in such a big tin and and it does work you can make the nemesis from that that recipe I think all of your recipes the simplicity of them is the attraction for me. Oh, thank you. And I think it's just delicious ingredients, like you mentioned using a special pasta. And it's worth buying. I think that, you know, they don't have to be expensive ingredients. I mean, ingredients now, like good or bad, everything is expensive.

But I think that if you are making something very simple like a pasta with tomato and we would say you know use the best pasta you can find, use the best tomato and olive oil and then you're there. You know it can be very simple. Wow this is exciting. No that is perfect. Delicious. Tell me about what this is, go on. My mum thought it was quite funny that I chose to do this because basically I used to do this loads when I was younger for dinner parties,

basically so I could prep it the night before. You know what it's like when you're having people over and Otelengi all talk us, but you prep. So anyway, and it's been so miserable, the weather. Now at least there's like kind of blue skies. It's actually more of a summery dish, but you've probably, you've had an Arbea chicken before. Tell me about it.

But I just like it. So how did you make it? Oh God, I just bunged everything in, in a mixer. All right, eight cloves, 10 cloves of garlic, oregano that had so much frost on it from outside, bay leaves, olives, capers, apricots, prunes, wine. Wine goes today. I actually I don't know if I've put enough brown sugar on but whatever because I thought it had so much sweetness anyway. Capers, vinegar,

olive oil, delicious, easy and mixture of thighs and breast because last time I made it it was quite dry, and with the breast, because I overcooked it. Anyway, I think I put more sauce in. But, and then I realized, because we always serve it with pesto rice. It's just been a thing that we've done as a family. But I realized, why am I doing pesto

when I've got Ruthie Rogers here? But anyway, so I made some pesto yesterday, and I've shoved it in with some basmati, it's not a risotto. I'm so excited to eat this. And then with just a herb salad. and I've shoved it in with some basmati, it's not a risotto. I'm so excited to eat this. And then with just a herb salad. But I just quite like it because it's quite peppy and it kind of gets to the back of your throat.

It's kind of also comforting isn't it? Yeah, it is. It is what we want to eat. It is. It's delicious. So can we start at the beginning, Rife? Yeah, sure. You were born in New York.

Upstate New York. I was born in a town called Woodstock. Oh, yes! I know, I used to say I just come from a small town in upstate New York, and then I could say Woodstock. And I went to the local school, and then my last two years of high school, 11th and 12th grade, I went to school

on a ranch in Colorado. It was like a very progressive school. Wow. We all had to kind of clean out the stables and cook in the morning and then yeah, and then we have our parents Progressive you very yeah, my parents were very I mean not not not no no not in that way at all No, I have to correct that they were they were My father was a doctor my mother was a teacher and librarian. We you know, it's kind of that but they father was a doctor, my mother was a teacher and librarian, you know, it was kind of that, but they, politically they were, I felt that they were pretty far to the left, especially

in America. And who was around the dinner table? Well, Woodstock, it was just my family. I have an older brother who's a writer and a sister who's an artist. And so the family meals were very geared around family stories. I came from a kind of family, my grandparents were immigrants who arrived from Russia and Hungary and Oh you're Jewish? 100% yeah. So we are? Yeah. And so I think that there was a lot of talk. No, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. That was the food.

And the feather was the food. And my grandmother on my father's side was apparently, I didn't really know if I was a really great cook and a kind of force. And she used to come with her own rolling pin. You know? And my mother had her only male grandson, my mother, she came up to visit and my mother said, do you want to come and see the baby? And she said, no, let's eat first.

Food was, um, but um, and then I grew up in Woodstock, went to school in Colorado, and then I went to college in Vermont, and then I came here. What did you study? I studied liberal arts education in America, so with a major in English. So what was a memorable dish from your childhood? Well, funnily enough, I would say that a memorable, for me, when I think about growing up in Woodstock in the country, it would be corn on the cob, because we lived in a rural area and there were

a lot of corn fields, a lot of corn fields, and they had markets, right, where the farms were. It wasn't like now you have these kind of farm to table. It wasn't as sophisticated that. It's just simply that you could buy them by the corn. And so I still have a memory when I bite into an ear of corn of growing up in the summer and having that. I also remember picking blueberries. I remember my mother's pot roast, and I remember cheesecake.

But I think mostly it's the memories of food and community and talk and family and occasions was more than all. And there were a lot of artists. When I, my parents moved to Woodstock, it was an artist community. And so there were a lot of artists. And then Bob Dylan came there, you know what I'm saying? And it became- Did you see him? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I used to see him around. And I would say that my friend Libby and I were, after school we used to go to this place called The Bear, which is a cafe. We were doing our homework. We had a test the next day and Bob Dylan sent over a note saying, "'Would you two like to come and see the band rehearse?' We're going from here to there. Oh my God! And Bob Dylan sent over a note saying, would you two like to come and see the band rehearse?

We're going from here to there. Oh my God. And we wrote him back a note saying, no, we have a test tomorrow. No, no, not not not. Biggest regret of your life? Probably. Did you pass the test with flying colours? I don't think so. Ruthie, you the River Cafe is beloved, like by everybody. When you get a whiff of the guest list or the reservations, have you sometimes been

like, you know what, I'm gonna pop in. They're on the list. I'm quite interested to see what they order. Yeah, of course. You know, it's nice when you see the list. It could be a writer who's a novel you read or, you know, it's nice when you see the list. It could be a writer who's a novel you read, or, you know, somebody who worked on the COVID vaccine. It could be any, you know, there's not necessarily just a... Of course. I get very excited by, I think we all get excited when a chef comes in.

You know, we all love seeing the movie stars or the actors and the directors, film people, we all love that, the musicians, artists, but when you see somebody who actually works in the same field you do who is a cook, especially if you really admire them, that means something. How are you finding doing a podcast? I love it. You're great with, I mean I understand it you know. It's um it just is something that happened I always thought there's a restaurant in Brooklyn called Roberta's have you ever been there?

I remember going there 20 years ago or maybe less but 10-15 years ago maybe a long time ago and they had a radio station I thought oh it's so cool maybe we should do River Cafe radio and just when people are coming through, they can do it. And then of course we didn't do anything. And then who would have thought podcasts would happen? And when COVID, we were all going through that and we closed the River Cafe for a long time, longer than we, well, there are no guidelines,

but we just wanted everybody to be safe, you know? And so we closed it, then we thought, well, what should we do? And I thought, why don't we just read a recipe every day? Just for 365 days a year, we'll just read a recipe. And it was a way of sort of getting to communicate with people who we ate in the restaurant we didn't see, because we really missed them. And then when I told this to a friend of mine in New York,

he said, that's like not enough, Ruth. You've got a segue from, you know, recipe to a friend of mine in New York, he said, that's like not enough Ruth, you've got a segue from recipe to a story. And then we did three, we tried it. Luckily there were three great people. Who were the three people that you went through your black book and you went? Well they were just people that were close to me. So I just really good friends.

So we asked Jake Gyllenhaal as a friend. No big deal, sure. And we asked, I know this is going to sound obnoxious. No, I love it. That was great. And we asked Michael Kane. Sure. And, and because he eats in the restaurant every Thursday. You know, we were all at home. Nobody was doing anything. And we asked Wes Anderson, who's a really good friend of mine.

And all we asked him to do was to read a recipe. And then, and then we did the interviews. But on that basis, we sold them right away to I Heart Media, Paul Pittman, and then the rest. And then we just started and we did those three. Well, Wes actually did his, we did his later. I think we did, it was a kind of obnoxious list because we did those three and then we did Paul McCartney. And then once we had Wes and Paul and Jake, then we did... Emily Blunt was in town, so we did with her, and then David Beckham, Victoria, did one. They're hard to get, Ruthie. Well, those days, again, it was just nobody was doing anything.

No, it's because you're loved, and they like your food. No, I don't know. I think they were, I always say that it's a bit like, when you ask, if I were to say to Beckham, let's talk about football or Paul McCartney, let's talk about the Beatles. But if you say, what was the last recipe your grandmother, your mother cooked for you before she died, or they bring it up, or Beckham tells you that his,

actually his father or grandfather was Jewish. Did you know that? Yeah. Jewish. Yeah. Didn did you know that? Jewish? Yeah. Don't you know? And they had like in the East End they had you know kind of that welks and eels and whatever. Cockles and pine mash. So that whole story brings up memories of Nancy Pelosi. I'm a huge you know fan of

it now friend you know had chocolate. She never ate a meal without it now, a friend, you know, had chocolate. She never, she never ate a meal without it. She was Italian, first generation Italian. Father was mayor of Baltimore. She'd never had a meal without a tablecloth. Some things like that, you know. And she has obsessed by it. In the whole world. I'll show you a picture of her.

She came over because we were big supporters of Biden. And I gave a dinner and she came over to speak and she's just awesome, you know, it's amazing. 84, she came Sunday night, she did a thing about her book on Monday lunchtime, did the dinner at our house on Monday night and flew back Tuesday morning to San Francisco and she's 82. She's incredible and such values and, you know, we need those people. So you came from a Jewish family. It's interesting because having Nancy Silverton on too, Jewish family, both going to Italian food. Well my parents, I have to say going back to my parents politics, although they came from and always identify as Jews, they were not, I grew up with no, very little from my parents. I had the

cultural identity, but you know we didn't have, you know. Did you go to the synagogue temple? No, no. Do you go now? No, no. I don't. I feel, you know, that's another story, but I go to, you know, I really enjoy knowing about the holidays or you know my friend celebrating Passover going to a Seder. So and you were saying about your mom and the food so was there an Italian influence then? No it was only when I came to England and I met Richard's mother. Your husband? Because I could, oh yes, Richard Rogers mother, Dada Guy Ringo she's born who, Richard was born in Florence, although his name is Rogers.

Oh, he was Italian. Oh, yeah, 100%. His father and his mother. The Rogers family was his great-great-grandfather, but who came from the North, and then they all went on that kind of tour, the English, the European tour, lived in Nice. And then subsequently everybody was married to an Italian.

And so he was Italian, Rich's mother was born in Trieste, and they met in Trieste. And then they moved to Florence, and Rich was born in Florence. And then during the war, they came to London, because he'd always kept his British passport, my father-in-law. And so when they had to get out, because of Mussolini, they came here. And she came, she had come from a kind of aristocratic Italian family in Trieste,

and probably had never been in the kitchen. But when she came here during the war, that was what she learned to do, and she learned to cook, and she was a phenomenal cook. She taught both me, and because Rose Gray knew Richard before I knew him, they'd been to school together, she taught Rose, she taught Wendy Foster, she was the kind of Italian cook at Wimbledon,

and Cheam, and so a generation of, so she really taught me, she taught me Italian food, and then Rose went to live in Italy. So we met over our love for Italian food. Do you spend time in Italy? A lot, yeah. Have you got a house there? We have more family in Italy in a way than we have here. No, we don't have a house.

But we go to the same house for the last 25 years. Where do you go? We rent it. Which part of Italy? But we go to the same house for the last 25 years. Where do you go? We rent it in, it's called the Val d'Orcia. And it's an area between, it's an hour and a half north of Rome and an hour and a half south of Florence. So it's between Pienza, Montepulciano,

and Montalcino, that area. It's an incredible, almost a desert landscape. There's no wine, really, well very little wine. Montepulciano? Well, yeah, when you get to Montepulciano, almost a desert landscape. There's no wine really, well very little wine. Multiple, well yeah, when you get to Montepulcana or you get to Siena or you get to Montalcino it's great, great wine. But this area between them has very little trees,

very little vegetation. It has a beautiful mountain called Mount Ambiata. So there is green, but it has a big sky, which I love. And so we've been going there since 1993 Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Welcome home my boy. He's now streaming on AirMount Plus. He is much more impressive than the hedgehog I fought previously. My boy is now streaming on Paramount+. He is much more impressive than the Hedgehog I fought previously. Dude, I'm standing right here.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3, now streaming on Paramount+. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyber attack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters. Get customized coverage today,

starting at $19 per month at zensurance.com. Be protected, be Zen. Whilst you two carry on talking, I'm just going to get out some of the delicious puddings that we did, well we basically said if Ruthie Rogers is coming I'm being cheeky but I'm getting a River Cafe Pud. I didn't even know you asked for them. I called up this morning and said can we bring some cakes.

Oh my god I love you. So there you go. Thank you. I said to them would you make a polenta them, would you make a polenta cake? Either make a polenta cake, because I didn't think of it until quite late. And so I'm sorry that you, well, we had the same thing at our mind.

Please note, it was me being audacious. And then, well, I never knew. And then I said, well, you know what? Instead of making a polenta cake, why don't you bring two lemon tart, two Nemesis, and I hope two almond tart. So I don't know, we'll see what they- Thank you.

Well, I'm just going to get a few on the plate and just kind of cut them up. Yeah, absolutely. So if you were going to go to a desert island, not Death Row, because I can't bear the thought of it. No, I agree with you. When people ask me my Death Row recipe, I always say, why would I eat?

Why do I want to think about this? So if you were going to a desert island for six months and you had to choose a meal that you'd like to remember. What would it be? What time of year is it? Whenever you want to be. Well let's choose, should we choose the autumn or should we choose the summer? What would be? When's your favorite? I love how specific. No one has gone seasonal and thought about how many years have we been doing this for like seven years. I love it. You do, you do, you can do any season. So why would you choose autumn? Well I think autumn, you know, we all love, I love every season. I do think that there is a quality to every season but I think for

being a cook the autumn is an incredible season to have. In the summer you have the joy of the you know the peaches, you have the joy of the peaches, you have the joy of the tomatoes. Actually as I'm describing summer, I'm really liking summer. You have peas, you have asparagus. So maybe we should talk about summer food. But I think in the autumn when you have

the borlotti beans, you still, you have the borlotti, you have artichokes, you have pumpkins, you have game, which I love, you have grouse, you have partridge, you have pheasant, you have chestnuts, you have walnuts, you know, fresh walnuts, fresh chestnuts. And so I think, and most of all in November, you have the olive oil, you know, there's something about cooking in those seasons when you really have time to slow cook ingredients. You can make cavolo nero and we do cavolo nero pasta with the cavolo nero puree. That might be one of my meals I'd love to have.

Cavolo nero puree. So it's, you know, the exciting thing about autumn is that in November you have the olive oil coming out at the same time as a Cavaladero. Where do you get your olive oil from? Well, we have gone to the five estates or six estates that we work with them with wine in Chianti. So there's Selva Piano, there's Felsen, there's Capanzana, there's Fontodi. And we go to them because these wine producers also make olive oil. And we go there. It's actually an interesting thing about the River Cafe

is that from the very beginning, we wanted to expose the people who work for us, the real ingredients of cooking of Italy. So in the early days, we would take three or four people to Italy on a trip. When Rose and I went to taste the new wine and also to choose the olive oil, we would take two or three or four chefs. Now we take almost 30. So what we have to do is we take 10 or 12, maybe 12, to Tuscany, and then the next year you get to go to Piedmontet and so those are the two trips and

The idea is that you will have worked in the River Cafe for two years or a year and a half and it is a kind of It's something everybody really Wants to do it's it's very You know cost quite a lot. It's it's it's it's intense because we work quite hard We get up quite early in the morning. You get in a little van and you drive to the wine estate, say, Capanzana. And then we go in and they talk to us all about the wine.

And then you see the process. You see the olive trees. You see the olives. You see the press. You see the oil. You taste the oil. And then we go in and they always cook us lunch. And so it's a, and then you go to another one. So it's quite, just when you finish lunch, you get back in the van and then you go again to another estate.

And you do the same. And then you have dinner. So, and then you get up the next morning. It takes two days, two and a half days. But they come back so inspired. And you know, when you pick up a bottle of olive oil and you've seen it go through the process, you treat it differently. You realize why it is kind of so special. It's special. So you're going to have cavolo narrow. Oh, so yeah, we could do that.

We could have the cavolo narrow. And we might do it, we do it with, we can do it with a pasta, a fresh papp a pasta, a fresh pappardelle or a fresh tagliatelle. You can do it. I've made a meal of your almond. No, it's perfect. It's so beautiful, but it's perfect.

It did kind of fall apart. I'm sorry. This is an almond tart that I learned to make when I lived in Paris. And there was a restaurant called Benoit and it's it's we make it all year round, not with pears, but we make it's the almond filling. It's like a frangipane. It is a frangipane. It's ground almonds.

It's butter, sugar, ground almonds, and eggs. And that's kind of it, a bit of vanilla. And then we, in the season, I like it most with pears, because I think the pears cut the sweetness of the almond but we make it in the summer with raspberries or strawberries on the top we do it with apricots sometimes but the pear is in season right now these are delicious I've just gone dug into the almond cake which is the most moist delicious beautiful thing I do have cream but I don't feel I don't know

you don't okay fine I didn't want to be blasphemous having cream. This one we always serve with creme fraiche. I've got creme fraiche as well. That is beyond divine. I'll put a dollop of creme fraiche on the side then. I'm not going to have Nemesis but I'll try this. So what are you having a starter or are you starting with the pasta? Yeah I start with the pasta. I love starting a meal with the pasta and then and then I Might just do a lot of vegetables. I love following a pasta when I Have people over very often. I'll start with the pasta and then have Sometimes I do

Langerstein which I'd love Langerine. I'm not too keen sometimes on the kind of first course, main course and dessert things. So I like starting with a pasta and then bringing to the table copious amounts of roasted pumpkin, fresh, you know, cannellini beans, and always a green braised spinach or braised. But I love it.

Do you get fresh cannellini beans? You can buy them. In Taurus. You can? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Boillotti. So if it was in the autumn, we'd have a Cavalonero pasta.

And then because they're really, we'd have langoustine, which would be split. We split them live and then we roast them. So we put a bit of oregano and dried chili on them and you put them in the oven. They come out and they're just break clean. How long do you roast them for? Well not very long, about 10 minutes, you know, in a hot oven. And then you'd have those on the table and then we'd have probably, I'd like to have vegetables cooked in different ways, so I'd probably roast pumpkin or violetta squash and then we would have, pumpkin or violetta squash. And then we would have,

there are really nice winter tomatoes you can get from Sicily. And we have those very hard tomatoes that you only get in the winter. Because we don't do tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes in, except in the summer. But these are really interesting. And then we might have, you know, slow cooked fennel,

which is in season right now. And then olive oil, maybe just do spinach. So with the langoustine you would just have these vegetables. And then for dessert, my favorite dessert would definitely be ice cream. I love ice cream. I just love to end a meal with ice cream. And actually my favorite ice cream is probably... Pistachio.

Pistachio or vanilla. Me too. I love vanilla ice cream. Pistachio is the best. And do you bring the olive oil on the top? No, I don't do things like that. I think it's probably really good, but recently a chef, I thought maybe it was in New York, and they said try this Ruthie, it was vanilla ice cream with olive oil. But I'm a bit old school, so I don't do that.

Pistachio ice cream and vanilla ice cream are probably the best. We do a very dark caramel as well but I love ending a meal with ice cream. Do you eat ice cream every day? Probably. I love it too. And they don't even ask me when I go as you know to the River Cafe they just bring you. You just need a little don't you? Yeah we do just a tiny bit. A little tiny bit and it's great. What are you drinking with? A friend of mine, son, actually she won't mind if I met, but you know Greta Gerwig who directed the book, she's a really good friend of mine, and Noah, have a son, Noah Brumbach, have a son called Harold, and I said, Harold, do you like ice cream?

Have some ice cream. He said, I don't like ice cream with you, it's too cold. I said, well, what's there to do about that? Too cold? What's an ice cream? So, that? What are you drinking with that? Well, with the ice cream or with the whole meal? What do you start with? Do you like an aperitif? I love an aperitif. For me, I would have probably five years ago said I'd love a Negroni. I'd love a dry martini I'd love cosmopolitan, but I really since I lived I had to live in Mexico

I didn't have to but I I did have to because my husband had an accident there and so I lived in Mexico City for four months and I was just blown away by tequila, you know, and I had to kill I don't what you really the great thing about tequila in Mexico is that you don't, you drink it with the meal, you know. And so you don't have a tequila and then go on to wine. To drink it neat. And so, yeah, so you just get a little shot of tequila. And I can drink tequila through a, even an Italian meal. I just really, it doesn't go down well with my wine department,

the River Cafe. So I don't. But I I I really love starting a meal with just a what with ice just on no I just have a shot. I used to say I would you say margarita I guess in the summer I'd have margarita, but I just love tequila. Are you friends with Alice and Roman? No, I don't know her. Oh, yeah, you know what's going to go to your restaurant. Yeah. She came to... Don't you remember? I get emails from her. I think she's really good. Yeah. But she says, and I think it's great, if you have a dinner party, make a big jug of margaritas.

Yeah. And give people margaritas. And I tried it once. Everyone wouldn't have cared what I'd made for dinner. They loved it every minute. They were happy. they enjoyed life. The dinner was great. Kathleen Tynand, you know, she was a great woman and writer and her husband was a playwright and critic. Ken Tynand died and I said that I would do the party after the funeral at our house and Joan Buck, who's then the

editor of French Vogue and other friends, she had a lot of really sort of great friends. And she said, well, what are you going to have, Ruthie? And I said, well, we'll have, you know, red wine, white wine, champagne, whatever. And she looked at me, she said, Ruthie, I'm going to tell you something. And this was in nineteen, maybe ninety two. Never give a party without margaritas. That was OK. Whether it's a funeral, a wedding, a birthday, a thing and so since 1992 I've never given a party without margaritas so there you go.

I love that. I like that kind of advice don't you? I love that. Can I ask you when you married your late husband what was on the menu? Oh, for a wedding? Yeah. Well, we were married in my parents' later house in Long Island. So they were on the water on the Long Island Sound. And we went. It was like one of those old 1940 movies where they get in the car and they go to the Justice of the Peace in their house.

And we sort of like, we weren't eloping, but with my parents, it was very small, and my sister and brother and a few friends. And we went into this kind of little one story little house and the man came out and he and his wife married us around their fireplace. It was very sweet. It was really sweet.

And then we went back home and we had lobsters, because where the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean has we had lobsters, you know, because where, you know, the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean has very good lobsters. How would you cook them? Just grill them? We boil them. Boil them? Yeah, boil and split.

What were the sides? And then, what did we have? We had just a lot of greens. We had oysters to start with. Oh no, we didn't have oysters, we had clams. And it was in, we got married in November, so I think we probably had, I can't really remember the greens, but we probably had, I can't remember the greens,

but we probably had spinach. Lobsters are so, they're so big there, that you really get this huge lobster dough here in America. And then Philip Johnson, who's an architect, who was head of the Yale School of Architecture, and built the Miss B's Vanderohe, the Seagram Building, and the Museum of Modern Art. He's a great kind of father of architecture.

Would always take us to a restaurant called the Four Seasons in the Seagram building, not the hotel, but it's called the Four Seasons. And it was the kind of most chic place you could go to in New York. And so he sent us a chocolate cake from the Four Seasons for dessert, which was really amazing. And it was beautiful. It was nice. It was in 1973, so quite a long time ago. Ruthie, before we let you go, it's a pleasure to have you over and listen to your stories. You are such a good storyteller. And you may have already answered this

with the corn on the cob, but is there a nostalgic taste that can transport you back somewhere? Well, I would say that for Italy and for Florence, I think when I have the new olive oil and I have it on a piece of bruschetta and it's the best piece of bread with grilled, it's the right, you know, know, with sea salt on it, molded salt on it.

And then the new oil, I'm transported to the first time I had it, which was with Richard when we arrived. The first time I went to Italy with him, and we went to this little place in Florence and we were served that and I kept saying, there's something else on this, you know, because the olive oil was so peppery and it was just so,

and it was only three ingredients. It was just the bread, the olive oil, and a bit of hint of garlic. So I think when I ever ate that, I'm transported to that moment with Richard. You've met the most amazing people through the River Cafe and probably through Richard as well. Who would you have at a dinner party, alive or dead, now?

If you could have your best dinner party. Yeah. Ted, I'd have dinner with Richard. Yeah. Yeah, the two of us. That'd be my dinner party. Somebody said to me the other day that he'd met somebody and she was living in Hong Kong.

He said, so Ruthie, it's kind of a long distance relationship and I said, that's what I have. Aw, he's still there. Yeah, he's around. We just, long distance. How long is it since he passed away? Two years, yeah. Oh, so it's not...

We're good, we're good, we're good. I have an amazing family of 13 grandchildren and I have my family and I have my friends and I have the River Cafe and I have you and I have you so I have Sophia and you we're all it's a life we're good. Thank you so much for coming on this. Good luck with the New England series. You know you're so calming we've not even argued. I know you've actually had conflict resolutions. Yeah. It's beautiful to be here. Thank you for asking me. Oh my god, such a

fan. And I can't wait to let you know next time I'm in with the cafe and eat a bowl of ice cream with you. I'd love to come. Yeah, just let me know when. I'd love to. I'll come every day. Ruth C. Rogers, what a ledge. A ledge. Absolutely a ledge. She is fabulous, she is generous, she is cool, warm, just a very good storyteller. She knows so much about food, but all the people she's met who've crossed that threshold at River Cafe, it's fantastic. She was a treasure chest of food information and stories. I loved hearing her stories. I could have had her for, well, a full season, to be honest.

Yeah, she has a lovely voice. Oh, heaven. Yeah, really has a lovely voice. Oh heaven Yeah, really nice voice and so warm gave me lots of cuddles Yeah, I just loved her and lovely beautiful Sophia who she came with who's a fan Yeah, and I got to eat chocolate nemesis on a Monday afternoon. So that is great news for me Yeah, Ruthie's podcast Ruthie's table for is out now for a new season and she does have fantastic guests because she knows everyone. She loved my Marbella chicken. I know it was delicious. It was delicious today.

It was very good darling. It was really really good. You know what? Never underestimate the power of the Marbs. Marbella. And then thanks to Ruthie for bringing delicious delicious puds. And shout out to River Cafe and the gorgeous chefs that will be listening and that I can't remember your names and I feel very bad about that that's really shit of me and I apologize but you're gorgeous and I'll see you soon and then you can spit in my food because I forgot your name and

alright we'll see you next week Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is now streaming on Paramount Plus. He is much more impressive than the hedgehog I fought previously. Dude, I'm standing right here. Sonic the Hedgehog 3, now streaming on Paramount+. Do you have business insurance? If not, how would you pay to recover from a cyberattack, fire damage, theft, or a lawsuit? No business or profession is risk-free. Without insurance, your assets are at risk from major financial losses, data breaches, and natural disasters.

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