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Ruthie's Table 4: Adam Schiff

Published Jun 21, 2022, 6:00 AM

When Congressman Adam Schiff came to London, giving a dinner for him in our home was a great honour. On Episode 40 of Ruthie's Table 4, Ruthie and Adam talk about the food he grew up with, the food he cooks for his family, and the food he finds personally comforting. 

For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home.

 

On Ruthie’s Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers.

Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. 

Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation.

 

For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/

 

Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/

Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/

 

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Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. As an American living in Britain, a visit to London by Congressman Adam Schiff is a big deal. That we gave dinner for him and our house was a great honor. Adam was on the way back from Ukraine meeting with Zu Lanski and over pasta and winter vegetables, he talked to us about world we are living in, food shortages, child poverty, and food insecurity. Today will continue, but also talk about the food he grew up with, the food he cooks for his family, the food he personally finds comforting. Adam, will you begin by reading a recipe you've chosen from River Cafe Cookbook thirty. So I've got a wonderful recipe for spaghetti. I have the lave pasa and my favorite is spaghetti or angel hair. So this is a perfect recipe for me to share with you. Spaghetti, rots, tomato and arugula, or as you you would say in Britain, rocket spaghetti, grams, plum tomatoes. You'll need four of those. You'll need two garlic clothes, dried chili, just one dried ChIL unless you like it really spicy. Capers, two tablespoons, black olives three tablespoons. Now I'm a huge olive fan, but it does work great in spaghetti arugula. You'll have three leaves and three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. So you will cut the tomatoes in half, squeeze out the excess juice and seeds, and chop the flesh course. Then peel the garlic can squash with one teaspoon of sea salt. Then you'll crumble the chili, rinse the capers and stone the olives. Then you'll roughly chop the arugula. Finally, combine the tomatoes with all the ingredients except for the rugula, seasoned generously, add the olive oil, and put aside for thirty minutes. You cooked the spaghetti and boiling salted water until all dante. Then drain and stir the pasta into the tomatoes. Add the rugula and tossed the coat each strand season with black pepper, Serve with olive oil, and delicious. Beautifully read. I always think your recipe is half science and half poetry, So there you go. You read it as a poem. It is beautiful. Thank you glad I didn't read it as a scientist. Beautiful. One of the things that I really love about you is that I think you're a really good eater. I issue it was not good eater, but I do love food. Yeah, that's what I mean. I meet people from time to time that can kind of take or leave eating. I don't understand them. I think there, I think they're from another planet. Tell me about growing up in the Chift household. What was it like food? Why? I think this is why I love to go out to eat, because when I was a kid, it was such a rarity. And I always like to claim to my wife, because you know, only a husband can make this claim that I'm the ideal husband because I don't want to home cooked meal. I really love going out. You're not distracted by the phone ringing, You're not distracted by the TV or this kid wants to run off to do homework instead of finishing the meal, and so you're you're at a table. You're just focused on each other and the food. But I think it part of it is that it was a rarity when I was growing up. My mother was a good cook but didn't like to cook, but nonetheless, we ate at home all the time, and my father was traveling salesman in the shmata business, and it was a big deal when when we could go out and to one of our favorite restaurants. I think that it's changed so much because I also grew up where you went out to dinner if somebody graduated from high school or there was a birthday or an anniversary. Now having a restaurant, I just see people eating all the time. They come with their children, they come on a Friday night with their their parents. They use a restaurant in a very different way than we did. I think. I think that's right. And because my mother didn't like to cook, um, a lot of our meals were very kind of standard fair tell me about them. What did she cook? You know, a lot of canned food, to be honest. But my favorite meal that my mother used to make was something that she she made using these little boneless chicken pieces that she breaded. You made it with a sign of spaghetti and they were breaded with cheese on them, so it was kind of like a mini chicken parmisan with spaghetti. But I guess my strongest memories in childhood of food were of the high holidays when we get together my grandparents and they would make a great big meal. Were they born in the United States? Were they immigrants from another country? My father was an immigrant from London. His parents immigrated from Eastern Europe. My other grandparents were born in the United States, but their parents, my great grandparents, all came from Eastern Europe. But when we get together for the holidays, it would be a lot of mats of b a soup and holly bread and brisket, and it was quite a feast that I didn't want to go near. Like chop lever. Yeah, there is an eternal debate in Jewish households about whether matsi boll should be light and fluffy or should be the kind that when you drop them, they go through the floor. I just want to state, unequivocally, without hesitation, they need to be the kind that that fall through the floor. That suspense was killing me as you were telling this guy's going to think, what is he going to go for falling through the floor or light and fluffy. I did think you might choose light and fluffy, but I will it has to be that really heavy, sinking feeling. Yeah, as the politician was, sometimes we have to make difficult decisions. Yes, I know, and I am fairly firmly in the camp of the very little, very heavy months of all that. You know, when you've eaten it and uh and it doesn't get lost in the broth. You interested in eating? Were you interested in cooking? When I did cook, it was frankly as a kid and through adulthood at the barbecue. Ah, that's very male, that's very that's kind of always think when men feel that they can cook because the barbecue, Yes, barbecue. Well did you do you know? My cooking pre pandemic was pretty basic, fair, And what happened in the pandemic, well, you know, we we're not going out to eat, and it was a huge lifestyle change about other things. So I got myself a few gadgets. You know, I think this is also a male thing. You'd like to cook with gadgets? Yeah, we love a gadget. Yeah. I got an air fryer, and I got a pressure cooker. I started making a curry tofu and the pressure cooker with vegetables and potatoes and it it seemed to be a pretty failsafe device in terms of coming out well, and likewise the air fryer. I have to tell you a funny story. I has had a political event in Los Angeles and I gave my speech and then a brand new assembly member went up to the microphone, real sharp up and comer. He was saying some nice things about me, and then he said, and I got some of the most important advice from Cargo smanth shift when I was getting started, the most important advice I've evergotten. And I was waiting to hear what what sage political advice I'd given him? And he said, he told me to get an air fryer. You've just come back from Ukraine. Did you experience the food shortage and challenges we did. We discussed this with the President Zelinski when we sat down with him. This was a congressional delegation that Speaker Pelosi led, as it turned out, the first congressional delegation to Ukraine since the war. And one of the things that was apparent to us before we left, but became much more apparent as we discussed the issue is that when the Russians blockaded Odessa, they were not only trying to cripple Ukraine's economy, but as Ukraine has been the bread basket of Europe and a lot of the grain to Africa and other places as well. The Russians were also blockading food that a lot of people will need it to survive, and because not only a great increase in food prices, but also risks starvation in many places that really have relied on Ukraine for their grain. And so part of the appeal that Zelinsky was making for the weapons that he needs to sink of that Black Sea fleet and the equipment he needs to do demning was this is important to Ukraine, it's important to to our economy, but it's also important to the rest of the world because the real food shortage issue, Well do you think it will be that in Egypt and North Africa? What is going to happen when they can't get their food? You know, it's certainly risks great instability, and just in its own right, of course, it risks starvation. And I think it's one of the reasons we have to do everything we can to try to bring this war in Ukraine to an end. You know, sadly it's hard to see that path. I think it does require us to give Ukraine what needs to defend itself to increase the costs on Russia, so the Russian people see the folly of what their dictator has done. But this tragic war has had a lot of repercussions, and one of those I think the world at least understands is the impact it has on people's ability to get enough to eat in many parts of the world. What do we do now? What are your major concerns in terms of poverty inequality? You know, I think that we have experienced the revolution in the economy and the global economy as a function of globalization but also automation, and the result is that millions of people in the million in the middle class or at risk of falling out. A lot of working families have to work harder than ever to try to get in the middle class. Uh. At the same time, of these structural changes in the economy have produced a very great concentrated wealth. So while we have students in our colleges who can't get enough to eat, we have captains of entry literally flying into space on tourist strips. You are very vocal and very concerned and very politically engaged in food inequality. When I think it's seventeen million of our children in the United States are faced with hunger every day. It really is extraordinary. And I had a meeting some years ago, this before the pandemic, with a group of community college students from my district and they were talking to me about and it came up in a common, offhanded way about the food banks they had on campus for students, and I was astonished at each of them, and they were going to three different community colleges all had food banks on campus. US this was still before the pandemic. So the economy was strong, far stronger than during the recession and fully recovered, and yet the hunger was greater than ever. And it really pointed to me of some strong structural problems in the economy that even when it was doing well, it wasn't doing well for millions and millions of people, to the point that, uh, college kids, you know, not only a community college, but the state colleges of the private universities were going hungry. So I um introduced a bill to try to expand the free and reduced lunch program that we have in K twelve up through community college, and that was the genesis of the Food for Thought Act. And we've been working to get that past ever since, and and trying to address broader issues of hunger and homelessness as well. In Britain in the pandemic, what became very clear was that when schools were they were enormous a number of children who are not having lunch and therefore had depended on lunch as their meal for the day. Did you find that in the United States as well? Absolutely, And what we discovered is that schools, these kindergarten through high schools, we're one of the major providers of food, as it turned out, to low income families. And when those schools closed and people went to remote learning, suddenly these families didn't have meals, didn't have meals. So what a lot of our schools did, and I visited so many of these sites in my own district and participated is they would prepare meals and families would drive up in their car. We would ask how many kids do they have, and we would give them the number of meals for the kids and their family that they would have had if they were in school. Tell me about the road from being a barbecue of meat and fish to being vegan. What is your vegan story, Well, my cholesterol has been high and I tried medication like Satin's, but they didn't said well with me. I couldn't tolerate them very well. So my wife, was a very healthy eater, suggest that I tried being vegan. And I've been vegan for about three days when I was in my district and I was at an event, and of course at any event in Los Angeles, you talked about food. I was talking about a great restaurant i've been too, called Crossroads, and the person I was talking to recognize it was a vegan restaurant, and she said to me, can I tell people here your vegan? Uh? And I thought that was kind of a strange question. Why would people be interested in that? And then I realized where I was. I was in West Hollywood at an animal welfare event. Oh yes, I guess that is a big deal. At an animal wealthfare event. And I said, I've only been vegan and to be honest for three days, and if you tell people, I'm going to be pretty locked in. But you know I need the incentive go ahead and tell people. So that was six years ago, and you know, I do allow myself to cheat from time to time the truth be told. When you cheat, what do you go for? Usually cheat when I'm traveling because it's hard for me to always find vegan food, so I try not to be too tough on myself. I also cheat during Thanksgiving because I had my first Thanksgiving as a vegan and it was just an awful experience. You had just cranberry sauce and vegetables and no turkey. We were actually out at a place in Pennsylvania, nice little place for the weekend. Our kids were with us, and we had ordered in advanced to vegan meals and then two traditional turkey dinners. You know, our family is kind of isolated in DC. We don't have other family there, so we often have Thanksgiving out or at friends. And they brought these two beautiful plates for our kids, and then they our own plates, and it looked like someone had opened the Gerber's baby food jar and poured it on the plate, and it was not at all satisfying. And so I thought, Okay, I'm Thanksgiving. I'm gonna make an exception. Do you know when I talked to Paul McCartney who about being a vegetarian when he and Linda as my wife became vegetarians. They said that the first Christmas they had, they made a macaroni and cheese, but they shaped it into a turkey and carved. I have a ballenge for your listeners if I can on behalf of vegans the world over, and that is how to make a good vegan pizza. I really have yet to find one that I really like because most of the places should go to use a kind of a diet cheese which is made of coconut oil. It doesn't taste anything like the real thing. So I put this up there with hurt long machine. If somebody can invent pizza, we do just you know, cooked tomato sauce with a pizza. You don't have to have a cheesy pizza. I don't know how you substitute cheese, which is I think substitutes are tricky. One of the things about this restaurant is we're really good for vegetarians and for vegans because the Italian diet that we serve as so vegetable based. So when you come in there are big huge plates of you know, braised artichokes or charred or pumpkins, whatever the season is. And so if somebody says I'm vegan. It's actually that sounds wonderful. So we'll do that. And so I suppose my last question to you is that if food is is love, and food is sharing, and food is alleviating hunger, it also is comfort. What would be your comfort food? I think my comfort food to to go back where we started with the original recipe. Yes, pasta pasta. I think pasta is hard to be I have so many fond memories of it as a kid, through adulthood, having pasta. When I travel, there's nothing more comfortable than a great Italian meal, uh with with some wine and some bread and and worrying about the carbs tomorrow. Okay, And so when you come to London in September, we'll have pasta together. Lots of love to you, Thank you, Adam, thank you, lots of love. But tell me about what an air fryars, because actually I don't I'm not sure I know this gadget. Well, an air fryar has a pot that circulates air. The device circulates air around the basket or the pot, and it's like deep frying, but you're using air, so there's know what. So it's kind of a healthy version of fry. To visit the online shop of the River Cafe, go to shop the River Cafe dot co dot UK. River Cafe Table four is a production of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Ruthie's Table 4

Welcome to Ruthie's Table 4 hosted by Ruthie Rogers, co-founder and chef of The River Cafe in London 
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