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Ruthie's Table 4: Eddie Redmayne

Published Dec 20, 2022, 12:00 AM

A year ago, I used every bit of access and influence to get tickets to Cabaret for one reason only - to see Eddie Redmayne the star of the show. And last week, conquering my enormous fear of being afraid, I watched him in the Good Nurse and was unnerved how beautifully he made a mass murderer not only empathetic, but almost loveable. All of us in The River Café know Eddie as an enthusiastic eater.

On this episode we discuss his life through food but not before we put him to work in the kitchen, fulfilling his life’s dream and making pizzas with our chef, Jessica Filbey.

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/ruthiestable4

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

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Welcome to Ruthie's Table for a production of I Heart Radio and Adami's Studios. A year ago, I used every bit of access and influence to get tickets to Cabaret for one reason, only to see Eddie Redmain and I went back two times. I would have liked to have gone back more. And last week concrete my enormous fear of being afraid, I watched him The Good Nurse and was a bit unnerved about just how beautifully he made a mass murderer not only empathetic but almost lovable. But I and all of us in the River Cafe really know Eddie as a great lover of food. Actually I'm here alone as Eddie is in the kitchen with the chefs making pizzas a little annoying, as I don't go around acting in plays and movies. But how could I possibly mind? Hi, I'm Jess and I'm a chef at the River Cafe's been here for four and a half years. Uh, and we're making pizzas on pizza section, so you want to roll it out quite quite wide. I obviously made the rookie era to begin with, putting far too much stuff on top, which is I think a sort of like day one exactly, all spledges over into sort of pie rather than so now because it led you on pizza. Great, wow, thank you so much. Today Eddie and I are here in the River Cafe about to begin our conversation. Thank you so much, so nice, so thank you. But how is it making the pizzas it was? You fulfilled a childhood dream of mine. I like childhood dreams? Would that be? I mean it was watching Jefs. As a kid, we didn't really go to restaurants that much, but it became a thing when we were sort of I think about nine ten years old, that the weekends will be playing sport on a Saturday, and then the evenings we would go to like Pizza Express, watch pizza's be made, take them home and watch porrow. That was like sort of and so but but my parents always said I would sit there touching onto the marble, kind of watching the process. Nothing like the pizza I got to make today that it was extraordinary. You fulfilled my life long. It is very dramatic. You're absolutely right, and it's but also the process of watching food being made has always been something that I've just adored and and so open kitchens. It's theatrical. Maybe it is that. Maybe it is that. And it's also kind of organized chaos, you know what I mean, there's sort of um that the choreography of it, even just going into the kitchen today and hearing about the process of the different numbers of fs somewhere they which a section they're in charge of, and how they arrive at They're not knowing whether they're going to be on the wood oven or pieces or I love the ordered chaos of it. There's also always say and there is something about the drama of a restaurant that the current goes up at twelve thirty, you know, and at that point everybody has to have, you know, um, cleaned the carpet or grated the cheese or you know, made sure the olive oil was on the shelf, and that the men you had been written. And I have never acted in a play, but I assume that if the actor doesn't know their lines, or the stage that hasn't been painted, or the program hasn't been printed, that the show doesn't go on. And also the feeling of I think I imagine it's similar in restaurants, but of when we were doing cabaret, for example, you have your own weird path of superstitions that we've created over the run of the thing. That involved for me, because I'm old, having to sort of roll out a lot in order that your body doesn't break vocally warm up and all that stuff. But then also as a group meeting on the circle of the stage and warming up together since greeting each other, seeing how that everyone's days have been. And at that point the space has a kind of fluorescent light on it's and then we we could hear the audiences coming in, and then we all shift out and the lights go down and the space takes on this kind of magical potency I suppose is that similar so collaborative. But going back about working and food, I am so intrigued about whether it actors and if it's a matinee do munch well generally, what happens with me when I do theater is I lose weight because you're firing on adrenaline. And the truth is I can't eat just before a show. It's too soon. So I try and eat a really good breakfast. I try and drink a shed load of water first thing in the morning, which I'm not good at but recently doing cabaret, my wonderful singing teacher said that apparently takes the six out of your vocal cords are the last things that hydrate, and it takes six hours for the hydration to get through. So sort of first thing in the morning, you I would sort of come downstairs and down glasses of water. But then of course after the show, you're riding on adrenaline and it's late and you don't um. So on matinee days you sort of have to force yourself to ease, which is yeah, and and and normally for me it's something kind of it's it could be noodles with prawns or something that light, something that's easy. There's a weird thing about our job, both in theater and on film that, particularly on film, I suppose when you because you wake up very early, you can be up at sort of you know, four or five or something, and then back late that I feel like you turn more into a child in the sense that your body clock like straight to lunch on a film set, if you quite often you just hit this total wall of like you eat and then you can completely pass out because and then you sort of wake again and you you kind of I suppoth dose yourself with caffeine in order to sort of then put you through, But I never feel it when I'm not working, but that real feeling of straight after lunch you're a bit like a baby. You sort of go straight to, Yeah, but learning to to eat and caffeinate yourself. The odd things about film sets and and theater is the rhythms of it. You know, you can be you can be shooting an intense scene on on on a film set and have done the wide shots, and then they'll call lunch, and then you'll have your food, You'll have that exhaustion, and then you straight after lunch, you're coming back into the most intimate of close ups and you've somehow got a recap of that energy. And that's pretty so Weirdly, food and drink does affect all that, and you are having to kind of give yourself false energies at moments to push yourself to a to a place that's kind of I thought it was a very beautiful scene in The Good Nurse that takes place at the very end and that dinner where you're clearly going into a place of eating, a place where you sit down in a booth and there's the expectation that you're meeting and you're going to have probably something, you know, a meal that you're going to have, and then that conversation and it was very beautiful. I thought that dynamic of the two of you over a cup of I don't you didn't have anything? Did you? Food? And then that thing that also resonates so much is leaving. You know that you walking out of a restaurant is quite or a diner or any situation where the expectation of a nice meal and then that kind of thing of walking out is pretty pretty tough. There was something about the architecture of that diner, you know, diner's force you to kind of sit opposite. There's no that and also the director to be a slim Holmes an amazing man to set the scene. It's it's a moment in the film when these two people who are close friends meet and my character has been doing horrendous things and this friend knows about it and is wired. So it's being it's recording the conversation to try and get evidence, but hasn't given away that that she knows anything. So it's filled with sort of tension. And to be asted this these interesting things, for example, giving these gigantic menus, you know that that that that that that almost stopped you from being these obstacles to the scene, like he kept having the woman in charge of the restaurant come and interrupt the scenes, so adding the kind of odd rhythms to to a scene that is that is filled with angles and edges, I suppose. But now you're right there. The restaurants are extraordinary places because there, you know, the real man Charles Cullen that I played. I got the sense that his relationship with Amy Loughran, it's just Jessica Chain's character was always one of friendship. But I believe that this was the only time that he began to think maybe there was something more. She had invited him on a sort of out of work date, and so he's got slightly dressed up, and that that filled that scene. Attention to Restaurants can be places of first love. They can be places of breakup, of power negotiations of you know, they are people do very private things in a very public space. So people get divorced in restaurants, and now it's affairs and restaurants. They get fired in restaurants, and you know, you think of maybe you might want to do that at home, you know, in the office, and instead there's a safety net I think of knowing that if you're firing somebody or announcing an affair. We have had people, you know, spilled a glass of boy and very rarely or yeah, the drama. Well, the best one, I think I've said it before is the man who said he called up and said that he was going to propose to his girlfriend. If we've right, will you marry me on the cake? So we did, of course, we can marry me, you know, you know it. And halfway through the meal he came and said, cancel the cake, and so we never knew why, you know, but it is that's been back. No, I don't know who he was. It was just like one of those I probably wasn't even here that night. All these things get I have to say, I wish I had more dramatic stories. There's I've been asked, you know, but I mean just people. Very often people want to bring their own food, which is a bit odd. No, yeah, exactly, bring that, yeah, bring that, choose faster. But sometimes people will say can I bring somebody gave me a truffle Kenny grade it and that's fair enough. They want to bring it or basically you know that's what we were saying before. Is we just say yess. You know, people want a surprise, they want the you know, the proposal moment. They want to get down on their knee, or they want we've had a surprise party and we've told I had to see somebody in the restaurant and then take them into the room. Um. I once trying to help us, but I tried to hold on her and she could see it straight on my face, like that's going to group people behind the story or else you call up somebody and say, you know it's your partners, so looking forward to seeing you in Mad says I didn't know anything about it. No, we love restaurants and we love that as you say that drama. I'm really pleased that you've chosen a recipe from the River Cafe book thirty to read. What is that? The recipe is Rigatoni with cavalonnero and new olive oil. Serves six one m cavalonnero leaves, two garlic clothes peeled, two hundred and fifty miles of extra virgin olive oil, five d crams of rigatoni freshly grated parmesan. This pastor is the celebration of two ingredients that arrive at the same moment in the year, cavalonnero and the first pressed peppery extra virgin olive oil. When we started the river cafe, cavalon neero was nowhere to be found, so we brought the seeds back from Italy. Now you can find it every it, but only by it after the first frost, and not after the winter months. Never after the winter months. Remove the stalks from the cavalon arrow leaves. Now this it's the bit about this recipe I enjoy the most. Just there's something about the texture of cavalon nero that is so satisfying. And you could just tear out the stalks, or you can get a very sharp knife and just kind of insize down the middle, and I love. I think that's the part of cooking that I find therapy if you think it's the sensations of things anyway. So you have to keep the leaves whole. You blanch them in a generous amount of boiling salted water along with the garlic clothes for five minutes you drain, put the blanche cavalo nero and the garlic into a food processor and pulse chopped to a puree. In the last couple of seconds of blending, pouring about two mills of extra virgin olive oil. This will make a fairly liquid, dark green pure season well, cook the attorney in a generous amount of boiling salt of water, and then drain thoroughly. Put the pastor in a bowl at the sauce and stir until each piece is thickly coated. Pour over the remaining extra virgin olive oil, and serve with parmesan. I chose this recipe because during lockdown, my wife Hannah is a wonderful gardener and had always dreamt of having a kitchen garden, and lockdown was one of those occasions when we could fully commit to it without the fear of travel and other things. And it became this amazing thing for because I generally do the cooking in our house and she would just start bringing things to me that were ready. This is in Staffordshire and cavalonero was brought in by the armful and I have no con and I found this recipe and it was so simple. So I made vats of the stuff and frozen and it's lasted us for good. That's good, you know. I think what's interesting also is that moment when you actually boiled the garlic with the vegetable, you know, so or if you were to chop it. But somehow the fact that's a whole cold garlic, it almost almost makes it a bit creamy. It doesn't need to do that, it does and it's um And there's something so odd about throwing garlic clothes into a kind and you have to kind of you have to sort of scoop them up with your maidle. That was so glad that you chose this recipe. So, going back to the beginning of the red Main family, did you grow up with a feeling that food was to be taken seriously or enjoyed or was it something what? How was a feeling in your house? I grew up. My mom is a a wonderful cook. She she learned from her mother and it's very it was actual. So she had there were three boys. I have two brothers and an older half brother and half sister. But it was three of us growing up at home, and she had a lot on her hands like we were sort of running circles around and quite so hyperactive. And so the food I remember from my youth was very traditional British food. It was cottage pies, it was it was also the eighties, it was it from a region. Did she come from them? She actually came from Scotland. She grew up in Edinburgh, and so all those kind of things, like my mom learned from my grandma, who I who still lives in Edinburgh, is a hundred and one years old. I remember my grandmom makes the greatest bacon sandwich. She um, it's streaky bacon fried to a crisp. Then you use either that the softest bap that you can find, or the cheapest white bread but nothing posh about the bread, but and the freshest, cheapest white bread. And you put the bread once you've done the bacon. Um, you put the bread onto the frying pan with all those juices and you just fry that for a few seconds. That then what you have, I smother it in Heine's ketchup. I can't. I can't be dealing with posh ketchup. And then put all the bacon in and when it goes into your mouth and salty. So back to your mother, diress? What is we digress? We could be here for hour, but go back because I heard you I say something about it was so my memory of the like when Mom would go, you know, get really stuck in. It was things like voliv On, Like I love a chicken volivan and I feel like Volivon's need of resurgence puff pastry with some creamy sauces and tarragonny chicken em But the thing about Mom that was really influential for me is because she had so much going on, she again was quite a It was the most punch for the least effort, I suppose. And so all the recipes that I've learned from her are they sort of got me through being a student. They got me through Um yeah, and it's interesting. But it's certainly why the cavalonera what appealed because I don't have a huge entertained. Did she make full of for her She did? She did entertain And again she was like me, she has to she has to prep everything in advance, because um, did you get involved? Did she get her kids to? Yeah? I would. I would always help when I could, and then do that thing of we lived in a very tall, very thin house, and I would do that thing of creeping down sitting on the stairs listening to her. And again it was the eighties, so when it was like a proper dinner party, everyone properly got dressed up. And I remember the glamor of that film, and you know famously, I'd love the story that your brother Charlie, who eats in the River Cafe more often he ate in the River Cafe when Harpark down the Road. Yeah, he told a very funny story about your father and McDonald's, would you like to tell Yeah, there's I don't remember being there that there's apocryphal story about my dad going to McDonald's and asking for a rare hamburger, which didn't which did media exactly didn't go down so well. Didn't go to restaurants we did. We didn't eat other other than you know, Saturday night before especially, but very occasionally. I remember once and this was quite seminal moment actually, when asked, probably about nine or ten, my dad decided to take his children just before Christmas to have a roast lunch at the Savoy and it was going to be a really this was a big glamorous thing, and I don't know if it was something that his father had done him. And I remember going into the Savoy and seeing the glamor and the dance at the theater of it, I suppose. Anyway, we was sitting there and we had ordered food, and the soup came and I was sort of eating it, but I was being sort of fussy, and eventually my mom and Mom was saying, you know that this is incredibly indulgent, like we were in this extraordinary place. Why aren't you eating your soup? And I sort of said to her, it's too salty. My mom was like, Dad, we have bought you this extraordinary place. You know it's it's very dope. Be ridiculous. Of course it's not too salty. This is one of the great restaurants. Anyway, Eventually Mom tasted it and she was like, you're absolutely right, it is too salty. And so they called over the waiter and the other waiter had tasted it, and I was like, I'm so so, and so the chef, the head chef, came out and he took my older brother James, and I on a tour. I apologized and said he had been on the phone or something. When when when he had been seasoning and he took us on a tour of the kitchens of the Savoy and it was like I sort of watched that film Ratta too, you know, it was it was it was again being low in height and seeing things being flow made, and it well, I was completely hypnotized by it. It's like, you know, but also you didn't turn to your mother say I don't like it, which a lot of kids might just say I don't like it. You knew that it was too salty, and you were right. What's interesting is now later in life, I'm some salt addict. But yeah, yeah, but still I think that and actually their response it's the same thing I always prefer. You know, sometimes people write a letter and they'll say, you know, I my you know, my fish was overcooked on my pasta was undercooked, And you say, why didn't you tell us at the time, Because of course you want that feedback. It doesn't matter if they're right or wrong. It doesn't matter. You just want them to leave having had the best meal we could give them. So I think that you said it, and then it's a nice story. Then he went to boarding school, didn't you did. I went to well, I went to school in London, just across from where we are now until I was thirteen, and it's why I have whenever I come to the River Cafe, I have a mixture of like joy mixed with slight PTSD because it was these tow paths that are right next to the River Cafe and on the other side that was where we had to run our cross country every year. So I've got sort of memories of like freezing little legs, sort of having to my My little brother was very clever and sort of feigned asthma in order to get out of it. But I didn't have the ingenuity for that. But what was the food? Like boarding school? It wasn't great, um, it wasn't bad, but it was also where you had this thing, a sort of tea time where you would cook yourselves, and that is where I first and because I didn't love the food at school, I would start sort of. It was never something adventurous, but you learned to do something. You had one little hot what's it called the hot basically, which which you shared between ten students, and the sort of one pot pasta became a thing you could just cook there would let but then and then you would have dinner, and then there would be dinner afterwards. But if you kind of sustained yourself, then you perhaps didn't have to and and so it was just and that the food was your brother actually said another he said that the British are very good at the British epper class would be very good in prison because they've been institutionalized since at very young age, you know, and so you get what you're taken. Yeah, you have now it's some yeah. But there were some people that were I remember, very adventurous. Remember one one person at Eaton who had come back, had been away for the weekend, and I was sort of cooking some sort of stirring pasta and and he just sort of threw a rabbit on a sort of on a on a frying pan and cooked himself. Running around was pretty robust. When I left home, I moved to Borrow and I lived there for a decade, right by the market. And my mom did this wonderful thing when I was about twenty three, I think between two and as a Christmas present, she bought me this this class, and this amazing woman took this group of us that there was random people from different ages and and took us to the market and introduced us to the the traders and taught us how to to spot decent produce versus the stuff that was being flung. And then we went back to her home and this assembled group of people were taught. We were talked three or four very simple things that totally changed the way I remember what they were, aude recipes and attitude, obviously, like one of them was a olive oil in the pan, put of cherry tomatoes, salt and lid on, and then fry, then squashed them once they get thingy. And at the end you can grace in some cheese if one, but I never do, and just put in some basil torn basil at the end, and then you the cherry tomato skins are so sort of fine that they almost disintegrate. And I since then have never bought her a tomato sauce again. But it was also there was a time when I was about six or seven when my my mom had mom dad had a a pair this amazing woman called Arianna, and she came. She came from Italy. She came and I and from then on she would when she came went back, a friend would calm and and so Italian food started kind of infusing my life. And when I was just between school and university, I went and traveled and in Italy a bit, and and we went to stay with her, and I remember being this moment when it was all of the tomatoes that have been grown by her family, her extended family, had all been given to her, and it was that time of year when she made passata. Basically, I just remember her in in the kitchen and I was all helping to kind of grind the tomatoes through and that that would be bottled off and back and then passed back out to the family, and that there was something just generous spirited about it. It's a beautiful thing to watch and as you say, a process. So if we've sort of talked about school and food and family and food and being young and food, and what was it like when you started your career working and food, you know, you were acting. I was starting to act and travel quite a lot, and and travel has been one of the wonderful elements of what I do, you know, whether it's to Japan or I spent a lot of time in Hungary and Budapest, and and then in North Carolina, remember, and then dan in Louisiana and having grits and crawfish and and sweet corn and the simplicity of that. And one of the wonderful things about my job is, particularly when you're filming, you're even these cities and rather than basically as a tourist, but you're there to work, but often the crew are from there, and so you have this amazing thing of having an introduction to cities that that means you can get quite quickly, sort of slightly beneath the surface and get told where where the sort of great places are. And it was then I suppose that my sort of food tastes started expanding. If you knew you were going to be filming in Venice or Budapes, would you start thinking about restaurants before you went? Would you ask? I'm not good at that, but I know many actors that are the greatest of those is Jeremy Strong, Jeremy wonderful actor and absolute passionate foodie. And it was great when we were making the Trial of Chicago seven. Wherever we were, I would just get a sort of email from him saying, right, I've got a table at this place that was on chef's table. Your film. We shot a bit in Chicago and then actually in New Jersey, but we were based in New York. We've had a lot of conversations people who say, mostly the directors were just like, really not to stop for lunch because it just stops the flow of the filming, of the acting, and then actors saying that actually the food on set could be terrible. You feel about working and eating. It shifts and it changes. I mean definitely. When I was starting on British sets, there's this thing craft Service, which in the UK is a couple of sort of slightly MOLDI digestive biscuits and uh, you know, some instant coffee. And I remember when I did my first film in America, which was being directed by Roberts Nero and was a big budget that movie. I love that, but it was a big shock to me because suddenly you arrived and on the streets of Brooklyn it was like it was like Borrow Market had these sort of gigantic piles of bagels and and well, I think it's also an American thing. And of course I was completely seduced as my children remained. They came to the set of The of the Goodness and not quite sure what it is I do, but as far as they can see, I just work at a sweet shot. And something about Jessica. Jessica Chess was saying recently what sort of tips had she learned from about being an actor, and one of them was that al Pacino had said that careers get ended at the craft service table people who becomes too obsessed with the ground age. Um. But my greatest onset food was I made a film many years ago called Savage Grace with Julianne Moore, and we shot it all in in Barcelona, and even though it was set in kind of London and New York and Cadecats, it was a sort of low budget movie and Barcelona was passing for all of these things. But the span Ish cruise were just wonderful lunch. You support her out and that put a table up with a kind of umbrella, and that it would be just the most exquisite dispatch in little cups for everyone just to sort of start, and then it felt like you were living. I mean, I think there was even wine on the table, wasn't it um, which I think would probably have aided my performance. So I always think, you know, investing in good food for the people who work for you or that you work with is so important because we all work better, we all are better when we have good food. So I think that your mother is coming any minute, you do not want to keep her waiting. We always say that, you know, we've discussed you know, food and childhood, and food in school, and food and acting. I also say that food is comfort. If you needed food for comfort, is there something you would turn to? Can it be quite specific? Can be all you know? Bolosia, can be anything you want. So there was a restaurant in France, in a village called Grimo that was an Italian restaurant called Las Spaghetta. Um I'm not sure it's there anymore, but I went there as a child, and um, they did it a starter called which was well. For years, I've been trying to work out how the heck they make it, and everyone does their version of mozzarelen so that sort of thing. But but I think it was done with the cheapest mozzarella, you know that that really sort of plastic stuff with bread crumbs, and it just a very simple, uh fried and then it was and you could. You had to eat it quickly before it got before it and it it remains my comfort. And my brother, my brother James partickl my old brother James and I would go and we would order it for starter, for main court. It was and so and we tried to ask how they made it, and they would never tell us. That makes me very very happy that point I said, you were a food lover. I did, and we love you. Thank you so much. Today. Where is that? Let's go make another one I'd never tasted. The River Cafe Look Book is now available in bookshops and online. It has over one hundred recipes, beautifully illustrated with photographs from the renowned photographer Matthew Donaldson. The book has fifty delicious and easy to prepare recipes, including a host of River Cafe classics that have been specially adapted for new cooks. The River Cafe Look Book Recipes for Cooks of all ages. Ruthie's Table four is a production of I Heart Radio and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, 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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