Best of Season Three: Part 2

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1:10Food unlocks so many memories. The kitchen you grew up in, the first meal you cooked, celebrations with friends and family. More than 40 guests have joined me at Table 4 this season, sharing recipes, cooking together, and talking about the importance of food in all of our lives. In this episode, we will share some of those conversations, hearing from the actors Stephen Fry and Laura Dern, former footballer Gary Lineker, and the three-star Michelin chef Eric Ripaer. But first, Linda Evangelista, talking about her memories of working as a model in the 80s, her love of cooking and life in Canada with her Italian family.

1:50We began with our recipe for gnocchi with slow-cooked tomato sauce. It's great to see something in writing because I learned to make gnocchi with my grandmother. But it was never written down. And it was a little bit of this and this many eggs, depending how big they are, and some potatoes. Yeah, and some potatoes. That's how we learned to, I mean, that's a beautiful way to learn. Did she ever write anything down? She couldn't write. Yeah. She didn't know how to write. She didn't know how to write in English or didn't know how to write at all? She didn't know how to write at all. She was a peasant.

2:26She was born in Italy, as was my father and my mother and all my grandparents. And do you speak Italian? Very badly, I speak it. And my family speaks dialect. I know you're from... And proper Italian, but at home they speak dialect. My parents spoke English to us growing up, and only when they were arguing did they speak to each other in Italian. So I can tell you where to go in Italian, but I can't ask you, are you having a nice day? Yeah, or kind words. My husband, Richard, the dad's father, had Italian parents, and he had the same thing, that he heard Italian spoken. Again, a very similar story when there was an argument, I think.

3:09And then when he did learn Italian, a lot of it came back because he had kind of grown up for it. Right. So this grandmother, she never did learn to speak English. And in our neighborhood, it was quite Polish, some Ukrainians and Italians. Where was it? Where was the neighborhood? In St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, across the lake from Toronto in Niagara region, right near the border of the United States. And my grandmother went to Italian mass, shopped at the Italian store, worked picking fruit on the farm with the Italian ladies. So she didn't really need to speak English. I remember how excited they all got that generation when Canada went metric.

3:53I was about 10 years old or so, approximately. And then they understood, oh, this is how many grams of meat I'm buying. And so they were very happy when that happened. When did they leave? The family comes from between Naples and Rome. Yes, it's a town called Piñataro in Taramna, which is near Casino and Monte Casino, where the big battle of World War II took place. and my father would have come over in, he was born in 1940 and I think he came over 1956. And my mother was born in 43 and she came over in 1950. And the grandmother that you were describing, was that your mother's mother? That was my father's mother, but my mother's mother was kind of the same.

4:43And they all came. They all came. Eventually they were all. Yes, and they came with the few belongings that they had. and I have the two handmade hammered copper pots that my one grandmother came over with and she would make her sundae, you know, tomato sauce in and I have them. They're like, they're our precious belongings. That's, there's no painting, so we're jewels. Yeah, but a saucepan. Yeah, a saucepan is a memory and it is what she cooked with, So bringing that with her was part of her. Why did they leave, you know? They left in search of a better life. They had lost everything. Well, they didn't have anything much.

5:32They worked their land, so it's not like they had vocations. And they just went in search of a better life for their children. In Canada rather than the United States. Well, they were heading to the United States, But at the time, they closed their doors, and then they were not receiving any more immigrants. And somebody in the United States found a sponsor for my grandfather in Canada. And the other one, similar story. So, yeah, one grandfather was a prisoner of war. They were both in the war, my grandfathers. My mom was born during the war, 43. And she spoke Italian? She speaks proper and dialect.

6:14She speaks both. When you say dialect, you mean the dialect of that region? Yes, correct. And it gets even worse because then, you know, it takes on a life of its own in Canada. Not quite like the way the Americans, they've like totally butchered the language. And I don't like the way they cut off the ends of the words when they say mozzarella and when they say... Mozzarella. I know, that's Tony Soprano. Do you remember Tony, in watching The Sopranos, they would always call it mozzarella. Yeah, that's interesting. And so your mother also, your mother had both her mother and her mother-in-law. Correct.

6:54With her, yeah. And did they all cook together? Yeah, I think early on they did. And, you know, my mother is, because she came over quite young, she got quite Americanized. And, you know, she has an education. Sure. She cooks with recipes. but she also has all the recipes in her head of what she grew up making. Who is the best cook of all of them, do you think? Me. You. Good. Okay, we're going to get to that. I like your answer. Okay, so do you want to read the recipe for gnocchi with tomato sauce? Gnocchi. I'm joking. Okay. Gnocchi with tomato sauce. Served six. In my family, three. There's one.

7:41Yeah. Okay. Two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Two cloves of garlic, finely sliced. I would say a little. You can add more. Yeah, okay. Good. 800 grams of tin-peeled plum tomatoes. One kilogram of white flowery potatoes. Your grandma would be happy that this is in grams, wouldn't she? Yeah, she would. 130 grams of double zero flour. one large egg, lightly beaten, and ten basil leaves. Interesting. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat. Add the garlic and cook until soft. Add the tomatoes, breaking them up. Season well and cook for 30 minutes on low heat. Bring a large saucepan of salted water to a boil and add the potatoes and cook until they are easily pierced with a four.

8:42Drain and peel when they are cool enough to handle. Immediately put the potatoes through a food mill and then sift the flour over them, making a well in the center. Add the beaten egg. Using your hands, quickly mix to form a smooth, soft dough. Do not overwork the dough or you will make the gnocchi too heavy. Divide the dough into four. Using your hands, roll the dough into a sausage and then cut into pieces. Cook the gnocchi until they rise to the surface. Remove the gnocchi with a slotted spoon and then stir into the tomato sauce. Add the basil and, if you like, grated parmigiano. Now, we ran our gnocchi along a fork to get the ridges.

9:33You can do that. We sometimes do ridges and sometimes we don't. I prefer without. Yeah, you prefer without. We were also talking today about gnocchi. I was talking to Joseph Trevelli, one of our chefs. He was saying, do you remember, Ruthie, how the cook in our house in Italy, called Giovanna, made gnocchi? And she said to us, when you form them, it's almost like you're doing a book, like you're making a book of the flour and the mixture. Because it is really true that if you handle them too much, they do get tough. And so you want to touch them. Because the flour gets overdeveloped? It gets overdeveloped.

10:07And the idea that you want to make them as light. And actually, I also used to say that what we do is we'd make the potatoes and add a little bit of flour. And then put one in and then they'd fall apart. And then you would add a little bit of flour. And you would do it so gradually that then you would know that you need that amount of flour for them not to fall apart. But the least amount makes them as light as you can. And then once you've done them so many times, you just know. So let's go back to the beginning. You grew up with an Italian grandmother, two. Two. Two grandfathers. Two. Your parents.

10:45What was food like growing up in the Evangelista household? Well, I complained a lot because we always ate homemade food. and I wanted to have TV dinners or frozen meals or something out of a can. I wanted clothes from Sears Roebuck. Oh, my clothes were from Sears. I said to my mother, not that we had money, but why can't we buy clothes out of a catalog? That sounds so weird. My clothes were from Sears and Woolworths. So it was a lot of homemade food, And I appreciate that now, but like growing up, you know, I wanted the TV dinners with the compartments, you know, and the little apple pie in the corner.

11:38But yeah, my father took us out for dinner every Friday because my mother worked late. She was working in retail, but my father let us choose the restaurant. And by restaurant, I mean McDonald's or Denny's or the pizzeria. Or A &W, you know, fast food. And so that was a big deal because we were very spoiled with that. And fresh, we had homemade pasta Wednesdays and Sundays. We had roast beef once a week. We would have steak or barbecue once a week. My father really spent a lot of money, I think, on food because he didn't have much growing up. They ate like a chicken or a rabbit once a week. This is until he was 16 and came to Canada.

12:34Yeah, until he got a good job at General Motors. And the food went on the table family style. How many of you were there? Me and two brothers. Two brothers. And he would serve us, and he would put like this mound on your plate, and you had to eat it all. And for him, the most important thing was you weren't hungry, that you were nourished, that you ate. Everybody had a garden, and what they produced in these gardens was unbelievable. Tell me about it. Everything, like tomatoes and cucumbers and peppers and different, like radicchio, and then there were the fruit trees. And then there was, like, basil, all the herbs, you name it, onions.

13:17And it was just all there. So you had your own garden full of things. Everybody had. The whole backyard was a garden, but shared what the other one didn't have. And it's not like we had a swimming pool. We didn't play in our backyards. We played on the street or a parking lot. Did they bring the seeds, do you think, from Italy? Where did they get the seeds for broccoli and rubs? The seeds are a whole thing. The seeds was like a network. And whoever had like the best tomatoes that year would do the seeds and hand them out. And it's so funny now, you see all these heirloom tomatoes and I'm like, those are the tomatoes I grew up with.

13:55Like none of them were nice little round tomatoes. And then the fruit trees and my father, he had a green thumb and he would graft. He would do these sensational things like the apricot tree had plums on it. and the red apple tree had a branch with yellow apples and he would graft and it would just be incredible and then he would make his grappas. So do you think that then he would go work at General Motors, do you think that his real passion would have been to have been a farmer or to have done this all day? Absolutely. Yeah. Well, he grew up, he didn't get an education because he had to work the land and I know he had a donkey And whenever he referred to Italy, he referred to it as the good old days.

14:43I think that would have been what he would have loved to have done because he was so good at it. When you left, because you went to work quite at an early age. I was 18, almost 19. Oh, you were. What was that like leaving this culture of food? What did you do? How did you eat? I think I ate really simple. I was in New York for about a month or so, and then they shipped me off to Paris. Who shipped you off to Paris? I couldn't see because I wasn't doing so well in New York. They said maybe you'll be more successful in Paris. At age 18. 19. And I was first in the Hotel Sant 'Andre des Arts, but I got bed bugs there.

15:21So I went to the Hotel La Louisiane. I know Louisiane. I stayed there. My mom agreed. We found out our hotel room in the Louisiane was being used during the day. I'm not kidding. What? Yeah. And somebody once came home and they would rent it out during the day. Oh, my God. Yeah, so we left the Louisiana. Well, that was an upgrade for me. It was$10 more a night and my mom had to approve that. And so I would go to the market on Rue La Boussy. Yeah, yeah. And I would, like, get a baguette and a piece of brie and a piece of fruit. And that's how I would eat on a budget. Yeah. We moved into the Hotel Descends.

16:03Do you remember that one? That was next door to Louisiana. Yes, that's a very nice one. That was a big step up, yeah. What year was that? Well, it was in 73, maybe 72. Yeah, it was there in like 84, 85. Yeah, so that was later, so I'm sure. But I remember my city. It was pretty rough. That's so funny. Oh, my God. The best story I have about the hotel we stayed in, Renzo Piano came to visit me. Richard and his partner, they were doing the Pompadour Center. I was sick, so I was in bed. So Renzo came up and talked to me until Richard came back. He was at dinner. and we were just talking and I was sneezing, and then the phone rang, and it was the concierge, and he said, Madam, your husband is on the way up.

16:42And I thought that was so cool, the hotel. They were warning me because they thought that I was in bed with my lover. That's good. That's good. I thought that was in a cheap hotel. That was a pretty good service if I needed it. It's very good service.

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18:47Authors are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50 % and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. La Bernardin is one of the great restaurants of the world and Eric Ripert is one of the most admired chefs in the world. We sat down together in New York to talk about his culinary education and his food memories of his childhood in the south of France. My two grandmothers inspire me a lot, and my mother was an amazing, amazing chef.

19:28Tell me, because it's interesting. I always say that in all these interviews that we've done, the grandmother... The Italian one was cooking, very Italian, soul food. She was cooking like great Italian, northern Italian food. And I loved it. And then my grandmother from Provence was doing the same with Provencal food as well, which is a little bit similar to northern Italian, but has some subtle differences. I did the drive quite recently from Santa Margherita to Genoa to Nice. And suddenly you were in Italy and now you're in France. And, you know, the farinata, which they do in Italy, is the Italian version of the soca.

20:14Soca, the soca, yes. Yeah, which is in Nice. And what else do they cook? Like my grandmother in Provence, she was from the region of Avignon. So in Avignon, they're not close to the sea. They are obviously inland. And she will do like a baby leg of lamb, roasted. And then my grandmother, the Italian grandmother, wouldn't do that. But she would do Ossobucco, for instance. My grandmother in Provence would do a coccovin. My grandmother in Italy didn't know what a coccovin was. And those were subtle differences, but they were important. My mother was obsessed with the chefs from Nouvelle Cuisine at the time.

21:02So the Michel Gerard, the Paul Bocuse. that generation. And at home, she was cooking lunch and dinner, those elaborate meals with appetizer, main course, cheese, which she didn't cook, and dessert that were different from lunch to dinner on a different pattern of tablecloth, different china. It was unbelievable. For who? Who would she be cooking for? She was cooking for myself, stepfather, and my sister when she was old enough to be at the table with us because she's much younger than me. She did this every day? Every day. Well, she was a business lady. So she was in the fashion industry. She was importing the brand Courage for Spain and Andorra.

21:52Short skirts. Yes. Love those. And so she was very busy with the business. But she would wake up at 5 a.m. to prepare the meal. and then she would finish whatever needs to be finished, all the little details during lunchtime, and then same thing at night. And sometimes after the dinner, she will start to cook for the desserts. Like if she was doing, I don't know, a baba or rhum, she would start to let the baba dough rise and so on. Yes, I mean, it was amazing. But do you think she would have liked to have done that as a career? No. No. She wanted to do it because for the art of doing it, for the love of doing it, and she wanted to feed the family.

22:38So you had this incredible life of having food that was cared for, you know, was a priority in her day and your stepfather. And different styles too. Yeah. Did you ever cook with her? With my mom? Yeah. Later in life, because in the beginning they allowed me to watch and eat anything I wanted. but they really didn't want me to touch anything. They were like, you're going to mess up the kitchen, don't touch it. So I was eating. And just before I went to culinary school, my mom started to allow me to help her in the kitchen. She sounds amazing. Is she still cooking? She cooks for herself and she sent me pictures sometimes and I'm like, oh my God, this is amazing.

23:22Like the other day she did the duck confit and then, you know, she has the, I don't know how you call it, those little, for the bone, those little white. Oh, the little things, the white things you put. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, those white, it's like a little heart. So she still has those kind of details. And I'm like, oh my God, how can you do that? How do you look back at the food of the Nouvelle Cuisine? What do you think when you think of that food? Well, as you know, Nouvelle Cuisine at one point became really a bad word. And it became a caricature of. Big plates and little food. A little food, and I always have this image of like three string beans parallel to each other.

24:03But Nouvelle Cuisine in the beginning was a revolution. We were coming out of the era of Escoffier. It was a different mindset where the sauce was not hiding anymore the flavors, but the sauce was enhancing the star of the plate, which was whatever protein, mostly, or vegetable you decide. And also, it was the first time that chefs were plating their food. Yeah. Oh, really? Until then, the food was on platters and the waiters were serving the food. Or the clients were serving themselves from the platter. Yeah. But the first chef to say, I'm plating my food in my plate was the Trois Gros. So you grew up in a house where food was a priority, where your mother cooked, your grandmothers cooked.

24:54Tell us about your journey to becoming a chef, from being a child that wasn't allowed in the kitchen to being, I think, a 15-year-old that started cooking. What happened at 15 when you decided to be? Well, at 15, I cannot go to school any longer because my grades are so bad. So I end up in the principal office with mom and he's explaining to her that I have to find what they call a vocational school or a career. What year was this? It's 1980. And I look sad, but I'm really happy because I want to go to culinary school. And my grades were great on the first year. On the second year, same thing.

25:43At my exam, which was after two years, I had to do a goulash and a rice pilaf with langoustines in a sauce nantua. And I did a good job because I graduated with honors. And then I was like, this is the beginning. So at 17 years old, I write a letter to the 18 three-star Michelin restaurants in France because I was 18 at the time. and nobody answered. They didn't? Nobody. So then at one point I go back and I write to the two stars. And then Maxime sent me a letter saying we don't have a spot for you. And that's my only letter. And then three months later, I received a letter from La Tour d 'Argent.

26:33And at the time they were three stars. Yeah, of course. And they were celebrating in 1982 their 400-year anniversary. Anyway, I ended up at 17 years old in La Tour d 'Argent in Paris Where did you stay? In a tiny hotel And then I finally found a place It took a couple of months to find a place It was very, very challenging That's so young 17 in a kitchen like that What was the culture of the kitchen? What was it like? Very old-fashioned A lot of abuse, verbal abuse, physical abuse that was the culture in those kitchens at that time. And also, I have to say, I was the youngest in the kitchen and I was not necessarily the best.

27:20And they were patient, but at the same time, they were very abusive. And as you probably know, in France, it was a philosophy behind it. First of all, it made no sense to me, but they wanted to break you psychologically and rebuild you as a champion, which is ridiculous. I think it was more an excuse to let the chef be abusive and have those tantrums and be aggressive. And someone who's angry is not someone who's... It's not a quality to be angry, let's put it this way. So I learned the hard way. Did you think of giving up ever? No, I never thought of giving up. I was obviously at times down and not happy, but my vision of becoming the chef that I became was never compromised.

28:17The ambition kept you going. It was, yes, but the ambition was not about being number one or being rated or being... The ambition was to cook great food and create an amazing experience. And it has always been my vision, all my life. Stephen Fry, a memorable guest, endured years of bland boarding school food, craving sweets and treats. At Cambridge University, he joined the Footlights Student Review and was part of an acclaimed generation of actors, including Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson. After university, new opportunities opened up, acting, travelling and eating exciting food in foreign places.

29:04We went to Edinburgh and we won this new prize called the Perrier Award for comedy, and this involved going to Australia. Well, sort of. It didn't, the prize didn't. But because we won it, an Australian entrepreneur called Michael Edgeley saw our show and then said, you guys want to come out to Australia? And that's where I learned to eat, because, Ruthie, it was an absolute revelation. This is 1981. Starting in Sydney, Doyle's, of course, the amazing seafood place. You walk along the dunes and come to this beautiful shack where the food is, where things you've never heard of, like barramundi and Morton Bay bugs and all these extraordinary seafood things.