Bonus: The Cook And The Book

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0:38So, Ruthie, as you were going back and reading the finished galley of the book, was there anything that you learned that surprised you? Well, I think what I've learned from the book and from talking and the transcripts is that so many of the guests talked about their grandmothers cooking almost more than their mothers. and I think that was particularly true of people who came here as immigrants and I always say that the mother adapted her cooking to the country she's in, the culture that she's in. The child totally rejects very often the cooking of the country they left but the grandmother keeps it with her and that she's there to cook it for the mother, her daughter or daughter-in-law who remembers and might want to, and the children who actually then, because they love their grandmother and has that food.

1:35So I think that is something that really was moving to me. Steve McQueen talked about going to the market with his grandmother, what that meant, the kind of introduction of different vegetables that he'd never really had. And I think that the other very moving part for me was how many people came in with their own cookbooks that had been written for them by either their mother or their grandfather or their father. They wanted to take the history of their family with them when they went into the world. So if they were at university, they could make a soup or pasta that they'd had at home, in someone's home.

2:14And so they brought Kristin Scott Thomas and Tom Hollander. There's a photograph of Tom and I looking at one of his books of the recipes that they've had 50 years later. You know, both their parents had passed or their grandparents had passed, but the cookbook was with them. The last one I want to ask you about, Ruthie, is tradition, which sounds like a very kind of milquetoast generic term. But actually, when it comes to Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach, two of your close friends, tradition is actually a time of the week. It's an event. What is it? I think, you know, I say, you know, in an uncertain world, there are certain things we want a certainty.

2:51And I went through it with Richard's family that you just knew that every Sunday lunch you'd have with family, either your mother-in-law or your mother or your sisters or brothers. A Sunday lunch is something. And Jewish religion, you have the Friday night supper, don't you? You have the Shabbat meal. And I think Ramadan. So I think there is a kind of tradition very often in families, immigrant families, to do with your heritage, you know. With Greta and Noah, I met them before they came to London, but Greta came here to work on Barbie, and then Noah made a film. They brought their two children.

3:33They lived in Richmond, so they were near the River Cafe. And so the easiest time for everyone who was working was to try and have Sunday lunch. We did it about, again, about two or three times in a row. We just said, you know, we're having lunch on Sunday. We check in on Wednesday. Who's coming? What are we doing? I said, you know, maybe this is becoming a tradition. And Harold, the little boy, I think he was about five, said, oh, this is what tradition is. Okay, this is what tradition means. And we said, yeah, it is what tradition means. And so we just ended up calling it tradition. Are we meeting at 12 o 'clock for tradition?

4:11Are we meeting at 2 for tradition? It just became the word for Sunday lunch. I was thinking about that Raymond Carver book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. And the same could be said of food, What We Talk About When We Talk About Food. And I think the answer, as this book proves, is kind of everything. Yeah, I think maybe food is everything.

4:34Ruthie's Table Four is proud to support Leukemia UK. Their Cartwheel for a Cure campaign raises funds for vital research and more effective and kinder treatments for acute myeloid leukemia. Please donate, and to do so, search Cartwheel for a Cure.

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