Bonus: What’s New At The River Cafe

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement, the ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. You might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story. John has never been anything but gay, but he really tried hard not to be. Listen to Atonement, the John Palk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:40So here we are in the bonus edition of Ruthie's Table 4, and I'm here with Sean. And we are celebrating being back together again. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. What did you do over Christmas? I was doing my other full-time job. What would that be? Being a mother. I was just looking forward to coming back to work so people do what I say. Yeah. We always close. It's always been since the very beginning. Why do we close so long for Christmas when, you know, a lot of restaurants do quite well over Christmas? It's a funny thing, isn't it? Because even being in London over Christmas, I thought, where can I go and eat?

1:17You've always had it as a family business, haven't you? So that was really part of the kind of core values of the business, which this year we were closed for two and a half weeks, weren't we? No. Which was literally like a lot. But this year there was a reason we were doing work in the kitchen. It's very exciting. Because we have this year we've put a new floor down and then we've put down a new carpet, which is bluer than blue. It's bluer than blue, isn't it? I don't know what colour you'd call that but it's almost Eve Klein blue it's almost that blue everything looks really glistening and new and special and most of all what do we have?

2:01the new wood oven we have a new wood oven have you noticed any difference in cooking in it? it took about two days to get really hot actually so the first day we came back you couldn't get heat in the restaurant because the wood oven must just hold so much latent heat. But now it's all good. Good. But it's nice to come back after being off and see it all looking pristine and it feels like you've got to look after everything again, which feels good, doesn't it? Yeah. I came in on the night flight, the day flight from New York and walked in and it just was so glistening. It was so nice as a cold, grey London day to come in and see the blue carpet, the new floor in the kitchen and the wood oven looking so great yeah and so that's what we've invested into the restaurant but also food you know that's arriving i called up and i said what's happening in the restaurant they said this person is here that person here and guess what ruthie a gretti has arrived and i thought wait a minute that's not a person that is our favorite favorite vegetable from Italy.

3:16So it was great to welcome a Gretti back to the River Cafe. Definitely going to have that as soon as I get in. Oh yeah, definitely. So a Gretti is, it's called, I think it's called Monk's Beard in English. But a Gretti is the word in the market. And it's like a marsh grass, isn't it, that grows I think in and around Lazio, I believe, in that kind of swampy it looks like grass thick grass thick grass i know somebody asked me to describe it and even calling it a vegetable doesn't feel quite right it is so different but it's really it comes in in bunches kind of cool for the chef bride maybe in white paper and um just cut it off with the scissors or pick it but it tastes like minerals it tastes like almost almost a bit spinachy slightly saliney you boil it in salted water then you can have your a gritty experience can't you yes so then you go just going to decide what you want to put on it so you can have olive oil and lemon which is obviously delicious super healthy fish or something or you can have it with tomato so sometimes we make like a slow cooked tomato sauce and then the pan grittato and make which is fried breadcrumbs which gives it a texture it gives you the sauciness of the tomato and then you have the saltiness of the agretti, then you have the pan grittato yeah the crunch which is delicious, also served with mozzarella if you want to put that together it's properly heaven or you can have it with bataga which you can make a bataga sauce that's what I had that is probably in my top 5 meals if you like fish roe and caviar and things like that you'll love mullet roe and it's dried so you grate it finely and dissolve it with a bit of boiling water a tiny bit and then whisk olive oil into it one or two drops of lemon juice but no more than that no I don't like it too lemony too one drop and black pepper then when you've boiled the agriti put it into the Bataga sauce zhuzh it around and then you can put it back on the heat but if if you overheat it it will turn into scrambled egg a scrambled egg effect so don't overheat it and then put more bataga on top and that is delicious isn't it so this is a great way to start a meal you know because you have that first and you feel slightly virtuous that you're having something that is just a delicious green i i vary you know sometimes I really love it with tomato depending on your mood but the other time when I came in my first experience after with a gritty after nine months or eight months or however long it's been was to have it with the batarga yeah yeah it's so good or if you want to go all out yeah I'm going to tell them about the you can put um I was going to say spaghetti yeah with pasta yeah which is like that's my idea of a ready meal you just have your spaghetti with batarga add a bunch of a gritty to it and then that is just such a good combo and it's also very beautiful because you see the green sprigs intertwined with the yeah you know you wouldn't want to do with a fresh pasta but doing with the linguine or a spaghetti and then we have the blood or if we want to think about desserts or ice creams or sorbets and also the special drink that we have with the Prosecco to start we have blood oranges yeah before Christmas it was really seem to be not getting them but now we're January February that's adding a bit of color to the kind of green yeah and brown food that you can add a bit of blood orange into something and can lift the plate hmm and also the panna cottas to do blood orange with the the almond tart and the polenta cake and and sorbet you know yeah ending a meal with a blood orange sorbet yeah and if you're cooking at home it's a really easy thing to make you know blood orange is a versatile thing it's not just a pudding i agree you can use it um sometimes we use it with um a shaved or raw fennel salad with some blood orange yeah and that kind of lifts the palate somewhat it's so beautiful to look at also you know again and you know yeah it's been two months today i'm frying it actually part of the fritton misto oh yeah good idea just one piece of blood orange with some radicchio Yeah, I'll check.

7:46And then the other exciting thing, and we can do this next week report back on it, is that we have trips to Tuscany for olive oil in November, and we take 15 people, and we have the trip to Piemonte to taste the new wines in Piemonte. And then we also have a trip to Sicily. And so the group that neither went to Tuscany or to Piemonte are going to Sicily next week. And that will be an episode that we can all come back to and see what they had and what they discovered and what they learned. So stay tuned to Ruthie's Table 4 for the next bonus. Thank you, Sean. Thanks.

8:33I'm John Polk. For years, I was the poster boy of the conversion therapy movement. the ex-gay who married an ex-lesbian and traveled the world telling my story of how I changed my sexuality from gay to straight. You might have heard my story, but you've never heard the real story. John has never been anything but gay, but he really tried hard not to be. Listen to Atonement, the John Palk story on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.