Bonus: Wine with Ab Rogers

0:00Ab Rogers:This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Game night rush, or any night of the week, really. Genius keeps every order moving. From online ordering, to your kitchen, to the front counter. Big league reliability for any business. That's genius. Ruthie's Table 4 is now a book. Paul McCartney, Michael Caine, Kamala Harris, David Beckham, Tina Fey, Elton John, and many more. It's full of stories, beautifully designed in a celebration of the way food connects us all. It's available now wherever you buy your books.

0:41Ab Rogers:Ruthie's Table 4, brought to you by Sky and Montclair.

0:50Ab Rogers:I know from a very early age, going with you to Italy, you were really interested in the vineyard. In the vineyard. Yeah. You know, that vineyards were part of, you know, exploration for you, getting to know people who made wine, how they made the wine, whether it was in Greek Island or whether it was in Chianti or whether it was in Piemonte, that your interest in wine came from the grape. So would you like to talk about what your relationship with wine is? I mean, for me, when you make a tagine, I find it really fascinating because you can't stir it. In a way that for me, it's very different from Italian.

1:30So you have to you have to imagine all the different layers and you're going to put it in the five or four hours and how those layers are going to be interacted during the time. And wine is kind of like that. You need to imagine all the things that's going to happen to that wine when you pick it, how ripe the grapes are. Are you going to let them stay on there? Are you going to allow the skin to kind of to stay on a little bit? What it's going to sit in and all the way through the wine takes memories from those moments. But maybe the most important is the soil that it's grown in. And I think we see in this, you know, it's amazing what world wine is doing.

2:06But for me in Australia and in California, we had this really rich soil. And I think the grapes get a bit lazy. It's like, oh, this is really easy to grow. And so, you know, I'm just going to sit here and sure I can be high alcohol and I can be round and I can get many points. but there's no tension there's no there's no fight you know when you're on a volcano particularly like la palma which has erupted and you have an incredible winemaking there called victoria you have these these grapes that are growing against all odds you know that they're fighting through the volcanic soil and the volcanic ash to to make their foundations and they're really working hard and when the grape comes out and it's been got trade winds blowing on it it's this incredible grape that has fought through all of this and then you kind of put it in you know in glass rather than oak so you're kind of really holding on to the to the to the flavors um and you know you this one woman runs around these 20 different parcels she has no employers she's kind of her background is art history and she makes where is this in la palma this is kind of one of the smallest canary islands um like liegra um bianca and these these kind of ancient these ancient grapes also very very old old roots and the whole influence of the of the volcanic soil makes these very very mineral wines um i mean like in etna um there's envernet we do really interesting wine on the other islands um but also it's what the wines put in you know i mean oak makes our wine very rich but let's you know we go back to the romans and they're putting in terracotta and it you know it's like um the way you put clay against plastic and it looks like plastic when you put the wine in the terracotta it takes on this very matte influences and so you get these you know i like wines which are light i don't like the really heavy and i love spanish wine the modern wine i find the old rioca can be a little bit too heavy piemonte is fantastic for the for the for the for the reds and so when you go to cook and you're you know you're spending this time when

4:05Ab Rogers:in the market thinking about how you're going to cook a whole fish how you're going to you know make the vegetables in a certain way are you thinking at that point of the wine that you're going to be drinking definitely i'm thinking yeah and i think you know to have a volcanic red um uh with a turban it's fantastic because it kind of that it's very very savory and salty because you've had all the sea the salt from the sea blowing onto the grapes and this kind of slightly salty savory light red wine really cuts perfectly with this with that kind of emulsified fats that you have in the turbots. I know that when you're coming into the River Cafe, you really take great care of the wine that you're going to have with your food.

4:47Ab Rogers:When you come to our house, go downstairs and you really come up and say, Ruthie, this is what we should be drinking tonight. This wine is something that will make the food taste different. You know, the food will take the wine. Also, I think it's interesting, the stress when you're cooking for certain people and how that's, you know, how that affects you. Do you think cooking is a performance? Does it matter to you very much how the audience reacts to what you've thought? For me, cooking is definitely a part of performance, but it's a way of expressing your love, I think, to the people that you're cooking for, to an extent.

5:20I cook behind a counter and I put food out as I'm cooking and then someone might be peeling peas or doing something on the other side. but that energy that is going into it the energy of the room completely defies how the food is comes out i think to an extent and if there's this kind of very positive spirit then the food comes out much more you know perfectly to an extent and sometimes you can get nervous and when you get nervous then your kind of sixth sense goes goes out i mean i think partly because i've been dyslexic i can lie in bed and you know milk i melt colors together and look at things but also very much foods and smells and tastes and think about how things might go together or the things that i want to try or to do and the kind of chemistry of these different fish fats or you know with some thai fish oil or these kind of emulsifications and how they they go and i thought for me that's you know thinking of you know spending the last two days preparing for this the opportunity just to be thinking about food i find it so you know yesterday had a big design meeting and i found myself bicycling and just thinking about food and i think stop you need to be thinking about, design.

6:33Ab Rogers:From game day crowds to memorable meals, Genius by Global Payments keeps your kitchen and floor perfectly in sync. Real-time menus, seamless updates, big league reliability for any business. That's genius. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.