Cate Blanchett on growing her own food, multiculturalism, and a disastrous Christmas dinner

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1:08People always ask me who my dream guest would be on Ruthie's Table 4. Cate Blanchett has always been top of that list, an actor, director, and a vocal activist for values and ideas close to my heart. A few weeks ago, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach took me to see Kate in Thomas Ostermeyer's radical new version of The Seagull at the Barbican Theatre. After a stunning performance, we all went for a small supper next door, talking about Chekhov, her role in tar, and the serpentine party that she's co-hosting this summer. And as always, family. Kate lives with purpose in the countryside in East Sussex, keeping bees, growing vegetables in her garden, cooking and eating seasonally.

1:57Here we are at the River Cafe on the beautiful first day of summer. The sun is shining, the chefs are cooking, and the garden is flowering. Kate and I are going to talk about our shared love of food, artists, children, and a lot more. A dream come true indeed. Thank you. I'm glad I got out of bed this morning. I'm glad you did too. You're right, a little piece of sunshine has come onto the table. It's coming through. That was such an incredible night. How do you feel post-Seagull? What does it feel like? You did it for how many weeks? It was so short. We were at the Barbican, so it was six weeks.

2:34And I mean, I've known Thomas Ostermeyer for years and years and years. You know, he's running the shower burner, and my husband and I are running the Sydney Theatre Company. So our paths continually crisscrossed. But we never actually worked together. And I think the thing, maybe it's a little bit like a dinner party. When you do Chekhov, it's all about the ensemble and the alchemy that happens or doesn't between the actors. And I've always done Chekhov with a loose ensemble of actors, whereas Thomas was assembling all of us. A few people had worked together before. I'd worked with Tom Burke on Soderbergh's Black Bag relatively recently before the production started.

3:12But a lot of us didn't know one another. and he was able to bring us all together, all from totally, wildly different approaches. And the thing I miss most is the people. I love them all so much. People here are like my family. We work together, we go out or we celebrate or sometimes we also just work. But it's a very strong attachment when you're working together and creating something. Here it's every day. In a way, there are parallels. The curtain goes up at 12.30 and the curtain goes up with you at 7.30, don't you think? There's an anticipation. You're very dependent on each other. And also I think you're part of something that, and this is what maybe the patrons don't realize, what an audience doesn't realize, is that whatever happens in the kitchen will be totally influenced by the people who come through your front door.

4:09And so the evening is a thing. You know what's on the menu, but you don't know how it's going to unfold. You don't know what people are going to order. And so it's fresh every time. And, you know, being quite shy, I mean, I don't know if you are. Yes, I am. You get to know people by doing something together. Collaborating, being together. But we see actors on stage singing or the incredible gift that is given to us as an audience to be able to have that. and Britain has always been known for that. Exactly. Do you feel that this is something that is threatened now, that the priority of culture in this country is being lessened?

4:51There was a time when there was money for the arts. There was money for building a theatre. And I know that you are an activist. I know that you're engaged in political life. What are you feeling about right now in terms of... Well, I mean, people talk about activism, you know, that it's political, but I think it's engaging in things that have been politicised. And it always is strange to me when we talk about the arts, this word elite is used. And if you think about an elite sports person, that term means that they have spent many, many years perfecting their ability, that they are at the top of their game.

5:32And that when we talk about the arts, yes, they are elite in the sense that those people who put those shows on are exceptional at what they do. It's not for an elite. I think the elite these days are the people who don't pay tax. I agree. And if they did pay tax, then all of these wonderful offerings, cultural offerings that Churchill said, what are we fighting for if we're not fighting for culture and the access to it, is that then they would be more accessible to people. And so there's this, I think it's a linguistic language division that's often created between people and culture. And I think that you, I mean, that's the joy of touring a play is that you will tour to a regional area.

6:19You'll do it in a major city. You'll do it in one country, in another country. And I think the reaction that people have in various different locations will feed the work and hopefully those people will be fed by the work. The first time I went to, you know, a gallery and saw, you know, a major work of portraiture, it changed the way, you know, at my little state primary school, the way I thought about the world. And dance does that. Music does that. But we're told that it's only for a certain set of people. And I think that's because access is not afforded them. Tell me about the early days of being in your family.

6:56Did you have sisters and brothers? Yes, I have an older brother and a younger sister. and my father was from Texas. Where were you born? I was born in Melbourne in Australia. Yeah, we were going to move to the States really early on and they decided, I think, for our education that they wanted us to be in Australia. So we stayed there. How did he come from Australia to, I mean, from Texas to Australia? Yeah, he was the child of two alcoholic parents And so he grew up, I think, killing birds in a park. And it would never happen now. But, you know, a gentleman saw him and took him off the streets and educated him and put him through high school.

7:45And the minute he could, he wanted to get out. So he lied about his age, joined the Navy, and he went to the Antarctic. And I think he decided to become a Unitarian minister. and my mother who was at Teachers College in Melbourne, well, his ship broke down leaving the Antarctic so they had to dock in Melbourne and there was a teachers dance and they didn't have enough men so they went down to the port and then my father came and my mother and he danced all night and then he left three weeks later and they corresponded for two years and then he decided to come out. It was quite old-fashioned. It's a little bit like this wonderful Patrick White novel called Voss where there's an explorer and I can't remember what she did.

8:31I think she might have also been a teacher. They fell in love but didn't consummate it or declaim it to one another and then they corresponded through letters and that's sort of what my mother and father did. And then they decided that he'd come out and they'd get married. That's a story of adventure and chance. and pursuing an idea. Or two lonely people who found one another. And the idea of the harbour and meeting and dancing all night. We celebrated Halloween and Thanksgiving, so I grew up with pumpkin pie and pecan pie and ribs. So did he make them or did he teach your mom how to make them?

9:11Yeah, both. And so we grew up with quite a lot of American black-eyed peas, all of those things. Did you ever go back to Texas? Yeah, sadly. He died when he was 40, and we had planned a trip back to Texas, and he died in January, and we were going in May. And so we made the trip anyway and went and met his sort of diaspora of his family. And so growing up, there was a sense of the American influence. There was Australian influence as well. Yeah, my grandmother was, I think, a Scottish. And you said your grandmother lived with you? Yeah, she did. She lived here and made the sandwiches. Made the sandwiches.

9:52I think she was a Scottish descent, so everything was boiled within an inch of its life. And at that point in Australia, avocados were, you know, incredibly exotic mangoes. What year are we talking about, Kate? We're talking about a long time ago, Ruthie. So in the... No, in the 80s. In the 80s, okay. And so because of the fruit fly, there were quite strong demarcations between what was grown in Queensland, what was grown in New South Wales. Yeah. Nothing ever came over from Western Australia to Victoria. If you had fruit and you were crossing between Victoria and New South Wales, you had to leave the fruit, the vegetables at the border.

10:30So there was no tropical fruit that even came down. I mean, I have the utmost respect for farmers. It's, I mean, in any country. But in Australia, it's really, it's very hard. It's such an ancient land. And I think because for so long we have marginalised Indigenous understandings of the way to grow and collect food. What would that be? Tell me about the Indigenous experience of... Well, I mean, there were so many hundreds of language groups and cultures that have been wiped out through, you know, a white invasion. I mean, you can't call it any other, name it any other way. but I think we've not grown as a white culture through that wisdom and understanding of the land and so the food bowl in so many parts of Australia is actually in the wrong place.

11:21Water is a scarce commodity. I mean brand Australia when I was growing up was multiculturalism and so once we really embraced the wave of Vietnamese and Lebanese and Greek and Italian immigrants and refugees, our cuisine became extraordinary and now it's been exported to the world as Pan Pacific or Asia Pacific. But at the time when I was growing up, my mother was an excellent cook. So tell me about it. So your mother was left with three children. She was what, in her 30s? She was, yeah, 39. And my brother was 11, I was 10. Was she working? My sister was 8. Did she have a job? Well, she had to go back to work as a teacher.

12:02As a teacher. So she taught home economics. So our kitchen was fantastic. Describe it. Yeah. What was it like? A lot of Italian cooking and a lot of fresh seafood and salads, and that was not what people were eating at the time. But I think the thing when there was a lot of grief in my house, so the meals were delicious, but they were silent. And that's been one of the great joys, I think, for my side of the family, but also for me, is my husband came from this enormous Catholic family. So the food may not have been... Is he British? Yeah, I know he's Australian. But they had massively noisy, loud, raucous meals.

12:47And my husband's an excellent cook. And actually the first time I met my brother-in-law was at Christmas. And I came towards the house and people were screaming with laughter. And I don't know what the meal is, but it's a medieval recipe where you stuff a goose with a pheasant, with a pigeon, with a quail. That's right. And what had happened was he'd open the oven and the thing had shot out and it telescoped out onto the wall so there goes Christmas lunch. The smallest thing that was in there. Yeah, so they were madly trying to stuff it back in. I know that recipe. I mean, I've never done it myself, but I know that.

13:26It's dangerous. Have you ever done that? Do you know that? It's really dangerous. That's so funny. Because probably as they're cooking, they... Expand. They just have expand and then therefore. Yeah. That's hilarious. Yeah, so they're wildly adventurous with their cooking. How old were you when you met him? My husband and I got to, we've been married, God. We got married very quickly actually in 97. It wasn't a shotgun wedding. We didn't have children for quite some time. But I think we were 28. Yeah, so you were embraced by this family. But going back to yours, you grew up with your father in the beginning cooking and I assume your mother both cooked and you had meals and barbecues and people.

14:07And then it became a kind of sadness. And then there was a joy. It was just very silent. And did that change? Did you? Yes, thinking about it, maybe because I was coming to speak to you. But then I've always loved the dinner party. And so what I would do is I wouldn't go to a lot of parties as a teenager. I would have dinner parties. Would you? Yeah, so I would, where everyone would dress up, my girlfriends would all dress up and we'd all cook something and we'd, you know, I don't know who we were trying to ape or what we were trying to ape. There was a lot of sorbet inside orange cups and I don't know.

14:42And I grew up with this Salvador Dali cookbook. You know, the one that he'd done and he'd done the illustrations. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And I cooked recipes from that. What were they like? Crazy. I have to admit that I didn't ever make anything from it. That was where I cooked my first snails. A surrealist cookbook. a surrealist recipe. Yeah, but it was hard in Melbourne at the time to find a pheasant. But brave of you to do that. Yeah, I tried. I tried, so I cooked and tried to decorate the dishes from the Salvador Dali cookbook. What age was this? Probably about 13. So that's young, because I often talk to people who when I say, okay, so you grew up in this nurturing home with a grandmother and a mother and cooking, and then what happened when you left home?

15:25And very often people say, then when I had my own flat and I started buying local ingredients and I started cooking. But 13 is an early age to do that and to entertain. I think it's because it was my father's book. He worked in advertising and it must have been a gift that he was given one year. Yeah, so it was sort of trying to. Oh, the Salvador Dali? Yeah, not that I can remember him ever cooking from it, but it was something of his that maybe I gravitated towards that. And also the surrealism seemed to make sense to me. I had very vivid nightmares and dreams as a child. And so his work and the surrealism movement as a whole kind of really unlocked something for me.

16:12An open kitchen in the River Cafe means we as chefs are able to talk to our guests dining in the restaurant. And now we're bringing that same ethos to our podcast. A question and answer episode with me and our two executive chefs. Send a voice note with your question to questions at rivercafe.co.uk and you might just be our next great guest on Ruthie's Table 4.

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17:47Malcolm Gladwell here. I recently recorded the first episode of Smart Talks with IBM, where I learned how AI agents are joining AI assistants as a major productivity tool. Let's start with AI agents. AI agents can reason, plan, and collaborate with other AI tools to autonomously perform tasks for a user. Brian Bissell, an expert from IBM, gave me an example of how a college freshman might use an AI agent. As a new student, you may not know, how do I do with my health and wellness issue? How many credits am I going to get for this given class? You could talk to someone and find out some of that, but maybe it's a little bit sensitive and you don't want to do that.

18:27Bissell told me, you could build an AI agent, a resource for new students that helps them navigate a new campus, register for classes, access the services they need, and even schedule appointments on their behalf, which in turn buys them more time to focus on their actual schoolwork. We can see patterns of how agents and assistants can help employees and customers and end users be more productive, automate workflows so they're not doing certain types of repetitive work over and over again, and streamlining their lives and making data more accessible to them 24 hours a day. To learn more about IBM's AI agents and how they can help your business, visit ibm.com slash agents.

19:15Tell me about cooking the Dover sole. What was that? Well, I'd actually deboned a sole in Alfonso Cuaron's disclaimer. And I don't know whether he thought my deboning was too good or that the scene was too static or whatever. But he then threw a cat onto the bench. so I was trying to debone and cook the sole with a cat on the bench. What did the cat do? Tried to eat the fish. She tried to eat the fish. So having cooked the Dover sole, filleted the Dover sole, would you like to tell everyone listening how to make roasted Dover sole? Well, first of all, come to the River Cafe and have the Dover sole cooked for you.

19:56I quite agree. Why do it? And also, you know, you can change it in any way you want. People read it and add their own advice. or you can just read it, whatever you like. You know, and there's something I was thinking too about the way you cook. Someone said this, and I'm going to phrase it so badly, that Chopin apparently said that the great reward of having played many, many notes over many, many years is simplicity. And I think that is something extraordinary about the way you cook. And maybe it's for this recipe. So the more Dover Sols you cook, the better you'll cook them. Dover sole with capers and marjoram.

20:35Two tablespoons salted capers. Extra virgin olive oil. But put that on the fish before you put it in the pan. That's what I learned today. A bunch of fresh marjoram leaves. Four whole Dover sole weighing 350 to 400 grams each, scaled and cleaned by someone at the Roofer Cafe. One lemon cut in half and put in the pan eventually. Put the capers in a sieve and rinse under cold running water. Leave to soak in cold water for 40 minutes, then rinse again. Preheat the oven 230 degrees Celsius. Brush a large, flat oven tray with extra virgin olive oil. Scatter half of the marjoram leaves over the tray.

21:24Season. Place the fish on top, side by side, little buddies who are about to be eaten. Season, then scatter the remaining marjoram and the capers over. Drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Test with the point of a sharp knife or a fork inserted into the thickest part of the sole. If cooked, the flesh should come away from the bone. Don't eat it yet. Squeeze the lemon over the fish and serve with any juices from the pan. Delicious. So simple, isn't it? I know, but I didn't realize if you oil the fish first, of course it doesn't stick to the pan. I know. And marjoram, I would have put parsley, which is a bit more, the marjoram is just so flavorsome.

22:09Yeah, it's very perfuming, the marjoram. But then, again, we do it with rosemary. Sometimes we put a whole branch of rosemary under the sole when we cook it. We do it, we do do parsley. And then the capers, the saltiness of the capers. Yeah, that was delicious. Or maybe I'll just do an anchovy, one anchovy over it. I love anchovies. You love anchovy too? I do too. They're much maligned. I think it's probably one of my favorite fish. It's cool. We use them in Italian cooking. They are like a herb. They're like the seasoning. So we make, right now we're doing white asparagus or green, and we make an anchovy butter when it kind of melts over it.

22:48I've never done it because asparagus is my favorite. Do you love asparagus? Yeah, I love asparagus. Do you grow it? Yes, I have been. Are you getting it now? Yeah. Although we're changing, we had a really tiny little garden. We used to have pigs and then the pigs went because we won't realize we weren't pig farmers. And they're too intelligent and there was something just, I thought. Charlotte's Web. Yeah, and actually it was my Machiavellian plan to turn my family vegetarian. I thought if we get pigs, then the children will realize that the sausages they eat, the ham, the bacon, it all comes from these pigs.

23:22and my now 17-year-old called himself the pig whisperer and he used to go up and he used to hug the pigs and stroke the pigs. And, of course, then when they got turned into sausages and, you know, ethically and as humanely as you can, I was sitting down, I was a little bit cruel, they were sitting down putting the ketchup on their sausages and I said, you know, this used to be Benson and Hedges. My husband called them Benson and Hedges because he said they were going to be smoked. It was a little bit off, but anyway. And they said, this is Benson and Hedges and my now 17-year-old said, delicious.

23:55So it didn't work. So then the pigs went. I don't think I'd want to be on a lifeboat with that boy. No, he's actually incredibly kind and sweet. But he's a sensualist, so he's very in the moment. And so then that little vegetable garden where we're growing asparagus and we had raspberries, we had a whole hodgepodge, we then decided to build a walled garden. So that has gone to fallow. So the asparagus has kind of now gone to seed. So do you get great fish from the coast? Yes, in Forest Row there's a fantastic fishmonger, VZs. So we get our fish from there. And we used to live in Brighton, you know.

24:34And mushy peas, that's what I discovered when I came to this. I love a mushy pea. Tell me about mushy peas. I love mushy peas. There was one fish and chip shop on the tram stop near my school, my high school, and I discovered, I was going out with a skinhead at the time and he took me there and I had my first mushy peas and chips. I like mushy peas. And those don't need to be like freshly picked peas, do they? They're better if they are, let's face it. But the first ones I had were not. Did you enjoy going out to eat? Was that something in your culture that you'd go to eat for a special occasion?

25:14We did when my father was alive. We went to a lot of Asian restaurants. And my father, I never really got to speak to him about this as an adult, but he had a lot of Japanese lithographs and books of haiku poetry. And I think he must have traveled through Japan quite a lot. So there weren't very many Japanese restaurants when I was growing up. But I remember going to several with him and eating a lot of Chinese food. The first time I had fried ice cream, it was just miraculous. Or the first time I had raw fish was amazing. and I just loved the beauty and precision of the Japanese culture. And so I remember those experiences.

25:54And when I went to drama school, I didn't have a penny, but a girl who was in the directing course was married to a QC. This is in Melbourne. In Sydney. Yeah, the National Institute. And we used to sneak away and go and have sake and a little bit of sashimi at lunchtime. and that seemed so chic and, you know, extravagant. Do you remember when you started acting how that married with your wife? How did that affect your food? I mean, did you eat a different way? Did you go out to more restaurants? I mean, my first job actually out of drama school, I worked in the catering truck on a television show because I wasn't working as an actor.

26:36And it was my first entry into the film world. So I didn't, it was like this distraction that was happening that was so frustrating being in the catering truck trying to get breakfast out and lunch out and, you know, in the afternoon, whatever it was called, that we had to keep stopping because they were doing this annoying thing called filming. They kept turning over. It was like, guys, how are we going to get the cheesecake ready? And then eventually I ended up on the other side. But I had a real love and respect for the difficulty of working in the catering van and how it can be thankless. Imagine a state bottled olive oil chosen and bottled for the River Cafe arriving at your door every month.