Christmas At The River Cafe

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltsin. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville, tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed. It doesn't matter how much I fight. It doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this. It doesn't matter how much justice we get. None of it's going to get me pregnant. Listen to What Happened in Nashville on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, Chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Adria Health Institute in New York City.

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1:23Today's December 18th and you can feel the festive quality the River Cafe, the Christmas trees on the lawn and the room looks great we have lights, we have people coming in to spend more time at lunch and there is a feeling of a celebration so we're going to talk about what we're actually cooking in the River Cafe right now and so here we are with Sean Owen and Joseph Trevelli, the executive chefs, and we're all going to talk. So tell me about what were you cooking today, Sian? You both have your chef's whites on. Joseph, in preparation for tonight, and Sian running away from the past right now.

2:00I'm in the middle of lunch. She's in the middle of lunch. I'm in the middle of lunch service. Don't worry. We have no idea what they're celebrating in there because we're in here. So what was on the menu today? What are you thinking about when you're thinking about your menu? This week, I think, is pulling out all the stops for decadent dining. I think people feel that they can eat in a way this last week coming up to Christmas in the way that they're not going to be eating in January. So I'd like to just put on some things that I just think sound quite flamboyant, decadent. I mean, today at lunchtime, what day is it, Thursday, I've put on the penne with the vodka and tomato and chili and cream.

2:40But I was trying to explain to the chefs how to cook that So it's not just a tomato sauce with a vague hint of vodka, but it has to be a tomato sauce with vodka cooked into it. And then what we've also done is put it through the mouly, so it's very smooth. Why don't you take us through the recipe? Just say it takes step by step. So take us through penne with vodka, cream and chili. Yeah, so we're using the penne that is a smooth penne, so it hasn't got the ridges on it, which I think is really nice for that kind of dish. I don't know if you disagree with that. And then fry some garlic, a couple of cloves of garlic, drain the liquid off the tomatoes and chop them tomatoes, put them in.

3:22And then I put like a good glug, like probably, I mean, for a whole restaurant of people, I would use a whole bottle of vodka. But if you're making it for two, maybe not a whole bottle. A good, generous shot of vodka or two, depending on how. In our case, probably half a bottle of vodka. then cook it down with a bit of flick of chili and let that cook down so it's really well cooked down for about 20 minutes and then we put it through the mouly so it's really smooth and something we never do for a tomato sauce yeah i think it gives it a nice there's no texture yeah and then um put a splash of cream in to just give it a bit of kind of extra luxe feel and then when we're serving it we're warming up the penne well we're heat cooking the penne reheating the penne, adding that to the tomato sauce and then putting what I think would be an extra shot of vodka in it and a good big massive pinch of black pepper and a bit of olive oil.

4:22So it's really like, don't drink, don't drive after that. Don't give it to a kid. I was going to say, everybody probably wanted to taste the tomato sauce like never before. Yeah, well, I put it on for staff lunch and I said, without the extra shot of vodka. but it's really warming and it's got a bit of a kick it feels a bit like a bit of fun which is just nice on a on the lunchtime I think they're beautiful and it's funny how some things just suit certain moments isn't it yeah it's obviously a christmasy thing you know like in fact someone said to me what keep asking me what's your christmas drink and that maybe I was thinking a bit morning after but anything I did was bloody mary you know it's not something I have very often but for some reason it sort of suits now.

5:07Yeah. And of course you could have it on a Monday in March, but somehow that last week of the year where you're pulling at other stops, I've put on the Tagliarini with caviar, which is something that is just a real last week of the year, something that's a bit like... People are having it. People are really enjoying it. How do you make that? Tagliarini, just some butter, like a few drops of lemon juice, a little bit of black pepper, and then put that on the plate in a nice tower. and put a spoonful of caviar on top. Yum. It's really nice hearing these things because, you know, I'm not there by definition when you're telling people how to do this because I'm at home waiting for my shift.

5:46But you've just described exactly what I said last night, almost overworked. Well, the other night I came in, I was on the other side, I wasn't in the kitchen, I was at the table, and there was Belita Mista, which I think was also partly inspired by the time of year, but also inspired by the fact that we had so much delicious mostarda that had been made. That's also true. Oh my gosh, we've never had such good mostarda from Genova. I know mostarda is supposed to be from Cremona, but this Genova mostarda is... What did you think was so good about it? Just the actual fruits, the way they come from a special sweet factory.

6:23Let's tell people what it is. So it's a fruit with mustard essence. Mustard essence, which you can't buy here. you know it's the same essence i think you'd use for mustard gas so you can't um you have to go to a pharmacy and it's not i think even in italy it's not easy to get hold of so it's generally because quite often you know people would have a jar of fruits and just add a few drops from a pipette but these days you just buy it already done um so you've got this lovely sweet fruit which is often candied although not always but in our case very much is this year so kind of candied fruits with just these few little drops of mustard essence and it has that lovely you know sweet, hot, kind of an equal balance, really nice.

7:04And it's great with loads of things. You know, certain mustadas are delicious with cheese, for example. But the thing we do with it more often than not here is have it with boiled meats. You know, this bolito misto with these kind of three sauces is really fundamental. And in fact, when I'm asking a chef like I did the other night to make this bolito, probably for the first time she'd ever like put it on the plate. you know the the plate of the meats with a few lentils and maybe a carrot or whatever else is good but it's nothing i have to just take them to the past and say now look with the sauces because it's so much you know part of the track so we have you know the mustard so mostarda then we have horseradish which is obviously equally spicy and still sweet because we put cream in we make the horseradish ourselves so let's go into the detail so horseradish we grate horseradish and then chop it more finely still.

7:57And then we always mix it with creme fraiche because we have this most amazing creme fraiche from the Neal's Yard dairy that they make for us. So we mix the two together and then just a few drops of vinegar and salt and pepper and that's it, you know. And we probably make that more days than not, you know. It's really... Yeah, we do. We've got lots of meats. Loads of things, yeah. You know, so that's wonderful. So it has that, this kind of like creamy, rich, hot sauce. These mustard fruits, you know, which can be figs or pears or the jars we have at the moment you open. There is one. I have a quince.

8:30Yeah, well, at the moment there's actually a strawberry in there. I've been avoiding the strawberries. I put one on yesterday. Yeah, did you? Yeah, I did. That's hilarious. I did send out some. But anyway, there's a... Yeah. Yeah, but the factory that makes these, this Romanenga, is amazing. They're candy strawberries. You know, like that. It's just like, it's another thing. Yesterday I was putting mostardo on the Belletto Misto, but there was a little tiny orange. like it wasn't apricot maybe or even i think there's all sorts it's a kind of tiny orange like maybe like a mandarin or something and then there's a third sauce um which is um uh we make two versions of a similar sauce one we call dragon cello because it's with tarragon it's probably the only thing we ever do with tarragon here or bagnette and they're exactly the same but the bagnette sauce is probably more traditional piemonte's sauce um similar to like uh sort of southern French sauce, I suppose, but with boiled eggs chopped up and tons of parsley and, you know, mustard and all those sorts of things.

9:30Do you use the white of the egg, of the yellow, or do you just use the yellow? Yeah, but all the eggs. I do, too. Yeah. But there's some. When I was in Bolognese in Rome, they were only using the yellow. But Richard's mother used to make it all on a board. She never used a bowl. And so, you know, you'd have the egg, you'd have all the ingredients, and then you'd combine it. chop it all on the board and then scoop it up. Yum. In the old days, we used to make it with a mezzaluna. Yeah, yeah. We just sharpened it yesterday, so it's ready for you. It's just how we used to make it. No, we used the mezzaluna all the time.

10:04Yeah. I mean, in the early, early days, we were all on the mezzaluna. And then it became kind of uncool to use the mezzaluna. When we got really chef-y, although the chefs got like knives. Let's bring that. Maybe we could do that for Zara. Oh, my God. It's a great idea. We could do a workout called the mezzaluna workout video. Yeah. Do you remember you used two at once? Well, there was a double-bladed one, which was not very nice. And then there was the big, really big one. You could almost go like that and do it. It was really like upper body. Yeah. To the left. All your way. So what about the, let's talk more about the meats.

10:39So then the meats, yeah, you can have all sorts of things. I mean, and there's loads. I mean, I, you know. I like boleto actually all year round. It's delicious. And there's plenty of restaurants, you know, all over the sort of central and northern Italy that just specify this, you know, like we have carveries, you know, that just, you know, boil and roast things. But what's lovely about this time of year is people are more likely to order it. I mean, that's the truth. You know, people fancy it. You know, it's freezing, it's raining, something warming with this bejeweled fruits on. So the meats that we had the other night.

11:13So the other night we had tongue, which is very commonly we have tongue, ox tongue. We have beef. we had some beef brisket that we cooked and i came in early and put them on at 11 so they were boiling slowly all day until the evening and then um cotta quino i think cotta quino is pretty much essential for us for a bolito misto i always i just love bolito uh cotta quino you saw i really like also we do just the cotta quino and lentils as a yeah as a plate nothing else we do that as a starter we never get zamponi anymore no i'd love to yeah i haven't tried it for years actually i'd I'd like to try it again.

11:46Maybe it's too much. I mean, better is like eating like this pork. We should try it. I did bolita yesterday at lunch and I didn't put tongue in it. But I don't know why, because I wonder whether that's one of those sort of ingredients that's slightly less approachable. I don't know if it puts people off. So I put, I mean, it's not, it's perfectly delicious. But I put, we didn't have any left anyway. But I really, I put a chicken, I got a special chicken and just cooked it with white wine. and a bit of water, but like not boiling it, but kind of braising it or broiling it probably. And then did the sort of chicken, cottaquino and brisket.

12:24And that was just, and then we sold a lot, but I didn't think. We sold a lot with the tongue. I actually did it with a massive artichoke sotolio on a plate and lentils on the main plate. Sorry. Wow. The things you find out. I just put an artichoke on the side plate and I put the lentils on the plate. So I thought, why not? Why not? And then we were talking about, you and I, about to chicken or not to chicken. You know, how sometimes the chicken does... Funny, the day I put the chicken out, we sold loads more. Yeah, well, that's probably more than... Took it out or put it in? Took it out. When I put the chicken in the night, the night that you had it, we didn't sell as many.

13:02The next lunch, I didn't bother with the chicken and just had the tongue and the brisket. And we sold, like, loads of it. So maybe it's just the weather and the day, you know. And then we have the Christmas desserts. One of the most easy desserts I think you can knock up at home for maximum impact and low workload. Sounds important. It's a pressed chocolate cake because it's really looks, it tastes amazing, but it's very easy to make. But it's like, and also it's basically a chocolate souffle. so you're not set up for failure by not letting it rise fully if you're making it home you press it so no one knows how high it really did rise and it's just chocolate sugar a butter and eggs but the eggs separated and then folded through the white it's just really delicious so it's as light as a souffle but slightly pressed so it's a little denser and we serve it here at the river a cafe around Christmas with either the Zabaglioni ice cream or the most shocking to anyone that makes Vinsanto, Vinsanto ice cream, which is like sort of borderline sacrilege, but also amazing.

14:16I don't know. I think if you're going to cook with Vinsanto, I think Vinsanto ice cream is the thing that kind of keeps it because it's not like reduced. You know, I was actually thinking of making something to go with Christmas pudding. It's like, you know, you don't cook the wine down. you just add the eggs and it's just perfect you know i don't think i think it's worth it i always feel embarrassed when we go to tuscany and if they're like what do you always say there's somebody who really objected to it do you remember one of our i don't know it was david cleave or it was somebody who saw it on the menu how can you possibly make ice cream but you know it comes from with vincenta but it comes also from again dada uh rogers who when she came here wanted did zabbione but during the war you couldn't get um marsala and so she combined uh bristol cream sherry with rum that's our recipe for the zabbione ice cream and i i love that ice cream i like it better than zabbione i don't like a hot zabbione but that ice cream um is really special but that ice cream i mean the you don't have to have an ice cream machine to make it no no no so that is what is yeah you know you could make it at home i could make it in my house because i don't have i bet you have an ice cream machine don't you well i do but it's i rarely put it in the freezer and actually i love making ice creams like that at home more i think because you make the there's that you make the egg yolks the sugar the vincanto alcohol cook that over a bammary yeah so it volumizes then you just make fold in whipped cream and then you can just put it in your freezer done you don't have to it's a lot of whipping pressed chocolate ice cream and zabbione you know there's a big balloon where it's cubing i think the um the hint about the zabbione or the vincanto ice cream is that when you are cooking it at the on the top of the stove and one of the nice things about making that ice cream is always that you don't have to worry about it curdling you know how when you make a vanilla ice cream you're always worried that it's going to curdle but doing that ice cream because there's no cream in it you want to let it bubble but i I always think it's really important to cook it a long time because it gets that taste where it almost sticks to the side.

16:24I always used to stop making it when it started sticking to the edges and you knew it was getting thick and it was sticking. And sometimes it would even go darker and sometimes you'd get those little curdles of little lumps in the zabaio from the eggs. And I rather like that. because otherwise it can taste a bit eggy and insipid. And if you just have to keep cooking and cooking and cooking it, I remember always putting it back on the stove in that bambouille, not taking it off too soon. And then the other last Christmas gone Italian, an adaptation of, I think, the Christmas cake is, again, from Trieste, from a recipe that was changed over the years.

17:10So I met Dada in 1968, but she was cooking and teaching Rose for years. Rose was a friend of Richard's, and Rose knew Dada before I did and really talked about her influence to Wendy Foster, to Rose, to Natalie Gibson, a group of Richard's friends. She showed me all the recipes, the recipes that she'd written for her Christmas cake. And it was so beautiful to see. I wish I had it because every year something would be crossed off. every year something would be changed every year and ultimately what you had it started out with you know I've never made a British Christmas cake but I guess it has a lot of nuts it has a lot of fruit I don't know if it has a lot of nuts but it's fruit and you know it's made with butter and sugar and eggs and Dada what she did was she put more alcohol in so she marinated everything she put in everything that went in was marinated first in brandy and then I remember she also became quite healthy and really had a really hated butter she thought butter was cholesterol it was all that cholesterol and that was really bad for you and she I would kill Richard she said to me you're gonna kill Richard you know because you put so much butter in your food and her own husband so she was really reducing the butter, increasing the alcohol, and decreasing the fruit.

18:38And so in the end, what you had was mostly cake with nuts, with chocolate, with raisins, and some candied fruit, but maybe just enough to be in there. And then she, every year, kind of increased chocolate. And so again, it was kind of strange to have a really, a Christmas cake that has so much chocolate. And the first recipe that Rose and I put in, I can't remember which book we put it in, but it was pages and pages. It was in the TV book. It goes on and on and on. And then I think we also adapted it. Then it was in the green book. And I know that when I make it now, I also kind of cut out the fruit and put more nuts and chocolate in it.

19:20And then more alcohol. It's so good. It's a really good cake. I meant to bring some in for you. because I'm Oh please can you do that tomorrow then Oh my god I still have some It's like I was thinking because I was going to make a Christmas I was also thinking maybe I should make a Christmas cake but then the boring thing about Christmas cake is all I mean not it's a lot of the sort of currants and you know the kind of whereas with the Dardos cake it's just all the good stuff so it's all the glacé fruits and all the chocolate and alcohol You don't cook it too long so that's too dry I'll bring you one for you I have some and then also the I think the great thing about that cake is the marzipan topping.

19:58I made it with Sipan. He came over and he went, and I put as much sugar, I put all the ground almonds in, and then equal amount of sugar. So it was like sugar and ground almonds. And then to hold it all together, we just put rum or brownies. And so the whole thing becomes, it's quite a dry paste, but it is, it's total alcohol. Do you know, is the marzipan topping, was that Dada's idea? I think so, yeah. I've seen it. Yeah. So you put the marzipan, so you make this paste and then you press it on the top and then you make it flat and then you get a fork and you kind of take the fork and run it through.

20:35So it kind of lifts up with the idea being that when you put it under the grill, you know, the top bits of it will get grilled. And so we did that. And it's not a cake that the kids really like that much. Yeah. Also useful. More for adults. Yeah. And then we pour more alcohol at the end. That was a cake that reminds me when I was a really young chef, I came to your house to help make that for a photo shoot or something. And Rose and Ruth were both there making it. And I was just helping make the cake. And then it came to the bit to grill the marzipan or not to grill the marzipan. And I presume you wanted to.

21:13I'd grill it, yeah. And Rose didn't want to grill it. And they were like, what do you think? And I was like, I have no idea. I think if you don't grill it, I can't, you know, you need to cook the marzipan. Yeah, that's right. You need to make it sort of tasty. And we always... I remember it was quite heated. I remember you were getting quite heated. And I was like, I don't know what. We like it. We like it. Okay, so we have the ice, we have the pede with vodka. We have the bolita misto with sauces and mostarda. And then we have the Vincanto ice cream with the sabayoni. and we have a candied hazelnut and clementine Christmas cake.

21:53Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas. Thank you.

22:00Next week on Ruthie's Table 4, I'm with the absolutely wonderful Rashida Jones, actor of The American Office, Parks and Rec, and Black Mirror. We're going to talk about her parents cooking, eating on set, traveling, and all the memories she has of food and music. Watch this conversation on Tuesday, December 23rd, along with all our other episodes. Just head over to our YouTube channel or simply listen wherever you find your podcasts.

22:34Ruthie's Table 4 was produced by Alex Bell and Zad Rogers with Susanna Hislop, Andrew Sang and Bella Salini. This has been an Atomize production for iHeartMedia.

22:50I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltsin. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville, tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed. It doesn't matter how much I fight. It doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this. It doesn't matter how much justice we get. None of it's going to get me pregnant. Listen to What Happened in Nashville on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. From tips for healthy living to the latest medical breakthroughs, WebMD's Health Discovered podcast keeps you up to date on today's most important health issues.

23:29Through in-depth conversations with experts from across the healthcare community, WebMD reveals how today's health news will impact your life tomorrow. It's not that people don't know that exercise is healthy. It's just that people don't know why it's healthy. And we're struggling to try to help people help themselves and each other. Listen to WebMD Health Discovered on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.