From The Archive: Nancy Pelosi - Part 1

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.

0:30with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa. With a modular design and changeable slipcovers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style. Whether you need a single chair, loveseat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Anabay has you covered. Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home. Right now, you can shop up to 60 % off storewide with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Shop now at washablesofas.com. Add a little to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. Welcome to River Cafe Table 4, a production of iHeartRadio and Atomize Studios.

1:15There is an infinite amount of subjects I'd like to discuss with Speaker of the House Pelosi. But you know the rules of River Cafe Table 4. we only discuss food, memories, and how food fits into our lives, family, work, and values.

1:38Nancy Pelosi and I share the same aspirations and concerns, inequality, the environment. The difference is that I wake up every day worrying about the world, and she goes to work every day to change it. In an hour, 50 guests will be arriving for dinner in our home to celebrate this awesome woman. While we are talking, River Cafe chefs are cooking risotto amaroni, poaching langoustine, roasting pumpkin, and because Speaker Pelosi loves chocolate, we're going to have two chocolate desserts, a bitter chocolate sorbet and a rich chocolate cake.

2:26I'm very happy to read the recipe for chocolate sorbet, one of my favorite basic foods. In order to achieve this work of art, you take 750 milliliters of water, 250 grams of castor sugar, 150 grams of cocoa powder, 100 milliliters of racchio-romagna. Gently boil the water and sugar together. To this light syrup, add the cocoa powder. Cut gently, stirring for 15 to 20 minutes until the cocoa powder is completely dissolved. Strain, cool, and add the brandy. Put the mixture into an ice cream maker and churn until frozen, or freeze in flat freezer trays. Thank you.

3:22Before we go into food and values and food and family and food and memories, tell me about your love for chocolate. My earliest memories are about loving chocolate. I remember once when I was a very little girl, my big brother, who was a teenager. My parents said, you can have the car if you bring Nancy home some ice cream first. He brought vanilla ice cream home. I put it under the bed, never ate it because it wasn't chocolate. Why would he bring me vanilla ice cream? But I've always loved it. And as time has gone by, I've loved it darker and darker and darker. What about ice cream? Because I did read that you have ice cream for breakfast, or is that an urban myth?

4:12No, it's not an urban myth. It's convenient. It's right there. It has a long shelf life. You don't have to worry about it. It's right there. But I have it for breakfast. It's a great way to start the day. I don't have it every day, but I have it often. And when I was younger, I used to have it, before I went to sleep, a pint of chocolate ice cream. But as time has gone by, the later the chocolate, the less sleep I have. Yeah, you find the caffeine in the chocolate. So as a child, so you ate chocolate. Did your mother know that you were having a pint of ice cream before you went to sleep? And that was fine.

4:52That was not unusual. We didn't have sodas or soft drinks or anything in our home like that. Everything was fresh, except we had chocolate ice cream. I love ice cream. When I go to the River Cafe, my restaurant, or go to any restaurant, the dessert I go for is always ice cream. Well, people say to me, you're going to some of the fanciest restaurants in the world and you're ordering chocolate ice cream for dessert. Don't you think you should have something more sophisticated? I think it's delicious. I think it's a way to end a meal. Should we go back then to your mother and your older brother? How many of you were there in your family?

5:33Well, I'm talking about my oldest brother. At the time, there were seven children, six boys, one girl. I was the youngest. And I'm talking about my brother who was like 11 years older than I was, my oldest brother, when we talked about if you want to have a car, you have to get ice cream for Nancy first. So your parents had six boys and then they had you. Yeah. One of them died when he was young, so I was really raised with five boys. Yeah. In the D 'Alessandro household of six children, how is the food? Who cooked? The cook cooked. My mother, may she rest in peace. Bless her heart, she had a cook.

6:14And what was it like? It was very Italian, but it was also very fresh and delicious and the rest. I mean, the cook would come in the morning and make breakfast and that. What would that be? It could be anything you want. You could have eggs or you could have oatmeal. There were some standard things. Sometimes I would even drink coffee at an early age, like 11 or 12. And would you all sit down to breakfast? So that would be if six or seven children and two parents, was breakfast a meal that you all shared? Sort of. Dinner was what we shared. Now, my father, my whole life, my father was the mayor of Baltimore.

6:55From when I was in first grade, when I went away to college, my freshman year of college, he was still the mayor of Baltimore. So our routine was he would come home, and in those days, a long time ago, he would go out to make all of his speeches in the evening. in black tie. Everything was very formal. So he would come home from work. We would have our family dinner together early. What time would that be? Like 5.30. Because he'd have to then go on the campaign trail or just the civic engagements. So that was the time that we were together. And then, of course, Sunday brunch and those kinds of things.

7:35But I'm just talking about every day. And to this day, my husband, Paul, who was born and raised in San Francisco. I was born and raised in Baltimore. To this day, he likes to dine at eight and I like to eat at 530. Like a peasant. No, well, actually, I find that now in the restaurant, more and more people are eating earlier. Everybody used to make fun of Americans for wanting to eat early. And now it's harder for rest is all the later tables. Even young people, everybody wants to eat early. But going back to this day of your father coming back from work and you all sitting down, would it be raucous?

8:16Would it be talk? Would everybody be... What was it like at the table? It would be a mixture, just depending what the mood was at the time. But there were certain things that I carried over to my own children. And I'm still that way in a restaurant. We always had to have a tablecloth. I mean, that was a long time ago, so it isn't so unusual to think tablecloth then. Now it's almost a luxury. And so for my own children, we've never had a meal without two things, some linens, whatever it might be, could be placemat, and salad, and whatever else we happen to have. And when they were growing up, the five of them, five and six years and one week to the day, in a pack, I had different things I would try.

9:09I would try when they came home from school, I'd say, let's have dessert now at 3.30, 4 o 'clock, we'll have dessert. And then we'll have dinner later. Then I decided it wouldn't be a good idea because they came home, they were hungry, to have dinner at 4 o 'clock so that they would have their dinner and then we'd have dessert who've tried all kinds of things to satisfy their appetites.

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11:11Well, my father's mother was born in Baltimore, Maryland. But her parents, which would be my great-grandparents, one was born in Venice and one was born in Genoa. So there was a lot of that influence in the food. Northern Italian. Northern Italian. My mother's family was from Campobasso, which is in the center of Italy. But we lived in an Italian neighborhood. So there was every food you can imagine in the neighborhood and every dialect that you could imagine in the neighborhood. But there was one thing in common, the smell of very fresh bread early in the morning, fresh Italian bread. To this day, it's one of my happiest memories, the smell of fresh baked bread.

11:58It smells. Yeah, that's a good smell. But I think we always talk about Italy, which became a country very late. So you have the very strong regional dishes, don't you? So in Venice, you have the polenta. And in southern Italy, you have tomatoes. And in Florence, in Tuscan, it's very bread-oriented. And then everybody, I guess, came to Baltimore, and there was everything in one little area. You had the Tuscana, the Siciliana, the Marcajan, the Bruzes, the, what are they called, the Genovese. The Genovese, yeah. They had other different names. Ligurian, yeah. The Venezia, those from Venice. And so by the name of where they came from, because they were all sort of like city states, many of the northern Italians came early.

12:52You know, as I say, my father's mother, she was born in Baltimore probably like in the 1880s or something like that. Yeah. They came earlier than the others. And then the southern Italians came later, you think, the more southern. Later, middle and later. And then San Francisco is a very Italian-American city. The Bank of America was originally the Bank of Italy. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, that's the Bank of Italy. And the influence there is very Italian in terms of food. So it was a comfortable move for me. And what did you – so what would a meal be like? Would they make – did you have a lot of spaghetti or pasta?

13:35Well, we laugh because we used to say in those days you had macaroni and gravy and ice cream. Then it became pasta and sauce and gelato. Did you have pasta every day? Regularly. It may not be actually every day, but on the average of every day, one form or another. You know, my husband's family are Italian. My husband was born in Florence, and his mother was born in Trieste, and his father was born in Nice, and then moved to Trieste. So the whole family was very Italian. We tell the story that one of the cousins came to visit from Florence to London, and they put the food on the table, and there wasn't a pasta, and he started to cry because it was just a meal without pasta.

14:24And pasta wasn't the meal. It was part of the meal. Yeah, it's a preemie. When my friends, so that way, they'd have an exchange student or something like that. We tell the story of when they were having lunch and they said, well, you know, who's having peanut butter and jelly? Who's having this or that? And what would you like? And the child said, well, how about a little veal with lemon? Yeah. It came from Tuscan. Right, exactly. And so do you remember the pastas that you had? Do you remember the food, exact food that you had? Oh, I do. All the standard stuff that you see now, of course, but I loved it.

15:03I always liked it a little thicker and a little more al dente, whether it was fattuccine. Of course, rigatoni would be hard. I preferred cheese ravioli, polenta. I was very amused because my big brother, one day a very fancy restaurant opened up in Maryland. Not in Baltimore, but in sort of eastern shore of Maryland. It was very acclaimed and it's hard to get into and this or that. And my brother went to the restaurant and he came back and said, Nancy, you'll never believe it. They had polenta as if it was from a former. I said, no, Tommy, that's become chic. Exactly. What year would that have been?

15:46Oh, gosh, I don't know. Probably about 25 years ago. That became chic. It's not like they're having your grandmother's polenta. they're having. Well, now let me just say, people say to me, what is your, in fact, my grandson said to me, for our family tree project in our class, we have to have a family, favorite family recipe that's been in our family for generations. And what would you suggest? And I said, well, what I would suggest is probably chocolate souffle or chocolate mousse. And he said, no, I mean, a traditional family thing. My mother wasn't a big, she wouldn't like me saying this, she wasn't a big cook.

16:26I mean, she was capable of cooking, but she always had to cook. And her mother didn't cook because her husband cooked. He was a chef. I would see him break the neck of an eel or whatever it is and cook these fabulous meals. This is your grandfather. My grandfather. And so my grandmother never cooked. And I was like, you better talk to your father about a family recipe. So the Italian influence, so stayed and stayed. Well, the deliciousness of it all. I know. It's funny what you say about polenta because polenta and a lot of the dishes that come from very traditional, I hate the word, but what they call peasant food.

17:10I would never let it be called peasant food. But rusted cooking, family cooking, family dishes are now so, as you say, so sophisticated. Well, my husband's mother made tripe all the time, and it was pretty standard. She made tripe? Oh, she made tripe with polenta. Yeah. Tripe with polenta, or polenta with almost anything. So when it became chic, we thought, oh my gosh, Nana is really on the forefront. Wow.

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18:40Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50 % and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. Did your parents speak Italian? No. Well, I don't know. They never spoke Italian. No, I didn't speak Italian. See, my father's mother was born in Baltimore. So it wasn't a case of his, he didn't know Italian. My mother, she spoke some, but I don't know how good she was. And every time I would go to see my grandfather, who was so beautiful and wonderful, and I loved him so much, the chef, he was going to teach me how to speak Italian.

19:30And every time I'd go, he'd get out a map. and we'd start, these are different dialects of Italian. So I could give you the map of Italy and the different dialects, but I don't know how to speak Italian because we'd start with that map every time. No, there are. Again, my husband, I was saying, was born in Florence, but when we would go to Venice, very often he couldn't understand some of the fishermen, you know, what they were speaking. It's interesting because in these podcasts I talk to many people who recall their grandparents cooking almost more than their parents cooking. And very often they come from families that emigrated from another country.

20:09And I often think that perhaps the mother was trying to adapt to the new environment where the grandparents probably, you know, that was their identity and took it with them. But I haven't ended, you know, the fact that your grandfather was actually a professional chef. My understanding of this is before I was aware of what he was doing. He sold pasta. He had one of those shops that sold products from Italy, pasta, dry pasta and those kinds of things. So he was a foodie. I mean, he was into food and a chef. And my grandmother was treated like a queen. She never did any housework or anything like that.

20:52And she didn't cook. I mean, I never knew how to cook one thing. In my mother's case, she had these seven children. If she were alive in another generation, who knows what she would have been. She was a mom. She was a political organizer for my father. She was a poet. She was an inventor. She did all kinds of things. She said to me once when I was a little girl, I know that the telephone can be used for more things. I just have to figure it out. And also you were her only daughter. We're very, by the way, in all of this, very devoutly Catholic. So lots of times the ritual of food surrounded mass either after or midnight or Sunday brunch.

21:41A lot of it revolved around going to church. Church and then coming home and eating afterwards. As I always say, we were born in a family that was devoutly Catholic, fiercely patriotic, proud of our Italian American heritage and staunchly democratic. Yeah, staunchly democratic. Those principles came in very early on. Well, they related to our Catholicism in our view of taking care of other people. Yeah, yeah. And food, people came to our door when people were poor. My brother Tommy, my old brother, he used to tell me that when he was a little boy, people would come to the door and mommy would always be giving them food, giving them food, giving them food.

22:20And even in her old age, she was giving ice cream to children, and they knew to come to the door to get ice cream. So it was all about nourishment one way or another. And when you left this incredibly close family and centered around the table and food and church, when you left this family and went to university, to college, how did you deal with food then? Do you remember? Yeah. I went away. The only place that I was allowed to go would be a woman's Catholic college. That would be— Where was that? What college? It was called Trinity College in Washington, D.C., the oldest Catholic women's college in America.

23:01It was a strict academic school, and it was within 50 miles of Baltimore, Maryland. So that means that. Close. And our college, it's not exactly a culinary delight. But we used to, we used to, don't tell anybody who told you this. We used to go at night. They know now, years later they know, but we used to go like in the middle of the night down to the dining room and break into the freezer to get ice cream. Now, it was locked, so you could only lift it a little bit and then put the scooper in there and pull it out. We better not tell certain members of the house about this. It's hard to tell a flavor in the dark.

23:53In the dark. You could tell if it's chocolate or not, but peach, strawberry, and the rest, it kind of comes together. And sometimes we would order pizza so that the guard, We'd say to the guard, somebody would go talk to the guard and say, I ordered pizza, I'm waiting here for the pizza, while we would go down and steal the ice cream. Distraction of authority. Steal the ice cream. And so your college days were spent... Stealing ice cream. Stealing ice cream, basically.

24:3020 minutes with Speaker Nancy Pelosi was never going to be enough time to explore her moving and memorable food story. So join us next week when we will continue our conversation, River Cafe Table 4, Part 2.

24:49To visit the online shop of the River Cafe, go to shoptherivercafe.co.uk.

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26:20Book ahead, save up to 50 % and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster, ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. This is an iHeart Podcast.