Jemma Sbeg

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human Hi, this is Shirley Strawberry from the Steve Harvey Morning Show Toyotathon is on So stop by your local Toyota dealer for incredible year-end deals on the cars, trucks, and SUVs known for their legendary reliability Like the stylish and efficient Camry The ready-for-anything RAV4 Or check out a rough-and-rugged Tacoma or Tundra all with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit buyatoyota.com to find out more. Toyota, let's go places. Welcome to Ruthie's Table 4, a production of iHeartRadio and Atomize Studios. I'm Sharon.

0:46I'm Anne. I'm the executive chef at the Rua Cafe. It's Friday lunch, so I'm here with all the chefs cooking away. Yeah, nice. I know it's busy in here. And I'm Gemma. Hi, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. And I'm the host of The Psychology of Your 20s, the podcast.

1:04Gemma Spegg and I met for the first time just a few days ago in the River Cafe. She was introduced to me as the most exciting podcaster today. Not great for my ego. Distance keeps us apart. She lives in Sydney. I live in London. And we're in different stages of our lives, for sure. But that doesn't seem to matter. We both love talking to people. We both love eating delicious food, and we both love pondering situations and finding solutions. Listen to the titles of some of her episodes on psychology of your 20s, and you'll see why I am hooked. Embrace your authentic self, daddy issues, why we date the wrong people, career anxiety, disillusionment, and feeling stuck.

1:50Gemma has been in the River Cafe cooking asparagus fondue to with the chefs. We're going to have lunch and talk some more. On Monday, she's going back to Australia, but something tells me I'm not letting her go. That's for sure. That's for sure. So tell me about cooking fonduta. How was that in the Vera Cafe kitchen? It was amazing. I actually used to work in a restaurant. I used to work in a steak restaurant, yep, in Australia. Where? In Canberra. So Canberra, capital of Australia. It was how I paid my bills when I was at uni and broke. And so it was really fun to come back and to be back in the same kind of situation and cooking something.

2:32And actually, we didn't cook much fresh food. At the steak restaurant. At the steak restaurant. No, it was duck fat potatoes. So asparagus, fresh asparagus was a nice treat, that's for sure. Let's do it. I'm so excited. Cool. So we're going to cook asparagus, which is really slap-banging season now, like it's English asparagus, and it's exactly peak season. And then we've made a sauce out of creme fraiche, egg yolks, and parmesan. It's really yummy. But the sauce is just you put the three ingredients together and cook them together, and we've done that. And I'll just show you how you put it together.

3:10Oh, I'm so excited! Yay! Okay, so that... How long did you leave it in? Not very long. Not very long at all. three or four minutes but because it's so fresh yeah it doesn't take that long to cook yeah it's super fresh actually probably slightly oh look i love the green when it turns that beautiful shade of green it's just gorgeous then what we do is we have this sauce which is really yummy we just put on the plate like this it looks like custard almost but i know it's savory exactly You can do platters of it for guests, you know. You can up the size based on how many people. Exactly. Or how hungry you are.

3:49Or how hungry they are. Look at that. Simple, but amazing. A bit of cheese. Do you like more or less? More. Yeah, me too. You've got to have more Parmesan. Exactly. You never have too much. This sauce just makes everything better. I agree. Oh my goodness. I'm going to finish this whole piece This is probably one of our most popular dishes that we have on a lunchtime Also with the sun And a glass of wine And a glass of wine So would you like to read the recipe? Yes please This recipe says it serves 6 I grew up in a big family so it's going to serve 10 at least So we're going to up some of these portions It recommends a kilo and a half of asparagus.

4:39Let's change that to three, just for fun. Leftovers are always nice. 200 grams of parmesan. You know, double that, it's 400, but everyone loves parmesan cheese. You know, you never want to stop, so let's say 500, freshly grated. Garlic as well, one clove of garlic, peeled and crushed, of course. And then 400 mililiters of, I don't actually know how to pronounce this, creme fraiche? Creme fraiche. Creme fraiche. It's a kind of sour cream that you get in France. Lovely. I had some before when I had this, so 800 mils for that, and then four large organic and, of course, free-range egg yolks. We're not here for cage.

5:18Sorry, guys. So your first step will be to use a medium saucepan, maybe large in this instance, that will fit inside another larger saucepan with enough room to half fill with water. we're going to rub that crushed garlic around the surface of the smaller pan get all those flavors in there and add the cream and a nice amount of parmesan maybe more than we suggested and of course your egg yolks place the pan on top of the hot water and stirring gently until the sauce thickens that should be about 15 minutes and of course salt and pepper let's season it well snap off the ends of the asparagus and cook that in the boiling water for three to four minutes interestingly when i had it was a bit al dente which was really really nice so maybe sitting a little bit below that three minutes whatever takes your fancy and then drain it place in a warm bowl and pour the fondue over the asparagus maybe add a little bit of olive oil if you're feeling extra excited by that.

6:25Of course, the River Cafe olive oil is amazing. So that would be my preference and serve with, you guessed it, even more grated Parmesan. There it is. Beautiful. Great.

6:43Do you cook for yourself? Absolutely. Do you? Yeah, I cook so much. I think I travel so much, right, that when I'm home and when I'm back in Sydney, I really don't want to go out and eat out all the time or order in. I want to be alone or with my, I live with housemates actually still. I live with three boys, three guys in their twenties. It's very a new girl situation if you've seen that TV show. And one of my favorite things to do when I'm back is to cook something for them. So every Sunday night we do, I call it family dinner. We're not related, but by, by hearts we are. Something that I did when lockdown sort of eased up, we were allowed to go out, but everybody was pretty much in their own homes.

7:30A friend of mine was making a movie, actually say with Austin Butler. We were talking about Austin a minute ago. And we started having Sunday night supper. So I would cook. They would kind of do some shopping or we'd cook and just get together. And then we played a game of cards. And there were about eight of us. And we met every Sunday night for almost 30, well, for 39 weeks. It just became very important. A Sunday night dinner kind of is the end of the week, the beginning of the new week. Sundays are kind of grim. Is that what you like about Sunday night suppers? That is spot on. And I think it emulates a family system that when we get older we don't have.

8:08But the way that I really saw it was you start your week off doing something for someone else. So it was a really beautiful way for me to express my love for these people and show them generosity by going and getting a leg of lamb or making Italian meatballs or lasagna and really starting the week off having done something for someone else. And we also play cards. Did you? Yeah. What was your game? Okay, so ours is actually Monopoly Deal. So it's a card version of Monopoly. So maybe not as... Do you buy and sell hotels? Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's the only taste of property ownership I think I'm going to get for a while.

8:47it keeps me on my toes. Maybe not with the impact, but maybe not. Who do you live with? What are the guys like? They're amazing. I really love them. One of them is an actor. One of them is in finance. One of them is in marketing. It's very different from what I do. Maybe Jack is the actor. He's actually moving to Paris soon. So the Sunday dinners are sadly coming to an end in October, but it's also really, it's, it's nice, I think in some ways, because it makes me feel quite maternal as well. And I think that's an instinct that I've always had. And I think that food and family are very much synonymous.

9:23So maybe it's because I always saw my mom doing this for me and for my dad and for my cousins and my aunts and my uncles that I've really taken the reins from her. I've taken that from her. And it's really interesting when we think about psychology, actually, everyone's like, I don't want to turn into my parents. I don't want to be like them. and I'm like, I absolutely want to be like her. She has generosity running through her blood. She's a wonderful woman. I found that very touching when you said you want to be like your mother. That's every parent's dream. And it certainly was mine as well.

9:58I think you can tell people who come from happy families where they were loved and where they want to love. So tell me what it was like growing up in your house. It's interesting. My dad's from Queensland, so it's kind of rural. Well, it's a bit rough and tumble sometimes. My mom's actually from Wisconsin. Oh, she's American. She's American, yeah. How'd she end up in Australia? It's kind of actually a hard story. You know, her parents got divorced and her dad kind of walked out of the picture. She hasn't spoken to him for a while. You know, she won't mind me saying that. And she moved with my grandma and they moved to Australia.

10:35It was really hard, I think, when they first got here. She was old enough to really have friends and to want to assimilate. She was around 14. And I think that's actually a really hard age to move. But it has made her a wonderful mother because she really understands the importance of belonging. And my dad grew up in a big family, so he understood that as well. They met in Australia. They met in Australia. They met at a cricket game. And my mom went up to him and was like, I think you're really cute. And the rest is history. And they did long distance for a while. They have such a beautiful story.

11:14It's really nice being able to look at your parents and realize that they still really like each other and that they really get along. And every night I'll go home and they always share a glass of wine together. They cook for each other still, like I said, food and love and family. Are you an only child? I'm not. I have two sisters. So what would meals be like? Tell me about food in your house growing up. I'd love to. So my mom, she was a breadwinner. She worked full time. She travelled a lot. We didn't actually see her very much for a little while because she was trying to provide for the family.

11:47My dad was a stay-at-home dad. What did she do? She's an economist and so it's so different from what I do, right? She talks about money all day and talk about feelings. And she would be travelling but she would always try and come back for at least two to three nights and my dad would cook for us. And actually the meal that I most associate with my childhood is by Jamie Oliver. He has this tuna pasta dish. It was in his book, 15 Minute Meals. It's tuna and it's got this amazing basil flavor and cinnamon. And it's like you would never think that tuna and cinnamon would go well, but it's like delicious and it's my comfort meal now because we ate it so much.

12:31You know, my dad was really trying to look after three young girls and my sisters, one of my sisters is an athlete. So there was also a lot of driving to practices. What is her sport? It's an Australian sports football, so AFL, Australian Football League. So it's kind of like rugby. She's really tall. She's like over six foot. She's tall. She's beautiful. She's so kind. And, yeah, so that's the meal I most associate, that or a tuna pasta bake. A lot of tuna. Simple. Tuna, yeah. And then for dessert, we would have berry cobbler, which is a classic, right? Everyone, when you think of cobbler, you think of warmth and cozy and childhood.

13:12What is berry cobbler? Can you describe it? So berry cobbler, it's kind of like, I think it was like kind of a poor man's dish back in the day because it's super simple to make. It's these berries that you cook in this like amazing sugary syrup and with butter. and then on top you put like egg and more butter and sugar and flour together and you mix it all up and then crumble it on the top. It's like a crumble. It's a crumble. So you grew up with your dad and he would cook. Would every night be a different kind of dinner? Did he really spend time on making sure that everything was good? He did.

13:46He's from an Italian family. So I think it's like this generational thing. His mum used to put so much care into her meals and he would do that for us. And when your mom cooked, what would she cook? She loves fresh food. We used to do this thing called snack plate. And what that would mean was we would go to the markets with her when she was back on Saturday or Sunday, the Queen Victoria markets, if you're ever in Melbourne. It's amazing. If you live there, you know all the tenders and you know everyone. And she would take us and we would all get to choose what snacks we would want on the snack plate.

14:19It's kind of like a charcuterie board. Charcuterie boards before we knew what that was. and with very cheap deli meats, not prosciutto, but we would have carrots and she would always get these amazing cherry tomatoes and cucumber that she would slice and dips and it was very Mediterranean. And we would put it down on the table and then there was always a portion for sweet foods and the sweet food that we'd always get was chocolate-covered pretzels and they were amazing. She worked so hard, you know, but she still wanted to, When she had the time to provide and to do amazing things. And every Christmas she is the pillar of our family Christmases.

15:03No one would eat without that woman. She's such a provider. So this was your growing up. You're growing up with this food, with your father cooking, your mother coming back from a business trip and cooking. What were your teenage years like? Were you quite a happy teenager or was it conflicted? I actually wasn't, I don't think. I think I was a bit of a strange child. I was a bit of a strange teenager. In what way? I was very focused on academic success, and I went to a public school in inner city Melbourne where it was the thing to be very different and to be drinking early and to be doing rock and roll music.

15:43It was very punk almost. I was a very anxious teenager, and I just wanted to do well in school, and I wanted to go on to university. I wanted to spend time in nature and by myself. And I think that I was kind of lonely. I had friends, but I think I've always wanted to examine things deeper in a way that can sometimes make people a bit uncomfortable, especially when you're younger and talking about your feelings isn't really as popular as it is now. And so it actually meant that I left home really young. How old were you? I just turned 17 to go to university. Where was that? I went to Canberra.

16:24So in Australia it's really uncommon to move away from your home city, but I think I was just like, I need to, I need to. How far is Canberra from Melbourne? It's around an eight-hour drive. Oh, is it? Yeah. And it wasn't in Australia, that's not that far, but in other places, you know, in Europe, that's really far. Yeah. And I moved out of home and I think that's, this is going to sound weird, but I think that's where like I really came alive and I became a person rather than just someone who has memories and other people's thoughts about me. What made you kind of blossom in that way from your high school to college?

17:03I think it was like I'm in this new place, no one knows who I am. You could make your own identity. Yeah, and actually that was such a good question because it was like I didn't actually need to make my own identity. It was like my identity was already there and I just let people see it. And I just met the best people I've ever met in my life. I'm still really, really close with them. What were they like? They were just so intelligent. It was this shared value set. We'd all moved away from home in an environment where that's not common for a reason. and we moved into this shed and we lived in this massive dorm at 550 people and the kitchen actually was self-catered.

17:47It was the largest non-commercial kitchen in the Southern Hemisphere. Really? Oh, it was huge. For students, yeah. Did they have chefs to cook it? You were all just allowed to go in there and make your own food. Can you imagine what that was like? No, I can't. I'll give you one word, messy. Yeah, messy. Messy. It was gross. Yeah. So what would you do? Would you go in there and just clean up before you started or would you just sort of how did you work in a kitchen like that? Yeah, you would need to clean up. Also, you'd have to lock away your stuff because everyone's poor. Everyone wants, you know, if you have Lerpac butter, that was such like a luxury item.

18:26That would go missing so quickly. Or avocados. Oh, don't even try it. And so we would come down and we would actually, you would have a little group. We never wanted to go alone because it was so intimidating. There's 500 people in a kitchen and we're all 18 and we're all uncomfortable in ourselves. And, you know, we feel embarrassed just by being alive at that age, I think. And you would always text your friends and be like, hey, anyone want to eat? And we'd come down, we would cook together. And there was the staple meals, right? Pesto, pasta. Okay. Of course. A stir fry, naturally. and then always a frozen meal.

19:06Oh, okay. I know that's sad. That's okay. I never did that. You didn't do that. And what were you studying at the time? So I obviously studied psychology, but then little no fact, I also studied a Bachelor of Politics, Economics, and Philosophy. So I wanted to be a politician. Did you? Yeah. I can understand that. I was really invested in becoming the Minister for Women. at the time in Australia it was a man who was the minister for women doesn't make any sense and I was like I find that so uncomfortable I want to change that I want to I want to work for DFAT I want to change women's lives I want to change people's lives and then I think I slowly became someone else and I always had this fascination with psychology because the psychology is really interesting in terms of what you're doing now but that path through the psychology at university what was that what did you learn i learned so much i was but i learned so much but then at the time i had stopped working in the restaurant and i started working in um child maltreatment research because it paid really well at first i was like oh this is i have this background and i've learned all these things and this job is going to pay really well and then suddenly i was like it doesn't matter if this doesn't pay well this is like what i want to do so I just done a one of the best courses I ever did was personality psychology and then also developmental psychology and I think when we think about psychology we think about disordered thinking we think about mental ill health and this was about just being like your average person is more interesting and nuanced and wonderful than the whole universe like everything everyone is made so differently and I took some of that experience I started working for this study called the Child Maltreatment Study in Australia.

21:00And it's like the first of its kind to ever track the outcomes from people who have experienced neglect or abuse into adulthood. And I was doing qualitative research for that, so I was talking to people. And it was hard, but I was like, this is what I want to do. And I know that if I do something else, I won't be able to do that. Sorry, I know this isn't about food. No, no, no, but it's the same. And also, when you started, you started out by saying that you cooked Sunday night. dinners to make people and there was a whole connection it wasn't just to feed your friends or to have a great day shopping and cooking there was a definite connection with people and making them feel loved making them feel a memory of their family making them feel ready for the week making them feel understood and that you cared about them and I think that this all seems to be tied in with what you're doing

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22:47making it easier than ever to get behind the wheel of the Toyota you've been waiting for. But don't wait. These year-end savings won't last. Shop the entire Toyota lineup and find a great deal today on buyatoyota.com. Toyota, let's go places. Morning people wake up for peace and quiet. McDonald's breakfast people, we wake up for the sweet rush of getting that warm, delicious breakfast right before it ends. Beef up your morning ritual with a hearty steak, egg, and cheese bagel or any of your favorite bagel sandwiches. Then kick it up a notch with any size iced coffee for just 99 cents. Price and participation may vary.

23:30Cannot be combined with any other offer. I always wanted to practice. I was like, I'm going to go back to practicing. I'm going to become a psychologist. And that was the trajectory I was on. and then I became a therapist for people in an entirely new way that I think only this generation and the last few decades have allowed. Suddenly it's almost so much more efficient. Sometimes I say to people, obviously take my advice with a grain of salt. I don't know you. You don't know me. We don't have this bond. We don't have a relationship. But I think the beauty of being able to immerse myself in the theory and then also to do a lot of that work with children and with people who experience domestic violence as well was that I'm able to make all of that knowledge so much more accessible with people who need it without it being wrapped up in all this academic jargon.

24:24So I don't know, maybe I'll go back and finish it up. I'm thinking about doing a PhD. That would be so much fun. Yeah, why not? Yeah, honestly. Just keep going. From one podcast to another, we've heard the story of your university child days. Tell me, how did it happen? How did you decide? Is it true that it started in the back of a car? Yeah. Okay. Tell me about the car. That's true. So actually, I went through a breakup. And it was when COVID was happening. And I'd been dating him for almost just over two years. It was my first love. And I thought we were going to get married. And it just devastated me.

25:04And then suddenly, everything was locked down. and all the things that you normally do to heal after a hurt you know you go to the gym you go traveling you go out with your friends tell your friends you tell your friends everything they come over you get drunk everyone's they cry with you and suddenly you couldn't do that and I just one day had this idea I have this theory that sometimes there's something in the world that just places an idea in your brain and you just have to grab it. Like you just, it's, it's like a gift. Everyone gets an idea that could be the choice of their life at some point, but you have to be like, this is, I'm going to take this now and it's mine and I'm going to give it everything.

25:46I'm going to, I'm going to like birth this idea. And that just kind of happened. I was like, one day I was like, oh, the psychology of your twenties. I wonder what that would be like. Oh my goodness. And then I called my best friend and I was like, what do you think about like, if I started a podcast and she was like that would be such a great outlet for you I think she was sick of listening to me have the conversations I now have on the show with her and so I was like let's do this and just googled like where can I how to start a podcast I literally went on wiki how yeah I understand yeah I never ever thought that it would be what it became I just wanted to do it I always say to people I would have kept doing it even if no one listened where did the idea of doing it in the back of your car come from?

26:31Oh, sorry, I forgot the back of the car. Well, I lived in a house with six, seven people. Yeah, too many people. And we had very thin walls. So the only place I had that was private was my Subaru Forester 2007. So you're still a university. I'm still a university, yeah. I started it in my final year. And I sat in the back of my car with my phone and I was like, today we're going to talk about imposter syndrome. And I'm starting this podcast and I'd written a script as well and I'd printed it out at the one of my housemates has a printer and I sat there with my phone in one hand recording it and then the thing in the other hand and I had the overhead light on and only one of them works and it just just and also sorry this is so funny my car's very old and I don't take good care of it so you can actually you lock yourself in like all the time and the keys don't unlock it so you have to roll down in the window and get out.

27:29And so I actually think that happened. I got locked in my car. Did you have guests on your show or did you just do it by yourself in the beginning? I did have guests, but they were my friends. So it's interesting. They'd come and sit in the car with you. Yeah, they'd come and sit in the car. Or we would do it at their house. I remember one of my best friends, Phoebe. Oh, gosh, she's amazing. And we sat on the ground in her kitchen or lounge room, and we had a little stool in front of us. and we were just getting drunk and we recorded an episode and it's still up. Which one is that? Let's Get Friendly with Phoebe.

28:03And we just talked about it. I feel they've all given me permission now. When we recorded these, I didn't think that there was going to be millions of people listening to them. So we're telling them about where we went to primary school, we're telling them about our first pet's name, all the questions that your bank asks you for your security code. And now I'm like, oh, shit. like there's things that yeah and then only at the start of this year did I really start getting like guests on that um I maybe hadn't met before have only met a couple of times and not people that I've known for six seven years yeah as your success became more evident were you able to eat more kind of the food that you wanted to eat were you able to afford better food can I tell you a secret yeah so the podcast took a while to take off so I was working a nine-to-five job yeah but I remember the first time I ever made like a scent from the podcast I went to this restaurant in Sydney um called Toddy's everyone knows it's so amazing and I went to Toddy's and I ordered a bread I ordered a burrata I ordered these tomatoes and I ordered a chocolate torta Torte?