Marina Hyde and Richard Osman

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.

0:30there. NBC News, reporting for America. You're listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in collaboration with me and Em, intelligent style for busy women.

0:44Over 218 episodes of Ruthie's Table 4, I've interviewed actors, chefs, musicians, and politicians. Today, I'm here with Marina Hyde and Richard Osmond, two great friends and also the hosts of my favorite podcast, The Rest is Entertainment. Marina is a brilliant journalist. When I don't know what to think on any subject, I read her with an open mind and then think what she thinks. Richard is a brilliant TV producer, presenter, and hugely successful novelist, and one of the most loved members of the River Cafe family. Last night he was here celebrating his newest book, The Impossible Fortune. Today we'll talk about food, friendship, entertainment.

1:30I'm also looking forward to learning about how to do a really good podcast with two great friends. What an intro. What an intro. I agree with all the stuff about Marina, less so with the stuff about me. The reverse. How did it start? Do you want to go, do you want to take this one? yes I will because I tell you what when I had a book out which when I have a book out it's not quite the same as when Richard's got a book out um they said we want to do a big London event and um we want to get a host for it and then they came back to me said Richard Dawson was going to do it and I said what's he doing there he's got no need to do that I was affronted that you had said yes um sometime before Gary Lineker had said to me will you do a podcast or something and And I'd said, oh, no, I'd be absolutely terrible at it.

2:15That's very female. Yeah. You don't want me. I'm not good enough. But then Richard wrote to me on a Saturday evening. And I lay away saying, what do you think about doing this? And it would be about entertainment, which I also, that was a whole separate thing, which I thought, OK, this would be really fun. This is all the things that people escape to from a darkening world. And I thought, and I lay away the entire night, but not in an unhappy way. and then at like quarter to five on Sunday morning I wrote back and said no I think I would yes I think I will do that. I know I was delighted because I wanted to do an entertainment podcast so I feel it's the only thing I actually have some authority on you know people always ask your opinions on things and politics and stuff I think I have an opinion but it's not based on anything other than you know my opinion whereas entertainment I've sort of worked in it for a long time so I feel like it's an area that I can talk about and working out who to do it with and finally Ingrid my wife who loves Marina almost as much as I do.

3:10She said, well, there's only one person. It's got to be Marina. And so immediately I wrote to Marina and suggested it, thinking, because I know you famously, you don't do many things like that. I thought, well, she'll say no, and then we'll have to get some sort of inferior Marina. So many superior Marinas, trust me. But I remember thinking, oh, I think this would be really fun. And I just think I would really look forward to speaking to him every single week, which we do on Monday mornings. And every Monday morning I think, Like, I wonder what Richard will have to say about these matters. So how do you prepare?

3:42Well, we sort of pick across our poor producers. They're always like the previous Thursday or, you know, something. They go, any ideas what you're going to talk about this week? Now? On Thursday? Absolute radio silence from me and Marina. Then maybe sort of like a panicked email on Saturday evening going, maybe should we talk about this this week? And then on Sunday. But you know what? Maybe we'll talk about that. And so Sunday is sort of my research date. Very occasionally we would change it on Monday morning. Yes, we did. We talked about Salt Path, the book the other day. And it came out on the Sunday evening, all this story.

4:12So we changed it on a Monday morning. So we do our bit of research. And then we turn up. We never tell each other what we're going to say. We don't really know as well. I often, like so often in life. We're just about to be impressed. Until I hear something come out of my mouth, I'm like, oh, didn't know you were going to say that. So that's my opinion. But I just sit back and, you know, Marina, let's rip. and I'm thinking this is great. So we're here to talk about food, aren't we? So we always start with the reading of the recipe. Would you like to do the ingredients and I'll do the... No, I'll say, I'll pretend we're doing a podcast.

4:48Okay. I thought you should just do that and I could sit back and relax. Hello and welcome to Grilled Veil Chops. My name is Richard Osman. And I'm Marina Hyde. I have a question, Marina. It's from a Ruthie Rogers. Ruthie, thank you for your question. And she's saying exactly what would you use for ingredients if you were cooking grilled veal chops? Great question. I'd have four thick veal chops. Four of them? Yeah, I'd have four. Is that for four people? I think it would serve four. Yeah. And then I'd have 50 grams of prosciutto fat. Okay. Yeah. A peel of two lemons. Yeah. Two tablespoons of sage leaves.

5:24Two tablespoons of sage leaves. Yeah. But you're piling them up? Yeah. Yeah, well, I'm chopping them beforehand. I'm never sure about tablespoons because heap tablespoons. I don't know. Listen, that's my issue. There's a level of imprecision that this will admit of. Then we'd have a tablespoon of lemon juice and sea salt and freshly ground pepper. When aren't they there? That's what you would do. Like the Eva Longoria and Orlando Bloom of celebrity weddings. They're on every list, those two. Do you have a further question for me? Yes, I'd like to know what to do with these items. Who's that question from?

5:56Ruthie's back on. Oh, Ruthie again. She's had two questions in a row. I think she's known as what's called a super fan. So super fan Ruthie Rogers asked, what would you do with these for the grilled veal chops? What would I do with them? God, that's a good question. So what have we got? Four thick veal chops. So quite thick. I think probably, so you've got the prosciutto. Take the prosciutto fat. Take the lemon peel and sage leaves, lemon juice and that seasoning. Stick them in a food processor is the first thing I would do. And if you've got all your different settings on your food processor, I would use Pulse Drop.

6:27so pulse chop that to make a coarse thick paste is what I would do then you dry the veal chops thoroughly I don't know how wet they are but if they are wet with a kitchen towel I think I would definitely do it with a kitchen towel and then I would spread the mixture remember from the food processor from before just spread it evenly on each side grill gosh I would say 5 to 8 minutes something like that and then hey presto you've got yourself absolutely perfect grilled veal chops. I hope that answers your question Ruthie, thanks for listening. That was a brilliant reading of it and I really will learn a lot from the next time.

7:06As a matter of fact I thought I would ask you why you chose that recipe or did you have veal chop? Well I chose this recipe and I have made this recipe many times actually and it is a real high wire because I have to tell you veal chops are very very expensive. There's something about me that I don't know. Especially thick ones. Yeah especially very thick ones and And if it goes wrong, it's completely ruined. And all veal chops are wrong. This is from the book that came out in the mid-90s, right? This is the first book. Yeah, exactly. It got a lot wrong in that book. Oh, did you? Yeah, people say to me, I made something.

7:37And it didn't come out, though. Like, what was our first book? Yeah. Listen, it's like the Thursday Murder Club. I didn't absolutely know what I was doing. I didn't either. We just did this. I don't want to reduce the sales of our first book because we do love our first book. It's a banger. Yeah. It's a classic. If you want to make something, I would go. It's called the River Cafe Cookbook. But it's the blue one. Yeah, but I would definitely go to the one that we did for our 30th birthday called River Cafe 30. Clever. Which is kind of more knowledgeable. There you go. But, you know, it's fine.

8:07Yeah, yeah. We were young. We started out. You were faking it until you were making it. We were saying how and why the veal chops. Why you chose this recipe. Well, I chose this recipe because, first of all, I absolutely love veal chops. I felt the recipe was quite forgiving because I could see obviously the main thing you don't want to happen is for it to dry out because once that's happened the end um so I saw that you did this thing with the fat I really always try and push myself too hard on all sorts of different things so when I did this I always used to feel like oh this is such a high wire if I can pull this off then maybe everything else in my life will go right too.

8:41Cooking is a performance do you think people say to me you know how do you feed 200 people here when I can't do a dinner party of eight and I go I don't like doing a dinner party date you know it's hard it's such a performance you're taking something out you're feeding it to people they have to like it or not like it you've succeeded or you failed do you find that or do you find it my job as a as a as a non-chef is is the job in the dinner party is to make sure everyone's happy all the time yeah in weirdly in the same way that when you're presenting a tv program you've got okay I've got four people you work out who they are what's slightly different about them and you just make sure everyone gels so my job at any dinner parties is always a playlist and vibes.

9:24That's all I've got. I will prep, I will clear up, and I will do a playlist. And that's all it, because I love to entertain. All of those are good. They're okay, aren't they? Yeah, all of those are good. I would not cook this at a dinner party. It's too stressful. I would cook this for my husband, Kieran. That's who I would cook for, who is an obsessive lover of veal chops. But that's it. And what do you do when you have a dinner party? Do you have a dinner party? Now, over the years, yeah, I used to sell myself completely mad and be like sucking the kitchen and making all these really complicated things.

9:52Now I do things that can be put out almost at room temperature or there's one thing that's coming out of the oven that the oven's doing all the work. And I can do things like that. I can't remember. You came the other day. We came the other day. We had an amazing schnitzel. Oh, yeah. Schnitzel. I mean, God. It was so good. The thing I eat most more than anything is schnitzel of all different types. I make that. I have a different type of schnitzel at least once a week. Tell me about some of your schnitzels. All different things. One's with seeds on the side. That one had almonds and porridge oats and weird things on the side.

10:21It had like a crunchy crust to it. Yeah, that's a good one. A classic sort of Milanese one. Austrian one with a matzo. I'll do pork ones. I'll do anything. I will schnitzel anything. Okay, let's schnitzel. I will schnitzel you. I will eat any schnitzel as well. But that's very last minute though. You have to be in the kitchen. But it's fine because it actually doesn't take very, it's last minute, but it's not many minutes. Yeah. Yeah, so schnitzel is probably the thing that I cook by far the most. And everybody likes it. It might be the thing I eat the most, yeah. I love it. My wife is half German, so we go to Germany a lot.

10:55And I'm so happy because every restaurant you go into, it doesn't matter what they do, there will always be schnitzel. Usually, especially in the South, there'll always be fondue as well. So I'm always happy to be in Germany.

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11:57Get early access to Black Friday pricing starting at just$699. It's time to upgrade to a stress-free, mess-proof sofa. Visit washablesofas.com today and save. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. And when you were growing up, did your parents entertain?

12:49Did you grow up with dinner parties in your house? No, they never really did that. And actually, we never went out. say but my no I think it was expensive and we didn't go out but we my mother sort of hated cooking and sort of still does but cooked every single meal but we had about five dishes on rotation and they were called funny things they were you know some of them were like obvious what they were there was like kidneys and rice or spaghetti bolognese some of the things were called things like chicken in a mess with rice okay and there was so there were all of those things but when I was coming here I was thinking my gosh you know if I was giving the honest sort of that the account of all those things there were certain moments and you look back to them remember the shop b jam i remember i had a saturday job in b jam did you you didn't it was the precursor to iceland yeah it was i was gonna say was that a freezer okay it's a shop that sold freezers and also things that went in freezers so clever one stop shop fill it up and i'll take it aesthetically it's a nothing experience these guys but for a certain type of woman who did not want to cook particularly those chests were treasure chests and in them were things like i mean i remember the first time we saw a vionetta we were like oh my god how could such a thing be created and look so perfect yeah and retain it i mean the answer of course was a little ultra processed or whatever but at the time we didn't know any of these things and we lived in blissful ignorance and they had no one's ever no one's ever topped the vionetta no well sarah lee's had a good go I tell you, some of Sara Lee's frozen desserts, you know, that came out.

14:19We ragged up on Sara Lee. That was very American. Yeah. Well, eventually. Never Sara Lee brownies. And so those sort of things would come out. And they, you know, ice cream, fancy ice cream flavours. Can I say something about fancy ice cream flavours? Yes, please. Now, Ruthie, you're an experimenter in the kitchen. You understand food and flavour and all of those things. So the history of ice cream. We have vanilla, of course, classic. And then we had chocolate and then we had strawberry. So I absolutely get that those are the first three flavors. The next flavor out of the traps, I think, like the fourth flavor, immediately before they thought of anything else, was rum and raisin.

14:57Remember in the 70s they had rum and raisin. That's a really early, so early to go rum and raisin. When you haven't even done pistachio. But I love it. We, by the way, had some ice creams here yesterday that were sensational. But they're not like outreaching flavors. They're really simple flavors. They're beautiful, beautifully made. Talking of ultra-high processed food, one of the greatest moments of the 1970s was when they brought out Ice Magic. Do you remember Ice Magic? Yeah. So Ice Magic, you'd have some, you know, Sainsbury's vanilla ice cream, and you'd get this squeezy bottle that was chocolate-flavored, and you would pour this, you know, squeeze out this chocolate sauce, and it would instantly form like a hard crust.

15:41Again, sorcery. Like a chocolate bomb. Yeah. Yeah. There are some things even now that I think, if they hadn't existed in the 70s and someone, if you went to a restaurant and someone showed that to you, you go, this is the greatest act of gastronomy in the history of restaurants. But they were so far ahead of the curve. I think the best ice cream flavor, I don't know if you agree with me, Ruthie, and I don't think there's any argument with this. I think the best ice cream flavor is mint chocolate chip. Oh my God, I'm so embarrassed for you. Oh, okay. Are you going to say Stracciatella or something?

16:10No, you'd be really surprised what I'm going to say. Oh, amazing. I really love vanilla ice cream. Wow. You know, it's kind of boring. We should get some. Do you want some ice cream? We could have some ice cream now. Yeah, yeah. Why not? This is the best podcast ever. Our podcasts are shit compared to it. Yeah. It's shit. The best ice cream I ever had was in Italy, of course, in Rome. And there was this gelateria we went to all the time, which is called Otoleg. And we thought that's an unusual name. But anyway, we kept going back there because it was just incredible. And, you know, it's a hole in the wall one.

16:44And it was only at the very, we were there for a month. It was only at the end of the month that I worked out that Otterleg was gelato backwards. Oh. I'd always think, that's an unusual name. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, yeah. The hole in the wall place, there's a place in Newlyn in Cornwall that's called Gelbert. And I have been having this ice cream since, and people used to queue for absolutely miles for it. And it's just, they just do vanilla. and it was honestly served out of a bucket. There was really, they had a dairy. It was amazing and no one ever got saved. But it was a proper thing. And the only way you could have it served was plain or with clotted cream on top.

17:20And by the way, clotted cream on top of ice cream. You're thinking, so perverted. It's far too much, I can assure you. It is the best dessert though, don't you? I love ending a meal with ice cream. Oh, 100%. It's a million different things. You can be whatever you want it to be. Sometimes on the way home from work, I stop. We have one on the King's Road called Ventsy. They do really nice. Oh, yeah, they've got to get in. And it's not too late. But then I always buy one for the taxi driver for I feel guilty. And I bring him one. And then I gave one to him the other day. And so he said, you know, the last time you were in my cab, Ruthie, you got me an ice cream.

17:55So back to your mother now. Yes. Your poor mother. She has never loved cooking at all. But I do think there was a sort of liberation in those frozen chests for many people. And I love cooking, but I sort of taught myself. Did you sit down to dinner every night as a family? Yes, always. You did, every night. How many of you were there? And it was very noisy because there were three girls, three sisters, and my parents. My father loved having three girls, but if we brought friends home from school and stuff like that, then sometimes there would quite regularly be like nine people. Did you? Did you have dinner every night sitting down?

18:30Every night my mum, again, I think my mum would love to have been a good cook. And my parents split up when I was quite young. So she kind of got out of the thing of people coming around. And she had two boys, neither of whom were particularly adventurous. So very quickly, it was the absolute typical. I think that's the reason I never get food poisoning because I was brought up on, you know, potato waffles and spaghetti hoops from a can and fish fingers and things like that. So I think that she would have loved to every night rustle something up. But she never had an appreciative audience. Oh, also, did she work during the day?

19:03Yes, she became a teacher. She was a primary school teacher. Because that's hard. Oh, it's super hard. You're working all day and then you come home and... And you've got to cook. Did your mum work? She did when we got a bit older, but she didn't when we were all small at the same time. You'd love it. I do all the cooking at home, but I taught myself. Funnily enough, in the pandemic, it's the only time that I've sort of met friends online that I'd never met. And these two producer brothers who have got a company called Fullwell who produce things like the Late Late Show with James Corden when they do.

19:36And they were called Gabe and Ben. And they wanted me to do a TV project with them, which I thought I'd be terrible at. So I didn't do. They said, we don't really know how to cook. And we're getting people to teach us how to cook with two others. And they were Phoebe Waller-Bridge and her sister, Isabel, who's a brilliant composer. And so we were in this cook-along. So we would go on Zoom and people would teach us how to cook things. and there were amazing like people who taught us how to make like challah bread you know our plaiting was so bad and when the things were like rising and doing this we would all talk to each other and it was this amazing thing and we didn't know what we were doing technologically we would just like have our laptops set up on our shelves in our kitchen and it was so fun oh look oh my god look at this look at that and i think i ate your ice cream yesterday as well did you so you say your parent you didn't go to either neither of you went to restaurants as kids which is not surprising because we only went for special occasions we didn't have them but you didn't go at all I remember reading the tiger who came to tea the children's book once and the main thing should be that there's a tiger in your house yeah but the thing I took away from it was that they went to a restaurant and it had like kind of those the gingham tablecloths and I was like I loved it so much it's and it's so glamorous because she goes in her nightie and her she puts her coat on over her nightie yeah they have sausages and ice cream i think do you do you think about what you're going to eat when you wake up in the morning do you immediately i think about all the different meals i love all the different meals i can't play favorites and i really think for my children like oh i want to make them a cake i want to do things i want to do things like that i want to try and do absolutely everything and do all my work and make a really big supper i make everyone a cake yeah do you think that's a personality Did you try it with your marina?

21:15Yes, I do think it is. It's weird because it's never come across. But do you go to sleep thinking about what you're going to eat the next day? Unless I'm in a hotel and then I've got a hotel breakfast coming up and then I can barely sleep because I'm so excited. I think it's the greatest. What's your idea of a hotel breakfast? Well, just help yourself. Oh, the buffet. If I go to a hotel and you go down to breakfast and it's waiter service, I'm like, well, we're moving hotels. because listen I want to be able to see I want to go and see that bouncy Do you like lifting that silver thing and seeing different kinds of eggs and stuff?

21:48Yeah and they go mushrooms Do you want to make a couple of trips? You want to I always think it would be a great restaurant a hotel breakfast restaurant Just around the clock? In the evening yeah I think people would go nuts for it I think yeah Would you ever interview somebody over breakfast? Would you Breakfast meetings or lunch meetings Do you like food and work? Business breakfast yes definitively I think that's great We all know where we are and there's something about it because, as we know, the calories don't count and all that kind of stuff. And you've got to eat anyway. And you've got the day ahead of you.

22:17Yeah. Business lunch, no. I don't like business. Do you do business lunch? I love a long lunch, but very, very rarely. But I love to do it. I go out with all these slightly older guys and they're really good fun. And I have a long lunch. But then I'm not sort of going to do any more work. Are they that drinking at lunchtime generation? I was going to ask that too. That's the one that I really – I wish I'd been born in that generation. I don't know how they did it. the cabinets in the room, right? They had wine, mad men, cocktails. When you came back from the business lodge, you had three martinis and then you went back to the office and had another thing.

22:48It's just you're building up resistance, right? They did pretty good ads, didn't they? Yeah, exactly. But I love a business breakfast. You're so right. That's a much, although having said that, I start work really early in the morning. I always start by five. So I don't, and I'm much better. Yeah, something that takes me five minutes at 5 a.m. will take me an hour at 5 p.m. So those are my good hours of working. If ever I get a text at 6 in the morning, it's only Marina. And you know I've been waiting to send it to you. Take calls at 5 because sometimes I wake up at 5 and nobody talks. I'd love to call you.

23:19Oh, really? Because what I do. Oh, my God, I'm so available. Because what I have to do, I wanted to have a website called areyouwake.com because then you could find out who's actually awake. Because often in the morning I'll ring somebody and say, I say, I woke up at 3 and they go, I was awake at 3. And you think if we just knew each other we're awake. It's easy to see my voice. Yeah, me too. Whenever my wife and I are separated, she works away a lot and I work away a lot. And both of us find it harder to sleep when the other isn't there. And so I know sometimes if I could ask, that's the only time I would send a text at three in the morning and just go, are you finding trouble sleeping?

23:52And I immediately, yeah. And then, okay, let's have a chat.

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