Massimo Bottura & Lara Gilmore - Live

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0:37Hello, everyone, and welcome to Repertorio Felix. I'd like to introduce today's event. For more than 30 years, the River Cafe in London has been the home from home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, and politicians. On River Cafe Table for chef and owner of the River Cafe, Ruth Rogers, sits down with her customers to talk about food memories. And today we're excited to welcome her guests, Massimo Battura and Lara Gilmore, for this very special live recording of the podcast. Massimo Battura is the chef patron of Osteria Francescana, a globally celebrated three Michelin star restaurant based in Modena, Italy, where he grew up.

1:24Lara Gilmore is a fine arts major, restaurateur, author and hotelier. Their new book, Slow Food, Fast Cars, tells the story and shares recipes from the idyllic 18th century guesthouse, Casa Maria Lugere. Welcome. It's so good to be here.

1:47There are 20 regions in Italy, from Piemonte in the north to Sicily in the south. This is a fact, but let me tell you about 21st region. The region, next to Emilia Romagna, is warm, it's welcoming, and it's inclusive. The food has its roots in tradition. The views are stunning. A love of the arts is everywhere. Ethics and social justice are priority. When you're there, you'll never want to leave, though if you do, there's no speed limit for fast cars. The region I'm describing is not a place, but two people, Massimo Pitora and Lara Gilmore. Of course, I've known about this region for years, but only since last Thursday, when a table was booked in the River Cafe, did I experience them.

2:44The excitement of Massimo and Laura, creative director and three-star Michelin, four-star Michelin chef, coming to the restaurant was huge, and I have to admit that I cancelled a theater date to pick up the shift, so to be there for this momentous occasion. The chefs in the kitchen stopped, on my behalf, to organize a competition, guessing what they would order. Grilled squid, tagatelli with porcini, wood-roasted turbot, and no dessert. A few days later, we went to hear Massimo and Lara tell a packed lecture theater in the Victoria and Albert Museum their story of starting Osteria Francescana and Clausa Luigi, their ambitions, their values, their love for hospitality and their love for each other.

3:35It was an astonishing hour. Today we're here for a live podcast of Ruthie's Table 4 to talk with Massimo and Lara, co-authors of the just published and fantastic book Slow Food Fast Chars. They're heroes to chefs everywhere. They are my new friends and And they are the 21st region of Italy. Wow. Can I please? No. Please. I would never say no to you. Of course you can. Oh my God. It's amazing. It's amazing. I'm very impressed. It was written from the heart. And I think that the regions of Italy are so important. But for me, having lived there, having worked there, having family, I'd say that it's not region to region.

4:24It's city to city, it's town to town, village to village, and in our case, family to family, and in even another case, sister to sister, brother to brother. And I remember once, and this is what I want you to carry on, that I was in our house in the Valdorce, and we were going to do a porchetta, and I went to the butcher, and he said, how are you going to cook it? And I said, ah, you think you're talking to anybody. You know, I am a chef. And so I said, oh, I'm going to take sea salt and fennel seed, and I'm going to do-do-do-do. And he went, oh, no, no, no, no, no. That's what they do in Siena.

5:02Now, Siena was 40 miles away. And so I think that closeness, that pride, and that interest in where you're from. Over to you. When I hear, a ragù alla bolognese, you know, I got like, oh, I'm like, ragù alla bolognese. I'm not cooking the ragù alla bolognese. I'm from Modena. Yeah. We won against the bolognese. And we keep winning. So is ragù alla modenese? Almost, no, everything, hand chopped with the right pieces. Very, you have like some pork, some cuts, some beef, bone marrow. Very complicated. Bolognese is just pork. Come on. It's so much about identity. From one table to the next, even in a town like Modena, the tortellini are different.

5:56The tagliatelle are different, thinner, thicker, cut in a different way. The ragu, you're filling in the tortellini. And as an American coming over to Italy 30 years ago, this is my 30th anniversary in Modena. I arrived in the fall of 1993 for Massimo's birthday. I fell in love with that making everything personal. A meal is a personal tribute to your mother, your grandmother, what you learned, what was passed on, and then you've mixed it all together. I think those traditions are so important to keep alive. What you said about the 21st region, Massimo and I creating this, not only a property we invite people into, not only the restaurants, but our imagination has been added to the landscape, to the ingredients, to the artisans, to create something that is unique.

6:41And when we have our guests come in, we want them to have that feeling, that they're in a very special place, a moment in time, passing it with us. And do you think back, though, because you grew up in Amelia Romano, you grew up in New York. Are you constantly referring to both of your backgrounds? Of course. I grew up in Modena. Susan. And of course, it's like this. To me, I'm acting very local. You know, we built a relationship with our farmers, fishermen, cheesemakers, our artisans, everyone around in the area. But we are acting very global, very open-minded. You know, as I learned since I was in New York, and I met Lara for a time, she introduced me to contemporary art, and she was saying, I said, no, art is over after Duchamp.

7:34And I said, no, you have to look much deeper. You have to look, you have to understand when it's done this, when it was done that, why the artist is that. And since then, everything changed. We are acting in a very long way. Imagine in the last tasting menu in Osteria Francescana, we have the tortellini, you know, like I open the kitchen and the creative process for all our 65 chefs, they are working there, 65 for 30 covers, to express and rebuild our history of 40 years in Nostaria Francescana, but filtered by a contemporary mind and the culture biodiversity of each one of them. And the first course that Korean chef came out with the idea was the tortellini are walking on the broth.

8:25I was like, wow, this is going to be, they're going to still crucify me. Walking, walking, not swimming. You know, but the tortellini, you know, instead of being tortellini, they're like dumpling. They want to be tortellini, you know. Imagine the locals eating dumpling up there, like walking in the middle of the broth, standing there with Korean toasted nori creamy sauce, cured eggs in the middle. But what I keep saying to all the locals, they come. imagine you know the asians the people they travel they try this dumpling better than any dumpling because the mixture and the tortellini though it's made with the best product of emilia romagna like parmigiano but also prosciutto but also mortadella but also the balance between veal and pork but also some bone marrow but also some nutmeg you know extremely complicated but extremely balance and you go there and you feel these little dumplings that come up like that and they stand there in the middle of the broth it's going to be an incredible message for everyone yeah but the tortellini are better so to give it some context the new menu in austria franciscana massimo challenged the whole team to look at our most iconic dishes the ones that are in never trust a skinny Italian chef, and each individual on the team was given the opportunity to reinterpret them, choosing whatever they wanted.

10:01Choi, this Korean chef, chose to reinterpret the tortellini. And so for us, it has been such an amazing year because all of a sudden we're seeing the dishes that we know and love, have written about and talked about through someone else's eyes. And so it's very interesting after all these years, 28 in Austria-Francis, Ghana, that we're still up to being playful and to taking risks and to trying to see something from a different point of view. Well, a different point of view, we can also talk about, and we have much to talk about, is seasonality. And as you know, in this little podcast that we do, we ask chefs to read their own recipes.

10:40Most everybody else reads a recipe from one of our books, but we asked you to choose a recipe, and the recipe that you chose to read is a recipe for... pears. As a North American who moved 30 years ago to Italy, our head chef Jessica Roosevelt, who wrote the recipes for Slow Food Fast Cars, is another North American. She's from Montreal, and she and I definitely had a bonding over this project because I kept asking Jess, who is in Austria-Francis, Ghana, working in a three-star Michelin restaurant, in her free time, if she could come by to Casimo Luigia, help design the kitchen, help me do interviews to find a head chef.

11:18The more time she spent at Casimir Luigia, I had already planted a vegetable garden, and so we had some Brussels sprouts coming up, and she wanted to learn how to use our wood-fired oven, and so day by day, as she spent more time there, I realized she was never going to find a head chef, because she wanted the job herself, and it's been an extraordinary collaboration, because both of us fell in love with Modena. We've tried to look at the ingredients, the traditions, from a distance, from our completely different cultural upbringing and sometimes seeing them in a way that the modernese don't see them, like Cotecino we serve for breakfast.

11:57And it is so delicious cooked under the wood-burning oven. So this comes from our breakfast recipes, but of course it can be served any time of the day. We cook these pears in an iron-cast skillet and finish them off in the wood-burning oven. If you don't have a wood-burning oven, you can also just do it over... No, you can't do it. You can, it just might not taste the same. It's a good way to sell books, right? You cannot do it. This recipe is from the cookbook, Slow Food Fast Cars. Pears, serve six. Three pears, 120 grams cane sugar, six tablespoons of saba, four sprigs of rosemary, pinch of flaky sea salt.

12:35Preheat a wood oven to 220 degrees. Cut each pear into eight wedges. Remove the cores and seeds. Place them in a 12-inch cast iron skillet. Cut sides up. Sprinkle the sugar and the four tablespoons of saba on top. Add one tablespoon of water to prevent the fruit from drying out. Insert the rosemary between the pear slices. Cook until golden, about 12 minutes. Take the pears off the oven. Drizzle with the remaining saba. Sprinkle with salt and serve warm. I always say a recipe is part poetry and part science, isn't it? It is poetry. Yeah, yeah. And it's beautifully read. Can you tell us about Saba?

13:14Yeah, of course. But first, I have to talk about breakfast. Because to me, the breakfast that we did... I said, can I just tell you that I really did think, when I heard them at the V &A, that I could ask one question and come and join you. You know, we did, you know, we were like, we were recording Masterclass. I am kind of the boss, you know. I know, I know. But listen to this. We were talking about, we were recording Masterclass, me and Taka. And Jessica behind the scene, I prepare everything. And the director was keep asking questions, because I get lost into my ideas. So at one point, we were plating something with parmigiano.

13:54So he said from behind the scene, but can you tell us about how many grams of parmigiano reggiano you're putting in the recipe? And I was looking at him and said, you didn't understand anything. You know, because it's not about how many grams of parmigiano. It's about your mental palate. And I start talking and explaining how to pick the right parmigiano for 40 minutes. And they were still recording. And I was like, I just asked how many grams. I think it was the first time that I heard a chef, a masterclass say, you have to tune your mental palate. I mean, it's like your little Jiminy Cricket there.

14:34But Massimo's been talking about it forever since I first met him. I think when we met in Cafe di Nona in 1993, when we kind of ran into each other in this little restaurant, he started talking about the mental palate, and I thought, who is this guy? But it's so easy, because it's like, if you get a Parmigiano Reggiano, it's not the same Parmigiano from autumn, or winter, or spring, because it's aging in a different way, because the animals, they eat different food, etc., etc., etc. It's completely different. So how can you say 30 grams of Parmigiano Reggiano? Just listen to your palate. Your palate is telling you how many grams of parmigiano reggiano you have to put.

15:13Okay, back to Saba. Saba is the must. Actually, since we are in Maria Luisa, we make our own must with our own vineyard of Trebbiano di Spagna. It's very important. Like the white grape full of sugar, but also vaniglia, but also back taste that reminds you apricots and peaches. We harvest, we go, we press very softly to get il fiore, the little soft press. Let him sit for a while to get extremely clean. At this point, we boil very, very mild, like 69, 70 degrees. And once it's reduced in the right way, because it's all about tasting, It depends on the year. It depends on the harvest. It depends on the water and everything.

16:07It could be between 30 % and 50%. You have the Saba. And that's the best thing ever. I still remember one Christmas, we were stealing the key from the pocket of my grandmother because she was the only one who had the key to go upstairs and open the door where all the vinegar and the Saba was sitting. On Christmas time, during a very big snowstorm, we've stolen a little bit of Saba. We went downstairs. We put the snow in a glass, poured the Saba, mixing and eating slow Saba. So this is memory. This is a delinquent child, right? This is a new form of rebellion that we see in an Italian house, where this is what two naughty children get up to.

17:01You know, they take the saba, they take the snow, and they enjoy it. Did your grandmother find out that you had done it? Yes. And so I think that brings up a kind of cultural idea of what food is about growing up, taking the saba, of having your grandmother's cooking. Did you grow up with an American version of that? So I did not grow up with a grandmother doing much cooking. But in the early years, my parents met in Washington, D.C. My dad was an editor for a newspaper and got invited to a lot of embassy dinners. And my mother was a very curious cook. Not only was she number one fan of Julia Child, but she would always sneak behind the kitchen of the embassy dinners, whether it was the Chinese embassy, Japanese embassy, Indian embassy, and she'd get the recipe.

17:52So later she became a host, many different dinner parties at home. that's when I began my culinary career in the kitchen, serving as a 10-year-old, making sure the rice pilaf didn't burn, cleaning the dishes. But she was always an adventurous cook. And so I think that my sister and I really got this sense of food is a way that you can travel. You don't have to get on an airplane. You can start cooking. You can start smelling how different spices, fill up a kitchen. And in your imagination, you can go anywhere through food. And so she gave us that curiosity. She also taught me that my first job, I should work as a waitress.

18:26And I worked in a Friendly's, this ice cream diner. When I was 16 years old. And ever since then, it was just, she just set me up to meet Massimo. And, you know. Actually, Mrs. Gilmore, she's an amazing cook. She's an amazing cook. And was your grandmother or your mother or both of them great cooks? Who was the employee? My grandmother was really bad cook. Bad? Oh, okay. Because she had to cook for the whole family. My mom, she was an amazing cook because she loved to cook. That's a very important difference because cooking is an act of love, as I always write, to remind all the young chefs that I met.

19:05It's all about love. It's all about what you serve. You know, I keep saying to everyone in Osteria, in Maria Luisa, in Francescana, Gatto Verde, you know, serving a good food is one thing. Serving emotion is another thing. It's going to stay with you forever. And that's a very important part. But the breakfast was inspired by my grandmother, by her choice. She was cooking one day a year with lots of love. It was Christmas Day. She was waking up very early with burnt oven, cooking everything we are preparing and serving, the breakfast for everyone, for the whole family. Same, we are serving now at Maria Luisa's breakfast, Just fried dough with mortadella, some frittatine in the woodburn oven with a very slow cooking onion finished with some balsamic vinegar on top, some cotechino under the ashes with zabaione on top, herbazzone or other different quiche, you know, whatever.

20:11You know, all this kind of savory and sweet because Emilia Cuisine has always been about savory and sweetness. and this is what was like this and we challenge us to repeat this kind of breakfast every day because as we said in Maria Luisa we want an experience that is different from any other hotel in the world we want the kitchen always open with parmigiano and lambrusco on top of the counter so you can go there and eat parmigiano and lambrusco and you understand you are in Modena but also breakfast has to be an experience like we want Christmas every day in Modena for our guests and our guests enjoy so much they stay they spend a couple of hours there having a cappuccino and then an herbazzone and another cappuccino and and some cotechino and and sbrisolona you know this kind of stuff

21:06the river cafe is excited to announce the return of our italian christmas gift boxes our alternative to the traditional hamper we bring you all of our favorites from the River Cafe, kitchen, vineyards, and the designers from all over Italy. They're available to pre-order now on shoptherivercafe.co.uk.

21:37It may look different, but Native culture is very alive. My name is Nicole Garcia, and on Burn Sage Burn Bridges, we aim to explore that culture. It was a huge honor to become a television writer because it does feel oddly like very traditional. It feels like Bob Dylan going electric, that this is something we've been doing for hundreds of years. You carry with you a sense of purpose and confidence. That's Sierra Teller-Ornelas, who with Rutherford Falls became the first Native showrunner in television history. On the podcast Burn Sage Burn Bridges, we explore her story along with other Native stories, such as the creation of the first Native Comic Con or the importance of reservation basketball.

22:19Every day, Native people are striving to keep traditions alive while navigating the modern world, influencing and bringing our culture into the mainstream. Listen to Burn Sage Burn Bridges on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, it's Stephanie Beatriz. And Melissa Fumero. And this is More Better. We are jumping right in and ready to hear from you. Your thoughts, your questions, your feelings about socks with sandals. And we're ready to share some possibly questionable advice and hot takes. God, that sucks so hard though. I'm so sorry. Can you out petty them?

22:55Can you match their pettiness for funsies? Yeah. We had so much fun last season laughing, crying, talking to some new and old friends. Remember when we were in that scene where you guys were just supposed to hug and I was standing? Oh, yeah. And I was like, can I also hug them? I'm like, this has no friends. This time around, we are. Say it, Melissa. Should I? Say it. Getting a little more better. Oh, finally. It's all the dressing room talk you loved in season one. All the things. Because aren't we all trying to get a little more better? Listen to More Better on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

23:37Did you grow up with breakfast? So I grew up with typical pancakes, bacon, eggs. However, when I go back, my mother's in Colorado now. When I go to visit her at Christmastime, the one meal that I look forward to the most is we recreate this Sunday brunch. Kind of like your breakfast that you had at Christmastime. and we'll make crepes and salmon and eggs. And so there's that sort of celebration in that breakfast. I didn't grow up with an everyday breakfast like that, but Sundays were always a special moment. My dad, who worked a lot, was the pancake maker. So I have this very fond, nostalgic feeling every time I eat a pancake because he was the one who did the flipping.

24:22So there you are, your father and the memories. Did he cook other than just... No, I remember one thing about his father. Tell the story about the tongue. Tell the story about the tongue. You tell the story about the tongue. Please tell it. You tell it. No, you tell it much better than I do. One of the things that, you know, in Modena you eat is bolito misto. Yes, yes. Of course, bolito misto. And the things that I love the most in bolito misto is a veal tongue. And these are things that Americans do not grow up with, ever. No, no. And Mr. Gilmore, no, never, never. You know, so my sister's wedding, I cook for my sister's wedding.

25:05The only wedding I cooked for. At the end of the meal, I was serving like everything, like tortellini, lasagna, crunchy part or whatever. A little bit avant-garde, a little bit classic. But bolito misto, I pick the tongue and testina and I was served with all these different sauces. And at the end of the meal, I went to the table of Mr. and Mrs. Gilmore. and I was asking, so, Mr. Gilmore, did you like the, you know, the bolito misto? Massimo, I loved it. I loved it. And I said, wow, I'm very happy, you know. What meat was that? I said, Viltong. He looked at me. He looked at me with the face. What did he answer?

25:50You know, make sure you don't invite me anymore when you cook that kind of stuff. You know, I was like. Never invite me again. That's why I keep saying to everyone, listen to your palate, because your palate is telling you the things and give a chance. It's very important. To try. To try and understand. How do you feel when you go to other regions of Italy? If you go to Puglia, if you go to Tuscany, if you go to Naples, how do you feel about the other regional food of your country? For me, it's an amazing discovery. and I love to, I get really curious how they treat the same vegetable, do their peppers completely differently, their potatoes completely differently.

26:32They use different herbs and spices. And we love to bring a lot of that also into the kitchen of Cazor Luigi. We make a traponese, which is a Sicilian kind of pesto, and completely different from the Genova pesto. And that makes you understand also that a pesto is an idea. It's not a recipe. It's a way of putting together whatever you have that could be your mint and your almonds, or, you know, your basil. So I learned so much by going to other regions. And I've been in Italy for 30 years and I still feel like if I get in my car and drive, I have so much to discover. Did you travel when you were a child?

27:07Did your parents take you to all over Italy? All over, all over. From my point of view, like look at Italy and the regions. I got three regions that are extremely important for me. Sicily, it's very, very south, almost Africa. You know, like in the middle of Mediterraneo with incredible, incredible tasty things like the capers from Pantelleria. They're lightly sold by the wind. Costiera Marfitana, sun and wind with, you know, these lemons, all these flavors from Costiera and Piemonte. Completely different one from the other. and I got so many inspirations, so many ingredients that I use in Emilia Cuisine and introduce in Emilia Cuisine because they are so tasty and important.

27:59Like what? Like earthiness, like nuts. The hazelnuts. Hazelnuts or like the almond from Noto. They are both incredible. Like imagine, oops, I dropped the lemon tart. It's all about those ingredients. Do you know about oops, I dropped the lemon tart? We do a really bourgeois version of this, which is that we make a lemon custard and then we put it in the pastry and then we put it in the wood oven. And then we read about, no, no, no, this is really bourgeois. And so what we want to know is, oops, I dropped a lemon tart. Oops, I dropped a lemon tart. There is a line of flavors that you can pick and mix with the smashed lemon tart.

28:40They're like the range of flavors of south of Italy. You have the oregano from Puglia, The spicy pepper from Basilicata, the almond from Noto, capers from Pantelleria, sweet and salty, the bergamots from Calabria, the lemon from Sorrento. All these flavors are the range of flavors south of Italy. So to me, when it was so natural, when I saw Takah smashing the lemon tart in the plate. Can you tell the story? What happened? Just very quickly. It's such a good story. It's a good story. Tell us. All right. So it was a lunch, last service, two seats. You know, we were like ready to serve these two guests.