Q&A special - Ruthie answers your questions with executive chefs, Sian Wyn Owen and Joseph Trivelli

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1:00at washablesofas.com. Authors are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. You are listening to Ruthie's Table 4, in partnership with Montclair. So in the River Cafe, we love a question. We're always saying to the young chefs who come to work for us, ask questions, ask questions. And we tell the people who've been working for us for quite a while, answer a question, always answer a question. And I think one of the reasons we love having an open kitchen is it nothing's behind closed doors and customers guests come up to us and ask a question where did you get this ingredient if i don't eat meat can i still make risotto with a stock that's vegetables if um you know i'm a vegetarian can i take the anchovies out of salsa verde what can i do and so it's how we learn it's how we communicate and so we thought it'd be really nice on the podcast for all of you who listen, to ask us some questions.

1:58And so Sean Owen and Joseph Travelli, the executive chefs who know the answers to every question, and if they don't we can ask them of each other, are here. And we just thought it would be a nice way to listen to our listeners and to respond with questions because we love a question. People call the restaurant, you know. Not so much anymore. to in the old days in the olden days phone the river cafe kitchen so you could get through to the kitchen and someone would be on the phone and say uh i'm having a dinner party in an hour and my chocolate nemesis hasn't set maybe like okay um yeah you know and then and people would be questioning recipes and and it's i think now with this sort of how receptions changed hasn't it you can't get directly straight through to a kitchen a professional i used to love those calls I'd always run for the phone.

2:54I remember where the phone was. It was on the wall. I remember somebody once saying about a lemon sorbet. I had to give the whole direction because her lemon sorbet hadn't worked. Yeah. And also you feel vaguely responsible for the fact that they're having a big stress out at home, even though you don't know the size of even the pan that they've put a nemesis in often and things like that or how hot the oven has actually been and things like that. I remember someone saying they were roasting some pork and they asked me if it was ready. so I don't know I've been Hammersmith I don't know if your pork's ready so what is the first question hello Ruthie and team my name is Penny I'm here in Bristol I love listening to Ruthie's Table and end up being hungry by the end of it my question for you and your team of chefs is what's your favorite season for the menu summer salads with obviously lots of olive oil and fresh ingredients or do you really enjoy cooking over the colder months stews and maybe more pastas and warming dishes anyway I'd love to hear thanks again for such a great podcast.

4:11Penny from Bristol what do you think? I think I would say my favorite season is generally the season I'm in because every season is exciting and so in the contrary to what you might think about winter food it doesn't have to be stews and slow cook things it can be amazing winter citrus and amazing bitter salad leaves and summer food you can have a wet summer and decide to do a vil shin and so I love that all the seasons and as the seasons transfer from one to the next day to day you follow the seasons with excitement because because we write the menu twice a day you know every day is a is another day along in the season but then as as chefs often I think autumn is one of the favorite seasons as a chef because of it has some super tasty ingredients that's a fact is it what do you think um I yeah I agree the the best place is where you are I get I most excited I suppose at the start of things like I am you know always longing for basil you know all winter and then when it comes because it's not even just the flavor but it's the fact that this is spring all of a sudden you know so I love I love the start of the seasons or that bit where the seasons maybe one's finishing and one's starting so maybe now once we're through you know this hungry gap or the start of autumn when you've still got the tomatoes are incredibly ripe and the portugherty mushrooms are ready you know that's my probably my favorite but everything has its own place and if you don't have the things all year you know the obvious ones I think in in England that I grew up with were strawberries and asparagus you know the benefit of not having had them all year just makes them so much nicer and that goes for everything like another thing we have all year we rely on having is parsley but all of a sudden in the middle of the summer, suddenly the parsley gets delicious, you realise that actually everything's got its season.

6:11And then you get the exciting season crossover, like Joseph said, at the end of the summer and the beginning of the autumn, for one brief month, I guess, you have mushrooms and tomatoes. But when tomatoes begin, like in July, you don't have mushrooms. It's like doing one of those colour charts where you lap over colours. Those crossovers, Sometimes if I go to a restaurant, I probably shouldn't say this, I tick off things on the menu. If I was going to a restaurant today and it had, like, gerolls on it, I'd be like, where are they from? And also you sometimes see combinations that could never work, like asparagus and porcini or something.

6:50You're like, well, they're not ready at the same time. How do you have them? In my head, if I go to a restaurant, it's like that. I'm just screaming, no. But this is just because we've worked here for so long that that's just how we see it, isn't it? I remember somebody coming in and wanting a tomato salad in January or February, and we didn't have winter tomatoes then, and they were absolutely incredulous. I think Adrian Gill used to be furious about seasonality, a restaurant critic. I get where Adrian Gill, or if this, I mean, I'm just going to guess, this is what he meant when he doesn't like seasonality, the idea of this kind of snobbish, like, I'm not going to have this now.

7:27Don't you know you can't have, denial, you know. But it's the other way, isn't it? It's like, actually, I'm a greedy glutton, so I want everything when it's at its best. You know, it's not because I'm, you know, high-minded about it. I just want to have... You're a bit high-minded, though. Yeah, embarrassing. My daughter, she was desperately wanting pesto, and I was like, Allegra, it's only May. We're not having pesto yet. And they're like, why not? Everyone eats pesto. Like, please. Yeah, I probably would respond more openly to say that I love the autumn. For me, it's when game and porcini and pumpkins and the kind of darker food that cooks longer.

8:05And also probably, as you say, relief from the summer when you have a lot more green and fresh and somehow the darkness of autumn and the colors of the food, something I love. Thank you, Penny from Bristol. And let's hear our next question. Hello, Ruthie. This is Troy from New York City. My question for the chefs and for you is a very simple question, and it's about asparagus. I don't think that there's a vegetable or a fruit that we get more excited about in our home. We make risotto. We steam it. We roast it. I just made Alice Waters soup from Chez Panisse vegetables, and there's a place we love to go to in the Pioneer Valley in Massachusetts where they make asparagus ice cream.

8:54with almonds. But this is my question. I don't want to waste the asparagus, and I'm never quite confident in how much to cut off each spear. I'd love to know how you deal with it, what you advise, and then what your chefs also love most about making with asparagus. And you too, Ruthie, I'd love to hear what it is that you love to make with asparagus. Well, thank you. I love your show. I don't think I've missed an episode. I'm eager to hear more. Thank you. Thank you, Troy. Okay, asparagus. Well, I think that, and I often tell them, you know, like everyone gets an asparagus and they just snap it where it naturally snaps and they throw this bit away.

9:41Worst, best they put it in a stock. And I think you can actually, I think he's right, because I'm a miser. You waste a bit of asparagus if you do that. I think if you could just cut it with a knife, probably a centimeter, but you just cut the first one and you see where it's hard. and depending on how fresh it is you can go further down the spear so just cut the first one maybe eat a little bit raw and see if it's still nice or not and then you're away you waste as little as possible interesting because in the river cafe kitchen we we snap the asparagus at the natural snapping point don't we and that's what everyone's taught to do that's just the kind of house style so sometimes i when i see that happening these days i tell them not to because i think that you you do just, you lose more.

10:21When they're in their peak, you can eat the whole of the asparagus. Yeah, then you can see the whole thing. Have you ever been in a situation where you're talking and you're whatever, and certainly I have, and then I eat the whole asparagus and then I look at everybody else's plate and I've always left the bottom of the asparagus. Oh, yes. The plate is full of asparagus. And I've eaten all of mine. It's embarrassing. You're embarrassed, but actually it's the other way around. They're embarrassed. They're thinking, oh, I could have had more asparagus. Ruthie Rogers. Ruthie Rogers. He's eating all of his asparagus.

10:55So what else do you feel? What else did he ask? Oh, asparagus ice cream. Maybe we better go to that valley in Massachusetts and see what that tastes like. You don't like asparagus served with a main course? Never. That's one of our kind of house no-dos. I never use asparagus as a vegetable, as it were, with something. I love asparagus in risotto or in pasta, but you're quite right. I would never have it as a company by asparagus. When you sometimes get the call on the red phone and say, who put asparagus on Dover Soul? And you're like, that definitely wasn't me. Definitely not me. Who was that?

11:38And, you know, because there's some things that are just house rules that we all abide by. Not that you couldn't have asparagus as a vegetable, but we don't serve it as a vegetable as a side dish, do we? We serve it as its own thing. I'm really loving the asparagus. We've done a lot this year with either anchovy butter or Bittarga butter because I love butter. Also, I like butter when it isn't melted, but it just melts from the heat, especially on the white asparagus. I like it. I like the fondue. I like the fondue, which is rich. dish where you have, we make a sauce from creme fraiche and egg yolks and parmesan and cook it over a bain marie, it goes thick and it just tastes like a cheesy creme sauce and it is quite decadent, you could have that as a meal it's really nice I was having that every day for the week before and this time of year, when it's a bit sunny I actually quite like eating the asparagus you know, it's lovely hot fresh when it's just come out the oven or just come out the off the grill or whatever or um but i also like it when it's cooled down you know when it's cold particularly the white asparagus i think the flavor comes out more as it gets as it cools down a lot yeah i was gonna go on to white versus green asparagus what what are your feelings about that i reckon white asparagus is an acquired taste i've just come back from switzerland actually and they had massive bundles of it in the in the market like for nine euros for huge buns of white asparagus.

13:12And I cooked a load of it the other night, actually. And my daughter just couldn't eat it because it was so bitter. And I was like, that thing about... You have to peel it. Yeah, I cooked it in salted water and it was so delicious. But I thought for a younger palate, maybe it's a harder flavor. Because I really discovered it when we were living in Paris. And once we discovered white asparagus, it's all we wanted to eat. and we would bring it back to London to bring to friends or to the kids and they didn't like it at all. Is white asparagus the burgundy of asparagus? Because it seems like it's quite a bit more highbrow than green.

13:49It's like a completely different thing, isn't it? We quite often have green asparagus and white asparagus after each other on the menu and really they are just completely different. Actually, I've done it this evening. They're completely different. I don't like to mix them on the same plate. No, I don't like to mix them. Okay, thank you, Troy. That was a great question, and come and see us soon. Hi, Ruthie. This is Jen from New York City. I'm actually a personal chef myself, so I really, really love the recipes and the guests, and I love the whole conversation. Is there a guest that you've always wanted to have on the show that you just can't get because of timing, scheduling?

14:28I'd love to know who your white whale is. Thanks so much. Well, I'm going to say something, because I have been asked this question before. And I suppose if there was one guest that I could have, it would be my husband, Richard Rogers, because I'll start to cry. But he died before we came up with the podcast. So he never was. And I think he'd been amazing, don't you, to have Richard on? Because he would have talked about, he had a great childhood. He grew up in Florence, and then he came to London. And, you know, the podcast is really about stories. And so I think we'd have had a lot of stories about living in Paris and having an Italian mother who was a great cook.

15:09And he never cooked himself, but he was a great eater. And he loved eating in the River Cafe. Kind of we made the River Cafe for him because he couldn't work without having lunch. And so we brought lunch to the office in the sense that we put a restaurant right near the office. So I think it would have been great. I would have also loved to have had Rose as a guest, and she would have been frightfully honest and would have been very direct and, again, stories to tell. But whenever I hear about somebody coming, I would think, oh, that's a good idea. They would be great. Let's have that person. So a lot of my guests are slightly older.

15:48I realize that, too, that there is something about life and stories that come through age. But, you know, I've also had very young people who are funny. And, yeah, I'm just always waiting for the next person.

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17:43Malcolm Gladwell here. I recently recorded the first episode of Smart Talks with IBM, where I learned how AI agents are joining AI assistants as a major productivity tool. Let's start with AI agents. AI agents can reason, plan, and collaborate with other AI tools to autonomously perform tasks for a user. Brian Bissell, an expert from IBM, gave me an example of how a college freshman might use an AI agent. As a new student, you may not know, how do I do with my health and wellness issue? How many credits am I going to get for this given class? You could talk to someone and find out some of that, but maybe it's a little bit sensitive and you don't want to do that.

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19:10Hello Ruthie, I'm a massive fan down in Sydney, Australia. In the past few years I've become a massive fan of bouillabaisse and any bisque-based dishes. I've tried a few times to make a really good stock to use in my recipes but have always failed. I suspect I'm cooking my prawn heads, as we call them here, not shrimp, a little bit too long. Do you have any tips on making a really good shrimp or prawn stock? Thank you. Okay, over to you. We've actually been doing quite a bit of this the last kind of year. One of the other head chefs, Eliza, is a big fan of bisque-type stocks. And, you know, when I make them, I actually, I'll be honest, it's not something I do at home.

20:01But, yeah, roasting the bones of the heads or frying them in the pan. having quite a lot of them to water or wine or whatever you're using instead of putting in cold water maybe put in try putting in some ice cubes so that it's the thing when she mentions cooking it for a long time that's right boiling for a long time doesn't help a bisque but bringing it up over a long time to boiling point or just you know thereabouts definitely helps so yeah cooking it initially quite slowly and then not overdoing it is probably my advice we put quite a lot of vegetables yeah alongside it don't we we don't just do the shells we do like a full base of things like onion garlic celery red chilies tomatoes fennel seeds yeah parsley stalks bay leaves whatever white wine like you name it it's in it probably you know there's a lot of other the aromatics going in that.

21:00Some of our chefs make amazing bisques that you just think this should just be soup because they're so good. Because we don't really use bisque. We use it as a pasta sauce or in a risotto. But not as a lovely fish soup. Well, we do sometimes, but not as often as we might. It's all about the aromatics as well, isn't it? And getting the balance right. Like not too much onion, not too much of anything. It's a really rewarding thing to make. It's a real chef-y kind of balance, you know, to get those things right. You know, it's kind of old school cooking. It also makes such a difference to the risotto.

21:37You can taste, you just taste so much, whether the bisque has been cooked too long and it's too strong. But then also in the fish risotto, I prefer to have whatever fish is put in teeny tiny and maybe not too much of it. and so the bisque really plays a role, I think, in terms of the taste rather than the actual fish that you're eating. But then in the River Cafe we don't boil our stalks for very long, do we? We don't make those kind of long, long cooked stalks that you often see. I remember the first time I went into a restaurant kitchen and they had special pots or stock pots in the equipment and it just was cooking for so long and it was so dark and I think all our stocks are kind of uniquely very light, don't you?

22:26If we make fish stock, we don't always just use fish bones. You know, you can sometimes use fish in it as well, which you... Oh, so you mean you made chicken? Oh, no, sorry, fish stock. Yeah, it's an unusual thing. But if you make a fish stock, you don't have to just use fish bones. It's true, yeah. You can use white fish. And you can change the sweetness or the minerality by, if you put carrot in or onion and things like that because it's sweetness whereas if you have less of that and more other flavors like fennel and things it can get a bit more minerally flavors and i just think you can taste sometimes you can just taste that taste of of a stock that's been cooked too long and it's too intrusive you know intrusive i really agree i think chefs that come to work here they're often surprised that you know you say you know 10 o 'clock, they're like, what would you like me to do?

23:20Make a risotto? First of all, put some stock on. Ordinarily, they'd be made at least the day before and in the fridge, but that's just not how we work. We do sometimes make chicken stock in the wood oven overnight. Oh, that's true. That's really good. If you were going to make a risotto with chicken stock at home and you didn't have chicken stock. Then you would probably use like a quarter of the cube, wouldn't you? Just a tiny bit, wouldn't you? Maybe you wouldn't use anything. Or if you could do nothing. Maybe. Yeah, you don't have to use. Because we'd be lying to say, I'd be lying to say I make chicken stock at home to make risotto.

23:52That would be a lie. I'm just confessing that now. Well, I don't want you to lie on this podcast. I know. What kind of head chef am I? But I would be lying if I didn't say I didn't make chicken stock every week at home. Do you make it every week? Yeah, I always make a batch of chicken stock. This is the working mother versus the working father. Yeah.

24:13Thank you, Julie. and I think our next question is from Glasgow. Hi, Ruthie. My name's Sean. I'm not a bad cook, but I can never get aubergine parmigiana right. Can you maybe run through some tips or help? Thank you. Over to you, Joseph. How about you, the Italian? Straight on this. The Italian in the room. I don't know. This is a classic thing. Do you like it? I do like it a lot and I think it's something that can't be bad. however runny or you know and i've gone through loads of different ways to make it frying the aubergine you know at home probably more often might roast it instead but i just think having all nice ingredients really boring answer but i think the most best way is just to have all the ingredients as nice as you can the best tomatoes tomato sauce really nice mozzarella doesn't have to be buffalo mozzarella or anything, but something really nice, mozzarella, and parmesan.

25:10Maybe he didn't cook the tomato sauce long enough. Do you think he used cheddar? No, of course he didn't. I love it, don't you? Yeah, I love it. I think I came to it rather late in life, but I like it, and I have a friend who makes it really well. I think that, for me, the thing I feel really strongly about aubergines is that there's nothing worse than an undercooked aubergine. You can have an undercooked other vegetable, but I think if it hasn't been fried or cooked long enough so that you have that difference between the aubergine and everything else that's in it, then it loses its definition.

25:49And I definitely agree on the watery bit. Watery tomato sauce isn't good in anything. So when you cook the tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes, before you start cooking you want to try and get as much water out of them if they're either fresh or if they're in a tin or in a jar because it's just water really. And so I think you want to get rid of that and then just cook them slowly until the oil almost comes to the top of the sauce so you really see the oil at the top and then you have a nice thick tomato sauce. Yeah, and the other thing that might make it watery is the mozzarella. It's been sitting in water, so normally I'd take it out.

26:31Either I buy specifically a hard mozzarella, the type that you would make pizza with. I think that's the best for parmigiana. Or else if it's very soft, bring it out of the water, cut it into bits, and let it sit in a colander and drain the water liquid away. And even the aubergines, because not being anti-waterist, whatever you'd call it, is that, you know, very often we put those roasted aubergines in a dish. There's always that liquid at the bottom there. So I think you're right. But also, if you let it sit for a bit at the end, the water will probably absorb in at some point. Yeah, that's true.

27:07Don't you think? Yeah. You can tell if the aubergines cooked. Yeah. By sort of if you push down the sides of the aubergine. Yeah, that's a good hint. They push together, don't they? Yeah, yeah. So if the aubergines are not cooked enough, you can't sort of squash it between your fingers, the side of the aubergines. We do. When we do those slow-roasted aubergines and then you open one and if it looks all white inside and it's hard, you just don't want to go near it. Yeah. That would be something that I would really watch out for. Here at Ruthie's Table 4, we have something exciting to tell you. Our new substack has just launched.

27:42You will find all kinds of extra material from The River Cafe, including recipes, our latest news, and bonus content from the podcast. If you enjoy listening to this series as much as I enjoy talking with our guests, visit therivercafe.substack and subscribe. See you there.

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28:47Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home. Right now, you can shop up to 60 % off store-wide 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.