Ralph Fiennes

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.

0:19I'm Ray Fiennes and I'm having an affair with the River Cafe

0:30I can honestly not remember where or when I met Ralph Fiennes. It is often said that the test of a true friendship is that after being apart for a long time, you're able to pick up just where you left off. Ralph and I recorded this podcast a while ago, and since then, we've been apart too much for my liking. He and Rome, filming Conclave in New York, in David Hare's Straight Line Crazy, in Greece, The Return, and his beloved Suffolk creating a new home with a beautiful kitchen. Is that okay to say that? It's a beautiful kitchen? Yeah, it's a good kitchen. Okay. The beautiful kitchen. But right now we are on Ruthie's Table 4 to talk about the work he's doing, what he's been cooking, and then we will have dinner at the River Cafe.

1:14And like the loving, close friends we are, pick up just where we left off. Chocolate Nemesis. Ten eggs. 575 grams of caster sugar 675 grams of best quality dark chocolate 450 grams of unsalted butter Softened Preheat the oven to 130 degrees centigrade Whisk the eggs with a third of the sugar with an electric mixer until the volume quadruples This will take at least 10 minutes. Meanwhile, melt the chocolate and butter together in a heat-proof bowl set over a pan of barely simmering water. Remove from the heat. Heat the remaining sugar with 250 milliliters of water in a small saucepan until the sugar has dissolved to a syrup, stirring occasionally.

2:19gently pour into the melted chocolate. Stirring. Slowly add the warm chocolate and syrup mixture to the eggs. Increase the speed and continue beating until completely combined. The mixture will lose volume. Pour into the prepared cake tin and put into a deep baking tray on top of a tea towel to prevent the cake tin from moving. Fill the baking tray with hot water so that it comes at least two-thirds up the sides of the cake tin. Bake for one and a half to two hours or until set. Test by placing the flat of your hand gently on the surface of the cake. Well, I was going to ask you why you chose Nemesis, but when you said that you were having an affair with a restaurant, it all made sense because I was thinking if you see food as a seduction, you know, and whether we think that if you were having an affair with a restaurant, if you were having an affair with a woman, would that be part of the seduction?

3:34Well, there's always a sensual connection with food. Food is sensuality. And as I've grown older, or the last few years especially, I have found myself cooking more and more and loving cooking and loving the preparation. That connection to food and cooking has grown.

4:08Oh, hi, this is Sean. Hi, Sean. Hi, Sean. Hello. Hi, I'm the executive, highest possible chair to go. We're getting Sean to come and just talk about the Nemesis. Oh, yeah. Okay. Just for a minute. Will you talk about the Nemesis? Of course. Because you have made it for how many years, Pierre? 25. 25 years, maybe, yeah. I was trying to work out while you were reading the recipe how many Nemesis we might have sold. well how many are we selling i think we do 10 000 a year so times 30 would be uh is that 300 000 or is it yeah let's say half a million yeah maybe but you do make it sound quite relaxing when you're reading it but when you're making yeah it's also the chocolate cake that eludes most people it's probably one of the most difficult chocolate cakes to get perfect and Why is that, do you think?

5:01What's the secret? It used to be a real secret, didn't it, Ruthie, that no one could ever make it. And then when we did the River Cafe 30 book, we gave a more real recipe of how to do it. Was it deliberate withholding of information? I say people say, there are quite a few recipes in the blue book that people say it just doesn't work. And I say, give me a break. It was our first cookbook. But it is a hard one to make. and I think the tin was very big. And Julian Barnes famously wrote a piece about the fact that there was a time in the 90s when you went to anybody's home for dinner and you'd see this kind of splodge of chocolate.

5:45It was just this splodge of chocolate. And that was the attempt to make the nemesis. But then when we... Actually, I think Easy has an Easy Nemesis, doesn't it, too? There's one tried and tested technique to reduce a percentage of failure, I'd say, which is to make sure that you never take it out of the tin until it's totally cold. And if it's a little tiny bit warm, like lukewarm... It'll just splodge. Splodge, yeah. You'd have to pipe it into a bowl. Chocolate splodge. That's a very good hit, isn't it? That's a good tip. Yeah, that's our probably top tip. Is that because the chocolate itself has to cool?

6:23and is it the chocolate and the butter? It's just cooling and hardening. Yeah, and if you really have made a mistake, you probably could just put it in the fridge and it would set. But that's a sort of off-the-record difference. Yeah, that is very nice. Don't try that out. You looked a bit tired because you gave that away. But the other thing about the Nemesis is that it has no flowers, you know, and really it is like making a souffle because you beat the eggs so much, don't you? It's a workout. It's a workout. Because it has no flour, it appeals to the gluten-free, and so therefore it's almost a health food in itself, a healthy cake.

7:00Except for the sugar and the eggs and the butter. Don't ask. We have worked out the calorific value of one slice, but we can't divulge that because we'll never sell another slice. Was it 1 ,000 calories? It was quite a lot. It was like a daily, half a day's food. Just have a slither. It is so good. and then obviously the quality of the chocolate that you put in. So what chocolate? Can you reveal the brand or the brand of the chocolate? We shop around for chocolate. We would probably buy chocolate that's seasonal and going around the world with the season of chocolate making. We've tried different chocolates and different...

7:37Do you remember we had that Nemesis tasting, do you remember? That was hardcore. It was really hardcore. There were six Nemesis cakes made with six different types of chocolate and we were supposed to sort of taste each one. And it wasn't even that radical. Was there a difference? You had to pretend you were a really, really, really good chef and say, oh, I can really tell the difference between this chocolate and that, which we all were, but we could tell some differences. You could taste it was a bit chalky or it was a bit, well, some of them were too perfumed. Yeah, we used to use a chocolate that we've changed.

8:15Yeah, I'm a day. People's tastes change, I think. And people like maybe, as people know more about chocolate, I think they might not like such sweet chocolate as maybe 20 years ago. I think that's what's happening. I think I sense that just because what's on offer on the chocolate shelves and the shops is a lot of higher percentage chocolate bars. 75, 80, 85, 99. Do you think that we've had chefs that we just couldn't teach to make a nemesis? Have you? Do you think everybody can make one? I think it's part of your sort of badges of honour that you need to be able to make a nemesis. It's one of those things that I genuinely think eludes the average person.

8:55Like, have you ever made one? No, I've made the chocolate hazelnut cake, which is in the easy too, I think. Yeah, and also, because it has only got four ingredients, you really need to make sure that those ingredients are the best quality. Chocolate butter, sugar, eggs. Yeah, but I mean, we use buffalo milk butter, which is also like high fat yeah and it's white butter and really neutral and clean we use fine chocolate sugar and then really beautiful eggs as well that's it yeah great people listening to you they're going to rush off and do it yeah make it the challenge the challenge yeah Shana made one on YouTube didn't you did you make it yeah I did yeah there we go the incentive is the challenge yeah But people do phone the restaurant if they're having trouble with it.

9:44I'm not encouraging people to do so, but it would be like... We'll give them your mobile number. My email. 800 ,000 listeners listening to this now. People are phoning up. Yeah. I remember people calling up and saying, we ruined their dinner party. I had a few of those. But not even, actually not with Nemesis. It was a woman called me up and she made this lemon sorbet. The lemon ice cream. And she said, you know, it didn't work and you ruined my dinner party. and I said well I just gave the chef the recipe and he just made one and it's perfectly fine so take that the other thing is you've got to make sure you volumize the egg yeah that's really like probably at five times the volume and then once you've mixed the chocolate into the egg mixture but the other thing we do is we hit the tin really hard is a good way to bash out the air otherwise when you pour the mixture into the tin bash it then you just drop it or hit it really hard on the work surface and then all those air bubbles that you've got in there from just whipping it kind of drop out and it gives it that intense that um texture that's quite unique and that's maybe why people can't make it and if it when you cook it if it gets a crunchy topping wrong yeah you don't want that crispy top it has to have like a just set top I mean the finer details we could have put this in the book but of course it never occurred to us but also I think the cloth in the tin is a big difference I don't think we had that in the first book is putting the cloth in the when you put the van marie the water in the big tin and then you put that cloth down I think that's a good thing to do alright we'll come back we're going to have dinner tonight so we'll come back and have a piece of nemesis for dessert catch you later bye Jo It was good, it was really good.

11:32And then it was a workshop, we could do a phone-in. Yeah. Call us with your problems. Okay.

11:54When you were growing up, what was it like cooking and eating in the Fiennes family? What was that like? Sometimes quite stressful because there was eight of us, six children and two parents, and then we had, for many years, we also had a foster brother, Mick, so it would have been nine people. But generally it was eight of us. But I have a very, as you asked me that, Ruthie, I have a very strong memory of family meals, especially Sunday or Saturday. And I have memories too of my parents sometimes giving a small dinner party, very simple often something like spaghetti bolognese um and then i remember we all were tantalized when these grown-ups came so this one i'd be about eight or nine and these friends came and you get the whole sense of this adult world where people have come and they're we might have put on some earring or lipstick and the men have brushed their hair and thrown a tie on or something or not or you know and i remember being tantalized by the adult world and we had this game the the the eldest four of us, called Spy on the Grown Ups, which we actually technically had gone to bed.

13:00But we used to love tiptoeing down the stairs, opening the door and sort of listening and we'd hear a snippet of conversation which we'd probably misheard. We'd run up the stairs and report the bit of conversation that we had heard. I think I did the same. I remember sitting on the stairs and, you know, we all, sometimes we now sort of complain about but dinner parties are going to those kind of dinner parties or going to a dinner party. But for a child, it is so intriguing, isn't it? As you say, the adult world of manners and food and a different kind. But would your mother cook very differently, do you think, for the dinner parties?

13:38She would cook for nine, eight children. Well, there was a time when we were finding that, yes, she would. But there was a time when I think she developed a reluctance just because I think she felt pressure to be a good cook and she thought that thing about, you know, I'm going to disappoint. So I think it was... And for a time, we had... My parents were very pushed financially. We were in Ireland in the early 1970s, and there was a great... There was a whole summer where the lunch was only ever mashed potatoes and no packet soup. Oh, no packet soup. Yeah, and we all got very good at making no packet soup and mashed potatoes.

14:16And in the evening, maybe it would be a macaroni cheese or shepherd's pie or something. But you felt satisfied by that? Yeah, never felt hungry, no. But my parents loved food. When you talk about loving food, people often think you're an indulgee, but I think it needn't be the case. It just can be a really good piece of cheese and a cracker and fresh tomato, and that can be pleasurable. People ask me why did I learn to cook or why did I become so interested in cooking? And I think that at a certain point in your life, if you like to eat, And you can't really afford to go out. It's connected to eating.

14:53You want to eat well, so you have to kind of cook well. And I think that is something that... I think that's key. If you love eating, if you love eating, you really want to cook well. But again, going from the nemesis, that you chose the nemesis, because you and I have such a close relationship and connection to Italy. I've had phone calls from you from the market saying, Ruthie, I've just seen the most incredible leaves of Cecoria, or I've seen mushrooms, you roll, how am I going to cook this fungi or whatever it was that you saw because you do go to, you have this house in Umbria not far from mine, and I've had calls from you from the market.

15:32I've had calls from you while you're cooking, and I've had calls from you after you've cooked something and said, let me tell you about what I just cooked last night with you because it was really good, and you might learn something if I tell you this. What was it like in Umbria? Because you've been to me in Tuscany, but I haven't been to your house, so just what's it like food wise is it do you have a big kitchen I have a simple simple kitchen simple stove but fine you know four four hobs in an oven um but the big table and um actually I have a memory of going to when you've gone to the house that you take in Italy you have lots of veg and fruit and stuff ripening already waiting to be consumed and i definitely yeah i i definitely echo that with a table with bowls full of fruit and um if it's not if it's very hot i can't keep veg out because it but tomatoes i will keep out um but if when it gets very hot um the fridge is a resource because but no i mean there's a market in the local town and i go to the market there is the italian co-op i have to say is great Not bad.

16:42Not bad. You will hear it for the time to go up. You will, no. I agree. And there were others. There was a small butcher's, which I would go to, so I love. Is there a restaurant there that you go to? There is, yes. But it's just outside. Nonna Gelsa. It's a trattoria. Yeah. Which is great, simple, really good Umbrian cooking. Yeah. I think Umbrian cooking, it's so interesting about Italy. I would say that food varies from region to region, but also from city to city and also from town to town. So I think that even though you're quite close to me, they're probably more... Do you have a lot of lentils there and beans?

17:23Yeah. Lentil soup and chickpea soup. Yeah. And what about when you're alone? Are you alone there? Do you cook in a different way when you're solitary? Well, I'm usually when I'm there, mostly there on my own. And I have friends who come visit and I cook. But I'm more engaged with shopping and cooking when I'm in Italy than I am. I think so, yeah. Because? Because I got the time to go out and properly select food and think about what I'm going to eat. I love going to the market. It's great for people watching. And it tells you a lot about the culture, doesn't it? It tells you about the people who are selling the food there, what they're eating, the way they shop, the market is a kind of and the enthusiasm of the people selling the food and the lady saying the cheese will cut you a piece of cheese and also you feel their delight with their food you feel their kind of excitement about what they're selling it is very very regional and I think also when you come when we're in Tuscany together we just sit there don't we for hours talking and eating and eating some more and it's all kind of one big table in one conversation.

18:39The River Cafe is excited to announce the return of our Italian Christmas gift boxes. Our alternative to the traditional hamper, they bring you all of our favorites from the River Cafe kitchen, the vineyards, and the designers from all over Italy. They're available to pre-order now on shoptherivercafe.co.uk.

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19:44Parked cars get hot fast and can be deadly. So get in the habit of checking the back seat when you leave. A message from NHTSA and the Ad Council. Tell me about eating and acting. What's the deal there? Do you eat? That's a good question. I think you need a bit of food for energy. So to have starved yourself or not have eaten within three hours before a performance, I think your sugar level would drop. But I know I can't eat a big meal. What do you eat? Not big. What about on a film set? Breakfast, breakfast, breakfast, breakfast. Oh, really? They have now found ways to shorten the day. They have what they call a running lunch.

20:25A lot of films won't. You can maybe grab 20 minutes to have a sandwich and they'll have a running lunch from 12 to 2. Maybe if they do stop, it's half an hour only. And so, as I said, you were in Rome. I was filming in Rome twice this year. I was filming this film, Conclave, which you mentioned, about a film recreating the conclave when the cardinals, when the pope has died and all the cardinals get into the Sistine Chapel and they are sequestered away from the world. they have no contact with the outside world at all while they vote for the new Pope and they have to keep voting until the required majority is achieved Can one of them say, I want to be Pope and campaign to be Pope?

21:08There's a bit of that in it It's based on a great book by Robert Harris and it was written maybe nine years ago and it's been directed by Edward Berger who directed All Quiet on the Western Front, which got a lot of acclaim the last season. He was a wonderful director. Very, very, very good. Very lovely man. Very detailed and very... And the best sense, attentive to the actors and the nuances that he wants them to bring out. I love working with him and the wonderful Stanley Tucci. Yeah, he loves you. Playing my... We're two cardinals who are friends. We hit a few bumpy patches in our friendship in the film.

21:49Do you both want to put yourselves up for being Pope? In different ways. He's a bit more, we're both reluctant to admit it, that we do. And he's brilliant in the film, I have to say. Did the Vatican, were they involved? I think they just rise above it. They just, no, they're not really involved, but nor are they just... And they let you film in the Vatican? No, no, no. No, no, no. There is a whole, the key voting scenes are in the Sistine Chapel in real life. And there exists a Sistine Chapel set made, I believe, for the miniseries The Young Pope, which I think stood Jude Law. Yeah, that was Jude Law.

22:25Yeah, Jude. So that set of the Sistine Chapel was mothballed, and then our production brought it out, cleaned it up, repainted it. And it's the whole of the first 20 feet of the Sistine Chapel with the Day of Judgment at one end as a copy. And they add the rest with CGI. but I've seen bits of the footage with the added sea jar and it looks like we're in the real place and then for me what I'd last like to know is where did you eat in Rome don't ask me the names I've gone just tell me about the food how did it feel to be eating the food of Rome for as long as you were there Stanley, I hope you don't mind me bringing you up again in this podcast Stanley Tucci brought a chunk of us towards the end, a group of us who were filming including Edward to this wonderful restaurant called, not Pomodori, but Pomidori, I believe.

23:17And it's an old family restaurant that was beloved of Pasolini, the director. And he organized this wonderful meal there, late, very late after a day's filming. And that, I think, was the best meal I had. They had put on the special meal because it was Stanley. And they were charming. and I went back there to that restaurant again and I returned to Rome later this year in the summer to make the return. And it's just very, and you don't really, they kind of give you food you don't really order. I mean, you can order, but they just sort of present you with what they feel is the best pasta of the evening.

23:53And it was very easy and I definitely preferred the more trattoria style than the restaurants, the high-flying restaurants I'm not drawn to so much. Did you eat out a lot? No. filming? On Conclave I ate out quite a bit, but filming day, the filming hours are so long, in the end I would go back to my flat and I'd cook something. But in the weekends we'd eat out. And what about in Greece? I love, oh, in Greece, we were in Corfu for most of it and we came across a wonderful restaurant which served the most exquisite lamb that was on a spit. Oh, God, the lamb was just extraordinary, just so succulent and tasty.

24:39And Spiros is a restaurant it was. It was quite a simple restaurant catering for mostly tourists, but God, the lamb was. What month was that? Was that have been spring lamb? May. Yeah. May in Cofu. Yeah. Oh, you were just in Morocco. Was that also? Love. Tagine. Don't you think? Tagine, baby. Yeah. I agree. I think Moroccan food is... Oh, no, it's Moroccan. No, that was... Oh, heaven. Heaven. The tagine cooking is one of the best ways of cooking I think I've come across. Yeah, when the lamb comes so soft. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was... I was going to ask you about the menu. Yeah. Because, you know, here we are, chef, I'm a chef, Sean's a chef, we're going into a restaurant, and I remember you calling me up from there and saying that you were, you know, learning the skills.

25:27a woman from San Francisco came, didn't she? Dominique Crenn, who I think has a restaurant in San Francisco called Atelier Crenn, and there's a wonderful chef's table on her. She's from Brittany originally. She's fantastic. And she came, and she designed all the food for the film. And then she oversaw the initial first few days of shooting, and then she left a couple of her chefs with us who oversaw not just the food and the preparation of the food, but they were looking at the kitchen staff in our film to make sure that they behaved in their demeanour and just their rhythm of movement, just so anyone looking at it would believe it was a working kitchen.

26:11What was it like playing a chef? Did you believe it was a working kitchen? I thought I believed it was a working kitchen. No, I did. I definitely did. I mean, you were just such a fantastic character. And that type of food and the hidden humour. I was saying to Willem that Richard and I went to El Bully in the early days, you know, that restaurant in Spain. And it was very much one little tiny piece of food after another, one olive that exploded in your mouth, and one piece of crab that you had to pick, and then that was it. And they said to us, after 12 courses, he said, now we're going to finish with ravioli with parmesan and butter and sage.

26:50And I thought, at last, we're getting something to eat. and a plate came and it was just a plate and so we just waited and waited and waited and we said, where is the ravioli? And they said that basically it was a spray. It was a spray that they'd sprayed on the plate and it had the essence of ravioli with butter and parmesan and we had to take our finger and kind of wipe the plate and that was a dish, you know, and I thought, that's okay. That's exactly, the menu is inspired by exactly that sort of thing. Yeah, that kind. So what was it like being a chef in that situation? Well, as you saw from the film, I mean, I run the restaurant, so he doesn't do much cooking at all.

27:27He's overseeing it until the very end when he's challenged to make a good old-fashioned cheeseburger, which he does make. Yeah. And I had to cook that. Did you learn skills? Just the cheeseburger. Just the cheeseburger. Yeah, yeah. Did you make a good cheeseburger? It was good. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there something that you love about a restaurant? I would say that people do very private things in a public space. Have you used restaurants as a sort of safety net, do you think, to do something that's difficult or not? If you meet someone, I mean, I usually eat either with one other or on my own or maybe after a show with whoever might have been coming.

28:06I love going on my own to restaurants with a book, and it's a privilege, but to have a glass of wine and simple food, I love that. But going with, I have been in situations where this is the meal where you tell so-and-so that you're not going to do the film or you tell them that you can't see them anymore. Or, you know, and that's heavy. I mean, in that sense, when it's a tricky thing, then the restaurant is a sort of padding, as you say, a safety net. But it means you don't enjoy. yeah it's all then then the food and the service then that's all a kind of pathway to get through the difficult thing you've told yourself you've got to do yeah so i i like i like to be in a relaxed context where it's just the enjoyment of sharing food with people and and of course drink a good you know i mean let's talk about alcohol i love a drink let's have a drink i'm not you know I love a martini, I love a Negroni, and not in excess, but I just love that little drop in the kind of anxiety.

29:18And I hate getting really off my face. I hate the after effects, but I just love that little... Do you have a cocktail? Martini, gin martini. I love a cocktail. We're saying how cocktails... We had lunch, dinner once with some American friends. We say how their parents, you know, some Americans have like bars in their house. You know, that was that very American thing, a bar, and having a cocktail. But how delicious a cocktail is, you know, and how nice. And so, I was interested because the last thing I saw of yours was Beat the Devil. Yeah. Beat the Devil was a monologue written by David Hare, who suffered from contracting COVID very badly, so he wrote about it.