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Podcast Notes: Ruthie's Table 4 - Stephen Fry Episode
Podcast Overview Title: Ruthie's Table 4 Description: Hosted by Ruthie Rogers, the podcast features conversations with notable guests who reminisce about their food memories, exploring the cultural, political, and personal significance of food in their lives. Each episode includes recipes from the River Cafe cookbooks.
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Episode Details Episode Title: Stephen Fry Episode Description: Stephen Fry, a multifaceted personality known for his acting, writing, and comedy, shares insights into his life and love for food. The episode includes a humorous introduction and a discussion between Fry and Ruthie, along with a recipe reading for a Polenta and Almond Cake.
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Key Themes and Discussions
Stephen Fry's Introduction
- Ruthie reflects on Stephen Fry's numerous talents: actor, comedian, director, and writer.
- Fry's strength as a friend is emphasized—his character and values are celebrated.
Food as Comfort and Memory
- Discussion on how food shapes our memories and identities.
- Fry shares personal anecdotes related to growing up with a cook and a garden full of fresh produce, emphasizing the importance of seasonal eating.
Recipe
Polenta and Almond Cake
- Fry shares the recipe for Torta di Polenta Mandorle e Limone (Polenta, Almond, and Lemon Cake):
- Key Ingredients:
- Unsalted butter
- Castor sugar
- Ground almonds
- Eggs
- Lemon zest and juice
- Polenta flour
- Baking powder
- Method Overview:
- Cream butter and sugar until light and pale.
- Gradually add ground almonds and eggs.
- Fold in lemon zest, juice, polenta, baking powder, and salt.
- Bake at 160°C for 45-50 minutes or until set.
Culinary Influences and Personal Background
- Fry discusses his upbringing, highlighting the influence of his mother and the cook, Mrs. Riseborough.
- He mentions the impact of a household focused on food appreciation and traditions, especially from his Jewish heritage.
- Fry recalls experiences from his childhood, including his first boarding school food shock and how it shaped his relationship with food.
Food Education and Experiences
- Fry speaks about learning cooking techniques at Cambridge and how it influenced his culinary confidence.
- He recounts his adventures in Australia, discovering local seafood, which broadened his food horizons.
Los Angeles Food Culture
- Reflection on the evolving food scene in Los Angeles, highlighting street food and vegan options.
- Fry discusses the cultural significance of food in California and how it reflects broader social changes.
Comfort Foods
- Fry reveals that one of his comfort foods is skippers (small fish in tins), linked to nostalgic memories of his mother.
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Key Takeaways
- Food and Identity: The episode emphasizes how our culinary experiences are tied to personal history and cultural identity.
- Connection through Cooking: Fry's anecdotes reflect the role of food in building relationships and community.
- Joy of Cooking: The discussion underscores the pleasure and creativity involved in cooking and sharing meals.
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Conclusion This episode of Ruthie's Table 4 showcases Stephen Fry's warmth and humor while exploring the deep connections between food, memory, and personal history. It highlights the importance of food as a medium for love, culture, and storytelling. The recipe shared adds a tangible element, inviting listeners to engage with these themes in their own kitchens.
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Additional Resources
- [River Cafe Recipes and Products](https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/)
- [River Cafe Official Website](https://rivercafe.co.uk/)
- [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/)
- [Facebook](https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/)
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.
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1:13There is a well-known cartoon in The New Yorker magazine depicting President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his pajamas, on his knees, next to his bed, saying a prayer for his wife, the most active First Lady in history. Dear Lord, please make Eleanor tired tomorrow. I can imagine the friends and family of Stephen Fry saying the same prayer. For there's very little Stephen doesn't do. Actor, comedian, television host, director, prolific writer, with four novels, three autobiographies, and countless columns in national papers. But should you ask, as I've been doing, the people who know him really well, What Stephen is best at, they will answer, being a friend.
1:59As for me, I love this man, all he stands for, and quite simply, who he is. And I would change FDR's prayer. I would say, dear Lord, we all need Stephen Fry. Please do not make him tired tomorrow. Oh, Ruthie, I don't know what to say. I'm going to have to tiptoe out of the room now. I can't possibly live up to such an introduction. Yes, you can. More than, more than, more than. So we're sitting here in the River Cafe in our new Sylvia's dining room. So shall we read the recipe for the polenta and almond cake? So here is the recipe or receipt, as upper-class people used to say. We have torta di polenta, mandoli e limone.
2:43Mandole, of course. You know those pictures that the Renaissance artist did of a face in a frame that has a point at the top and a point at the bottom, a sort of point. They call that a mandola because it's the shape of an almond. Anyway, torta di polenta mandorle e limone. Polenta, almond and lemon cake. This serves ten. All right, so have you got your pencils out and you're licking them? These first three dry ingredients are great because it's the same quantity. 450 grams of unsalted butter. That's not a dry ingredient, Stephen. Softened. So remember, in the morning, first thing, take the butter out of the fridge.
3:20450 grams of castor sugar, 450 grams of ground almonds, six of your finest eggs, the zest of four lemons and the juice of one lemon. Then 220 grams of polenta flour, one teaspoonful of baking powder. I never really know the difference between baking powder and bicarbonate of soda. There's a huge difference. There is a huge difference, I'm being told in my ear by my expert. so it's baking powder don't substitute with anything else baking soda or anything so one teaspoonful of baking powder quarter a teaspoonful of salt you will have preheated the oven at this point to 160 degrees centigrade i would say 140 or 50 fan then butter and flour a 30 centimeter cake tin which i hope you have lying handily around beat the butter and sugar together until it becomes pale and light and that really does happen.
4:19The butter is good British butter, yellow to start with, but it's amazing how as it beats and beats and the sugar gets released into it, it does become notably lighter and that's your signal to add the ground almonds. Then you stir to combine them and then you add the eggs one at a time and beat the mixture through. Fold in the lemon zest, the lemon juice, the smell will rise up into your nostrils. Then the polenta, which gives the cake, its major name, of course, the baking powder and the salt. You spoon the mixture that then is now nice and smooth into your prepared tin and you bake in the preheated oven for 45 to 50 minutes or until set.
4:58I guess the old toothpick taste test will do. And the cake will be deep brown on top. That's a cue. It's delicious on its own, as I can absolutely testify, with a cappuccino, perhaps, or a glass of Vincenzo. And when in season, here at this place of joy, the River Cafe, it says, we caramelise blood oranges. Can you imagine? What are you doing this morning, darling? I'm caramelising some blood oranges. Or eating some blood oranges. It reminds me of wonderful Les Dawson, the northern comedian. She said, well, I can't stop chapping. I've got a cape on to baste. I've got sausages to prick, and so on.
5:38Anyway, I've got blood oranges to caramelise, and you serve that with the cake. You just couldn't do better. It's one of the great, great recipes. I think that if I, even in the last four minutes, I have now understood that you are a great cook. You're a great eater, but you are, you know, are you a passionate cook? Would you describe yourself? I do love it. Tell me about cooking. I had a strange childhood, which was an... It sounds, if I say it, it sounds like it's, I don't know, Downton Abbey or something, but it really wasn't. But my parents did have a cook, and we had gardeners, and we had an old-fashioned Victorian kitchen garden.
6:18So I was used to the fact that every day the gardeners would come to the back door and Mrs. Riseborough, the cook, would select some of the vegetables or tell them to go off and get something else, depending on what she was cooking. And I would hang around, you know, age five or something, watching her. I'd see her do things like... I mean, she was what used to be called a good English plain cook. So she didn't do anything terribly fancy, but everything she did was just right. Pies and tarts and things like that she was very good at. And she would take her thumb and put little squares of pastry on it and pull them back to make a rose that would go in the centre of pies and things.
6:55So she had little touches, yeah. And she made pork pies. Basically anything that you could make, she made. We had a game larder and things, and so we'd have birds hung and things like that. Sounds good, Mrs. Risborough. She was wonderful. Would they entertain? Oh, yeah, they were always. Dinner parties and they were very social. Yes, my mother would do dinner parties. And when I was young, up until I was about 12, 14 maybe, there would be dinner jackets and, you know, black tie, and the men would be left alone by the women in the dining room. So that's, you know, that tradition that's still going.
7:31The men stayed, yeah. The men stayed and the women withdrew. Withdrew. And I remember my mother saying, my mother read history. She was a history graduate. She taught it occasionally. And I would say to her, why do the men stand behind? And I think someone had said to me, so they can tell dirty jokes that women don't hear. My mother said, no, you know what it is, really? She said, the Victorians, the women did not like drawing attention to the fact that they had to use lavatories. So if they all went in one go, they would go up to the lavatories, use the lavatories together and then get down into the drawing room and they'd be sitting there.
8:08But if everybody went into the drawing room together after the meal and the women said, I'm going to go now, everyone would go, oh, she's off for a piss, is she? And so it was just a discreet way of women having that chance to do that without being noticed, as it were. And so your memories are of home and good food and a care for food. Yeah, because my mother also had food, I won't say issues, but she would drive the gardeners mad because she'd go out when the peas were ready and she would just eat the entire crop of peas out of the pod. I remember sitting on a railway train and we were going from one small town in Italy to another.
8:51And we'd gone to the market and bought some peas and we had children with us and we were all eating the raw peas on the train carriage. Italians went mad. I mean, the idea of eating a raw pea, these people were sitting at it. We could have taken off all our clothes and had more respect than giving our children raw peas out of them. But what's more delicious than raw peas? Oh, sensational. And we make a salad. Do you ever have raw peas? You can make a salad with delicious, very young peas. But the other thing that was natural because of the kitchen garden was everything was in season. So, you know, and there were fruit trees, you know, trained against the outbuildings, plum trees and things like that.
9:33And there were gooseberry bushes and raspberry and black currants. And four fantastic asparagus beds, raised asparagus beds. Belgian asparagus, quite small and delicate asparagus. And my mother had a constant war with the gardeners because, well, she had this theory that you shouldn't eat asparagus after Ascot. Which is what? June, something like that? I don't know. Anyway, she'd heard that somewhere or been told that. And she, of course, was desperate to get hold of, once the asparagus was getting old, the ferns would come up. And she loved it for flower arranging. She sounds amazing, Mother.
10:15She is. I mean, she sounds like that. She's still here. Yeah, she's still with us. And she is phenomenal. How old is she now? She's 92. because that i do think that inner knowledge and passion for the garden for the ferns for the seasonality of saying and there is a very short season for good asparagus i don't know if it's it is there is a you know in paris one minute you'd go down to the market and you know there were white asparagus and green asparagus and thin asparagus and then they were gone i mean just gone and i think it's here as well and they do come from norfolk yes they do but the criminal thing now, I think, in some ways, is people don't understand that you can store fresh fruit and vegetables.
10:55We had outhouses, and there would be newspaper and potatoes. And when you lifted all the potatoes, and there they'd be, and they'd last all the way through. As long as it was dark and cool, which naturally would be being an outhouse, and the same with apples and pears, they'd last forever. Your parents were interested in food? Would this come from their cultural... My mother, yes. My father, less so. My father just ate everything that was put in front of him, and his mind was on his work. He was a scientist. But my mother was from a Jewish family, and Jews always, compared to the British in those days, less so now, were obsessed with food, partly because in some cases they knew poverty between the walls when things were really short in Vienna and in Hungary, where my grandparents came from.
11:41My grandfather was a good cook, and I remember... He was. Yeah, he made the most beautiful sort of dill and cucumber salads and things. And I really got a taste for that kind of Central European flavor from him. Things like cucumbers and so on, which are very Central European, Polish and Hungarian and other such things. And spicy, spicy, but not like Indian or Mexican food spicy, but in that sort of paprika spiciness, which I'm very fond of. You know, my grandparents were Hungarian. One side were Russian Jews who left Russia and the other were Hungarian Jews that left Hungary. They came to the United States as part of the Ellis Island influx in 19, probably 15.
12:26Oh, right. So really early. They got here early. So growing up in this household, going to, you then went away to school at age? Seven. And was that a food shock as well as a kind of homesick shock? It certainly was. Because we grew up in Norfolk, and obviously my mother wouldn't force me to eat anything I hated. And I arrived at this prep school at age 7, which is in Gloucestershire, 200 miles away. What year was this? This was in 1964. And there are things like semolina and tapioca, hot milk puddings. Something about milk that's been boiled makes me actually keck, makes me a dry heave. And I saw these and I said, no, no, I can't, I can't.
13:10and they forced it, literally holding my nose like a hunger strike thing. It was cruel in those days. But, of course, it happened to other boys, so you just think this is life. But I really, and I forced myself to throw up at the table so that they stopped doing it. You forced yourself. And it was written down, Stephen Fry or Fry S, probably, or Fry Jr., because my brother was there, allergic to hot milk. Clever. I mean, a good defensive reaction. to figure out what to do. Yeah. But it was, I mean, it was, I wouldn't say Dickensian, but it was a world of chillblains and constipation and cold, you know.
13:49I mean, the way they heated a dormitory was just to have a hot pipe running along the bottom, no radiators or anything. And so it wasn't... Did you miss the food desperately? Yeah. Mrs. Risberg. Yes, very much. So what it does, I've spoken about this before, and what it does is you start to obsess about sweets. There's a tuck shop in the school. They're called the tuck shop. Tuck is the school slang for goodies for confectionery. And you start to get really obsessed with when the tuck shop's going to be open and how much pocket money you've got to buy these things. And this was the golden age of confectionery.
14:24Cadbury was producing new things like Curly Wurly and Aztec bars, and there were these amazing foam shrimps and flying saucers made of rice paper and fruit salads, four for a penny, and blackjacks, four for a penny. and I became so obsessed that I would start breaking out of school buns and going to the village shop. This was in Gloucestershire, a little village called Yulee. And I would spend whatever money I had on getting those sweets and it became a kind of obsession and my teeth suffered. By the time I was 12, I was having huge amounts of fillings and even having teeth out. But also, it was interesting.
15:05And this is, you know, I'm not using this as an excuse, but a lot of it was preparation for smoking. There were these coconut shredded brown fake tobaccos in a little wax paper with a Spanish galleon on it, which was like rolling tobacco. There were these candy cigarettes that you would have. I remember candy. We had chocolate ones in America. And in sort of fake Chesterfield packs, soft packs. Yeah, yeah. Looked exactly like Chesterfield or something or camel. and licorice pipes. And so they were getting you ready. Pipes like licorice pipes. Well, like a pipe smoker's pipe but made out of licorice, yeah.
15:43And even more sort of weirdly, the glamour of the white powder, sherbet. So you'd suck it up through a licorice straw in a sherbet fountain. So it was preparing you for a life to come. Yeah. So you'd then go from the, you know, when you were 14 or 15, you'd go for the real cigarettes and smoking. and then when you're a little bit older than that, the real white powder, it's a terrible thought. I'm not excusing it or saying that it was the school's fault that I in later life did become something of an addict. I was even, not to interrupt your story, but I was going to say that culturally, if your parents were Hungarian Jews or background of that, did going to boarding school come easy to them?
16:25So my parents had both boarded all their time as children, so there was nothing. And you have to remember, if you're thinking, how cruel to send a child away at the age of seven. If that seven-year-old child has other friends, as I did in the Norfolk countryside, they were all boys who were also going off to prep school. And then when you get to the prep school, obviously everyone's in the same boat. So you just think this is what life is like. You don't think, this is so unfair. There are people who are not going to boarding schools. You just think this is... You might not... Well, this is another discussion.
16:57You might not think it. The child might not think it, but the parents might think it. Yes, and I was aware that because we would go, my mother and I, from Norwich by train and we'd have breakfast on the train. What would you have on the train? Tell me about the breakfast. Oh, it was so good because they had these silver, they did silver service. They had stewards in short white little tops, tunics, whatever you'd say. And they would, you know, the silver service in the sense they'd use a spoon and a fork in the same hand. And they could deftly put the bacon and the fried egg on a train, exactly.
17:28And we got to know them. Then they would recognise us and say, oh, school again, young man, is it? And all that, you know. Anyway, we'd get the train and then we'd spend a day in London. Sometimes we'd have lunch with my grandfather at the, did you say the Waldorf or the Savoy? Yeah, the Waldorf Hotel. Yeah, that sort of area. He liked the Waldorf. That was in the Aldwych, wasn't it? Yeah, that's right, with the big palm courts. Yeah, you go in there. That's right, they had dances. Yes, they did. When I first came again to London, they had the Té d 'Anson. That's it. Yeah, nice hotel. and then go to Paddington and that's where my heart would start to sink and flutter a bit because you'd see at the end of the platform boys in these straw hats that we call boaters and that was the school compartment.
18:10But then you'd notice, or I'd notice, that my mother was crying. She was trying not to. So touching. It's making me move now because, you know, everyone thinking how cruel of parents, but they don't want to lose their child, but they just feel that's the right thing for them. You stayed in school till... Ah, well, now, we don't have enough time to cover the chapters of disaster, do we? I went from prep school. Prep school in England is age seven, which is the youngest, to 13. And then you would take what was called a common entrance exam, which was for public schools, i.e. private schools. And so I went to a private school called Uppingham.
18:50And my behaviour was dreadful. And then, worst of all, I fell in love with a boy. and I was so confused by this, so absolutely astonished by the power of the emotion, the sheer power that you could be obsessed for 24 hours a day and think of nothing else and change your walking habits so you would bump into this person and knowing... I mean, just phenomenal obsession. Not really sexual even. I was, you know, just something overwhelming. Was it reciprocated? Eventually there was a nice moment or two. Yeah, yeah. But it threw me completely and certainly threw my concentration away. But the actual casus belli is, I think one should say, the cause of the war, the originating disaster was I was a member, the youngest member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London.
19:46and I got permission from my housemaster to go to a meeting of the society in London in some grand club and I read a paper, I delivered a paper and the idea was that I was staying overnight at the club and the next morning I would take a train back to school. Well, the next morning I went to a cinema. In those days cinemas would start a programme at ten in the morning or something and then just you could stay in the same cinema and watch the same film again and again. And the film was Cabaret and I was completely obsessed with it. I'd just never seen anything like it. It was fantastic. You just chose it randomly.
20:24Yeah, I mean, almost randomly, not knowing what it was, anything about it, not knowing, you know, about Christopher Isherwood or Liza Minnelli or any of the sort of background to it. And then I wandered in a daze to another cinema and there was a clockwork orange was on. And fortunately, although I was 14 and a half, I could pass as X, which was 18, I guess. because being tall, I suppose. And so there were three or four films, I think The Godfather as well, and Fritz the Cat, which was a sort of pornographic cartoon. I remember Fritz the Cat. Do you remember it? Yeah. So four days passed. You stayed four days?
21:01Yes. And was anybody out searching for you? Yes, and they were terrified, and they didn't know what had happened to me, and he'd run away, what's going on? And then I kind of came to, you know, sort of days, and went back to the school. where there was a lot of folded arms and tapping of feet on the carpet. Did anybody call the police? Well, they had done, yes. They reported me as missing after three days, I think, or whatever it was. So, yeah, it was just a disaster. And I remember getting in the car with my parents because I was expelled from the school, and my father saying the words, we will talk about this sorry incident when we get home.
21:37Sorry incident. Sorry incident, I remember. It was a sorry incident.
21:46Did you know the River Cafe has a shop? It's full of our favorite foods and designs. We have cookbooks, linen napkins, kitchenware, tote bags with our signatures, glasses from Venice, chocolates from Turin. You can find us right next door to the River Cafe in London or online at shoptherivercafe.co.uk.
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23:59If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund. No return shipping or restocking fees. Every penny back. Upgrade now at washablesofas.com Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. When you went to Cambridge, what was the food like there? Then you were away from both the boarding school and you were away from your parents. Could you create your own food world more? Yes, there were some students that I got friendly with who really understood food. Did you cook for yourself at Cambridge or was that hard if you were in college? You had your rooms and you had what was called a gyp room, which was like a little kitchen, but it didn't really have a proper oven or anything.
24:41So you couldn't do much there. But because of the acting, I would, in particular, after the May term, which is like the summer term at Cambridge, when it was over, I would stay on to rehearse with friends all the plays we were taking up to Edinburgh. And then one might stay at totally different places, and I stayed with her rather than in your college, because your college would be given over to conferences and things like that and they wouldn't let you stay there. So I remember staying with friends and one of these friends, Ben, who was really good, he taught me the mirepoix, the preparation for almost anything, you know, the carrots, the celery and chopping them up.
25:20We call it in Italian cooking, sofrito. Sofrito, exactly, exactly. And it's the basis of everything from Bolognese's upwards, as it were. And so I really enjoyed learning that and seeing how all that worked. and he showed me as well what I now know is called deglazing, you know. I'd say, oh, everything's stuck. And he'd go, no, just take a glass of wine and just throw it on. And I'm going, what are you doing? And then it would all just come to life. And, you know, he had that confidence. So was he really the first person to teach you? He kind of was, yeah. He taught me not to be afraid and not to have to follow every syllable on a page because once you knew the principle of certain kinds of cooking, you could just then do very, oh, we haven't got any of that, we'll use fish instead.
26:04But it says it's for lamb. It's just, that's all right, you know. And he'd just sort of take the heat out. As I always say, cooking is a bit like poetry, you know. You have to know the real poetry to go to free verse. Yes, exactly. Once you know the 14-line sonnet, you can then exactly escape the prison of the form. But it was really, when I left Cambridge, I was so fortunate because, you know, the comedy stuff I was doing with Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson, won a prize. What was the comedy stuff? Well, it was Cambridge's club called The Footlights, which is well over 100 years old, and it sort of specialises in comedy.
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26:42I say it. It is whoever the undergraduates are at the time who happened to be members of the club, but it famously had Peter Cook and John Cleese and Eric Idle and Griff Rhys-Jones and Douglas Adams and Clive James and all kinds of mirror-margulies. And Stephen Fry. And then Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson. We were all one sort of bunch. And we went to Edinburgh and we won this new prize called the Perrier Award for comedy. And this involved going to Australia. Well, sort of. It didn't. The prize didn't. But because we won it, an Australian entrepreneur called Michael Edgeley saw our show and then said, you guys want to come out to Australia?
27:21And that's where I learned to eat because, Ruthie, It was an absolute revelation. This is 1981. Starting in Sydney, Doyle's, of course, the amazing seafood place. You walk along the dunes and come to this beautiful shack where the food is, where things you've never heard of, like barramundi and Morton Bay bugs and all these extraordinary seafood things. But also oysters. I mean, oysters are so plentiful. And not, oh, my goodness, I'm having oysters. I must be in Bentleys or in, you know, some posh, you know, London restaurant that does oysters. But it was, yeah, have some oysters, mate. I'll have mine, Rockefeller or Kilpatrick.
28:01You know, these different ways of preparing them. Kilpatrick, of course, a favourite of mine because it involved Worcester sauce. Back to the Worcester sauce. Yes. So I became really obsessed with oysters and would have, you know. So they were cooked if they had bacon. And they were cheap. Sometimes you could, that's the point. I'd have some plump, half a dozen plump Pacific oysters not cooked and then half a dozen cooked Mornay, Rockefeller, and Kilpatrick. Which is the one with the bacon, the Kilpatrick. That's the Kilpatrick, yeah. And they were cheapest chips, as people say. And wine was the other thing.
28:33I finally moved off the Lambrusca. Yeah, we haven't talked about wine. Yeah, because they had things like Grange Hermitage, which at the time was good, but nothing like as expensive as it is now. Three or four hundred pounds a bottle at least, isn't it? But they had this way of categorizing wines, which is so ridiculously obvious but was unheard of in Britain. What was it? By grape, i.e. varietal. So they would say this is a Shiraz, you know, and this is a Cabernet Sauvignon, this is a Sémillon, whatever. And they'd tell you about the grape and you'd go, oh I see then you get back to England and every restaurant just says Chateau Neuf to this Chateau that and you go what does that mean but when I got back to England from how long were you in Australia we were like for two months and travelling everywhere travelling everywhere all the big cities and some of the crazy little towns like Albury, Wodonga eating fabulous food cheaply and happily the whole day really was around the fact we'd finished the show and what restaurant we'd go into but when I got back to England I was wandering around Soho we were doing a TV show and I was feeling lucky and flush with cash relatively compared to being a student but not very rich and I was wandering around Soho and I was getting lost as you do before you understand what's the cross street and so I was going down this street called Greek Street and I saw an attractive looking restaurant and the restaurant was called Lescago The Snail and I wandered in and this fabulous woman about three foot tall came up to me and said hello dear and I said oh um I was obviously very nervous she said you come with me and she sat me down you'll know who I'm talking about Ellen Salvatini um this amazing woman phenomenal and she sat me down and I said I'm not and she chose for me somehow brilliantly things that were just cheap enough for me to be able to afford and so from then on the richer I got the luckier I got I would I would go there and this was in the high days of Lescargo we know Princess Diana would go and all these people.
30:43But most importantly, again, it was Jansis Robinson's husband, Lander, his name was. Nick Lander. Nick Lander, who ran Lescago. And Jansis Robinson was a great wine critic, the first woman to be made a master of wine, fabulous person. And she made the wine list varietal. So it was the first, I think, probably in London to be like that. where it was, and gosh, I had some marvellous times there. Absolutely amazing times. She also probably recognised in you somewhere. Oh, we became very good friends. She then moved to L 'Etoile in Charlotte Street. And her husband, Aldo, was a fascinating man as well because they lived in Noel Road in Islington in the 1960s.
31:28Yeah, I know Noel Road. And their neighbour, their neighbours, were a gay couple called Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton. and it was Aldo who, they'd heard some shouting and then the next day they were worried and Eleanor had said, what's up with Joe? And Aldo, and she looked through the keyhole and saw him dead and Aldo had to break down the door and of course Kenneth Halliwell had killed his lover and then himself. So she never forgot that. But I remember once, for example, I was having dinner there with Rowan Atkinson, my friend Rowan, the wonderful comic, great comic genius. At Les Gargots.
32:06Yeah, at Les Gargots, upstairs. And Rowan is the most wonderful person in the world, but he's not a late-night figure at all. In those days, I quite was. So we'd had dinner, and it was like half past nine, and Rowan said, right, well, I'll get a cab and go home. And I thought, oh, well, I'll do the same. So I ordered a cab. His cab came first, and I was just about to leave, and Ellen said, could you go and cheer up John Hurt? He's just left his wife and he's all very unhappy and he needs a bit of cheering up. He's eating alone. So I sat down and there was John Hurt, you know. I had to sit down.
32:46And every now and again Ellen would say, do your cab still here, Stephen? I said, oh, tell him I'll be five minutes. Yes, five minutes. So I remember getting home and the cab bill was£220. pounds and I saw John about a week later and said I told everyone I got hurt on Thursday night and he said well I told everyone I got fried. That was our thing. I got to know him even better later because he moved to Norfolk. Was Europe at all an influence? Did you travel to France or Italy or did you do Greece? Was there any food experience from being in Europe? Just as I was really beginning to love food, I went with Rowan, whom I mentioned, Rowan Atkinson, had bought a new Aston Martin, and he said, I really think we should try this out.
33:35And so we booked ourselves an amazing holiday, going all the way down France through, basically through as many three star, three Michelin star restaurants. So Mignonne outside Lyon, Alain Chappelle's restaurant, and then down to the Mougin restaurants outside Cannes, you know, and the Colôme d 'Or, which is not three-star, but is one of the greatest restaurants in the world. Isn't it great, isn't it? Oh, that menu. Heavenly. For people who don't know, it's up from Cannes in the hills, and it's this beautiful, beautiful place. It's like your ideal image of a Provencal house with the tiles and everything else, but it has added to it these extraordinary pieces on the walls by Matisse and others.
34:19And Miro. And Miro. There's a colder in the swimming pool. Yeah, that's right. These extraordinary paintings because the original patron and his wife would allow the artists to give pictures instead of paying the bills. And it has since become, you know, one of the great restaurants of the world, really. It's atmosphere. And for all its fame and, you know, not necessarily easy to get a table, especially during the Cannes Film Festival or something, it is the friendliest, warmest place. It's really, you know, like all these good places. You might think they're going to be frightening. It's the same family.
34:53Like the River Cafe. Come to the River Cafe. You won't find people looking snootily at you at all. It's the opposite of good restaurant to have snootiness, isn't it? When I spoke to you a couple of months ago, you were talking about your schedule, and a lot of it was around being in London or being in Los Angeles. And I think that California is so interesting in terms of going back to Alice Walters and food farm to table and restaurants like Wolfgang Puck's Ma Maison becoming Spago where he made pizzas and now the very kind of healthy eating of California. And I think if we're talking about a kind of food culture, would you say that in Los Angeles you're finding a certain kind of food culture?
35:39Unquestionably. And one of the interesting things is people picture Los Angeles and they think of smart movie people, and obviously there are a lot of movie people, but the food culture is driven from below and the smart movie people follow it. And over the last 10 years, the major thing has been street food, food trucks, which a lot of British people, when you'd say to them, oh, look, there's a fish taco truck, let's go and have that for lunch. They'll go, are you crazy, Steve? Is it hygienic? I mean, this sort of weird British idea that a food truck couldn't live up to a restaurant. And very often the queue is the indication.
36:16You'll see a big line and you'll know that's a good one and you make a note in your head. Next time I'm driving down here, I'll go in and try what they've got. And there's that side of things. Of course, there's the glamorous side of places. To go to the polo lounge. The movie people go, yeah, the polo lounge. A place like Craig's now. You'll always see a Kardashian in there if you want to. And again, you know because they're the paparazzi outside and what in America they call videographers. Oh, really? Is it called TMZ? This is kind of a news channel, a gossip news channel. But the quality of food is good for vegans and vegetarians, and so it's a good place to say, oh, I'll go vegan for a week, just out of fun, really, because there's so many options.
37:07Do you only eat out? No, not at all. No, I love to cook, though. I've got a really good kitchen in the house in L.A., so I really enjoy it. Well, it's open. It's this long, long room because the house used to be an art gallery when it was built in 1923. I don't give too much of a detail. Oh, sorry. But it's under the Hollywood sign, Beachwood Canyon. And there's an art gallery up there. It was an art gallery, so there's this very long room, this upper room which used to be where the pictures were. One end of it is the kitchen, and it's open to the dining room part of it and the other parts of it.
37:44So when you're cooking, you're cooking, you're chatting to everybody who might be there and there's plenty of room. It's really good surfaces. You know how somehow surfaces disappear when you cook. Where can I put anything? Do you cook there more than you would cook here? Yes, yeah, I do. And I love it. And my husband's a good customer. He seems to enjoy it.
38:12If you like listening to Ruthie's Table 4, would you please make sure to rate and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you.
38:32Morning, Zoe. Got donuts. Jeff Bridges, why are you still living above our garage? Well, I dig the mattress, and I want to be in a T-Mobile commercial like you. Teach me, Sildana. Oh, no. I'm not really prepared. I couldn't possibly. At T-Mobile, get the new iPhone 17 Pro on them. It's designed to be the most powerful iPhone yet and has the ultimate pro camera system. Wow. Impressive. Let me try. T-Mobile is the best place to get iPhone 17 Pro because they've got the best network. Nice, Jeffrey. You heard them. T-Mobile is the best place to get the new iPhone 17 Pro on us with eligible traded in any condition.
39:13So, what are we having for lunch? Dude, my work here is done. The 24-monthly bill credits on Experience Beyond for well-qualified customers plus tax and$35 device connection charge. Credits ended. Balance due fee payoff earlier. Cancel. Finance agreement. iPhone 17 Pro, 256 gigs,$1 ,099.99 and new line minimum$100 plus a month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees required. Best mobile network in the U.S. based on analysis by Oclob Speed Test Intelligence. Data 1-H 2025. Visit T-Mobile.com. Let's be real. Life happens. Kids spill. Pets shed. And accidents are inevitable. Find a sofa that can keep up at washablesofas.com.
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40:24Visit washablesofas.com today and save. That's washablesofas.com. Offers are subject to change, and certain restrictions may apply. Hi, I'm Sian, and I'm making lemon almond and polenta cake with Stephen Fry. I am a convicted lemon almond and polenta cake user, and I was on the road to recovery, but now that's all been set back, I'm afraid. So shall I make this? Yeah, you tell me what I need to do. There's nothing we need to do, apart from we've got our butter here. So that's butter just suffering on its own? I took the liberty of giving it a beat before you arrived, because I thought we don't need to watch that.
41:03But as it goes from the yellow colour to the pale colour, it's your point of knowing that it's been beaten, and then you've got your 450 grams of cancer sugar that goes in it. And then this is going to get beaten until the sugar dissolves. Right. And again, I mean, it's one of the loveliest tastes in the world, when I was a child, butter and sugar together. Yeah, that's... Just can't get enough, can you? Exactly. So, should I switch it on? Yes, do switch it on. I'm familiar with this. This is to be in the noisy bit. But you're not cool. We can talk amongst ourselves. Oh, yes. There we are. It's a very high-tech.
41:36Okay. Then, you know, some people will put a bit of egg and a bit of flour in it alternately, but I'm just going to... Right. ...brazen it out, quite frankly. Right. I think it's... All ends up in the same, in the end. Yeah. All lovely. Lovely. I mean... I just... And then this is the polenta flour and ground almonds. So I'll just get that in, let it go around slowly so it won't get covered.
42:08You made this one quite recently. It's still warm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's actually going to go on the menu for lunch now. That tastes like... Yeah. Do you want to have a piece of that? Why not? Do you want to cut yourself a slice? Yeah. Yum! So soft. Yeah. So, I'm going to have to say the word moist. There's no escaping it. We would just... Do you want to... Shall I find you a fork? I'm quite happy to just, frankly, drop my head into it and go... Like that, but probably would be a nice idea. That's got a cup of tea written all over it. Or espresso. It's got espresso written all over it, hasn't it?
42:43Mmm. Oh, my goodness. You can have that while you talk to Ruthie. That is so good, honestly. Brilliant. There we are. Thanks. Thank you. Nice one. Thanks. You've just made a polenta cake with Sean. I have. Tell me what that was like. It was a tremendous experience. It's so simple on the one hand, but like all great dishes, it can be made better by people who are confident. My theory about food is that certain ingredients know when you're scared. They know when you're scared. Yeah. I love making mayonnaise, but it's a mood thing. If you're not quite confident enough, it knows and it will split.
43:31If you're too confident, it will split. You have to just sort of come up to it and show that you are master, but that you respect it. And I think that's true of a lot of ingredients, and palenticake no less so. To get that gritty moisture and that sweetness and that citrus all in the right proportion, and it's a simply joyous thing to eat. I was going to also ask you about work and creating and food. So when you are writing, when you're directing, when you're doing your beautiful voice, audio books, what is your relationship with food? I find it very hard to eat anything before a performance of any kind.
44:10It's as if your nerves sort of shrink you up and your metabolism is fast, which tends to reduce appetite. Anything that makes your metabolism go quick reduces appetite, doesn't it? Like cocaine, for example, or speed. The white powder that you had when you were in boarding school. But those drugs are appetite suppressants as opposed to the slowy-down ones that famously cannabis gives you the munchies and so on. So aside from external forces and chemistry, the actual act of being nervous before a show, I find, has that thing that I just couldn't eat. but afterwards, yes. And that's, everyone tells you you shouldn't eat, you know, two hours before bed or whatever because, you know.
44:55I don't know if they say that anymore. Maybe they don't. Maybe they don't. We always look for that study that you want to read which says that actually you gain no more weight by eating before you go to bed than you would if you had it at 6 o 'clock. Oh, well, that's interesting. That's what I heard. Because I am a bit obsessed about my weight. I mean, I know I'd be fitter. I would snore less and puff less at the top of the steps if I lost a stone. You look gorgeous to me. We don't want any less of Stephen Fry. I tried that as Empik years ago. Oh, did you? I'm only a doctor of these things. And I happened to be in America, and I'd read about it.
45:32And I asked my doctor in America, my physician, as they like to call them, and he said, I think I can get you some. And he tried me on it. And the first week or so I was thinking, this is astonishing. not only do I not want to eat, I don't even want to, I don't want alcohol of any kind. This is going to be brilliant. And then I started feeling sick, and then I started feeling sicker and sicker and sicker, and I was literally throwing up four or five times a day. And I thought, I can't do this. Don't do it. So that's it. And the new variant to Zepidide, Manjura, as it's called, makes it even worse, apparently, if you have those side effects.
46:07So I think it's probably good. I think you look great. I think you just leave it. You are handsome and elegant. and they're eating. And so food and work, home and work. Food and work, yes. I mean, I do, I love to work on an empty stomach as well. You do? If it's writing. If you're writing. Yeah, and I'm in writing mode at the moment. What are you writing? Well, it's the fourth in a series of books I've done on Greek mythology, and it's the final one. The first was the kind of birth of the gods and the creation of humankind and the kind of gods and the humans interacting and interbreeding. The second one is called Heroes and is like Hercules and Perseus and Theseus and Jason and Atalanta and the heroic race.
46:57And then the third one was the Trojan War with Achilles and Helen and all that. And this fourth one is them all coming home. Agamemnon has to come home to be murdered and Helen and Menelaus, her husband, have to go home. I always picture that voyage home as a sort of a lot of folded arms. And you didn't try very hard to escape from Troy, did you, darling? And then, of course, the Odyssey, which is the main story of that. Do you think the gods ate? Ate. They did. And what did they drink? The gods drank nectar. Nectar. Nectar. Nectar, which is not quite the juice of, you know, the hollyhock or the flower, but a sort of honey and alcohol kind of thing that was good for gods.
47:38and they ate ambrosia. It was called ambrosia. What is that? No one's quite sure what ambrosia was, but it was the food of the gods rather than the drink of the gods. And this is what... And ambrosia kept their blood in a silvery form. The gods had silvery blood rather than red or blue or green. And it was called icor. And if humans had icor, if they tasted Ikora it would kill them straight away only for the gods but it's a nice one of the best words in the English language is petrichor petrichor petros is rock in Greek as in petrol and petrify all those things, petroleum and Ikora is that blood, that strange silvery liquid And petrichor is the word for that smell that rises up from the earth after rain.
48:43Isn't that lovely that there's a word for it? And that's what it is. It's this kind of holy, sacred smell rising up from the earth. And that note of smell and comfort. We were talking, I think, I suppose, we were talking a lot about comfort that you've derived from your life in going to school and needing comfort in sweets or growing up later and the memories of seeking comfort. As well, before we go to lunch, what would be a food that you would go for comfort? It's a small silvery fish in a tin, not a sardine, although I like sardines. It's called a skipper. You see them in supermarkets. At first you go, oh, there's obviously skipjack tuna, which is a different thing.
49:30Skipjack, yeah. But skippers are little, I don't know if there's another name for them, but they are kind of boneless, so you have them whole, and they're sort of soft enough to spread on toast. And on toast, they are absolutely glorious to me. Why do you think that gives you comfort? I think my mother used to get them, and that's probably what it is. I mean, it's a terrible admission, isn't it? Well, it's not a terrible admission. Most of the people who answer this question will say something from their memory of sharing their mother, their father, their grandmother, the culture they came from.
50:02Thank you. What a great day. Such a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you.
50:09Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table 4 in partnership with Montclair.
50:23Ruthie's Table 4 is produced by Atomai Studios for iHeartRadio. It's hosted by Ruthie Rogers and it's produced by Willa Malensky. This episode was edited by Julia Johnson and mixed by Nigel Appleton. Our executive producers are Faye Stewart and Zad Rogers. Our production manager is Caitlin Paramore and our production coordinator is Bella Cellini. This episode had additional contributions by Sian Wynn-Owen. Thank you to everyone at the River Cafe for your help in making this episode.
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51:43Plus, they're earth-friendly and trusted by over 200 ,000 happy customers. 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. Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50 % and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. Discover Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a perfect destination to unplug and enjoy the season. The rolling hills and quiet countryside offer a peaceful escape, while the vibrant city and rich culture provide so much to explore.
52:33Wonder through the boutique shops in Lancaster, enjoy a glass of local wine or a cozy cup of coffee, and catch a live show at the American Music Theater. You can also dive into the authentic Amish culture by visiting markets and sampling the homemade treats. How delightful. Lancaster County offers the perfect balance of cozy and adventurous, ensuring a memorable escape. If you're planning a fall getaway, start at discoverlancaster.com forward slash soul sessions. This is Ashley Iconetti from the Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous podcast. I just got a little shipment of BOEM clothes. These are the cutest dresses ever.
53:19They're high quality and they're affordable. I do this thing where when I see something cute, I'll buy it. And that way I'll have it when I need it. Because you know when you go shopping for something specific, you can't ever find it. So I came across Boehm's website and I saw all these cute dresses and I was like, okay, I will get this, this, and this. And then next time I have an event, it's going to be perfect for it. They have trendy products that fit everyone's taste and personal style. I showed my friend the website and she was also like, I need this, this and this. Tons of options for dresses.
53:58Also like cute little summer two pieces and all that stuff. You can visit bohm.com and start your style journey today at Bohm. Start now at bohm.com. That is B-O-H-M-E dot com. This is an iHeart podcast.
From the publisher
There is a well-known cartoon in The New Yorker magazine depicting President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his pyjamas, on his knees next to his bed, saying a prayer for his wife, the most active first lady in history. ‘Dear Lord, please make Eleanor tired tomorrow’. I can imagine the friends and family of Stephen Fry saying the same prayer, for there's very little Stephen doesn't do.
Actor, comedian, television host, director, a prolific writer with four novels, three autobiographies and countless columns in national papers. But should you ask, as I've been doing, the people who know him really well. What Stephen is best at, they will answer, being a friend. As for me, I love this man. All he stands for, and quite simply who he is.
And I would change the FDR prayer. I would say, ‘Dear Lord, we all need Stephen Fry. Please do not make him tired tomorrow’.
Listen to Ruthie’s Table 4: Stephen Fry in partnership with Moncler – out now.
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