Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware - S16 Ep 38: Kate Winslet
Episode Date: September 11, 2024We’re still on our summer break, but just in time for your back to school runs we offer up a very, VERY special one off episode with the absolutely legendary Kate Winslet! We met Kate at a hotel and... served up some delicious Honey&Co food while we chatted over lunch. Kate is a top tier foodie and taught us so many vegan and vegetarian dishes to make; the recipes poured out of her! We also heard about the delicious roast dinners she had while growing up, why she wasn’t at the Titanic premiere (but I was!), how a very special dining table inspired her film ‘Lee’, why she wants to try topless dinner parties, her dream of one day being Sandy in Grease and we even get a story she has never told before (our fave)! It’s not one to be missed, thank you to the absolutely gorgeous Kate for joining us for this very special summer episode! Kate’s new film ‘Lee’ is released in cinemas on the 13th September. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello and welcome to Table Manners. I'm Jessie Ware and I'm here with Lenny.
Hi, I'm here. Just back.
I'm here. And whilst we are still on a hiatus getting ready for Season 17, we couldn't say
no to this guest. So let's just call this Table Manners Season 16 and a half because
we have Kate Winslet coming on
Table Manners. How do you feel about that, Leni? Very excited darling. She's coming on
the show to talk about her new film, Lee. About the iconic Lee Miller, war
correspondent for folk. Incredible, important, historical figure for women,
feminism and also documenting the Second World War.
Yeah, she documented a period in the Second World War up to the liberation of concentration camps
through her photography.
Kate Winslet has produced this film, stars in it as Lee Miller, and it's really brilliant.
And so yeah, we are sat in the Corinthia Hotel.
Last time we were here, we were here with Millie Bobby Brown.
We only make these exceptions for very special people
and Kate Winslet is that.
So we've got about an hour with her.
We're gonna have lunch.
Now, disclaimer, we haven't actually cooked today.
No.
So we are cheating a bit.
Yeah.
But we have a really delicious delivery from Honey & Co.
Yeah.
What have we got on the menu?
So we've got stuffed aubergine, potato salad,
chicken salad with grapes, we've got the ganoush, shlabna, hummus, a tabbouleh chickpeas. So
yeah we'll be feeding Kate and I can't wait to speak to her. I mean she's been our favourite
dysfunctional cop. Well Jessie you queued outside premiere premiere of Tide Town. I did? Yeah.
Jessie was there. I've still got the poster. I was not there for Kate though, to be honest. I know darling, but I still have the, I should have
brought the poster along. I've still got it at home. Jessie stole it off, you stole it off the railings.
Picture of Kate and Leo together. I forgot that I went to the premiere.
I was one of those people.
Yeah.
How old were you?
You know what, if ever, and I don't know whether I should say this to her, but I...
I was quite resentful of Kate Winslet for many years.
Because she loved Leo.
Because she had those three hours with Leo.
Three hours. Yeah, a little longer, I should have thought.
Yeah. I mean, I really quite resented her.
Well, we've got her poster at home if she ever needs a spare of Titanic
because I've got it behind a cupboard in the spare room.
Kate Winslet coming up on Table Math. How are you?
Very well.
Yeah.
Busy?
Yes, it is, but it's not over the top, which it sometimes can be.
How do you look so gorgeous and fresh when you've been probably at it all morning?
I don't know.
I don't have make-up.
Someone else is putting hair, you know, doing my hair
and make up.
But you're not the same as you looked in Titanic.
No, I definitely don't.
I think you do.
There is no way I do.
We do. We think so.
No.
Yeah.
I definitely don't. But that's very sweet. Thank you.
I have to say that I was obsessed with Heavenly Creatures when I... I think I was watching
it way too young as well.
Oh my God. Because it's quite... I mean, it's quite fucked up, isn watching it way too young as well. Oh my God.
Because it's quite, I mean, it's quite fucked up, isn't it?
Well, it is.
Yeah, it must have been really young.
And I think we got it from Joe Hines.
You must have been really young.
Chessy, why did I let you watch it?
You didn't, I was at my mate's house.
Okay, fine.
But we were obsessed with the relationship
and it was amazing and you were amazing.
And then you got the Titanic gig.
Yeah.
And I really resented you, Kate.
Did you?
I was so, Mum has just reminded me when we did the intro that I actually queued up, I was
one of those people that was in the crowd of the premiere in London and I
have to say I wasn't there for you. But I wasn't even there. Well I mean I don't
know if Leo was there either to be honest. No No, it's so, yeah, so no.
Why weren't you there at the premiere?
Because I had gotten food poisoning or something terrible had happened to me.
I was filming something in Morocco and I had flown home for the premiere and I was sick
and I ended up in hospital.
Oh my God.
I was in hospital.
It was bizarre.
Jessica, do you feel bad now?
That's horrible.
I feel really bad now.
I feel really bad. But what was quite funny though about it
was as I'm lying in hospital on a drip
and completely delirious,
like they kept coming to visit.
So Leo kind of came in at one point.
Oh, sweet.
And then a few hours later, Jim Cameron came in,
checked my temperature,
decided that actually I was probably hotter
than they had told me that I was.
It was kind of funny.
You did miss probably the biggest kind of premiere of,
well, at the time.
Maybe that was quite nice to miss it.
Honestly, I mean, you know, premieres are
such a great celebration of the film,
but actually for us lot, it's quite a full-on experience.
And you just have to kind of gird your loins
and sort of get through it a bit.
But yes, I missed it.
I missed it completely.
Well, let's talk about Lee.
Okay.
I thought it was amazing.
You're amazing.
It was brilliant and-
Thank you.
You must be really thrilled with it.
I am.
I'm so thrilled with it.
I'm so proud of it.
And I so can't believe that we've actually done it.
I mean, honestly, I keep having aftershocks
and just thinking, okay, we, we okay I don't have to make
the film anymore the film is made I can sit back and watch it and I can feel incredibly proud of
all the literally blood sweat and tears that went into it. How long did it take to get together?
So I first started thinking about the possibility of making a story about Lee Miller in 2015.
And actually tying in with what your podcast is about. So I love food and tables and kitchens
and family and feasting. It's a hugely important part of my life and a hugely important part of how
I grew up. that the ritualistic
thing of even if you don't see each other during the week, you always sit down for Sunday
lunch.
And a friend of mine who lives in Cornwall, she knows this about me and she works for
an auction house and she sometimes is asked to research particularly important pieces
that might come in.
And she called me, she said, Kate, Kate, there's this table that's come in.
Oh my God, Kate, you're going to absolutely love it.
Should I have to just tell you the story?
I said, tell me.
She said, well, it's a table, it's a wooden table
that was in a house in Lamb Creek in Cornwall.
And it was the home of a woman named Annie Penrose,
who was the sister of Roland Penrose.
And Roland later became Lee Miller's husband. She said, but this was the
house where all the Surrealists would gather and have these kind of hedonistic summers
of love. And this was the table. They would eat at the table, they would fight, they would
feast God knows what else at the table. And she said, you just got to get it, you got
to get it. Cut to, I got the table. I got this table and it arrived
and I could not believe how stunning it was.
The top is one thick slab as though it's cut
from a huge, huge old tree
with the knots and the whorls of the wood.
I mean, you can really feel the life in it.
It feels a bit vibration-y actually.
And I sat at this table and I just thought,
my God, imagine the people who had meals at
this...
Seen a lot of action.
Oh, my God, a lot of action and not just the eating food kind of action, I don't imagine.
And I thought, Lee Miller, Lee Miller, God, why hasn't anyone made a film about her?
And of course, I knew who she was and I knew a bit about her photography, but I actually
didn't know anything truly about her as a woman and the phenomenal life that she
lived. But most importantly, the decade of her life that actually defines her, which is the 10
years when she went to war and photographed the front line for the female readers of Vogue. And
she went there not as a young whippersnapper, she went as a complicated middle-aged woman
and she did it by herself.
And I suddenly realized, wow, she's been so labeled incorrectly as this muse, former model,
ex cover girl.
And that was a sliver of her life when she was a model.
And actually she didn't even like being a model and she couldn't wait to get away from
it.
And she famously said, I'd rather take a picture than be one and she became a photographer and a really extraordinary one at that and then
during the war put her photographic skill to incredibly powerful use and went and documented
the truth of the atrocities of the Nazi regime so much of which was being covered up and kept
from people and it really was.
I mean, there's a scene in our film
where Lee makes a telephone call from Paris
to her editor Audrey Withers at British Vogue.
And she says, are there any stories
of missing people in the news?
And Audrey is back in London having a party.
Someone's brought in a cake
because they think the war is coming to an end.
And Lee says to her, it's not over at all. Thousands and thousands, which then of course we know now to be millions of people missing and no
one knew where they were. And Lee went and found where they were and she photographed it.
And it takes a particular person to do that. The tenacity, the courage, the respect for the voiceless victims of war,
giving them a story in photographing what they experienced, giving them a voice. And
she lived her life with passion, compassion and respect. And she herself had suffered
a terrible trauma as a child,
which she carried with her always.
And I believe that's the thing that motivated her,
whether she was even conscious of it or not,
the injustice that had been done to her,
the cruel, horrific injustice that haunted her.
I think that was the thing that drove her to go to war
and have the courage to do what she did,
whilst at the same time
redefining femininity. Lee Miller represents femininity to mean resilience, strength, power,
courage, compassion. It takes it away from the muse, the model, the pretty, young thing,
the svelte, all these awful, laboury words that get
thrown at women all the time. Lee was stepping outside of that and we're talking about the 30s,
the 40s, the 50s. There she was. She was doing what I've been trying to do for 31 years. She
was already doing it. You said that so eloquently. Yeah. I, I wanna know whether you have dabbled
with topless dinner parties since filming this.
Yes.
Yes.
I'm probably, you know, I'm probably topless
more than my 10 year old son would like me to be.
He's like, aha, aha, aha, mom, oh God.
You know, that age they get to when they're suddenly like, oh God, oh God, put your knickers, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, Fascinated stage and then they then they go through this disgusted disgusted. We're actually repulsed stage
So now I haven't had any topless dinner parties. Maybe that's one to do I should do that
I definitely do that in the film. There's a scene where they're in the south of France or France. Yes
Yes, South of France and literally everyone's got their boobs out and not the men. No, no the men don't get topless do
They well, there's a lot of things
No, the men don't get topless, do they? Well, there's a lot of things men don't do, let's face it.
A lot of things men don't do.
And they're just drinking wine and chatting.
And I don't know whether it's because I'm approved,
but it was quite a shock, but it looks, it's bohemian.
Yeah, but it's, you know, I mean, first of all,
that scene is a recreation of photographs
that were taken in Mougin, which was a,
it was an annual holiday that Pablo Picasso himself
actually hosted at a property he would rent
in the south of France.
And they would all go there and you know,
I mean, I think they were probably all sleeping
with each other and getting drunk before lunchtime.
And frankly, having a great time.
But even when I look back to my own childhood in the 80s,
I totally remember, I had an auntie who lived in Australia
and she was extremely free with her body
and she was topless on beaches all the time.
I remember the days of topless sunbathing. Yeah it's not really a thing now. Well no it's not but
then I think but then if you think you know iPhones and the culture has changed so much and how we
have objectified women and scrutinized women's bodies in ways that I do not believe was as
commonplace in the 80s
and even the early 90s.
And then, I don't know, somewhere it all changed.
You've talked about feeling like you've been scrutinized
and with your body, and I guess like,
was that part of the reason why you took on this role
with this powerful woman that is kind of defying
expectations or is it just, it's a frustration a frustration I'm sure being in the public eye as
well. You've been lots of powerful roles haven't you? Well I have been very fortunate that I've had
some great opportunities and really interesting characters come my way. We love Mare, she's never
coming back. Why Mare? She's not coming back. I felt like she'd bring you a vape. Maybe. Maybe.
We'll see. Will she have given up vaping?
I very much doubt it.
But will she still fight with her mom, Jean Smart?
Never.
No, of course she would.
She definitely would still be fighting with her mom.
Is that an exclusive cake that you just gave us?
Maybe they've made it come back.
No, no, no.
There are rumors.
Moving on.
Okay, thank you.
So, no, so I think,
to answer your question really specifically,
the fact that Leigh was very free with her body
and physically celebrated
and really enjoyed her physical feminine self,
that wasn't a motivating factor in me wanting to play her.
But certainly a byproduct of playing her did mean
that it was enormously important to me
to really be how she was.
And that meant, you know, you read all the time about,
you know, a certain actor, you know, gaining weight
or losing weight for a role.
It's always the men and they always talk about the men,
right?
But when-
It was Christian Bale and the machine
and they're like kind of celebrated for it.
Right, and it's held up like that.
Yeah.
Whereas if a woman decides to go easier
on her exercise routine because she wants to create
the soft curves that would have been more of the period
and more specific to the character
that she might have been playing in the film,
suddenly that becomes a thing that people talk about.
Now what I do find interesting is that,
of course it's good that people are talking about that,
of course it's good that we're talking about that. Of course it's good that we're talking about
women's bodies in a celebratory way.
But there's a sadness for me around the fact that,
why are we still having this conversation?
Why is it even a conversation?
Why is it even a point we need to make?
It does still drive me mad.
And I wonder when the media will stop doing things like
saying, looking svelte in, you know, cuts a fine figure in blah blah.
Looking busty.
They love that.
Looking slender.
Leggy.
All this stuff, looking toned.
Shut up. Why?
Why do they attach these adjectives to the actress and not the male actor?
Yeah.
Let's go about food. Let's talk about food.
Yes, please.
Let's start at the beginning.
Who was around your dinner table
and what is a very memorable dish from your childhood?
Ah, so around the dinner table,
I mean, Sunday lunches would vary.
It was never just the six of us.
So my mom, my dad, my siblings
and I was never just the six.
You've got three siblings.
I have three siblings, yes.
I have two sisters and a brother.
And we lived in a very small house.
So Sunday lunch was never at our house.
We lived in a tiny terraced house
that was like a sort of a sliver of a building
wedged between a Barclays bank and a fish and chip shop.
Whereabouts was it?
Reading.
But my grandmother had a slightly larger home
that could fit everyone around the table, quite honestly.
And so Sunday lunch was always at my grandmother's house.
It was a walk away, maybe 15 minute walk away.
My mom and my grandmother, or sometimes just my grandmother,
sometimes just my mother, would cook the meal.
Good cook?
Extremely good, very good cook.
Roast dinner.
Roast dinner.
Always roast dinner.
Always roast dinner.
My grandmother absolutely always used dripping.
Sometimes she would have dripping in bread for breakfast
and half an onion.
I know she lived to 99, this woman.
Ah, half an onion.
Half an onion.
Raw or cooked?
Raw.
That's like Miriam Margulies.
Oh God.
She was a big raw onion gal, but she farts a lot.
Does she?
Yeah.
On the podcast, she did it a lot.
Did she?
My mum was truly offended.
Oh, I don't know what I'd do.
So yeah, so there were all of us.
Grandma's eating a raw onion. And my grandma eating half an onion, yeah. Mom was truly offended. Oh, I don't know what I'd do. So, yeah, so there were all of us. Grandma's eating a raw onion.
My grandma eating half an onion, yeah.
So was it beef?
It would vary. And then I have, my mum was one of six.
And so aunts and uncles there as well.
Yeah. So some of her siblings moved away to like Australia and New Zealand long, long
time ago, but a couple of her brothers were still very much around. So often one or two of her brothers would be there. One of her brothers is married to a lovely Austrian
woman and they had two sons, so they were cousins. And so it was lots of extended family.
So yes, sometimes beef. And I've never been able to cook beef the way... I don't actually
cook beef anymore, but I never mastered it. It was something so extraordinary about how
they cook that beef. And my uncle always carved I remember that and
I would always think to myself why does the man get handed this job when the
woman's done all the all the work and so now I resolutely will not let a man
carve in my house I feel like that yeah No, I don't let it happen.
And whenever it happens, I'm like,
why are you doing it like that?
You know what the fan said, don't they?
Yeah. Yeah.
I watched someone recently, a man carve a chicken
and he clearly just didn't know what he was doing at all.
And he was just pulling bits off,
literally with his fingers, pulling bits off,
flipping it over, pushing out the oysters,
but still kind of pulling bits off.
Well, you were going to eat it after.
Well, I wasn't.
But then I said to him, I said,
next time I come to your house,
I'll show you how to carve a chicken.
He said, carve?
Oh no, waste of time.
And the next time I went to the house, I said,
I'm going to show you how to do this.
Beautiful portions.
Yes.
Love that.
So are you chicken or beef or lamb?
Or pork?
I don't eat red meat.
Is that part of your decision to not eat red meat
is part of kind of ethical choice?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
My husband is completely vegan
and I have at times also been vegan
and certainly vegetarian for a very, very long time.
Fish?
No, no.
So don't eat fish?
No.
So you're vegetarian?
Pretty much.
I'm glad we've got some chicken.
No, we've got other stuff too. Don't worry. We've got other stuff. Don't worry. No, no, no vegetarian pretty much. I'm glad we've got some chicken. No, we've got other stuff
Don't worry. No, no, don't worry. That's fine. That's absolutely fine. That's absolutely fine. We didn't get that memo. That's fine
It's okay. That's fine shit. Well, I don't the thing is actually I don't make a big thing of it because
When people come into my house
I'm so used to adapting to whether it's someone's plant-based or whether they're just eating eggs or whether they can't have dairy or someone might have
a wheat problem.
And I'm just really, really used to adapting.
So it just isn't a big deal for me.
Take a leaf out of Kate's book, mum.
Thank you, darling.
So what's the best meal that you cook?
The best meal that I cook?
Yes.
That everyone says, oh, please do that, mum, or please do that, Kate, because it's so delicious.
Well, very recently, I've been making a lemon polenta cake.
Oh, that's fun.
And that's a real winner because you can do a dairy-free version and it's obviously gluten-free
because it is made with polenta and almonds, so it doesn't quite work if you've got someone
with a nut allergy.
And it's delicious.
It is absolutely delicious and it is really delicious with either coconut yoghurt or a
little bit of actual clotted cream.
And really delish.
Anything before that?
Oh yeah, many things before that.
So what's your best thing that you make?
And then I'm going to copy it next time I have a vegetarian.
Because I live with someone who is completely plant-based, you just have to get really,
really good at finding things that are also crowd-pleasy,
sometimes kid-friendly, that don't look like they're full of green things. So my son,
he, my younger son, he's... Is he vegetarian? No, no, no, but he, but he's, he's, you know,
he sometimes will say, what's that bit? What's that bit? Is that courgette? Oh, mom, you know,
I don't like courgette. But so one thing that I've been making quite a lot of this year is some really fantastic lightly Thai spiced little courgette fritters.
Yum.
Yeah.
And that works really well.
And I can do a version of that, which is either with organic egg
or with like a chickpea flour.
And sometimes I might also put into that a little tiny, tiny bit
of either flaxseed, but a small amount, or chia seed,
because those things work as really good binders.
Yeah, they're like gluey.
Yeah, and there's a seeded bread that I make,
because it's quite hard to get all the amigas into my vegan husband.
So there's a seeded bread that I make that is absolutely fantastic,
and it freezes really, really well.
And it is buckwheat, chia, flax, psyllium husk, hemp seeds, pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, little bit of baking powder,
salt, olive oil, apple cider vinegar.
And you just mix the whole thing together.
It sits for an hour and just kind of swells
with all those seeds.
And then you pack it into a loaf tin,
bake it for an hour and 15 minutes on 150 and then when it's done
we need the recipe. We've got the recipe, we're going to put it up on Instagram. Yeah
and actually it's a recipe from a friend of mine but I've adapted it and added a few other
things and you let it sit for a while once it's come out of the oven and about half an
hour after it's sat you can then start to slice it and what I do is I pre-slice the
entire loaf, I freeze half because it toasts brilliantly from frozen and then the
other half we'll usually get through in a couple of days. Oh yeah but you can have a bit of hummus. Hummus is amazing on it actually really delicious or a little bit of
whipped feta if someone's having that. Are you living in the States or here? I live
in England. So you live in England? Yeah. So where do you do your shopping? So I was
thinking this sounds like an Erwan. So we're really lucky we have our own chickens and we only have four, we actually only have
four but you know we'll get a couple of eggs from them a day and so that's really lovely.
So we have those eggs. Have you named them? No only one of them Tracy. Why Tracy? I don't know.
It was a name that was given a long time ago and it just kind of stuck.
But the others are nameless.
Why are the others nameless?
I don't know, isn't that awful?
You're like, I mean, that's really mean.
Well, you know, we'll name them.
We'll name the other three through the course of this meal.
Lenny, Jessie, and I don't know.
Tracy and Rockstar.
We're also really lucky.
We have a polytunnel.
So we have most of our own veg apart from root things.
So we don't have potatoes, sweet potatoes.
Actually, no, sometimes you have squash
and sometimes our potatoes kind of make it,
but it's a bit tricky.
So we have tons of tomatoes, heaps of basil, all the herbs.
We have courgettes, yellow courgettes,
cavolo nero, kale, celery, leeks, spring onions.
So I'm caught-
We live off the land.
We will, as much as we can.
So what you're hearing now is the lunch being laid.
So these are the noises that you're hearing.
We've got lots of gorgeous people putting it all together.
They've been in the bathroom putting all the bits together.
So that's what this sound is.
I've never had so many people handing us gorgeous food.
Look at this, amazing.
So we've got, we've got a lot of veggies.
That's a aubergine.
I think that's the only thing that maybe
you're not going to want is to check in.
You sure that's an aubergine?
That looks really round to be an aubergine.
I think it's an aubergine.
It is, go on.
Is it an aubergine?
It looks like an aubergine that's been stuffed.
It's a big old round one.
Oh my God, that's delicious.
Tuck in.
I have never done a podcast where I get to eat food.
Well, I'm just sad that we're not cooking for you,
so I'm sorry, because many of you are amazing.
I wish I was cooking for you as well.
I would have brought some of my bread had I known.
Yeah, I wish you had.
I should have done.
You sound like a really accomplished chef.
Well, I grew up with a mother who was very much a parent.
She was at home.
My father, he was an actor, but he was more out of work
and looking for work than he was in work.
So he had many, many other jobs that he did.
And so she was really at home with all of us.
I had an uncle who was, he was a chef
and my mom sometimes worked with him.
And my siblings and I would always joke
that we thought that she was the better cook than he was,
even though he was actually a chef and had a restaurant.
What was his restaurant?
Well, he had a restaurant that was within
an art center in Bracknell.
So it was a small place and he wasn't open every day,
but my mum would go and, she would go and help him.
And it was kind of, you know,
that sort of French Italian cuisine, that kind of thing.
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I love this.
Eating food, doing a podcast.
You've got to go to Honey and Food.
They're so amazing.
They're actually really vegan and vegetarian friendly.
It's just the podcast with food part that I can't quite get over. And this is the fun bit for Alice, our producer,
who then has to hear Masticating in her tears.
How am I going to, what is this?
Come on, darling, how are we going to eat that, darling?
Yeah, darling.
Yeah, darling.
You've already, you've learned about the Leninism,
which is darling.
Darling, she says darling all the time.
I actually say darling quite a lot, yeah.
So yeah, so anyway, I cook a lot.
I actually realized about myself recently
that I cook to think sometimes.
Sometimes if I'm chopping,
this is why I'm afraid I can't get to grips
with the Thermomix because I don't know why.
Oh, I'm very interested in Thermomix.
Have you thought of one?
No.
I'm really put off because that's the bit
I like about cooking.
Is the prep part.
The bit, yeah, I like it.
Also, anyway, you know, I don't want to be anti-thermomix, but I just, I guess I wouldn't
know why I would use it because the process of cooking, the thinking about either the
day or the next day or something that I'm trying to kind of puzzle through
in my mind.
I do use cooking and prep time to really think.
Sometimes I count.
If I'm chopping an onion,
I'll find myself counting how many times I've chopped,
which is weird.
Not that it matters at all how many times I've chopped,
but I will subconsciously count.
And there seems to be something calming about that.
That is really quite weird.
It's very interesting.
No, it's not, it's weird actually.
Don't know why I do that.
What is the kitchen staple that you couldn't live without
that would always be in your order?
Kitchen staple, well, food-wise or equipment-wise?
Well, both.
I now need to know both.
I couldn't live without chickpeas, actually.
I couldn't live without chickpeas and olive oil, really,
because I just, I feel like I just, we use so much of it.
But chickpeas in particular,
because they are just so good for us.
They are full of calcium.
They are very high in protein.
And when you live with someone who's plant-based,
you get really good at doing loads of different things
with chickpeas, chickpea flour.
It's fantastic.
What was your wedding cake? It must have been plant-based, right?
Now which wedding are you talking about? Bloody hell.
Very good.
Aren't you glad I said it and not you?
What was my wedding cake?
It's nothing about...
I'm trying to remember, I'm trying to remember. What did we have? There definitely was a dessert.
What did we actually have?
Was he plant-based then?
No, I think we had, I think Ned's absolute favorite dessert,
favorite, favorite, favorite is apple crumble.
You had that as your?
We did, yeah, but we had a small wedding.
So you didn't have a wedding cake, that was your dessert?
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Oh no, actually, hold on, that's not true
because one of our guests, we did have an apple crumble, I remember that,
but one of our guests, actually the person who hosted us,
her father was a German baker, is a German baker,
and she said, I'm sorry, honey, you have to have a cake.
And so she did get us a cake, and I remember it being,
there was some chocolatey thing going on with that. It was some kind of a chocolate cake. I do remember it being, there was some chocolatey thing going on with that.
It was some kind of a chocolate cake.
I do remember it being delicious,
but it wasn't massive, it was just a cake.
You know, it was just a single layer, lovely cake.
We didn't have lots of people, so it was just small.
Are you getting your 10 year old to eat chickpeas?
Is he eating chickpeas?
Hummus.
Mm, clever.
He's always eaten hummus, thank goodness.
Last supper, starter, main, pud, drink of choice.
Oh my goodness.
Last supper.
I have to be honest, I'm an enormous fan
of a really well-made Caesar salad
with a lot of Parmesan, a lot of garlic and exceptional croutons.
Where's the best Caesar salad you've ever had? Could you, would it be one that you've made or had in France?
I have made Caesar salad many times.
Anchovy in the dressing? And chavino? No, not anymore because of the plant-based. But the best Caesar salad I've
ever had, I have to be completely honest. I think it's probably at the Covent Garden
Hotel in London. They do a really terrific Caesar salad.
Good to know.
Yeah. And if ever it's not as good as the one I had before when I've been there.
You'll tell them.
Well, I don't tell them, but I'm quietly like,
oh, that's a shame.
I love that Caesar salad.
I love the coconut milk.
And then I have to order chips to make up for it.
It's gorgeous.
Yeah.
Maine.
I do love an incredible Thai curry.
A really properly good one.
Very coconut milky, really lovely and spicy. I do, I do love a good Thai curry. A really properly good one. Very coconut milky, really lovely and spicy.
I do, I do love a good Thai curry.
With tofu?
Uh, no, just with loads of veg.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, with loads and loads of veg.
I'm not a huge tofu fan actually.
I kind of try and make it work in my life.
Do you?
But, it's not very sexy, is it?
It's not sexy. But I've found a way to make it
very sexy. I actually make a really really good scrambled tofu. Okay. Hit me. Okay so
a really great scrambled tofu because it's very easy to get this wrong and when it goes
wrong it really is not nice. Yes. So the crucial thing with scrambled tofu is you have to get
quite a firm, you have to start with quite a firm block.
It can't be medium soft or,
and it certainly can't be silken.
Silken, silken is the one that you use for desserts.
Silken is better in desserts.
I've learned that.
The hard way.
Yeah.
So scrambled tofu, you'd soften half an onion
or a whole onion, but so that it doesn't catch,
you would just soften that with some olive oil and clove
or two of garlic or not, if you don't want the garlic.
And then once you've squeezed as much water as you can out
of the tofu, you just break it all up and crumble it all in
and whiz it around a little bit and sprinkle on there
probably about a quarter of a teaspoon of turmeric.
You don't want too much turmeric,
you want enough that it makes it yellow but not too much that you can overly taste the turmeric.
So mix that in. Then you have this lovely kind of yellowy crumbled up tofu. It looks, starts to
resemble scrambled eggs slightly. And then I put in about a half a cup of marigold stock powder.
You know marigold stock?
Yeah.
Comes in the tub, big fan of marigold stock.
So there's the purple one,
which has got slightly less salt in it.
Okay.
So I use that one, put about a half a teaspoon
of the powder into a cup, fill it to sort of a halfway mark,
just a mug, whatever, mix it around.
And I pour that over the whole thing
and just let it cook a bit so the liquid reduces
but it just puts a little bit more flavor into the tofu.
And then when it's cooked,
I stir through about a tablespoon of nutritional yeast.
And then I will also use, if I can be bothered actually,
Kalanamak, which is a black salt, which you buy.
Never heard of it.
You've never heard of Kalanamak?
No.
So it's Kalanamak, so it's a black salt. which you buy. Never heard of it. You've never heard of calinamic? No. So it's calinamic, so it's a black salt.
Spill it for me.
I think it's K-A-L-A-N, separate word, N-A-M-A-K.
But you can buy, it's best if you buy it in its rock form
and it looks like little sort of tiny pieces of,
I almost want to say like just little stones really.
Little sort of glassy looking black stones.
And you just take one of those black stones and you just take just take
one of those little stones and either just bash it around with a rolling pin
or if you've got a pestle and mortar just whiz it up in that and it smells of
egg it's got a sulfuric sort of a smell. You're not selling this to me. No but
when you put it on the smell of it is like no that smells like sulfur but when
you put it all over the tofu it gives it a slightly eggy flavor.
Who taught you that?
Me, I taught myself that.
I figured that one out.
I was like, I'm sure that weird eggy salt stuff would work,
but it's actually, it's completely delicious.
But that's why you've got to be careful
with how much, with using the low salt marigold stock,
because otherwise it all ends up being too salty.
She's an amazing chef, I know that.
You are.
I know, I love, I really do love cooking.
I love cooking, I love caring for people with my food.
I take my own food to work.
I just, I don't like having to ask people to get me food.
You know, there's always-
So you bring a salad and a box.
I will take my own food, yeah, all of it,
breakfast, everything. And it's it's not because I don't trust
an on-set caterer, because film caterers
are always incredible, yeah, it's fantastic.
But I just know that I have to eat at funny times,
and I don't wanna then have to say,
oh, they finished cooking, okay, well,
well, maybe could they make me,
I hate having special treatment, it's just not how I am.
So I just rather do it myself.
Is that why you held your breath
for like seven and a half minutes?
Yeah, yeah.
Because you just didn't want to be a pain
and then you had to do loads of things on Avatar.
Well, I just didn't want my stunt double to have to do it,
so I had to learn to do it myself.
Can I just say-
Selfless.
Can I just tell you,
I went out on Saturday night
to your favorite restaurant, Gocconi,
and I had a fabulous salad that was cream tofu
with peaches and micro basil and it was absolutely wow. That's silk and tofu that she made. But it
was whipped. And it was just like a creamy, almost looked like yoghurt on the bottom and then
grilled peaches with little micro basil. Oh yum there's a dish that
my my son my older son makes with peaches he just does griddled peaches
with cucumber matchsticks all in a little pile with burrata just split on the top
with basil leaves scattered all over and a little bit of chilli oil. It is absolutely
delicious with a little bit of toasted sour. It's absolutely delicious with a little bit of
toasted sourdough or something. Have you got any plans to work with your daughter again? With mother and daughters you see?
Not at the moment, but I mean I'd love to. That was a wonderful project. Oh, thank you very much. She's so extraordinary.
I'm incredibly proud of her.
Not at the moment, but I sort of feel like
we probably will do something together again one day.
Yeah, she's a pretty powerful one, that one.
Were you ever tempted to say, don't go into showbiz?
No. Was it, no?
No. Okay.
No. I always knew she was gonna do it.
Really? Yeah, completely.
I think you do with your children.
You know, you sort of kind of get a feel for at least what they're going to be into from
I think when they're quite young. Oh no, I always, I always hear. So you've got a fantastic
voice. Oh thank you. Have you done musical theatre? Well you could get the EGOT if you
do Tony. Jess has worked it out, yes. What if, also, we have a lot of queer fans
and it's a big tune.
That's bizarre.
Okay, move on.
I would, you know, I absolutely, I do love singing.
You've got a great voice.
Thank you. Gorgeous voice.
Thank you, I do love singing.
I'd have to, I don't know,
I was never sort of properly trained in anything actually.
But I would love to really learn properly
how to use my voice.
It's time to go and get that Tony.
Yeah, but I don't have to sing to get a Tony, do I?
Yeah, but I feel like you should just do like double,
double, like you're a triple threat,
do you know what I mean? You can do everything. Double down on it and sing and act. Would you want to do like double, double, like you're a triple threat, do you know what I mean?
Double down on it and sing and act.
Would you want to do a musical theatre?
I mean, I know theatre, yes, but musical theatre, please, Kate?
I think it's really hard to do musical theatre for a sustained period of time.
Yeah.
That's the one thing I would say.
And so I think now being, you know, I'm gonna be 50 next year. So, you know, there are things that I would have
to really take care of and work on so that I could sustain.
It's a little bit like anything.
Like when you go into filming something,
you sort of mentally, physically prepare yourself
in terms of just making sure that you're healthy,
rested, whatever, so that you can take anything on
because it is like running a marathon.
And I feel like there would be a different set of skills
and a different type of preparation
that would go into preparing for musical theater.
And I always really admire actors who can sing
and performers who can dance, just dancers.
I mean, they're just incredible.
The stamina, the physical
commitment that you make to a performance at that level is really
something, it's something completely different. So it isn't, I'd have to
honestly work out if I could because I don't know really. So if you could, which would be the musical theatre show?
Are you into musical theatre? We are. We are you see. I do love musical theatre. So which is your favourite?
Which role would you see yourself playing?
Well, when I was little, I always wanted to be Sandy in Greece.
I think we can aim.
But now that I'm older, now that I'm older,
I just, I think I can still be Sandy.
You've got the leather trousers on.
I have got the leather trousers.
Yeah, I have got the leather trousers.
I definitely haven't got the physique or the voice.
But I think, I don't know.
I don't know what I'd like to play.
Why am I still eating and you both finished?
Because you've been chatting.
Oh.
But, more about food.
We need to get your pudding.
But there's a scene in the film where Lee is quite
frustrated, stuck at home, cooking.
Apparently Lee Miller was a good cook.
Lee was an exceptional cook, yes.
She loved to cook and host and feed
and welcome and celebrate.
I mean, there are so many pictures of her in the archive
where she's clearly a couple of bottle of wines in
and they've had a wonderful feast
and they're all relaxing around a table.
But in her kitchen, which is preserved as her kitchen,
there is all of her old pots and pans,
all her old utensils, all her old spices,
some of which apparently have got things like arsenic in
so you can't even open the lid.
But it's all still there.
And I spent a good deal of time in that kitchen,
first of all doing
research like we would actually use it as our research business, very much so I'm
very close with Anthony yeah and I've spent a lot of time with him and I've
had meals in that kitchen that I would often I would know that I was going to
Farley's which is the the museum and archive and it's where Lee and Roland
lived and it's actually where Lee died and Tony runs the archive and it's where Lee and Roland lived, and it's actually where Lee died. And Tony runs the archive,
and it's an internationally recognized art archive.
But we would sit in the kitchen,
and that is where we would work.
And I would always bring the food,
because I know I was going there for a whole day,
and I think, oh God, I don't want them worrying and fussing.
So I would always take like a huge stew,
or a soup, or something.
Tony is actually vegan, and has been for quite some time,
and his wife is also vegan. has been for quite some time and his wife
is also vegan. And so I would just take things which I realised over time was probably exactly
what Lee would have done too. And there was something amazing about bringing my food into
her space. I always would think to myself, oh I hope she doesn't mind me bringing my
food into her kitchen. Because she was very much a, you know,
she was the cook and the maker.
She would have suggested different seasoning.
Oh, definitely.
But she would have also made dishes
and given them kind of rude names.
So there's a collection of her recipes
and her granddaughter, Amy Buhasan,
very recently created a recipe book of all of her things.
And there are recipes in there such as cauliflower breasts
and the green bitch,
which is a particularly fiery guacamole.
So Lee's sense of humor and sense of whimsy
came through in her food and she would create
these kind of surrealist style dinners for people.
And she had wanted to go on a cruise.
There was a competition, an open-faced sandwich competition,
and the prize was a Teas Made and two tickets
on a Norwegian cruise liner, and she won.
She was delighted. She won the Teas Made.
I love a Teas Made.
What's a Teas Made?
It makes your tea in your bedroom.
You plug it in and the water boils.
You can set the alarm.
Fantastic.
The water boils and which work with a cup of tea.
Yeah, I remember my parents being given a tea made.
Yeah, my parents were given one.
Yeah, amazing.
What was her open sandwich that she did?
I can't remember, but it would have been very elaborate.
I can tell you that.
Did you feel like you almost were her,
but you feel so kind of committed to her,
that you inhabited her?
Honestly, when you play someone who not only really existed,
but who has left someone behind in her son, Anthony,
I felt enormous responsibility to Anthony,
not just to tell the kind of story
that he was hoping to see made into a film about his mother.
Because many people have tried to make this film before,
across a number of years.
There were lots and lots of screenplays
that were sent to Tony.
And I said to him, why didn't you make any of those?
He said, they just never really quite got her.
And so he, luckily for us, loves the film
and is extremely appreciative of the type of story
that we're telling, because he also feels
that it was by far her most defining decade.
And it's the time in her life
when she was her most dynamic as well.
But yes, when you play someone who really existed,
there is an odd thing that does happen sometimes,
especially when you know a certain situation existed
and you're recreating it or you're tasked
with recreating a scenario or a photograph
and how that might have been taken.
A huge amount of care and thought goes into that.
And you have to be incredibly respectful
of how those people would have lived at that time
and how you wish for them to be represented.
And I just feel an overwhelming thing of,
oh my God, I really hope I don't fuck this up.
So there are moments when you sort of cross over into,
you know, a sort of a slightly frightening territory
actually, where you feel a little bit possessed and and the summer we did get a bit of that on Lee.
Yeah. Will it be in cinemas? Yes. It will. So it's not just going to be exclusively on Sky?
No, so it is released on September 13th in cinemas and then 40 days later it
starts streaming on Sky. Okay. Yeah. I want to hear what you think about that aubergine.
Yeah, here I go.
I haven't eaten the aubergine yet.
It's so delicious.
Do you like it?
I love everything that they do, but this is...
Delicious.
I reckon this is one for Ned.
Oh my God.
It's good, isn't it?
It's gorgeous, isn't it?
Now...
What do you think's in it?
She's thinking how she can really hear that at home.
I'm trying to figure out what's in it.
Okay, so this is not guacamole, you guys.
This is like either a pea puree or a broad bean puree.
Tahini.
There is a lot of tahini in there.
They used a lot.
Is there zuke in there?
I would actually say there's a little bit
too much tahini in there and not quite enough sharp.
They needed a little bit of lime in that.
Yeah.
Well, there was lime.
Do you want to say lime didn't put it on?
Yeah, I do.
Get the last bit out. Did they give us lime? Yeah. That they intended there was a bit of lime. Do you want to feel it? Yeah I do.
Get the last bit out.
Did they give us lime?
Yeah.
That they intended for us to put the lime on there?
I'm telling you they did.
No that's mine.
I think maybe, Kate, maybe, get in the way of your Great British Menu.
No.
You could be a judge on Bloody MasterChef.
Oh I'd love to.
I think she would love to maybe.
Oh I'd love to.
I love MasterChef.
I love Bake Off. Me too. Love all of it. Me too. to maybe do it. Oh, I'd love to. I love MasterChef. I love Bake Off.
Me too, me too. Love all of it.
Love all of it.
My cousin went into labour watching Bake Off.
She was like, it's the only thing I could do.
She was just swaying from side to side watching Bake Off.
I love my favourite Greek British menu.
Because they're professional chefs, they're fabulous.
And they compete with each other
and they make the most extraordinary food.
Oh yeah, the lime, the lime, that's come really come alive.
The lime is liming.
Want a bit more then?
No, no, I'm absolutely fine, thank you very much.
Last question before you go and do pudding.
And your nostalgic taste from,
well it can be happy or sad,
a nostalgic taste that can transport you back somewhere.
Okay, so this is really sharing.
Never, ever, ever, ever, ever revealed this before.
So, I love ice cream,
but I don't eat it very often
because I just know it's not gonna be nice.
I only wanna have it if it's really amazing,
great ice cream.
So, my mum's favourite ice cream
was rum and raisin and I would for years I would hear her say oh I'll just have a
little scoop of rum and raisin and I think oh that sounds terrible and when I
was a teenager I finally said what is all this rum and raisin lark and I
tasted the rum and raisin ice cream and I could not believe how delicious it was.
On the day my husband Ned proposed to me,
and I had no idea he was going to,
we went for an incredible walk,
and we got to a cafe at the end,
and they had proper, beautiful clotted cream ice cream,
and they had rum and raisin.
And I had rum and raisin on the day
that my husband proposed to me.
And now our 10-year-old gets such a kick out of that story.
He's like, mom, you've got to have it.
You had it on the day dad proposed.
You've got to have it and you've got to.
It's not an option.
You have to have it, have to have it.
And I'm like, yes, I do.
I'll have it.
So do you have it every anniversary?
Whenever, yes, I definitely have it.
Whenever you see it.
Yeah, whenever I see it now.
And yes, every anniversary.
You're going to be inundated with rum and raisins
through your post.
But the secret is to soak the raisins in the rum.
Exactly.
Not to add the rum to the ice cream.
Thank you for that story.
You're welcome.
Next time I eat rum and raisin, I shall think of you.
Amen.
Yeah, we will, definitely.
And thank you so much for eating with us
and being such a wonderful guest.
It's a pleasure.
An absolute pleasure.
I normally eat quite quickly.
Do you want to have a little doggy bag for later?
Can I just say I'm so relieved I haven't had to cook for you.
I know how great a cook you are.
But I know that feeling actually of sometimes it is a kind of relief.
But sometimes isn't it lovely not to have to cook.
I do cook every single day and yeah it's such a joy when someone else is doing it.
Yeah, and I think that you are such, you sound such an exceptional cook.
Oh no I'm not, I'm honestly not.
No I think you are.
No I'm not, I just know how to cook plants really well.
Okay, thank God.
Thank God, otherwise they'd all go starvel.
Thank you so much.
Pleasure.
And good luck with the family, good luck with it go travel. Thank you so much. Pleasure. And good luck with the family.
Good luck with it all.
Oh, thank you so much.
My pleasure.
Well, that was glorious. She's so gorgeous.
She's so gorgeous. And lovely.
I can't believe you didn't notice her leather trousers.
First thing I saw when she walked in.
I was too busy looking at her beautiful face.
And then she said that she couldn't play Sandy and I thought she got the leather trousers.
I don't know if, well you wouldn't have heard this but we just did the photo and she said,
and I was putting on a bit of lippy and she just went, oh can I borrow it?
And I was like, yeah you bloody can.
I felt like I'm in a club with Kate Winslet in the blues and we're going to be best rates.
She is a serious cook darling.
Oh yeah.
I am so relieved we weren't cooking for her.
But I think she would have loved it if we'd cooked.
Yeah but I don't know, I could have done it, darling. I have got a packet of nutritional yeast still though,
in the house, and some marigold.
We're going to put up that recipe for the seeded loaf.
Have you got it?
She said it all.
She said the temperature, she said how long.
Yeah, you're going to have to write it out.
We're going to write it up, and you can all-
But you didn't get quantities.
Oh, sure. Okay. Just write it up but you didn't get quantities. Oh shit.
Okay just try it. I think it would be a cup of seed, lots of seeds. I don't know.
I think like, I think it's gonna be okay. But was there any flour in there? That's a really good point.
Maybe we need to get some of it. Yeah, will you ask someone to ask her? I'm sure she'll give it. I'll just run down the corridor and
interrupt an interview that she's doing right now for the for the measurements And thank you so much Kate Winslet for coming on
She's really a
National treasure isn't she? She's amazing
And she spoke so passionately about Lee Miller and it seems
Well, she's done complete justice and she's both passionately about food darling. I know
Yeah She's done complete justice. And she's both passionate about food, darling. I know. Yeah.
She cooks every day, a woman after my own heart.
Brings her own packed lunch to the set.
I'm going to try and do that in the studio this week.
That's it.
I'm going to be more Kate this week.
OK, I've got a lot in my fridge you can take home with you.
Perfect.
Thank you, Kate Winslet.
And we will be back in a few weeks for the return of Table Mammers.
But we hope you appreciated this special nugget to tease you before we start Season 17 with an absolute bang. As women, our life stages come with unique risk factors, like when our estrogen levels
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Know your risks.
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