Apply the adage which suggests wine makers produce wine in their image (a big hairy Australian will make a big hairy vino, as one supplier puts it) to cooking and it is easy to work out that the fare at The River Cafe in London is clean, crisp and ultra sophisticated. Enviably stylish, Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers exude the kind of calm serenity not seen among the current breed of celebrity chefs. Launching their third book, River Cafe Cook Book Green, recently, they wear almost matching expressions of quiet confidence as they take people through their own brand of Italian cuisine.
Theirs is a simple philosophy, they tell you, standing on the balcony of Robbie Millar's Shanks restaurant near Bangor, Co Down. On the day, the sun shines and the only sound is the clinking of glasses and the phut of golf balls across the Clandeboye Estate. River Cafe Cook Book Green is mainly about vegetables and how to source them, treat them and, eventually, cook them. "If you cook vegetables, fruits and herbs at their peak, you will inevitably enjoy them more," says Gray. Which is why, this time, the recipes are divided not just seasonally but by the months when the pair say specific vegetables are best used for specific recipes: Bay and Red Mullet Tagliarini (February); Pea and Mint Torte (June); and Pear, Honey and Polenta Cake (October). The best ingredients for August, according to Rogers and Gray, are cannellini beans, marjoram, sweet peppers, raspberries and swiss chard.
The women are in Co Down for a promotional dinner for a group of Millar's friends, customers, journalists and representatives of the book trade. Rather less successfully, they are also trying to encourage the people of Northern Ireland to gather stinging nettles and wild mushrooms for recipes featured in the book. "We want people to be a little more adventurous," says Gray, busily trading herb-growing tips with guests at the dinner.
Millar is an ex-employee of the River Cafe and is delighted to share his kitchen with two of the e's cafe's 17 chefs. "We do very much more classical style and more of the preparation is done in the afternoon," he explains. "In the River Cafe it is last-moment cooking, there is no better way . . . but when you run the type of place I do, you can't cook lobsters and shell them and all the rest at the last minute. So the River Cafe is much more natural but if you are not used to that it can be a bit hectic." For their part, the River Cafe creators are impressed with the "clean architecture, no fuss, simple cutlery and nice glasses" in Shanks. "We have an affinity with Robbie," says Gray, a founder member of this mutual admiration society.
Rogers returns to their favourite subject, how to make the most of vegetables in season. "The book is about a way of cooking them, the approach to buying them and choosing them and respecting them and knowing about them, and with the book we want to take you through that process. The whole thing with our books is that we really try to inform, so that every picture is there for a reason . . . most important is the seasonality, so we divided recipes into 12 months, not just four seasons".
Jamie Oliver, the television chef, was discovered while working at the River Cafe. At his wedding recently, he described Rose Gray as his inspiration. "He is a lovely boy," smiles Gray.
Those who can just about manage the Naked Chef's recipes may find River Cafe Cook Book Green slightly more daunting and some of the more obscure ingredients more difficult to source. It's all very well for the River Cafe women, they have an organic garden where leaves such as purslane, cicoria and trevise grow, but these are hardly items going to be stocked at your local supermarket. And try asking for borlotti beans or marsh samphire down at the greengrocer. But, the way Rogers and Gray tell it, making the effort to source the best ingredients is part of the pleasure. They certainly make the effort to come up with the recipes, scouring Italy for new food ideas on regular trips abroad.
"What I like about Italians and their sharing of things is that one will tell you one way, that absolutely: `This is the way it is done in Italy', and then you go to another village down the road they will tell you something completely different," says Rogers.
A case in point are the Bellinis being handed to guests as they arrive. "I spied this bar-tender in Venice the other week and he was kind of annoyed at first, but there was no-one else in the bar, and he showed me the way he made them," says Rogers. Faced with the passion of these two chefs, it seems there are no food or drink secrets safe in Italy. Pucker, as one ex-employee might say.
River Cafe Cook Book Green by Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers is published by Ebury Press, price £30 in UK
Spaghetti with peppers and tomatoes
4 peppers red and/or yellow, grilled
1kg ripe tomatoes, skinned, hard cores discarded
400g spaghetti
Olive oil
6 garlic cloves, peeled,
3 finely chopped
6 salted anchovies, roughly chopped
2 dried chillies, crumbled
Maldon salt and freshly ground black pepper
50g salted capers, prepared
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 ciabatta loaf, bottom crust removed
3 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
Heat three tablespoons of olive oil in a large, thick-bottomed saucepan, add the chopped garlic and cook briefly until light brown. Add the anchovies and chilli, stir to blend, then add the tomatoes and one large teaspoon of salt. Simmer, stirring occasionally, for 30 minutes. Add the capers. Peel the peppers, discard the skins and seeds and roughly chop the flesh. Add to the tomato sauce. Mix together and add the vinegar.
Tear the ciabatta into pieces and pulsechop to coarse breadcrumbs in the food processor. Heat 100 ml olive oil in a small pan. When hot, not smoking, add the whole garlic, turn the heat down and cook until the garlic browns. Discard the garlic. Add the breadcrumbs to the flavoured oil, stir and cook for two to three minutes until crisp. Drain on kitchen paper.
Bring a large saucepan of boiling water to the boil, add the spaghetti and cook until al dente. Drain and add to the sauce. Stir in the parsley, test for seasoning and serve sprinkled with breadcrumbs. Serves six.
Raspberry and lemon sorbet
800 g of fresh ripe raspberries
1 whole thick-skinned lemon, washed
350-400g caster sugar (depending on the sweetness of the raspberries)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Cut the whole lemon into 1cm pieces and remove any pips. Put the pieces into a food processor with the caster sugar and blend until the lemon and sugar have combined to a thick puree. Little pieces of lemon skin should still be visible. Add the raspberries and continue to blend until combined. Add the lemon juice, then taste and add more juice if necessary. The lemon flavour should be intense, but it must not overpower the raspberries.
Pour into an ice-cream machine and churn for 20 minutes. Remove to the freezer and allow to get stiffer before serving. Alternatively, pour the mixture into flat freezing-trays and freeze until solid, stirring to break up the crystals every half hour (about 1 1/2 hours).