From the Archive: Zoe Saldaña on Growing Up in Queens, Family Recipes & Why NYC Has the Best Pizza
Ruthie's Table 4
In this archival episode, Zoe Saldaña joins the host to discuss the profound connection between food, family, and identity. She recounts her
Key takeaways
- Zoe's technique for perfect rice involves sautéing rinsed rice in oil for two to three minutes before adding water.
- Caribbean soups often utilize 'provisions' such as yuca, ñame, and plantains alongside meats or seafood.
Main topics
- Caribbean culinary traditions
- Family heritage and ancestry
Notable quotes
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
Conclusion
The episode provides a heartwarming look at how culinary and artistic
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Speaker 2 (0:04) One of Zoe Saldana's mantras in life is feel the fear and do it anyway. And what hasn't she done? She dances, she acts, she sings, she speaks several languages, and I think she loves to cook. Imagine my surprise a couple of months ago in October, standing outside my office with laptop and cookbooks in hand, with a large sign on the door saying, do not disturb. And the reason for this wasn't a meeting with accountants or a broken radiator, but the fact that Zoe Saldana was changing into her dress for a lunch downstairs to celebrate the release of her brilliant new movie, Amelia Perez. After lunch, I took her hand and walked her to her car, talking about how to make the perfect rice. A few minutes later, we'd agreed to do a podcast together. And since then, it's been quite a time for Zoe. I've seen her everywhere, on screens, in newspapers, magazines, and posters. And I'm thrilled that last month she won a Golden Globe, and in February and March she's a contender for both a BAFTA and an Oscar. A lot has happened, and a lot is going to happen. But right now, what's happening is that Zoe is here with me on a Saturday morning in the River Cafe. It's our chance to sit down and talk about food, food and memories, food and family. No fear, just happiness. And love. Speaker 1 (1:28) That was so beautiful. Speaker 2 (1:31) Well, it's true. Thank you. It was such Speaker 1 (1:33) a Speaker 2 (1:33) quick meeting, wasn't Speaker 1 (1:34) it? Speaker 2 (1:34) It was. It was Netflix was giving you lunch. Do you remember it? Speaker 1 (1:38) Yeah. Speaker 2 (1:39) Yeah? And you Speaker 1 (1:39) just reminded me we were talking about rice. About making rice. Speaker 1 (1:46) We should have cooked rice today. Well, Speaker 2 (1:47) we Speaker 1 (1:47) did. We cooked some right now. Speaker 2 (1:49) To make the perfect rice. Speaker 1 (1:51) Tell Speaker 2 (1:51) me how you Speaker 1 (1:52) make it. What is the perfect rice? It's Speaker 2 (1:53) very Speaker 1 (1:53) simple. We saute our rice before we put the water in. So you put your pot on the stove. You wait for it to get nice and warm. Speaker 2 (2:02) You Speaker 1 (2:02) add the oil. Sometimes you can add the salt over the oil, or you can just wait until you put the rice, the washed rice, rinsed. You put your rinsed rice in it. You saute it for at least two to three minutes. Speaker 2 (2:15) Make Speaker 1 (2:16) sure that it's just, you know, it cooks a little bit. And then you put the water. So you wait for all that water to almost evaporate on very high heat. Speaker 2 (2:26) And Speaker 1 (2:27) then when it evaporates, then that's when you close your pot. And you then put the fire on simmer. For 20 Speaker 2 (2:35) to Speaker 1 (2:35) 30 minutes. Speaker 2 (2:35) With no liquid in there. No, Speaker 1 (2:37) because the rice has already soaked up all the water. The rice has expanded and it's nice and kind of fluffy, but it's still very, very ardente. And then you cover it and you allow its own steam to cook it all the way into its cellular sort of component. And then you can have your rice. Is Speaker 2 (2:58) it a certain type of rice or just a long grain like rice? Speaker 1 (3:01) A long grain. We don't necessarily cook with arborio unless we're making a soup that carries rice, like a porridge in it. And we do. In the Caribbean, we make a lot of soups. Every island has at least five or six soups. Tell me about soups. The divert from Speaker 2 (3:15) the rice to the soups. Speaker 1 (3:17) Well, we make soups with provisions, which are those root vegetables from yuca, ñame, jaudia. I don't know the names in English, so please forgive me. And then also with plantains. Some of them can have plantains and potatoes. Speaker 1 (3:35) You either choose what kind of meat, either it can be beef or pork or chicken. Sometimes you can also do a fish stew or a shrimp stew, a hard shell stew. And you cook all of those things down with really important greens that add so much flavor. And I think you guys use it a lot here in England, the culantro. It's a coriander, I believe it's called. Coriander, Speaker 2 (4:01) yeah. Which Speaker 1 (4:02) in Spanish we call it cilantro ancho Speaker 2 (4:05) because Speaker 1 (4:06) the cilantro that they use in Central and South America is the small-leaf one that looks really like a four-leaf clover. But the ones that we use in the Caribbean is the really long leaf that when you slap it and you sort of make, you know, you open up all of its, like, pores and you put it into water or your tea or a broth, it's the most... pungent, you know, smell and fragrance and taste. So that's how I grew up, just making stews of all type, soups. But they vary from the winter Speaker 2 (4:40) soups to the summer soups. We'll Speaker 1 (4:43) make soup on the hottest day of summer, and it's always summer in the Caribbean. But it cools you off as you're having something that's really hot and sometimes spicy. In the Dominican Republic, we're not really known for eating spicy, spicy food. You can, but it's not something that is innate in our culture. Like it would be, for instance, in Mexico. But we do a lot of soups. And when you're having your soup on a very hot day, it just compels you to cool off. You know, it's like having a hot tea. And I just love it. So it must have been quite... Speaker 2 (5:15) In many ways, your early childhood, which you were born in. I Speaker 1 (5:21) was born in New Jersey, Speaker 2 (5:21) Passaic, New Speaker 1 (5:22) Jersey. And I lived in New York because my family has been in New York since the 1960s. And I lived there until I was 10. And then when my father unexpectedly, just tragically died in a car accident at, he's 38, he was still a kid. Then we all. fly and we move to, you know, where they're from in Dominican Republic, which is where I'm from, you know, at the root of my origin. And it was beautiful. Dominican Republic and the Caribbean, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic used to be places that we used to go to. during the Christmas holiday, in the summers. Oh, I see. So you knew it. Speaker 2 (6:00) Of course we did. And Speaker 1 (6:01) you had Speaker 2 (6:01) family. Yes, and we Speaker 1 (6:03) spoke Spanish at the house, but you speak English already at school. So I'm very much a one-generation child in New York where you code switch automatically and you don't even know what that means. And you eat rice and beans with your grandparents on Sundays. I Speaker 2 (6:17) was going to Speaker 1 (6:17) ask you, did your Speaker 2 (6:18) grandparents live with you in New York? Yes, Speaker 1 (6:20) yes. Speaker 2 (6:20) So both sets? Yes, both sets. Did they go back with you when you went back? Speaker 1 (6:26) Yes. Well, growing up, I used to travel mainly with my grandparents. And that's, you know, in our culture. I guess that was their version of giving my parents a break. Speaker 2 (6:38) So Speaker 1 (6:38) for two weeks, they would fly with us ahead, two weeks in advance. We would sort of take it all in from the gaze of your grandparents, of your nonos, your abuelos. And then your parents would arrive with a great tan. They probably would go somewhere and reconnect. And two weeks later, we were all together. We would spend the whole summer in Dominican Republic. Speaker 2 (7:04) A lot of people that I talk to, especially from different cultures, different family groups, talk a lot about their grandparents, almost more about their grandparents cooking than their parents. And as a mother, and now I'm Speaker 1 (7:17) a Speaker 2 (7:17) grandparent, I was saying last night at dinner that I really noticed the difference. in the way that I cook for my children and the way I cook for my grandchildren. When you're cooking for your children, very often you're just trying to get food on the table because you've worked all day or, you know, you're going out that night or you want to see them, but there are more important things to do than to perhaps spend hours cooking for them. But when you're a grandparent, there's so much love. You just want to bring the culture. You want to cook the food that they'll remember. It's part of the memory. Do you feel that with your... Oh, my God, Speaker 1 (7:48) absolutely. What you're saying just makes me want to cry. I just... There's just so much love that my grandmother put in every dish that she would make. She was born Speaker 2 (7:57) where? Speaker 1 (7:58) My grandmother was born in Dominican Republic in 1935 under the dictatorship of Trujillo, dictator that... That was in power for over 30 years. She was born and she was raised under this dictatorship, got married, had her daughter, my mom. And then in 1961, after the assassination of this tyrant, they were granting passages, visas, work visas to Dominicans. And my grandmother was, I guess, in the first couple of waves of Dominicans that arrived in New York in 1961. And would later then, you know, populate that uptown region of Manhattan, which is now known as Washington Heights. Which is basically, you know, it's all very much, the biggest Dominican diaspora outside of the Dominican Republic is in Washington Heights and Manhattan. And my grandmother was one of those, I would say, first arrivers, you know, and worked. She was a seamstress, and she worked in factories and for some fashion houses throughout, you know, those first two decades of her life there. How old Speaker 2 (9:12) was her daughter? Speaker 1 (9:13) My mother must have been, my mom was born in 56, so she must have been five when my grandmother. arrived in New York, but my mother stayed behind with her grandparents, with my grandmother's parents in Santo Domingo. And then in the summer, she would go to New York and spend it with my grandmother until she was 14. And at that age, that's when my grandmother then moved my mom and her parents to New York. And by the time I was born and we were living in New York, my great-grandparents had already sort of flown and moved back and retired in the Dominican Republic, but they would always visit. So I remember every time they would visit, like every three months. We were a family that was always on a plane. And still today, I've always been on a plane. And they would open up the suitcases and they would bring from Dominican Republic like their plantains and their cheese. It's like we have a version of like a halloumi cheese that you fry. That is the most delicious thing. Tell Speaker 2 (10:09) me Speaker 1 (10:09) then. I like that cheese. It's Speaker 2 (10:12) just Speaker 1 (10:12) called queso frito. Yeah. And they call it queso frito. I don't know if it's called something else, but they would bring it, blocks of it, and at the moment she would open that suitcase and that cheese would pop out. She was immediately slicing it and throwing it in a hot sizzling pan. And then the salami. There was this company, and Dominican Republic is still there. It's one of the biggest salami companies. We eat a lot of... salami, but we fry our salami. We don't really eat it as a charcuterie, like cold and stuff. We can, but not this particular salami. This one is frito. This one is fried. And we would just eat that as a snack. And then the plantains where, you know, I think we've inherited the eating of plantains from our African sort of origins. And you boil the plantains and you mash them with butter and salt. And you eat them and they make it into like a paste and it's called like a mangu, which I know that in Africa, in certain countries, they call it like a fufu, right? But we call it mangu. And you put then the fried salami and the fried cheese and you grill some pickled onions over it. And we just... I'm starving here. I think we're all... The smell. Why don't Speaker 2 (11:24) we Speaker 1 (11:24) just go in the Speaker 2 (11:25) kitchen? Forget the interview. Let's do it. Let's do it. Speaker 1 (11:27) But the smell of that in our kitchen meant that, you know, Abuelita from Dominican Republic was in town. Speaker 2 (11:35) And Speaker 1 (11:36) we would, for the whole two weeks that she was visiting with us, my great-grandmother, we knew that we were going to eat well. And she would sometimes go to the markets. certain markets in Queens, or she would venture out and sometimes go out of their downtown to Manhattan or go to Brooklyn, and she would buy the coconuts, like really good coconuts that they would bring from the Caribbean. What would she do with coconut? Desserts. Desserts. All types of macaroons. And she would make like these biscuits that we call coconetes, and she would make those. Or she would grab a spoon, a very big spoon. My grandmother, my great-grandmother was a – You know, she was just like a very simple woman and there