Food & Entertaining A Taste of Home Food columnist Emma Waverman and her mom, Lucy Waverman, share a menu of flavourpacked autumn recipes.

FOR ME, THE SCENT of a bubbling pot of chicken stock is the smell of home. I grew up in a house where food was the language of love, and where the preparation and presentation of meals was the lifeblood of family connection. So, naturally, my most enduring memories of childhood are in the kitchen. The taste of a slice of roast beef straight from the oven with crackling bathed in mustard and rosemary is as associated with family celebration as candles on a cake.

My mother, Lucy Waverman, is the third generation in a family that has made food the centre of their professional lives, which, in turn, made it the heart of their personal ones, too. Her grandmother, Sophie Geneen, ran the only kosher hotel and restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland, and her mother, Pearl Geneen, owned the (much-missed) eclectic kitchen store The Compleat Kitchen in Yorkville, Toronto. My mom’s by-the-numbers bio is that she’s the author of 10 bestselling cookbooks, has had a food column in The Globe and Mail for 25 years and, for 20 years, ran a cooking school. But the larger influence she’s had over generations of home cooks is harder to quantify. I, too, am involved in food media as a writer, cookbook co-author and a columnist on CBC Radio.

Some families have precious heirlooms or cottage properties that tie them together. Our family has a love of flavour. At our table, we talk about the flavour profiles of a hot sauce, or the complexity of a grass-fed steak. When my mother and I travel together, we search for flavours that teach us about the culture and history of the place, flavours which often shock us with their intensity.

My mother can still recall the taste of her grandmother’s chicken soup. While Sophie would not have used the word umami to describe the flavours, my mom talks about the savoury taste as if it was a gourmet dish.

1. Lucy Waverman teaching a BBQ session, a popular class at her home-based cooking school, circa-1990. 2. The publicity photo for mom’s bestselling cookbook (and still a family favourite) Fast & Fresh in 1991. 3. Sisters Katie and Emma Waverman clowning around in the kitchen in the ’80s. 4. The staff ready for service at Geneen’s Hotel and Restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland, 1936.

5. Pearl Geneen demonstrating in her tiny kitchen that produced miracles, undated.

In a way, she’s still chasing that perfect balance that’s frozen in her memory, like many home cooks. We are all burdened with that weight, knowing it’s impossible to recreate a memory’s favourite dish. That said, the lessons we learned in our family’s kitchens have infused themselves into the way we season and approach our cooking, and the foods we love to eat.

In our family, we want full flavour in everything we serve. But that doesn’t mean we’re always looking to the spice rack. Sometimes it’s a cooking method, like a braise that coaxes out the rich, earthy flavours we love. Sometimes, it’s including an unexpected ingredient in a dish, like adding cheddar cheese to an apple pie crust that boosts the umami of the dessert, or creating a quick pickle so we get texture and flavour. This is not to say that every dish we create is complicated and fussy. We love a simple soup that recalls the warm flavours of an autumn day or an oozy fresh cheese accompanied by salty and bitter vegetables.

When we’re planning meals, we often approach it flavour first. What flavour do we feel like eating? Something earthy and comforting? Or something naturally sweet or spicy to shock us into the moment? All food has a flavour profile at its core, such as sweet, earthy, salty or spicy. It sounds simple, but defining a dish by its central flavour can help focus the dish and help find the right balance of accompaniments. Our menu hits on all our favourite autumn tastes, using recipes from the bestselling cookbook The Flavour Principle by Lucy Waverman and Beppi Crosariol. Fall is our favourite season for cooking and eating because we can enjoy the bounty of our local harvests and the sweet, salty, earthy and umami flavours of the cooler season.