A TASTE OF ‘HOME’
ALICE WATERS’ DAUGHTER FANNY SINGER OFFERS
“When I was going through the universal experience of being a teenager, I couldn’t quite hear my mom talk to me. (But) she always showed me her unconditional love and support through food. She would make my lunch every day. She would always insist on sitting down at the table together with the family in the evening.” — Fanny Singer
Fanny Singer’s new memoir, “Always Home: A Daughter’s Recipes and Stories,” recounts her life as Alice Waters’ daughter. Below, Waters and a young Fanny share a laugh at Waters’ iconic Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley.
Fanny Singer has never been too far from her legendary mother, Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters. Right now, they’re closer than ever, sheltering in place at Waters’ Berkeley home — but they’ve always been connected by their shared love of cooking and food.
In her new memoir, “Always Home: A Daughter’s Recipes & Stories” (Knopf, $35), Singer, 36, recalls her childhood, growing up around the Chez Panisse kitchen and Waters’ always-burning fireplace. It’s a love letter, of sorts, from a daughter to her famous mother — but one with mouthwatering recipes.
Naturally, we had questions for Singer.
Q
What are your earliest memories of the Chez Panisse kitchen?
A
I just remember always feeling so familiar with that flow. I’ve heard stories of me as a 3- or 4-year-old, getting carried around by the maitre d’. The pastry chef would put frozen raspberries on my fingers for me to eat. There was a sense of home.
I didn’t realize how meaningful (Chez Panisse) was as an institution on a national and international scale until much later in my life. When I was outside of Berkeley, outside of California, if my mom and I were eating at a restaurant in New York, the staff would sort of be losing their mind that she was there. Q What was it like at home?
A
She maintained an almost miraculous work-life balance. Even though she was working like crazy, she was always present at home.
(Food and cooking are) a way of communicating how you feel about someone, without doing it verbally. There’s a kind of care taking — and it’s not necessarily something that you have to do perfectly. When I was going through the universal experience of being a teenager, I couldn’t quite hear my mom talk to me. (But) she always showed me her unconditional love and support through food. She would make my lunch every day. She would always insist on sitting down at the table together with the family in the evening.
Q
Did you grow up eating only perfect peaches and impeccably roasted chickens? Or did you ever rebel and get a Big Mac? A There was no rebellion, honestly. It’s not that I didn’t eat a Mcnugget or anything. As a kid, I used to love the taste of cookie dough. Who doesn’t? I even made a batch of cookies to eat some dough last week because I was craving it so bad.
(But) If someone is making you really delicious, but also very nutritious food, you don’t rebel. Your body wants to eat it.
And it was never really about perfection. We’d eat funky little peaches grown by the farmer up in Sonoma. There was never any kind of preciousness around things. We talked a lot about the term “terroir” — it’s not just birth or territory, but years of knowledge of how to grow things. We’ll be in France or Italy or somewhere where certain products like a grape or almond have been grown for so long that they have distinct, indelible flavor. I was very lucky to be the beneficiary of that.
Q What are your favorite go-to recipes?
A (Making) pancakes from scratch wasn’t something we did a lot as a family. I think my mom kind of imagined that making pancakes was as complicated as baking. Our dear family friend, Sharon Jones, has a simple buttermilk pancake recipe, essentially a cup of buttermilk, a cup of flour, some butter and an egg. So I make all kinds of pancakes with whole-grain flour. I’ll just whip up a simple, perfect pancake on the weekends.
I think the (recipes) I find truly indispensable and take your cooking from a B+ to an A are a really good vinaigrette and salsa verde. I use them all the time. We make a garlic vinaigrette once or twice a day. Salsa verde is a sauce with a bunch of herbs, minced garlic, chili, lemon zest, olive oil and lemon juice. It’s the thing that will make anything taste better.
Q What recipe from your book reminds you most of home?
A
The first that comes to mind is the “egg in a spoon” (an egg cooked over an open flame in the fireplace). The fireplace is reliably going throughout the year.
The other is my mom’s chicken broth. She’ll make a chicken stock almost as aromatherapy, whenever we are in a new place or have been gone for a while. I feel like we’ve been making stock every other day here in Berkeley.
I’ve been making zero-waste veggie stock (with) trimmings, carrots, radishes or some lettuce that’s wilted with some herbs, peppercorns, garlic and onion. You get some delicious veggie broth. It’s an echo of my mom’s chicken broth, but it’s all just about having something on the stove nightly.
There’s something so comfortable about the smell of veggies and chicken broth and how homey it feels. It draws you into a space. A lot of it has to do with the sense of smell and how important that was for me growing up. The right smell can be a balm for our spirit.