with caution. There I would select a small wood-handled
paring knife and, standing on my tippy-toes, pull a small
plate down from the cabinet. The fact that she trusted me
to select and carry a dangerous object even when I was quite
small made this daily ritual exciting.
I would bring these things to where she was sitting in front
of the fire—always, always, that same warm seat—and she
would feel around the fruit bowl as if blindly feeling around
in the dark, selecting only the perfect pear or the best apple
or the sweetest fig. The finger-feel, the knowledge in her
fingertips, strikes me as singular, though I know
it is the gift of many chefs: determining the
difference between lusciously yielding flesh
and a fruit that is over the hill.
The best specimen would be chosen, and
then a period of readying it for the mouths of
family or guests would ensue. The time it took
her to perform this sacrament seemed eternal,
but in a pleasant way. She did (and still does)
many things very quickly, but here the moment
would elongate as she methodically relieved
a peach of its fuzzy sheath or shimmied a ripe
pear from its bitter, gritty skin. If the quality
of the selection was in any way in doubt, she
would sample it before giving it away. Oth-
erwise she would slice the thing into perfect
crescents and, depending on the company,
either directly put these fruit-moons in our
mouths (I, her primary beneficiary) or array
them on a plate to be passed around.
There is something almost outlandishly
generous about the act of offering away the
best of something rather than keeping it for
yourself. And yet it was always like that with
her: Whoever has the good fortune of sitting
at her side at a meal will be passed something
from her plate—but only if it’s so delectable
that it cannot be missed. She would allow
herself only a piece of the second-best peach,
the subpar pear, the plum that needed another
day, so that her company might taste the very
best fruit. It was like that with everything,
really: the perfect morsel of lobster claw slid from its pincer
shell. Anything that took effort, that might be messy, but
whose taste was a reward—she would do the dirty work and,
turning to me, give it away.Excerpted from the book Always Home © 2020 Fanny Singer.
Published by Knopf on March 31, 2020.mal impulse to be closer to the thing she was eating. Her
fingers told her what the mind and mouth would take lon-
ger to compute: Was a crust crunchy enough, was the fish
cooked through, was the salad amply or under-dressed?
Given my model, I had little chance to develop particularly
evolved table manners. I was freely permitted to consume
most things with my hands. I don’t think I was ever once told,
“Use your knife and fork!” A favorite finger food at Chez Panisse
was what I called “inside-out sandwiches,” in which I would
wrap several large, dressed lettuce leaves around a crusty crou-
ton to pop into my mouth. Some patrons, regardless of whether
they were aware that I was the proprietor’s daughter, looked
upon the scene in mild disgust. When my parents and I trav-
eled to France, where even pizza is consumed with fork and
knife, I was regarded as a feral child brought up by a pair of
Américains pitoyables (pitiful Americans).
The general climate of finger-eating in our household also
meant that, for example, not a single paper brought home
from school for my mom’s compulsory signature authoriz-
ing, say, a field trip would be returned to my school unmarred
by oil stains or a swarm of greasy fingerprints. This isn’t
much of a surprise, really, given that I once apprehended
my mother attempting to “dye” a pair of pants in a pot of
olive oil after having splattered them in an oleaginous con-
stellation the previous evening. The washing machine has
never recovered.
But if there is a portrait of my mother’s hands that is most
etched in my mind, it is the way she holds a piece of fruit
as she deftly slips the skin from its flesh. Our dining table,
next to the fireplace, has always had a bowl placed at its
center containing some variety of fruit. This constituted
dessert in our house. I can hear the phrase ringing in my
ears, almost incantatory: “Fan, can you get me a sharp knife
and a small plate, please?” And it would propel me across
the room to the knife drawer, which I knew to approachABOUT THE
AUTHOR
Fanny Singer is
a writer and a
cofounder
of Permanent
Collection, an
apparel and house-
wares line. She is
the author (with
her mother, Alice
Waters) of My
Pantry, as well as a
memoir, Always
Home, from which
this essay was
excerpted. She lives
in San Francisco.Opposite page: At a friend’s house in Bolinas,
California, Alice peels fruit. This page: Fanny
stokes the fire in the Provençal kitchen of
Lulu Peyraud, the 102-year-old winemaker
and longtime family friend.BOOK COVER COURTESY OF ALFRED A. KNOPFAPRIL 2020 REAL SIMPLE 750420GOO.V2.indd 75 FINAL 2/24/20 9:47 AM