exercise in good taste.
For example, let’s talk about her vinegar. “I’ve tried and tried,”
she tells me, “to find a great wine vinegar, but I still haven’t.” Her
solution? She makes her own in a wooden barrel that sits on the
floor near a window. “You start with a vinegar mother and then
add wine to it. At the end of a dinner party, if you have wine left
over, you just pour it into the vinegar barrel.”
The resulting vinegar, which I taste on a simple salad that
Waters makes with purple carrots, celery, and radish, is positively
haunting, it’s so good. I say “haunting” because hours later, when I
journey back to San Francisco, I can’t get the taste of that vinegar
out of my head. It has all the complexity of a great wine—which,
when you think about it, makes sense because it’s made with great
wine.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. All of her vegetables—
shallots, avocados, turnips, jalapeños, radishes—come from the
farmer’s market, and they’re piled up in authentic straw baskets
from Africa. The eggs are fresh, organic, and pasture-raised (“Find
a farmer you trust,” Waters advises); her olive oil comes from
Stephen Singer, her ex-husband, who imports it from Tuscany. She
pours some into a wineglass and we both taste it. “It burns the
back of your throat,” she points out. “And it’s full and rich and
coats your mouth.”
Even when Waters makes something as simple as cheese tacos
(the second dish she teaches me), she uses the best ingredients.
The tortillas are stone-ground handmade organic tortillas from