Your Mama's Kitchen Episode 8: Matthew Broderick
TRANSCRIPT:
Audible Originals presents Your Mama's Kitchen, hosted by Michele Norris.
Matthew: She is chasing me, either with a knife or a scissors. Threatening to castrate me is what I would say is the actual event. And it's very hard for me to explain that in a way that doesn’t sound like child abuse, but it was not. I swear to God, I think everybody was laughing. I know it became a story that was never told. Is anything more than funny.
Michele: Welcome to Your Mama's Kitchen, the podcast that explores how we’re shaped as adults by the kitchens and some of the zany things we ate as kids.
For generations of Americans, Matthew Broderick will forever be known asFerris Bueller: the lovable slacker who inspired countless teens to play hooky and skip school since his film — Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was released in 1986. But Matthews Broderick’s career is so much wider than that. It has spanned decades, both on stage and on screen. He began his career on Broadway when he was still in his teens and he’s a two-time Tony award winner, known for his roles in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and the “The Producers,” and so much more. He has appeared in a slew of popular films, including War Games, The Freshman, Glory, Election and the remake of The Stepford Wives. And he's a prolific voice actor in animation. Yes! That was his voice as Simba in The Lion King and all those sequels. Most recently, he returned to the stage with his wife, Sarah Jessica Parker. They starred alongside one another in the Broadway production of the Neil Simon classic — “Plaza Suite.”
Matthew was born and raised in New York City, in a household of artists. His mother was a playwright and a painter, and his father was an actor, known for roles in films like Dog Day Afternoon and the ’70s-era TV show Family. In Matthew Broderick’s own family, the kitchen was where things happened. It was where friends gathered to read plays at the dinner table. It’s where family dramas—of the unscripted variety— played out with… intensity and theatrics.
In this episode, we learn how that little kitchen in his fifth floor apartment in New York City has shaped Matthew Broderick as a man and as an actor. We’ll serve up all that and more.
Michele: Matthew Broderick, I'm so glad to talk to you. Thanks so much for making time for us.
Matthew: Thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
Michele: This is a podcast that usually begins with an interesting question. We talk to people about the ways they are influenced by the food they ate as a young person, by the places where it was prepared or procured. You lived in New York all your life, right?
Matthew: Yeah, Greenwich Village. I was born on ninth Street and moved down to Waverly, which is really seventh Street. So I migrated to blocks when I was about four.
Michele: And you live not far from there now, right?
Matthew: No. I have now moved about four blocks west of that. And one or two.
Michele: People lived your life in a pretty tight circle.
Matthew: Yeah, I lived in Soho for a little while and even L.A. for a week. One middle year.
Michele: Living, you know, a year in L.A. can feel like a week.
Matthew: Or ten years. But and I loved it, actually. But I really do live very close to where I grew up.
Michele: Well, let's talk about where you grew up. What do you remember about that kitchen? What did it look like? Yeah, the kitchen that you. Well, I don't know. Would you remember the first or the second one? When you think about your childhood kitchen, which one do you remember? What did it look like?
Matthew: The second one. The first one I left when I was about four. So I. That was very small. I do sort of remember it. It had a cookie jar that I remember and a radio, but I don't remember it so well. The one I really grew up in, it was in Washington Square, north on the fifth floor and in a very old apartment building. And the kitchen was in the back like the window faced an alley. And down the alley you could see the Empire State Building perfectly framed in the middle of the alley, which was cool. It had a red linoleum floor around wooden table that you could eat in the kitchen tiles along one side of the kitchen, which I guess used to be like a old fashioned stove. There was an outlet for a chimney there, but that was no longer. There was an old dumbwaiter that didn't work.
Michele: Hmm.
Matthew: Very scary looking dumbwaiter in the corner. It was like in 19 turn of the century, maybe, or a little later. You know, those cabinets with glass, They had windows on them, but they'd been painted so many times, You know, they look round a sink, a stove. A refrigerator and. That was pretty much it. And it was very active. A lot of people used it and a little pantry next to it where that's where the fridge was with a little closet. And eventually when we got when we were doing a little better, when I was in my maybe 12 or so, we got a dishwasher, which was a huge improvement in our lives, and that was in the pantry. And then we had a big surface on top of that where we would prepare our matzo with peanut butter.
Michele: So wait, whoa, Matzo with peanut butter? What? What were you doing?
Matthew: Well, that just came to mind. There was always there was always matzo for some reason and almost always and there was always some Skippy peanut butter. So I do remember blathering that on to slathering that on to matzo after school.
Michele: What was going on in the kitchen? Was it just cooking or was it just was it also a place where people gathered?
Matthew: I think they gathered. Definitely cooking, but also cards. My parents would play. It was a round table in there. So that's where my mom and dad would play cards at night with other Another couple or friends would come over. So we'd be in bed or I'd be in bed and I could hear them talking and chatting, always in the kitchen, at the round table playing canasta or something like that. So there was a lot of activity really at night in that kitchen too. And homework was done often at that table. It really was the center of the family. I left out also, my parents did do play readings at the house with friends sometimes.
Michele: Oh, that must have been fabulous.
Matthew: Yeah. Yeah, it was really fun. And I got to read. Usually I'd read a part and we would. Do you know, the importance of being earnest or something? Whatever anybody was thinking about, we would Wait.
Michele: Was it? This sounds fabulous. Wait a minute. Wasn't a play that someone was working on. It was like, let's just put, you know, a play off a shelf and let's do a table read.
Matthew: It was really, really fun because inevitably we didn't have enough people or it wasn't all actors, you know? So you get to hear Charles Pratt, my mom's friend, very, very nervously read a part, you know. Bright red, sweating, absolutely terrified people just having to enter show business. So that was really fun and very charming. Like people were very good. The people who are best at it, in a way, we ones who were not actors.
Michele: Tell me about your parents. They were both in the business.
Matthew: My father was an actor and my mom had met my dad. She was a playwright when she was younger, and she met him at an acting school where she was studying playwriting and he was one of the actors. So he was from New Hampshire. His father was a letter carrier. He's they grew up very different. My mom grew up near Park Avenue, pretty wealthy with her father. Mother died young, but her father was wealthy. I think that was all gone by the time I got there. But they got that apartment when I was four. I don't know how many parents had before that. And I have two older sisters.
Michele: Mmhmm. So you're the baby of the family?
Matthew: I'm the baby. Who was.
Michele: The kitchen. A happy space for you.
Matthew: Mostly. Yes, Very.
Michele: Happy. That's an interesting answer.
Matthew: Well, serious discussions happened in the kitchen, too, you know, Very serious. It was the center of everything. I remember my sister shaking a bottle of something like chocolate milk or something, and the lid came off and she sprayed chocolate milk all over the large kitchen wall. That was very dramatic. I was very little.
Michele: Now, was that an accident or was she having a moment?
Matthew: She said it was an accident, but there were moments, too. But this one was an accident. But oh, my God. There were definitely moments. There were screaming fights in that kitchen, too.
Michele: What were you all fighting about? Well, your parents were actors. You were probably very expressive.
Matthew: Yes. And I had teenage sisters, you know.
Michele: Did they torment you?
Matthew: Not so. They were a bit older than me. They didn't torment me so much. No, but they tormented Mom or she tormented them. But, you know, the fights that happened between teens and their parents or can be pretty serious.
Michele: You know, some families suppress everything. Don't talk about everything, don't talk about anything. And some families talk about everything. And that can lead to discomfort. But it also is a way to let a little pressure out of the pot. Yeah. So doesn't mean that people are unhappy. They're just expressive.
Matthew: Yeah, I think for us, my mom was the expressive one and dad was pretty quiet. So, you know, mom would be the one who would be yelling or lose your temper or walkout or very dramatic. And dad mostly quiet until he would boil over. So that's very scary in its way to, you know, a parent who's quiet and not telling you that they're mad at you until they're too mad. You know, I'm a parent now myself. So I look at this much more sympathetically than when I was the kid. I know how hard it is, so I am in no way criticizing my dad for that or my mom. But that's just how it was. She was like she could get very mad at you and screaming, and then 20 minutes later you'd be playing jacks with her in the living room floor. Like didn't hold a grudge, you know, it wasn't like that. Or Dad would just be like, Something is wrong with Dad. What's wrong, Dad? And it would take a while till you would get some explanation.
Michele: He was just in a mood. Give him some space. Yeah, but in New York, it's hard to give people space.
Matthew: So that's why my mom would leave the apartment. Every now and then I'm gone, leaving, and she would leave. But then you'd hear the buzzer 45 minutes or so, the door from downstairs.
Michele: BUZZER So she didn't even take her keys or her pocketbook. She just…
Matthew: That's a good point, because she didn't have keys if I heard the buzzer.
Michele: But it could be a dramatic entrance.
Matthew: It could be.
Michele: Yeah, I'm back. Fix your face. Get it right. Here I come.
Michele: Your parents were from different traditions. Also, your mother's Jewish. Your father's Catholic?
Matthew: Yup.
Michele: How did that influence the things that were served in the kitchen? The culinary memories that you have?
Matthew: Yeah, well, they're very different. Those two. And then what I'm leaving out also is our housekeeper, Sally McFall, a huge influence in my life and raised me as much as my parents had, actually. So I have three cooking... Well, I have more than three. Maybe I have. My mom's kind of Jewish. She could make matzo ball soup and chop liver and Jewish things, but she was also kind of a gourmet type. She read cookbooks a lot. She's always interested in cooking, so she made sort of fancy things. My father made things, I guess, from New Hampshire and from being an actor on the road. A lot a lot of them came out of a can. But he was very good at it. Like he made delicious eggs, omelets, tuna salad with massive amounts of mayonnaise and a few dishesthat people made fun of but people loved. So those two and then Sally, who was like, she could make Southern food. That's all she made when she first came to our home. Like, you know, lima beans, collard greens, roast chickens, she could cook anything coleslaw, carrot salad. But then she got very influenced by my mom and their cookbooks. So she was desperate to make a good matzo ball, which I'm not sure she ever achieved. But her cooking got more and more varied and really, really special. She made really good. This is too simple to be a recipe, but she broke off the ends of asparagus. How you do to get the tough part off?
Michele: Mm hmm.
Matthew: And I'm sure a lot of people do this, but she peeled them about halfway up and then boiled them in a pan for, like, 4 minutes really fast. SARAH Bright green. Mm hmm. And just olive oil and lots of salt. And they were incredible. She had a way of things simple like that that were just perfect.
Michele: You know, that is it. That is a pro tip when you use the potato peeler to take the outside of the asparagus off because it's an entirely different flavor when you remove that sort of almost briny outer shell.
Matthew: Yeah, that's right. It becomes kind of nutty and just absolutely perfect and easy to eat. You know, you're not getting that chewy fiber.
Michele: And so was Sally a woman of color?
Matthew: Yeah.
Michele: I didn't want to guess. The clue was probably collard greens and lima beans, but.
Matthew: Oh, right, yeah. Sally McFall from North Carolina. Yeah, she lived in Brooklyn and came into the city and worked for us.
Michele: Do you know if she still alive? Maybe kept in touch with her?
Matthew: No. Yeah, we did keep in touch. And she's not alive. She lived into her nineties, though, and I never, ever lost touch with her even after I grew up and had my own life. She would come over once a week and cook. After that, she would just come and hang around. You know, she got a little too old to cook and she's still come. When my son was very little, she was always just always around. And I always I never stopped knowing her.
Michele: Did she influence you in some way? Is there some piece of her that lives inside of you?
Matthew: I think so. I'm sure. I mean, definitely with food, absolute love and humor. She was funny and she could tease you when you're little and get you very frantically upset.
Michele: Oh, no. What would you tease you about? She would tease you as a child? What would you do?
Matthew: Well, not that, you know, she just there's some story. When I was little of her chasing me with a knife, laughing, saying, I'm going to cut it off. I'm going to cut it off. What it is, I'll leave for the listeners. So it's hard to… That became legendary in our house.
Michele: What precipitated that?
Matthew: I really don't remember. It was with humor. I want to make that very clear. We were both laughing.
Michele: Were your parents around when this was happening?
Matthew: You know, they came home into it. I think that's why it became kind of a famous story.
Michele: Where you have to back up what would describe what was happening?
Matthew: She is chasing me either with a knife or a scissors. Threatening to castrate me is what I would say is the actual event. And it's very hard for me to explain that in a way that doesn’t sound like child abuse, but it was not. I swear to God, I think everybody was laughing. I know it became a story that was never told. Is anything more than fun funny. But she was a great person. I miss her. She was just very curious about everything. New foods. She liked to draw, anything new. She wanted to hear about my children. She wanted them to tell about their lives. She was very, very curious about everything.
Michele: She must have been very proud of you.
Matthew: I think she was, Yeah. She uh… If I did a show, she'd always come, even when she was quite elderly, you know, And it was hard for her to get in and get to the seat and everything. But she still always did it.
MICHELE: So we know that athletes learn how to eat when they are training for a big match or a big race, but how do ACTORS learn how to eat when they have a big run of shows on Broadway? It took some time for Matthew to understand how much his father shaped the way he, himself ordered his steps as an actor. And how so much of that influence sprang from the memories inside that tight little kitchen where the Broderick family spent so much of their time.
Michele: I want to go back to the kitchen, if I could, because your parents are both in the business, and I wonder if they taught you how to eat well, as an actor, if there are certain things that you have to do to maintain stamina to protect your voice. I'm wondering about like a Broadway diet because of the tempo of the day. You're many times doing two shows a day. You probably finish late at night. You're ravenous, but if you eat too much, then you don't sleep and then you have bad dreams and then you have puffy under your eyes. And then how do you eat for the work that you do? And did you learn that from your folks?
Matthew: I don't know that I learned what to eat so much, except I had to learn what to eat because of what they liked. And I liked that. My dad, who had been on the road a lot, was very into like he was like, You need a cast iron pan, a chef's knife. You know, he had a box.
Michele: He traveled with that?
Matthew: Yeah. That he would so he could. He always had it ready so he didn't have to, like, put it together, you know, a frying pan, some kind of pot to boil things and. I forget the things in a spatula, you know, a wooden spoon. He liked to feed himself. You know, he didn't like to always eat out or anything. He liked to be self—sufficient and he had it down to a science. So there was this box of stuff, and I try to emulate that.
Michele: When you take on a role you have the box of stuff you bring so you can cook for yourself?
Matthew: Well, pretty often I’ll rent a place that already has it because I’m not as broke as he was. But his organization and his ability to feed himself on the road definitely rubbed off on me. I’m very into that. You know if I’m gonna be somewhere for two months, I’m gonna have stuff in my refrigerator, stuff to cook it in. I do not like to constantly go to the diner around the corner or room service or any of that. I really like to feed myself. And I think I got that from my dad.
Michele: So you’re a cook?
Matthew: I am a bit of a cook, yeah.
Michele: I’ve heard that about you, that you actually cook quite well.
Matthew: I enjoy it. You know I get better. I love it. My wife’s a good cook too so we like to cook. My kids too are starting to cook. And the Broadway or stage eating is very difficult. Like eating a big meal at 11:30 at night, and a martini, when you’re 21, 22, you can do that. Then you sleep until noon and then you pop out of bed then you know you’re fantastic in your play and then everything’s fine. But uh for an adult there’s like nothing worse than eating a big meal that late. Everything’s messed up. And also you don't want to be full before a play so you have to eat at 5 for an 8 o clock show. So then you’re definitely going to be, if you’re me, starving after that show. So you have to eat after the play. Then I have to stay up late because I cant go to sleep full and with all that adrenaline. So a play requires you to turn into a 2 in the morning 3 in the morning person if you’re me. And that's very hard with a family. So play’s are really kind of a pain when you get older and have a family.
Michele: So when you eat at 11 o’clock what do you make yourself?
Matthew: That I might be out with friends because what I’ve not gotten good at, which I’d like to get good at, is to finish a plate, run home and start to decompress. If somebody’s come to the show I’ll go out with them. I tend to want to be with people and be told how great I was for about 45 minutes, then I go home.
Michele: Your dad must have been some kind of cook if he traveled when he went to work on the road with a box with his own skillet and spatula and wooden spoon. So is there a recipe from his repertoire that you would like to share with us also?
Matthew: Yes. Now, I want to preface this. He could make very good omelets and. Steak. He could. He was a good cook. But this is something that he must have learned from his New Hampshire roots. I don't know that my sister really loved. And all I remember is everybody making fun of him for this. But it was instant mashed potatoes. I think that was spread out on a plate.
Michele: Mm hmm. Just the flakes or really, you know, already reconstituted.
Matthew: Okay, Now, you cooked it with water, whatever you do. And then he flaked salmon out of a can.
Michele: Mm hmm.
Matthew: On top of the potatoes.
Michele: All right.
Matthew: Then canned peas were put on that. Then, according to my sister and I do not know how this could be done successfully, he would put mayonnaise to that. So why? That wouldn't collect the peas and put them to one side? I can't imagine.
Michele: So it was this. Was this baked then?
Matthew: I believe it was then presented.
Matthew: To the child.
Matthew: Then she said we would eat it and make roads, you know, with a fork. So it was fun to make a road through the mayonnaise, instant mashed potato, pea and salmon dish. So there's my recipe for your family.
Michele: We did this recipe in the name.
Matthew: I Not that I know, I don't know the name of it, but good luck getting the mayonnaise on top of the peas. How are you're.
Michele: Going to do well And you attribute this to New Hampshire. This is a New Hampshire cuisine.
Matthew: Well, that's where he's from. I mean, it must be.
Michele: You know, he made.
Matthew: It up.
Michele: Well, sometimes, you know, there are times in life where dinner is what we have in the cupboard.
Matthew: Yeah.
Michele: And that may have been a yes, but we have.
Matthew: And that's like something where you go make a special trip.
Matthew: Yes.
Michele: Was it do you have fond memories of this beyond making roads in the piece or was it, was it good.
Matthew: I don't remember it being my favorite, but my sister says she loved it. And what I really remember is my mom making looking down on that dish and making fun of it, you know, saying this isn't this is this is ridiculous. But my sister says it was very popular. Okay. I guess I was pretty little. I don't remember it as well as she does.
Michele: It may have worked its way out of the rotation, but.
Matthew: It did because I remember it when I was maybe four, but not after.
Michele: Do you think that you, as someone who chose to be an actor, also was influenced in some way by you know, I was planning to. To ask this question before I heard the stories you just told, because I was thinking that your parents were actors and you may have heard them at the table reading scripts and you may have been intrigued by watching your father on set. And you know what? If you visited him when he was working in TV. But I wonder also if you were influenced by some of the dramas that you saw inside your kitchen, which were unscripted.
Matthew: Yeah, I'm sure I was. I mean. When the dramas are unfolding. It's not like I'm thinking, Oh, neat. I can put this in a play someday. You know, I'm more like, Oh God, the world is ending. But I'm certainly those are very powerful influences and their situations. If I'm doing a play or a movie where I will remember, something will remind me and I'll remember things that I thought I'd forgotten often about my own family or in the kitchen. So it's definitely an influence and. I know a lot of why I became an actor probably is from watching my going to the theater and watching him rehearse and.
Michele: Watching your…
Matthew: Dad. Yeah, my dad, And what I really liked most was the atmosphere. I liked to be backstage and, you know, with my comic books and. Either watch the play or sometimes just hang out in the room. I just like the feeling at a theater. It took me a long time to decide that I wanted to. And once I started working. They were both just enormously supportive of me, you know, Very much so. My father talking about every moment in the play I was in my mom to helping me read scripts, decide. They were extremely supportive.
Michele: In that kitchen of yours where lots of things happened, including some family dramas. Is there a particular scene that you remember where you called upon something that happened in your kitchen and that gave you the right emotion, the right intonation, the helped you hit the emotional note that you needed to hit in that scene because you remembered you conjured up something that happened in your kitchen when you were young.
Matthew: I remember a few of them. I don't really remember. I remember when I was pretty young and I don't think I ever really used this. I might have used this. It's minor, but we had a light fixture over the kitchen table, you know, a glass white glass bowl, you know, with a bulb. And it fell. And shattered and cut. Sally.
Michele: Sally's your hand. Sally McFall?
Matthew: Yes. Yeah. The housekeeper who was cooking and it slit her hand open. And. Bled. I have used that. The fear I had. And the suddenness of it, you know that something could you could be chatting and. Happy and relaxed and watching somebody chop. She chopped beautifully, by the way. And suddenly somebody's bleeding. And she was perfectly fine, by the way. I probably had to go to the emergency room, but she was, you know, she put some paper towel on her hand and masking tape because we never had band aids or anything that really.
Michele: She used masking tape.
Matthew: I don't know for sure, but I know in my home when you would cut yourself, there would be a mad search for something related to that. Might you cover a cut? There's another story of me falling out of a carriage and my sister coming home with or my parents coming home to see that I had been taped up with toilet paper tape.
Michele: No one could find a band.
Matthew: Still have a scar. Yeah. They dropped me out of my stroller, her and her friend, and then taped me. Taped me with toilet paper. I remember a really sad time when my dad was not well and I was alone with him in the kitchen and he was had to stop to kind of like, get his air and energy back, you know? And I remember him standing by the sink, you know, his head over the sink, kind of holding himself up, just very weak. And. I was alone. I was sitting at the kitchen table and he was standing by the sink. And I just remember the sadness of that and the. Kind of loneliness, you know, I felt. Lonely and. Lonely for him, I guess. Hmm. You know, I was growing up, and here he was not well. And so that happened in the kitchen, too. That's it. So there's a lot of sad things in that kitchen. Truthfully. Is that. And a lot of joy, too.
Michele: Is that part of acting, though, is when you when you're called upon to, you have to go through some sort of mental filing system and loneliness Joy?
Matthew: Yeah.
Michele: You know, all the emotions that you go through and you have to figure out, where am I going to? How am I going to control this emotion?
Matthew: Yeah. Yeah, it is. And those are two that I've thought of before.
Michele: Your dad died and it was in 1982. I had read that. Yes. Yes. Was what? And I'm getting my years wrong in terms of the film, so help me out here. Matthew, when was war games produced? Was he around for that?
Matthew: Well, he was. What happened was he got sick right when I was doing a play called Torch Song Trilogy. And I shot war games and a film called Max Dugan returns. Right after. So my father was alive when I shot those two movies, but he didn't live to see them, you know, to watch them. So but he she's definitely aware that I was doing them. And then I got a lead in a Broadway play called Brighton Beach Memoirs.
Michele: Oh, just a little play called Brighton Beach…
Matthew: Yes. And that that's the one that my dad was like. You know, he when he was over the moon about that, you know.
Michele: Neil Simon.
Matthew: Yeah. And he was but, you know, he never got to see it. But he did. If asked someone when he was sick, he kept asking about, you know, and we hadn't. And then I had my first read through of that, you know, where the actors gather and with the director and Neil Simon and. And he called me or I called him. I was shooting war games. And he he said, How did it go? The you know, the table read. And I said, it went good and. You know, tried to tell him what had happened. He was already pretty, Bill. And unless my mind has. Trimmed it down. I think that's pretty much the last time we spoke. Hmm. So. You know. I don't tend to believe in stuff like that, but I do think he was trying to hang on and hear how that play was going. Now, at any rate, I can say I'm very glad that he did manage to that he was lucky enough to, you know, get to hear that.
Michele: You and your wife both have deep roots in New York, and New York has its own rhythms and its own flavor, and food is its it's just different in New York than it is really anywhere else. Having been a lifelong New Yorker, how is the kitchen that you and your wife Sarah put together? Sarah Jessica Parker how is that influenced by the the kitchens of your youth? Do you have you created an entirely new space or are there are there things that you recognize now or that's why I keep the olive oil there, or that's why I do this?
Matthew: Right now it’s a combination of both of ours. We both are a little. You would never see like American cheese or a yodel in my house. It was very a yodel.
Michele: Is that like a like a dingdong? Like a...
Matthew: Yeah. What I mean is we didn't have normal like, American food, like my friends might have.
Michele: You didn't have that in your childhood kitchen?
Matthew: Not really. We had, like, you know, some fancy salami from somewhere and, you know. Just a little.
Michele: Your parents didn't believe in snacks? No Bugles, no potato chips? No. No.
Matthew: Much of that.
Michele: No sugary Cap'n Crunch cereal or anything like that.
Matthew: Maybe that and the masa, as I said. But I think sweet cereal like that was frowned upon. And I was always jealous of friends who had a big cupboard filled with bugles and, you know, Doritos, Cheez Whiz. But we didn't have any of that, or soda.
Michele: So have you created that kind of kitchen in your own house, or did you decide that my kids are going to have Doritos? And I.
Matthew: I think we have more unhealthy food. We have mostly very healthy food, but. I don't We have this usually some bags of chips going in my house. There's some corn chips or potato chips. There's something open that you can stick your hand in most of the time. And that would not have been at my wife's home either. Her mom was very against that sort of thing.
Michele: Was that were they against it? Were both of your parents against it because it was not healthy or because particularly for your parents, were they trying to remain thin and fit because that's what their job required?
Matthew: Well, I always thought it was because it was unhealthy. But now that you say it, I'll bet you anything they didn't want to have it around for themselves because they wanted to be thin and fit. I'm sure of that. I know my dad wouldn't want that. He was always struggling to not get heavy. So. There were foods that I think they just didn't want around all day. Yeah, I'm sure of that. I never really thought of that until you told me, but. Yeah.
Michele: So…. earlier in the show you heard that…shall we say ….interesting… recipe for the concoction that Matthew’s father used to make with instant mashed potatoes and canned salmon and peas and all that MAYONNAISE. Well it turned out Matthew’s sisters dared him to share that recipe…and he did. And you listeners can decide if you want to try THAT in your own kitchen, but I know that for Matthew and his wife, Sarah Jessica Parker, food and all that goes into preparing it, is a very important part of their lives. So….I wondered if there was something else that he wanted to share. Something that to him tastes like home… Something that people might actually look forward to making in their own kitchens that maybe doesn’t involve mayonnaise.
Michele: I'm wondering if there's a recipe that you might want to share that tastes like home to you. What tastes like home to you?
Matthew: Home? Well, there's many that I don't really remember how they were made. Unfortunately, ratatouille that Sally made that was incredible on Ratatouille. It was very oily and spectacular.
Michele: Tell me about it. What was so delicious about it?
Matthew: Well, it had the right amount of eggplant that was it wasn't blubbery or watery somehow. Tomato, zucchini, garlic. I don't know why I loved it so much. She'd make big pots of it, and I do not know how she made it, so I can't give you that recipe. It was very cooked. I've made some from recipes that come out more fresh, you know, or less turned into a kind of corn beat, you know, like, got very gooey.
Michele: Well, ratatouille hard because sometimes you have individual vegetables, usually nightshade vegetables that can still have so much of a crunch that it has more of a minestrone feel than a ratatouille.
Matthew: Yes. Hers was not crunchy. And I know from making it myself that, you know, the trick is to cook all these things. The amount of time that each of them. You know, just throw it all in, right? Most recipes, you have to and.
Michele: You have to salt your eggplant to get some has.
Matthew: Always did that.
Michele: So I listened to you describe that ratatouille recipe, Sally's Ratatouille and in your voice head music in it, we're going to figure out how to get you a killer recipe for rent.
Matthew: I would love that. That would be great.
Michele: It'd be wonderful. I have love talking to you. This has been a lot of fun.
Matthew: Me, too. Thank you for making me remember all this stuff. It's fun for me. A lot.
Michele: Of fun. Thanks so much.
Matthew: Thank you.
MICHELE: Was it just me? Or could you hear just how much Matthew’s childhood housekeeper Sally McFall and her cooking still cast a spell over him, even after all these years. Good cooking can do that to you. It’s like sorcery. And when it’s something really special you can spend a lifetime trying to catch that flavor even just one more time. Sometimes on this show, we help people find that roadmap back to a recipe they love and let’s do that for Matthew Broderick. Let’s help him find a recipe for ratatouille that will make him swoon.
If you have a recipe for ratatouille that sounds something like that sumptuous dish Sally made for Matthew’s family all those years ago, we’d love to hear from you. In fact I would like to hear from you because this conversation has ME hankering for a delicious bowl of that perfect medley of zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers and tomatoes. Share your recipes. Your techniques and perhaps help settle the debate about whether the vegetables in ratatouille should be chopped or sliced. It seems like there are some strong opinions on this. So, roll by my Instagram page and use the hashtag YourMama’sKitchen to show us your version of ratatouille.
Thanks for listening to Your Mama’s Kitchen. I’m Michele Norris. See you back here next time.
CREDITS
This has been a Higher Ground and Audible Original. Produced by Higher Ground Studios.
Senior producer — Natalie Rinn
Producer — Sonia Htoon
Associate producer— Angel Carreras
Sound design and engineering from Andrew Eapen and Ryo Baum
Higher Ground Audio's editorial assistants are Jenna Levin and Camila Thur de Koos.
Executive producers for Higher Ground are Nick White, Mukta Mohan, Dan Fierman and me, Michele Norris.
Executive producers for Audible are Zola Mashariki Nick D’Angelo and Ann Heppermann.
The show’s closing song is 504 by The Soul Rebels.
Editorial and web support from Melissa Bear and Say What Media.
Talent booker — Angela Peluso
Special thanks to Jimmy Par with Par audio studios in Martha’s Vineyard.
Head of Audible Studios: Zola Mashariki
Chief Content Officer Rachel Ghiazza
And that’s it — goodbye everybody.
Copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC.
Sound Recording copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC.
