Splendidly Served
At home with Lynne Rossetto Kasper
Styled by Lynn Ostrowski
An invitation to dinner at Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s St. Paul home is cause for great anticipation. The famed cookbook author and host of American Public Media’s “The Splendid Table” is legendary for her culinary cunning and know-how. And, while you might expect lavish, she’s more likely to surprise with low-key. ¶ “ I seat everyone in the kitchen, and I make it feel like camp,” Kasper laughs. “I cover the table with the funny pages, plop some vegetables and greens in the center, and hand them a knife.” Before long, strangers are peeling and slicing, sharing in the making of a memorable meal—neatly breaking the ice before breaking bread.
Kasper is the culinary coach to radio listeners who depend on her weekly musings about cooking, condiments, and more. With her velvety voice and saucy laugh, she serves up descriptions of dishes and preparation tips that are as lusciously mouth-watering as a rosy, ripe, heirloom tomato.
In person, Kasper is exactly what you’d expect from her radio show. She’s lively, fun, and always ready with a good story. Spend a half hour with her, and you’ll be convinced that you can cook anything.
Her kitchen isn’t filled with polished marble and high-tech toys. Instead, the hallowed space is cozy with stacks of bowls, baskets, and books—kitchen clutter that feels just right. Hers is a working kitchen, and the star is “Babe,” her high-powered stove with bright red knobs. “It’s the first thing I bought with royalties from my [1992] book The Splendid Table.”
Kasper’s success was a long time coming. Raised in an Italian family outside of New York City, she had always been a whiz in the kitchen, but had no thought of making that talent her profession. “At that time, the choices in food were dietician or home economics teacher,” she says. “Both are fine professions, but not a draw for a kid up to her ears in art, history, literature, and theatre.” Instead, she took a job directing a children’s improv group in Brooklyn.
But, as fate would have it, the food revolution was just beginning in New York City. On a whim, Kasper took a job as a “gourmet consultant” at a local department store, where she began teaching cooking classes and first met famed chefs Julia Child and Jacques Pepin. From there, the snowball rolled. She started writing about food for newspapers and magazines, did culinary research, and opened and ran a cooking school in Denver.
When she and her husband, Frank, moved to Brussels, Belgium for his international marketing job at Honeywell, she traveled Europe to absorb continental cuisine, especially Italian regional cooking. Her fascination with the Emilia-Romagna region—where she has deep family roots—was the focus of her blockbuster first book, The Splendid Table.
Photo by Maki Strunc
Photography
When she and Frank returned to the United States in the mid-1980s, again for Frank’s work but this time to a city called St. Paul, Kasper hit the writing and cooking circuit—giving lectures, teaching classes, and freelancing regularly for Bon Appétit. Radio producer Sally Swift approached her about doing a radio show, but Lynne brushed her off (because who ever heard of a radio show about cooking?). Swift approached her again, this time with funding for a few pilot episodes. They got friends to call in with cooking questions, and the show was born.
Today, “The Splendid Table” radio show, nationally syndicated by American Public Media Group, is entering its 13th year, and Kasper is a nationally recognized food authority. (Greenspring Media Group, publisher of Midwest Home, is a subsidiary of American Public Media Group.) Kasper is the author of three cookbooks and winner of three James Beard awards. With food foremost in her mind, she travels the world, indulging in her passion for culinary collectibles.
An auction aficionado, she’s got more vintage cookbooks than she can count. Her collection of eighteenth- and nineteeth-century Wedgwood molds are displayed, along with creamware, caneware, and a mish-mash of quirky kitchen tools. “Anything having to do with food fascinates me,” says Kasper. “I find I like craft more than fine art. I like unusual colors and shapes, from the humble to the outrageously extravagant.”
In Kasper’s spacious dining room, an enviable assortment of vintage tabletop—gold-rimmed porcelain plates and monogrammed silver—awaits an elegant dinner party, though she doesn’t often entertain formally.
Color plays a key role in the dining room. After months of trial and error, she settled on a luscious shade of gold for the walls. Her idea was to recreate the luminosity of candlelight. “I always wanted a room where everyone looks gorgeous and so does the food,” Kasper says. “There’s probably still a painter somewhere in rehab after what I put him through to get that color,” she laughs.
Though her life is devoted to food and culinary lore, this skilled cook is as likely to serve Frank a hearty soup or a grilled cheese sandwich as osso buco or bolognese. The idea is to let the food speak. “We have to give ourselves permission not to be perfect,” she says. “Everyone is like me. They are busy. Time is precious. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”
That’s why she likes to entertain in her kitchen, where the mood is relaxed and lively. Guests at her 48-inch, round table almost rub shoulders. Kasper believes the smaller the table, the better the dinner conversation. “The disaster is the 10-foot table with six people sitting at it,” she observes. “It’s almost isolating. You think you want the space, but you really don’t.”
These light-hearted kitchen suppers inspired her latest book, The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper, coauthored with her radio show producer, Swift. The good friends and colleagues dispense the kind of kitchen wisdom most of us long for—everything from “The Cheater’s Homemade Broth” to handy shopping short cuts. Along the way, they dish up colorful opinions that make food an adventure, rather than a culinary obstacle course.
“It all comes down to one word, ‘gourmet,’” Kasper says. “It’s the yin and the yang of food. We are intrigued by it, we want to know more, but, at the same time, we’re afraid of it. We feel we can’t measure up.”
Kasper recommends we all relax. She believes that simple is best and that a little planning makes entertaining enjoyable. “Make as much ahead as you can, give yourself time,” she says. “And remember, food should be fun. Life is too short not to laugh.”
Wendy Lubovich is a Minneapolis writer.
For cuban black bean stew recipe, visit our Web-exclusive recipe page.
6 ISSUES (1 YEAR)
