COURTESY PHOTO
Ming Tsai's cooking demonstration takes place at 1 p.m. Sunday at the Kapalua festival.
Simplicity is king
in Ming’s latest flingMing Tsai demystifies Asian
cooking on his new show on PBS
Last time Ming Tsai was in town to cook a fancy meal, he had a new cookbook, a new television show and a new baby.
Kapalua Wine & Food Festival
Dates: Friday through Sunday
Place: Kapalua resorts, Maui
Cost: Four-day pass is $750; individual events run $25 to $130. Ming Tsai's cooking demonstration is $100
Call: 800-KAPALUA
HIGHLIGHTS
>> Sushi-making/wine-pairing seminar with D.K. Kodama, Sansei Seafood Restaurant & Sushi Bar, 3 p.m. Friday
>> Grand Tasting of wine and food, 5:30 p.m. Friday
>> Artisan cheese tasting, 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
>> Hawaiian Gala Luau, 6 p.m. Saturday
>> Kapalua Seafood Festival, 5:30 p.m. Sunday
For a full schedule visit www.kapaluamaui.com
After three years, he's back for this weekend's Kapalua Wine & Food festival. And this time he has a new cookbook, a new TV show and a different new baby.
Is this guy in a rut, or what?
Well no, actually. He has the kind of high-profile, ever-expanding career that defines the celebrity chef, plus a growing family.
Son David, 3, was born two months before Tsai played the guest-chef role at Sam Choy's 2000 Big Brothers-Big Sisters fund-raising dinner. Second son Henry is 11 months old. "Now we are a clan of four," Tsai said in a telephone interview from his restaurant, Blue Ginger, in Wellesley, Mass.
Despite all that's going on in his personal and professional lives, Tsai's byword is "simplicity."
His new cooking show, under development for PBS, will be called "Simply Ming." It debuts in October. A companion cookbook will have the same name.
The PBS project means the end of Tsai's Food Network shows, "East Meets West" and "Ming's Quest." Reruns will continue to air, but no new episodes are being filmed.
A studio is being built for the new show in nearby Millford, Mass., so he won't have to fly to New York for tapings. Less traveling; more time for his boys. Simpler.
Leaving the Food Network was a big decision, Tsai said, "but it wasn't so hard, because for me it is all about quality of life."
As a producer and part-owner of "Simply Ming," he also will have creative and financial control that he didn't have before. "The Food Network put me on the map and I owe them a lot. But they can play my show 100 years after I'm dead and I get nothing. Of course, I have no problem with that, that was the deal going in."
The new show will demystify Asian cooking, Tsai said. "I think people like to cook East-West but are intimidated by it. We're going to show how anyone can make East-West cuisine easily."
Every show will introduce a "mother recipe" or flavoring agent made from scratch: black bean sauce, soy-lime syrup, mango salsa or maybe a tea rub. Then will come three or four easy dishes made with the mother recipe as a base. A little detail work on the weekend simplifies weeknight cooking, he said. "This is how a lot of times I cook at home."
More new with Ming: Last year he entered a partnership with Target stores on the mainland to sell specialty foods and kitchen utensils bearing the Blue Ginger name. Top sellers, he said, are his woks, knives and a $1.39 bag of Asian-spiced potato chips. Pink Hawaiian sea salt also sells well. He's working on a frozen-foods line to be introduced in the fall.
Does he ever worry that all these projects make him more of a celebrity than a serious chef?
No, Tsai said, because Blue Ginger remains his center.
"I don't have that concern because I have one restaurant and I'm at my restaurant and the food is still as good as I can do. For most of us chefs, the celebrity status is just icing on the cake. All it really means is people are going to come to your restaurant from all over."
He also has the acknowledgment of his peers that he really can cook: the 2002 James Beard Foundation Award for best chef of the Northeast.
And anyway, Tsai said, how famous can a chef really get?
"I've had people come up to me and ask, 'Aren't you a celebrity?' and I say, 'If you have to ask that question, I guess not.' I mean, people don't come up to Harrison Ford and Julia Roberts and ask that. Chefs, thank God, will never reach that level. Except maybe Emeril."
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