Press

There’s something about tomatoes

Jan 24, 2007

Minnesota-based National Public Radio show host Lynne Rossetto Kasper is known for a honey-warm voice that always sounds as though she’s smiling, her encyclopedic knowledge of cooking and her rapid, wicked wit. She brought it all to the Islands last week, when she was here with executive producer Sally Swift to make a couple of public appearances and to research stories for future segments of “The Splendid Table.”

 

An example of the wit: Talking of ultraexpensive olive oil (much of which she considers a waste of money), she quipped, “For that amount of money, I want it to have been pressed between the knees of virgins and raised in the hands of the Deity.”

 

It was like that all morning as she taught a three-hour master class on how to get the best from tomatoes for chefs and culinary students at Kapi’olani Community College. With the aid of side-by-side tastings of tomatoes, olive oils and sauces, she conveyed prodigious amounts of information — always laced with laughter.