For Lidia, the heart of cooking is family

Lidia Bastianich is a woman of many tongues and many toques. She speaks five languages and has about that many thriving food organizations going.

Bastianich owns six restaurants, from New York to Kansas City, and just started the third season of "Lidia's Italy" on PBS (12:30 p.m. Sat., KTCA-TV, Ch. 2). She has written six cookbooks, including the just-released "Lidia Cooks From the Heart of Italy" ($35, Knopf, 432 pages).

But for all the impressive numbers on Bastianich's résumé, here are the ones that probably mean the most to her: two -- as in her offspring, Joseph and Tanya, who have followed her into the world of food and wine -- and 88 -- as in the age of her mother, Erminia Motika, who brought Lidia to the United States and still lives with her.

For Bastianich, Italian cooking is family cooking. And when, toward the end of each show she declares "Tutti a tavola a mangare," she is beckoning said family to the table to eat.

In advance of her book signing next week at the Mall of America, we caught up with this maternal multitasker:

Q Who taught you how to cook?

A It's an accumulation of experience, but it all began with my grandmother and mother and being surrounded by all this fresh food. We had the rabbits and the ducks and the vegetables. Growing up in this situation, you can't help but build up a reference library of flavors.

Q How would a recipe for your restaurants differ from one for home cooks?

A In restaurants, there are all those little steps and you can afford to have two or three pans going because you want a certain crisp coating or greens wilted a certain way. And ultimately it makes the nuances of a dish better.

At our restaurants, we go to the source and get the best of everything. But [in coming up with recipes] for the book, I think of people in Nebraska and what they can buy. My whole philosophy is based in Italian tradition and the home cooking more than the chef-y kind of style.

Q Are most of your recipes variations of traditional dishes or Lidia inventions, like "I think I should try this ingredient and that ingredient cooked this way"?

A The liberty of inventing, I don't give myself in the sense that I represent Italian culture and I don't want to bastardize Italian culture.

I sometimes combine two recipes. In Calabria there is a great dish of boiled potatoes with powdered pepperoncino, and another with five peppers, so I combine the two. I'm sure someone in Calabria is doing that. I just think I invented it [laughs].

One thing I take liberty with is if it makes more nutritional sense, with less animal fat or certain ingredients, then I will change the recipe. I do that a lot.

Q You focus mostly on lesser-known regions in the new book. Is there one that you think might emerge as the "next Tuscany"?

A I think Puglia certainly has all the elements for today: lots of vegetables, lots of fish, whole grains, all the elements of Mediterranean healthy food.

Q Your son and daughter have followed you into the business. Were they always headed in that direction?

A They were born into it, and we knew no other life. Everybody got involved in the restaurant. My mother would make the gnocchi and pasta. So they grew up in the industry.

But I remember telling them, "No, this is not what you want to do; you need to get an education." Joe went to Boston College and became a trader at Merrill Lynch [he now writes wine books and operates restaurants with his mother and Mario Batali]. My daughter went to Georgetown and then Oxford, studying Renaissance art. She came back and then began to work with me.

They could do whatever they wanted to do, and I was, of course, very glad where they ended up.

Q In this new season of "Lidia's Italy," you seem more playful. Is that by design?

A As years go by, I feel a certain comfort that knowledge gives you. I love what I do and I'm so comfortable with that. It gives a certain amount of confidence and a fearlessness that you may be seeing more in the shows. I know my audience understands me, and I really act like I would if they were there in front of me.

Bill Ward • 612-673-7643