Java_Bob

I watch the show almost every Sunday morning it is hitable tt

LAKE LUZERNE, N.Y.

AT the stove in her little cabin in the Adirondacks, about a dozen miles from where she graduated from high school in 1986, Rachael Ray spent a night last week making pasta with sweet Italian sausage and canned pumpkin.



With her mind more on conversation than cooking, Ms. Ray cut a nice gash in her thumb. She bandaged it up, laughed it off and kept chopping.

Even with her wound, wine breaks and the start of a dozen stories she would never quite finish, the dish took half an hour.

Her mother, Elsa Scuderi, who is 71 and lives in the cabin, walked in from the garden when dinner was almost ready.

"Did you burn something?" Ms. Scuderi asked.

"No, mamacello, I didn't burn anything," Ms. Ray replied. She flashed the wide grin that critics of her performances on the Food Network compare to that of Batman's nemesis, the Joker.

Though the nation's food elite might cringe, Ms. Ray, 37, is one of the most influential people cooking today. Let the big-name chefs fuss with foams and sous vide. She'll stick with hot dog nachos and "jambalika," a dish that is kind of like jambalaya. With more than 4 million books in print and four shows on the Food Network, Ms. Ray has shown America the way back to the kitchen.

As she likes to say, "How cool is that?"