Ray: 'We all grew up in restaurants'

To herald the guest appearance of the Food Network superstar, the stage of the Ed Sullivan Theater has been transformed into a cooking station not unlike her "30-Minute Meals" set.

While she toils at the stove, he fires off questions as rapidly as she answers them.

"Do you really live in a cabin in the Adirondacks? Is it a Unabomber kind of cabin?"

After Ray splashes red wine into the iron skillet, Letterman reaches for the bottle and chugs. Instead of passing her a stick of butter, he grabs it like a candy bar, chomps down and chews as the audience roars.

Unrattled, she shrugs while sprinkling capers into the pan as the questioning continues.

"Are you a chef? Did you go to culinary school?"

"I went to the school of Mama!" Ray exclaims.

"Mama" is Elsa Scuderi, Ray's role model and closest confidante, who lives in New York state in Ray's Adirondack cabin. Scuderi often took Ray, her older sister, Maria, and younger brother, Manny, with her to the Lake George restaurants where she worked as manager.

"My mother was the type who always wanted her kids around her," Ray explains. "She didn't want us with baby sitters. We all grew up in restaurants."

So it came as no surprise to Scuderi when, at age 11, Rachael presented her with a Mother's Day dinner fit for an Italian queen: a plate of spinach lasagna pinwheels in a Gorgonzola sauce with blanched asparagus.

"It was a feast for the eyes," remembers Scuderi. "She arranged the asparagus around the plate to look like the sun shining."

And it was a culinary gesture that brought back memories of her own childhood, where homemade Italian food was always plentiful.

Scuderi grew up the oldest of 10 children in the Adirondack town of Ticonderoga.

"The kitchen was the center of our home," she remembers. "There were a lot of mouths to feed, and we had to learn about food. My mother made wonderful pies and breads, and my dad was great with meats, stews and sauces."

On weekends, Scuderi's father, the late Emmanuel Scuderi, would teach the young Providenza (her given name) the finer points of cutting meat, proper food temperatures and canning vegetables from the garden.

"He'd take a whole piece of meat and season it with herbs and garlic, put it in a hot oven for half an hour then turn (the oven) off and leave it for a few hours, and it would be tender and succulent. His food was magnificent," says Scuderi.

"We had to learn about food, learn a little Italian and go to church," she says. "If we did those things really well, we got into the rumble seat and went for a matinee and an ice cream."

The elements of Scuderi's childhood were as magical as they were sensual: cookies and pies cooling on the kitchen window ledge, learning lyrics to an opera while making sauce at the stove, and heading out to the garden with a knife and salt shaker to feast on juicy, red tomatoes from the vine.

When a tree fell near the family's home, Emmanuel left it where it was and carved seats into it for all the children.

"We went out and took food there and listened to his stories," recalls Scuderi. "Life was good with him. He was a high-spirited, energetic person. There's a saying by Churchill: 'as soft as the driving fog and as resistant as marble,' and that describes Dad."

Ray also credits her late grandfather for being the genesis of the family's sense of closeness and their love of cooking.

"My grandfather and I were best friends," she recalls. "He loved to cook and grow his own food. In my family, there was always good food. It was Italian stinky cheese, fresh greens and sauces," says Ray. "We weren't kids who had Pop Tarts and crap like that; I was a food snob by age 7."

Scuderi may not have learned fluent Italian, but the slow-cooking methods for meats and fish taught by her father are embedded for life.

"Everything she makes is fabulous," says Ray. "She's good at all the soups and stews that I have no patience for."

But Scuderi says her daughter has taken the essence of her family's cooking and made it her own. "Rachael can take anything I cook and shorten it."

A trait that not only came in handy later in life, it snowballed into an empire that includes four Food Network shows, more than a half-dozen best-selling cookbooks and her food and lifestyle magazine Every Day With Rachael Ray.

And even though she's tight with Oprah, and will launch her own daytime talk show this fall in conjunction with Winfrey's production company, there's one thing she insists she's not.

"I'm not famous," she says, looking startled at the suggestion. "I'm a blue-collar worker who's had some success."

A modest statement if there ever was one. And now that she's at the helm of an empire, Ray has turned to her mother to be her right-hand woman.

"Mom helps run the business. She does the bookkeeping, research, tests recipes when I call her from the road — we're partners," says Ray.

According to Carl R. De Santis Sr., who employed Elsa Scuderi at his chain of Lake George-area restaurants for more than 30 years, there's no one better to have on your payroll.

"I'm over 6 feet tall and Elsa's about 5-foot-2, and I always felt like I was looking up to her when she was giving me the word — and I owned the place," he says.

By the time Ray was in her early teens, she was waitressing and hostessing alongside her mother at the Howard Johnson Restaurant in Lake George.

"She was a tough manager," Ray confirms. "If you're not a hard worker, look out. And God help ya if you show up stoned or drunk."

"For Elsa and Rachael, working in a restaurant was never just a job, it was something they loved," says De Santis. "It doesn't surprise me that Rachael is so successful. She gets it from her mother."

In return, there are a few things Rachael's passed on to her mother.

"I've learned that you don't have to stand in a kitchen for four hours to get dinner — Rachee taught me that," Scuderi says with a laugh. "I'm learning to have more fun and enjoy life. But I love French sauces and bean cassoulets and mint salads — I'll always take the time for that."