MILFORD, Mass. (AP) – Celebrity chef Ming Tsai is the creator of innovative multicultural dishes and proprietor of a celebrated restaurant. He’s already hosted one TV cooking show and has started production of another.

But even Tsai’s tastes sometimes run to the mundane.

“A banana split is probably the world’s best food,” says Tsai, host of a new public television show debuting in October. “Cold ice cream, hot fudge, crunchy nuts, smooth cream. I mean it’s the world’s perfect bite. It’s got every texture.”

Tsai, 39, is turning up the heat and bringing on the sauce – the “mother sauce” that is – on “Simply Ming,” which he hopes will make Americans eager to raid their own kitchens and start cooking good food.

On each program, Tsai will prepare a basic sauce, limited to seven ingredients, and use it to make dishes like those served at his Wellesley restaurant, Blue Ginger.

Producers say “Simply Ming,” which debuts on public television stations nationwide on Oct. 4, targets viewers with busy schedules and shows them how to make quick, flavorful meals at the end of an exhausting day.

On the set in Milford, about 40 miles west of Boston, guest chef Jasper White takes Tsai’s recipe for Thai lime sauce and invents his own twist, adding cream and butter.

As smoke rises from the pan, White combines the sauces with scallops. “I’m adding pepper because your sauce has so much salt in it,” he tells the host.

“You know, you should do this for a living,” Tsai tells White, chef/owner of Summer Shack restaurants in Boston, Cambridge and Uncasville, Conn.

“It’s very nice to have a Ming,” White cracks. “Everyone should have a Ming in the kitchen,” Tsai retorts.

Tsai and his crew are on a taping blitz: 26 episodes in 10 days. But this ambitious schedule doesn’t faze the high-energy Tsai, who jokes and smiles throughout the taping and even juggles limes during a break.

Director Bruce Francini first saw Tsai on his old show on the Food Network and was impressed by the Yale graduate’s energy and sense of humor.

“He has a nice personality on TV. He has some charisma. I liked his food. He’s wonderful on camera,” Francini says. “It’s difficult enough to be a great chef. In a half-hour, he’s showing you how you can make three or four things.”

In each episode, Tsai takes viewers to his favorite spots for fresh ingredients – like the Super 88 market in Boston’s Chinatown – and offers tips on beer and wine to accompany the food.

Tsai says his cuisine blends the best of east and west, reflecting his Chinese heritage and his American upbringing – he was born and raised in Ohio.

“My underlying goal is I would love if everyone in America would start cooking east-west style food,” he says. “I really want people to know that you can easily make east-west style food in your home.”

Like the food, the kitchen set, which Tsai helped design, is a blend of western and Asian styles. There are plants and exotic flowers – including pink ginger flowers from Hawaii, orchids and birds of paradise – along with wooden kitchen chairs designed by Tsai and his wife, Polly.

“It’s not Asian in your face,” Tsai says. “It has a nice slick, hip look to it.”

, which I think fits this show.”

There are bamboo poles against a back wall, Asian wall hangings and prints. There’s a wine cooler and bowls of purple basil, limes, mangoes, pink peppercorns, mint and fish sauce, all of which will be used in dishes that Tsai and his guests create.

The first 26 episodes will include appearances by chefs Todd English – who will show viewers how to prepare tuna carpaccio – Gordon Hamersley, Francois Payard, Michael Lomonaco and Ken Oringer, as well as White.

After adding cream and butter to a pan de-glazed by Tsai’s sauce, White produces several perfect, plump round scallops and places them on a plate next to a mound of white rice. He sprinkles them with herbs and drizzles the Thai lime sauce on top.

At the director’s cue, the two retire to a small table at stage left to sample their handiwork: the scallops, a spinach salad, scallop ceviche and crispy calamari, accompanied by champagne.

While they eat, they chat and drink for the closing shots and Tsai delivers the program’s signoff: “Peace and good eating.”

AP-ES-08-17-03 1144EDT

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