Minnesota’s Amy Thielen launches old-fashioned radio show for food lovers

Lutefisk is low-hanging fruit. The Upper Midwest’s regional cuisine of lye-cured fish so popular in church basements around the holidays makes for an easy punchline.

But when chef and James Beard Award-winning writer Amy Thielen embarked on an adventure to make it, she knew she needed a little mentorship. “It just clicked deep in my food nerd self,” she said. The story of her journey and the surprisingly tasty results are at the heart of the first episode of Ham Radio, a new podcast and radio show that’s broadcast Friday nights on KAXE Radio (91.7 FM) out of Grand Rapids, Minn.

Hosted by Thielen and KAXE’s Heidi Holtan, the show opens with the skills taught by Wisconsin’s own lutefisk master, Wally Everson. His voice carries a distinctive clipped accent, with juicy vowels and a faint rasp of experience. What starts as an almost offhand instructional, the way a grandfather might impart the most important wisdom, ends with a tender remembrance of his wife. As a newlywed, he learned how to make the dish she loved. In the years since she’s passed, it’s a way to reach across time by way of a lye box adorned with a skull and crossbones. The best kinds of love stories are, after all, a little bit dangerous.

“I’m an old-school phone talker,” Thielen said. “That’s how I keep up with friends.” The show gives her the opportunity not only to connect with folks like Everson, but also to keep up with old friends and the chance to make a few new ones, too.

“I’ve wanted to make a podcast for years,” she said, but her rural home in a township north of Park Rapids made the technical side of recording challenging. That was how she connected with Holtan, KAXE’s director of content.

“I’ve been with KAXE for 25 years now,” said Holtan. Every Friday morning, she hosts a segment called “What’s for Breakfast?," where she talks to listeners of the independent public radio station. “Food is a great way to really crack into a conversation. Everyone opens up from this simple place and it can really lead to deeper stories. And the listeners really respond to it.”

When Thielen floated the idea to a mutual friend at the station about the possibility of doing a show, Holtan was immediately on board.

Thielen wanted to explore conversations shared around a topic, the way time tends to pass around an extended dinner table. There would be history, bonding experiences, common challenges — and it would all be told with a Minnesota audience in mind.

“This had to be something from here,” said Thielen. Her cookbooks, which include "The New Midwestern Table" and "Company," are also centered around the cooking experiences of our region, giving it a respect that the land of hot dish and lutefisk doesn’t always get.

Ham Radio’s first episode, titled “Cooking Dangerously,” also has Thielen speaking with a 9-year-old home chef about acorn flour and celebrity chef Lee Anne Wong. Wong and Thielen worked together in Manhattan early in their culinary careers, before Thielen moved back to Minnesota and Wong made a name for herself as a breakout contestant on Bravo’s “Top Chef.”

“She’s a media personality,” said Thielen of Wong, “but she’s also a person I used to work with. And we can start out talking about being on the line in New York and suddenly she’s telling me about Hawaiian taro or kalo and it’s just fascinating.”

Each episode centers around an ideal: The second, titled “More Time Than Money,” digs into the resourcefulness that cooking skills can provide. The third, which airs June 6, is an audible potluck with tales of Pennsylvania Dutch country family reunions and Minnesota musician Jeremy Messersmith (who also created the show’s theme song) talking about hosting communal food parties built to pair with his performances.

“We want to have a mixture of guests that aren’t hierarchal,” said Holtan. “It’s about talking to people who are making a cool thing. That can be a chef in New York or a cookbook author, but it can also be our neighbors in the Midwest.”

The show also has a newsletter that fans can sign up for and cook along with the show. The recipes aren’t for beginners, and neither is the show.

“You know, we don’t have a lot of restaurants up here,” laughed Thielen. “Most of us are cooks.” The stories, tips and inspiration are all built to carry the connections of a deep recipe box — the kind with dog-eared index cards, magazine clips and gossipy asides scrawled next to sticky thumbprints.

She said she feels like the show is a combination of that and the old-school radio shows where people call in from wherever, sharing updates and connecting over the airwaves.

“You know, radio is a reminder that you’re not alone,” said Thielen.

How to listen: “Ham Radio” airs live on KAXE Radio (91.7 FM) at 6 p.m. Fridays and is rebroadcast at 1 p.m. Saturdays and 10 a.m. Sundays. It’s also available on the KAXE website and listeners can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Episodes: Six episodes of the show, which began May 23 and air through June 27, are underwritten by a grant from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund of Minnesota to preserve the food knowledge.