SARA Moulton is the cooking world’s answer to the Money Honey.
And nowadays, Sara — call her the Foodie Cutie — may be on the air more than her Wall Street television counterpart.
When she’s not toiling in Gourmet magazine’s kitchens (as its executive chef), she is spoon-feeding her creations to Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer on ABC’s “Good Morning America” (as the food editor).
Later in the day, she’ll be taking phone calls from viewers on her own hit television show, “Cooking Live” — one of the only cooking shows that actually talks to its viewers — on the Food Network.
“I’ve always had at least two jobs,” she laughs.
“Cooking Live” now airs threetimes a day.
Emeril Lagasse may be the hot sauce that gives the Food Network its “bam!” — but it is Sara who serves up the channel’s meat and potatoes. And it’s not as if no one has noticed.
This year she has been nominated for a James Beard award — the food world’s answer to the Oscars — for best “National Cooking Show or Segment.”
At 7p.m., it’s showtime for Sara at the Food Network studio on the West Side. Tonight her show is about cooking with herbs — and phones are already lit-up with eager fans.
The crew starts to snicker at a caller with a thick Boston accent who rambles on about her herb garden. “This is how we do it in Baa-ston, Sara, because the Baa-ston climate is very… here in Baa-ston …”
“Baa-ston!” mimicks a crew member. “If she says that one more time …”
But Sara smiles with a Katie Couric politeness through the one-sided conversation. It is part of her appeal.
“I love [the phone fans],” laughs Moulton. “They’re what makes me forget about the cameras.”
“I never intended to do TV,” says Moulton, 48, who could easily pass for half that age. “My first priority was always food.”
But that changed after a chance meeting with the original TV gourmet, Julia Child, just a few years out of the Culinary Institute of America.
While working at a restaurant in Boston in 1979, Moulton met the cooking legend.
Child was so impressed with Moulton, she asked the young assistant chef if she would be interested in helping part-time on her PBS cooking series.
“She asked me how I was with food styling. Of course, I said I was wonderful,” Sara recalls.
For three months, she worked on Child’s show and helped on the cookbook that accompanied it — at the same time she continued working as a chef.
In 1981, the native Manhattanite says her husband “dragged” her back to New York.
It didn’t take long for the hyper-charged Moulton to get busy. Soon she found herself in the kitchen of Café Amsterdam and, later, La Tulipe as executive chef .
But she couldn’t forget Boston. “I missed Julia,” Sara says. “Then she started coming to New York and doing little gigs on ‘Good Morning America.'”
One night before a “GMA” appearance, Moulton invited Child over for dinner. But the Grand Dame said she was swamped prepping foods for the next day.
That’s when Moulton volunteered to help — in hopes of freeing up Julia early enough to make that dinner.
A producer noticed Moulton chopping vegetables on the empty set and hired her on the spot to help prep for all Child’s future appearances.
Soon, she was prepping and producing for every guest chef appearing on the early morning talk show, before heading off to her chef’s job.
Eventually, she began showing up on camera herself on “GMA,” after the show began featuring her work behind-the-scenes with guest chefs.
A few weeks after her “GMA” appearance in 1992, Moulton was approached by the newly-formed Food Network on cable television and signed on as the host of a show called “How to Boil Water.”
“At the time, Emeril [Lagasse] was doing it,” she recalls. “And it was clearly not his thing.
“So they tried me, and it was godawful. I never smiled once, and my hands never stopped shaking.
“I walked out of there thinking my TV career was over.”
If Sara thought she was washed up, the Food Network didn’t. They asked her to do a show called “Chef Du Jour.”
“First of all I said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ Then I signed up for an intensive media-training course.”