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Saturday, August 22, 2009
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Making art in the kitchen
Senior Reporter BAXTER - Artistry has long been associated with creations from the kitchen and a noted Little Falls painter took that to heart.
Charles Kapsner, known for his work on canvas and numerous area frescoes, has had art exhibitions in Minnesota, North Dakota, California, North Carolina, Italy, Canada and France.
Years ago, Kapsner created his own sauce mixture of artichoke, mango and olives. Now that product is on area store shelves. The label shows the Italian influence with Kapsner as il pittore - Italian for painter. Instead of a brush, Kapsner has a wooden spoon in one hand and his pallet of colors has artichoke, mango and olives replacing paints.
"I've always been into cooking and spending all those years in Italy one could not help but get into that," Kapsner said. "I've always experimented with sauces."
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Kiley Wear, Morey's sales associate in Baxter, was one of the taste testers with Charles Kapsner's sauce during an event at the store. Kapsner created a sauce, which complements seafood and whitefish, calling it AMO. Ingredients include artichoke, mango and olive. Brainerd Dispatch/Renee Richardson
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Friends who tasted his sauce, including Richmond Stowe, who collects Kapsner's work and is a restaurateur, recommended he make the sauce commercially.
That led Kapsner into the complex research of developing a food product and taking it to market. Kapsner describes the mixtures as being "full of sweetness, a little spice and an enticing flavor." Kapsner said his sauce complements eggs, whitefish, works alone on crackers and may be a pizza topping or grilled on shrimp, scallops, chicken or steak.
He named his sauce AMO, using the acronym for the ingredients along with a nod to the Italian word for love. The journey from home cooking to commercial product has been a broader Minnesota-based effort and has grown through networks of friends.
To develop the product, Kapsner worked with the Agricultural Utilitarian Research Institute in Crookston for food testing. AURI is a nonprofit corporation that assists Minnesota businesses with product development.
Raw ingredients come from Roma Food products in Rice. Small batches are created at Klein Foods in Marshall. And the finished product is sold in a variety of places, including St. Joseph, near St. Cloud, at Pete and Joy's bakery and Thielen Meats in Little Falls and at Morey's in Motley and Baxter, along with a specialty store in Newport Beach, Calif., and Charlotte, N.C.
During a July taste test event at Morey's, a shopper tried AMO on a cracker. "I will take one," she said. "It's very good."
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Little Falls-based artist Charles Kapsner turned a passion for cooking and a home-based sauce into a commercial product in a collection that is expected to grow. Brainerd Dispatch/Renee Richardson
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Kiley Wear, Morey's sales associate, also taste tested AMO. "We have been selling a lot of that," Wear said.
Kapsner takes a day off from his art studio in Little Falls for taste-testing events and has been in the lakes area and Duluth. He said the taste tests are ways to gauge how people react to the product and have been interesting in terms of meeting people.
Now in eight different stores in Minnesota, Kapsner is researching additional outlets - in Utah and by mail order.
"We are still sort of in the research and development stage with the kitchen so once we move into more of a full-time manufacturing then there are a few other places I intend on going after, a couple of mail order spots in particular," Kapsner said. "My goal is to get into Dean & Deluca. I want to be in their catalog."
Dean & Deluca sells fine food, wine and kitchenware with 14 store locations, through retailers and wholesalers, via online shopping and its gift catalog.
To develop the thick sauce for AMO, the biggest challenge was getting it from the vat to the bottling in the right consistency as the scale increased. Kapsner created his sauce in a six-pint batch on his own and now it is made in a 35-gallon batch. Kapsner said Steve Klein at Klein Foods was a spectacular troubleshooter as they worked their way up in scale - from the six-pint batch to five gallons, 10 gallons, 20 gallons and up.
AMO's label also indicates more products are coming in Il Pittore's Reserve Collection. Kapsner's AMO sauce sells for $9.99 for a large size jar. Ingredients include extra virgin olive oil, fine Spanish olives, artichokes from Peru and fresh produce with Roma, including Stanislaus tomatoes from California.
"I've been cooking for many years," Kapsner said. "I do create a lot of things. It is a passion of mine. I cook every night. I already have another product in mind down the road. I do intend on creating other things."
RENEE RICHARDSON may be reached at renee.richardson@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5852.
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