Cookbook

From the field to the table is a short walk at the home of Mary Florence Smith. She cans and stews home-grown tomatoes every summer, and every winter her grown children return home to Rolling Acres Farm to help cure the hams."

It's a bitterly cold, fiercely windy night in Washington, but Dr. Dean Ornish has attracted nearly 600 people to a nondescript auditorium in a nondescript federal building across from the Smithsonian Institution.For more than an hour, they will listen as Dr. Ornish, a noted and sometimes controversial California medical doctor who has been researching the relationship of diet and heart disease for nearly 20 years, explains how his program of an extremely low-fat, vegetarian diet, no smoking, exercise, meditation and group support can really reverse heart disease.

Julee Rosso has been many things in her life: Fashion maven, advertising director, co-owner of a gourmet carryout shop in Manhattan, cookbook author, innkeeper in Michigan. But whatevers she's done, there's one thing she's always been: Busy.So she understands how difficult it can be to change something as complicated as your eating pattern -- even when you absolutely know you should be pursuing a healthier lifestyle. So the thrust of her new book, "Fresh Start" (Crown, $30), is guidelines and tips in a menu format to coax you gently along the low-fat path.

As word of Craig Claiborne's death filtered through the food world yesterday, the vivacious epicure was remembered as a critic with a keen palate who loved good food and the good life. Claiborne was a native of Sunflower, Miss., who went on to study at the Swiss Hotelkeepers Association school in Lausanne, Switzerland, become a restaurant critic and the first male food editor of the New York Times and write more than 20 cookbooks, including probably his most well-known work, "The New York Times Cookbook."

Charlotte Prouost of Lake Worth, Fla., asked for help locating a recipe for "Lightning Cake," which she remembers being in the Boston Cooking School Cookbook by Fannie Farmer dating back to the 1930s. Many readers, such as Joan Landsberg of Bend, Ore., still had original copies of this classic cookbook that had belonged to them or their mothers. Landsberg says she saved the cookbook because it was filled with recipes that she grew up with and with handwritten notes by her mother. The original Lightning Cake recipe, as published in the 1935 edition, did not specify a cake pan size, but later versions called for baking it in two 7-inch round pans or one 7-inch-by-10-inch pan. I chose to bake it in a single 8-inch round cake pan and it worked beautifully.

I BELIEVE IN "sweating" eggplant. Usually I slice it, sprinkle salt on the slices and let them sit for half an hour or more. The salt draws moisture and bitterness out of the eggplant. At least that is what the pro-sweat contingent believes. This is not a universal view. There is also a "no sweat" camp. Its members contend that there is no need for such roughhouse tactics, especially when dealing with fresh eggplant. Patricia Wells, for instance, pleaded with readers of her 1993 cookbook, "Trattoria," to spare the salt and to treat eggplant gently.

Q. I make the best cheesecakes in the world, but they are always split in the middle. I bake them at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours in a bath until the center is set. Please help! A. First of all, if you make the best cheesecakes in the world and someone other than you is griping about them, they have a lot of nerve. Now, if it is you who can't sleep at night because of split cheesecakes, my suggestion is relax! It's the flavor that counts. How about that for some help? OK, let's see what we can really do about this splitting problem.

New York -- Who knew? Who knew that the Duchess of Windsor, the woman who said you could never be too rich or too thin, could "remember no time when I was not interested in food"? Who knew that the king gave up his throne for this woman he loved and a lifetime of Salad Russe (peas and carrots in mayonnaise) and Glace Abricotine (crushed peanut brittle mixed in ice cream)?For an estimated $6,000 to $8,000, you can turn your kitchen into one fit for the woman who would be, but never could be, queen: Wallis Warfield Simpson of Baltimore.

In an article in yesterday's A La Carte section, the phone number for cookbook author's Lynn Fischer's catalog was incorrect. The correct number is (800) 835-2867.The Sun regrets the error.

Choose the most tender young vegetables for crudites. Pare only if necessary, then cut into sticks of chunks.-- The New Doubleday CookbookPub Date: 8/30/98@