The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 26

"EE w7 INSIDE Wine C3 Probe C5-: Landers C5 stiow'ci Tip-spching ii iimi i tii i mm mr an MlBllsWlffTirrleMMssMW 1 1 wm pn 1 mi in ii i iiiii inwimi iiiii in i mi jiiii iinTTTinw) You, too, can make use of tips from top chefs JUJY CREIGHTON RADIAN press GAZETTE PHOTOS. NANCY ACKERMAN There's nothing more tantalizing than the aroma of cooking food unless it's cauliflower or cabbage. But with a "true" to the rescue, the smart cook can relax. Family and guests will never again have to endure that sometimes nauseating smell. True is the French word for tip or trick, and you can bet chefs such as Giuliano Bugialli or Craig Claiborne have many up their sleeves.

This month, to raise money for hunger relief worldwide, a group of culinary experts have banded together to produce an invaluable book called Trues of the Trade. Edited by Frank Ball and Arlene Feltman, the combination recipe and problem-solver book is published by Harper Perennial at $20. Part of the proceeds go to support the work of Share Our Strength, or SOS, a U.S. network of food industry and culinary professionals. Here for those of us who, like famous chefs, could use a few tricks up our sleeves, are some selections from the book.

Odorless cauliflower cooking Works for cabbage and broccoli, too. Tear a slice of bread into small pieces and add it to the pot with the cauliflower and its cooking liquid. Bread will absorb and contain cooking odor. Keeping boiled potatoes firm Fill a pot with two parts water and one part vinegar. Add dash of salt and bring to boil.

Add potatoes, already trimmed or peeled, and gently boil them until cooked. Salvaging burned rice To remove the smoky, unpleasant taste from scorched rice, scoop the rice into a clean pot, being careful not to scrape in any of the crusty bottom at the same time. Place a single layer of onion skins on top of the rice. Cover pot and let sit 10 to 15 minutes. The onion skins will remove the acrid taste from rice.

Discard onion skins and serve. Keeping fresh coriander fresh Because the leaves of this Chinese parsley (also known as cilantro) tend to bruise and turn black quickly, pick leaves off the stem and place in a single layer on a moist paper towel. Roll up towel, and wrap it tightly in plastic wrap or seal it in a zipper-seal plastic bag, squeezing out excess air. Refrigerate; cilantro will stay green and fresh for several days. Repairing a too-salty sauce Dip a sugar cube into the too-salty sauce and pass it back and forth in a zigzag motion across the surface of sauce.

Repeat three or four times. Taste and rn -4 'ill: fj r-f! 1 'ft I "More difficult to get what I want." Trish Finnerti, top picture. "Not so many bargains in national brands." Sylvie Dernier, on left. Shoppers give mixed verdicts on service at former steinberg STORES repeat if necessary. Tenderizing meat with wine corks When making a stew, add at least three wine corks to the pot.

These corks release enzymes that help tenderize meat quickly and reduce the cooking time by as much as half. Remember to remove corks before serving. Boning fish Using a vegetable peeler, run it over the fillet, catching bones in the centre slit of the peeler. Twist the peeler slightly in the opposite direction and pull bones right out. Squeezing out the oil Fill a plastic squeeze-trigger bottle with olive oil.

Holding the bottle 12 to 15 inches from the ingredients, give a couple of quick squeezes to provide a light, even coating of oil. JULIAN ARMSTRONG Gazette Food Editor Almost six months since Montreal's food-shopping world turned, former Steinberg customers are divided on the new character of their supermarket. Most shoppers interviewed were less than happy, although many then admitted that a major reason for their negative opinion was a dislike of change. Having said that, we did find approval for stores in all the groups that took over Steinberg supermarkets Melro, Provi-go, IGA, Maxi and Heritage. The last two, while irritating shoppers used to the wide variety of goods in a Steinberg store, are winning some approval for their discount prices.

The food industry is also giving mixed reviews. While most of the new owners say vigo. Now that it's become a Maxi the warehouse-style discount Provigo company variety has been greatly reduced, Finnerti said. If you're on the lookout for bargains in national brands, you won't find as many at Metro as at the old Steinberg, said Fair-view shopper Sylvie Bernier of Pointe Claire. "My impression is that 30 per cent of this store's specials are in store brands," she said.

Merv and Rickie Levin of Cote St. Luc have taken to shopping in more stores to get what they want since their Cavendish Mall store became an IGA. "There's half the variety of store brands," said Merv Levin, citing the plastic food-storage bags he could find only from a national manufacturer, at a higher price than the one-time Steinberg brand. Continued on Page 2 they're keeping the stores unchanged, marketing insiders say Quebec's marketplace has lost and not yet replaced a company that once was both leader and innovator, that both atmosphere and customer policies in these now independently managed stores have altered, and that both quantity and quality of food on sale is reduced. Products on the shelves were front and centre in shopper reactions.

"It's more difficult to get what I want," said Trish Finnerti of Dorval, as she pushed her cart through the Dorval shopping centre's Maxi store. This store at first became a regular Pro- MIST MINUS? Humidifiers boon or bane? Whether they're a health hazard or not is a steamy issue. Bee MacGuire's Good Tastes column will resume next week. Fryday lazorback state where every day is AUCIA SHEPARD KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS ill Clinton might be carrying a few extra pounds to the U.S. cap do a lot of joggin' and all that good stuff," said Pat Harris, food editor at the Hope Star in Clinton's home town of Hope.

"Peoples' habits have changed a lot here," said Anne Yancey, who farms blueberries for Arkansas Blue Heron Farms near Fayetteville. "People are eating lighter and are more health-conscious. Having said that, every town has your corner restaurant with chicken-fried steaks, mashed potatoes and gravy and fried okra, which you don't get in California." Fat content drops slightly when it comes to the state's other favorite food, barbecue. Whether it's pork ribs or thinly sliced beef, Arkansans eat their barbecue smoked or slathered with vinegar or tomato-based sauces. A key ingredient in the state is corn-bread, sometimes called the Arkansas wedding cake.

While most folks say it's finger lickin' good, they just can't seem to agree on the right way to cook it with yellow or white cornmeal. 'That's kind of a battleground said Wanda Powell of Hope "You either like it with yellow or white cornmeal. I prefer yellow." just the wife and kids." One reason people prefer it outdoors is that the stuff stinks when it's being cooked. "Everybody is disappointed when I tell them there is no typical Arkansas food," said Irene Wassell, food editor for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. "The one exception, perhaps, is catfish.

We have a lot of catfish joints. They serve everything fried. Fried dill pickles. Fried biscuits. Fried okra.

Sometimes fried chicken and hushpuppies (fried balls of cornmeal). It'll just be everything fried." Catfish, the way Clinton likes it, is often served with 3,000 calories wo.th of cole slaw, french fries, turnips, baked beans, black-eyed peas, hushpuppies and cornbread slathered with butter. "The cole slaw is typically made with lots of mayonnaise rather than vinegar. It is rather fattening," Schaffer said. "If you could see me and Max, you'd know what I mean.

Max weighs about 275 pounds. Maybe more." But other North Americans shouldn't get high and mighty and start thinking Arkansans are drowning in grease. "We It makes it real juicy. Of course, it puts a ton more fat in the bird, which makes it more unhealthy. I'm not lying to you on any of this." "It fits with the time-honored Arkansas tradition of frying everything," said Brantley, editor of the weekly Arkansas Times in Little Rock.

"I was in a grocery store one time and a lady picked up a head of broccoli, looked at it, and said, 'How you fry this But surely more than deep-fried turkeys, Arkansans love their catfish, especially when it's rolled in cornmeal and dropped into hot, hot vegetable oil until it crackles. While the rest of the country with the exception of Mississippi and Louisiana eat a little less than a pound of catfish a year per capita, Arkansans gobble down almost four pounds of the farm-bred fish, according to the Catfish Institute. "We got these backyard, deep-fry rigs to cook catfish in," said Archie Schaffer, of Springdale, a spokesman for Tyson Foods, the largest poultry producer in the world. "Eating catfish is something you do in large groups. It's not something people cook at home for -NT Mil 7 02PPifS7 CREAM 7 CREAM ptj Ej psrrette ital, but he's leaving behind the fried fatty foods that helped shape his waistline and have come to define Arkansas cuisine.

No matter what the item biscuits, pickles, pies or even a whole turkey if it's deep-fat fried, you can bet the folks in Arkansas, and Clinton's no exception, love it. Arkansas cuisine is not without more sophisticated fare created by chefs such as Crescent Dragonwagon and her Nou-veau'Zarks cooking style a blend of Ozark food with secrets from France. But if one gauges the state's palate by the number of foods Arkansans fry, you can conclude that gallons of cooking oil sit on every kitchen shelf in the razor-back state. "We believe in fried foods," said Max Brantley, a former food editor with a waistline to match his hyperbole. "We are even now deep-frying whole turkeys.

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