In response to your editorial, "Gunning Down a Civilization," March 29:

I was also sickened by the murder of the Japanese students, but I was also sickened by The Times' editorial calling for more senseless gun laws. The entire editorial criticized gun ownership, yet spent no time criticizing the criminal who committed the murder or calling for the capital punishment that murderers deserve.

The Times stated that "respect for life crosses cultures and oceans -- or at least it should." The one thing that The Times needs to understand is that most of our nation's firearm-related crime is concentrated in urban areas where there is a large and distinct gang and criminal culture that has little regard for life. That is where The Times needs to focus its energies. The true problem lies with the criminals who could murder two people for a short ride in a car and think nothing of it. Until these individuals who culturally have no respect for life are permanently removed from our society the situation will not change. I will always respect firearms as tools to protect the lives and freedom of people that I care for, because I realize that there will always be people who have no respect for life and freedom.

MICHAEL THOMAS

El Toro

Our country can be like Japan. Our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, including your precious freedom of speech, need to be thrown out the door completely!

ED WOO

Long Beach

The highlight of a recent trip to Washington was discovering what Thomas Jefferson had written about the Constitution he helped draft. There it was on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial and, among other things, should give pause to the gun lobby and the lawmakers who support them. He wrote:

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in law and constitutions but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

LOU BOCK

Los Angeles

In the 4th Century BC, the political orator Demosthenes, speaking at a time of peril in the life of Athens, told his fellow citizens that they were like a clumsy boxer always moving his fists to shield the last place struck. In addressing the Bosnian crisis, Gen. John Shalikashvili, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, could use a lesson from Demosthenes.

Peace became imaginable in Bosnia for the first time when NATO, implementing a longstanding U.N. resolution, delivered an ultimatum to the Serbs about their Sarajevo artillery. In plain English, it was "Move it or lose it." The Serbs moved it.

Optimists then proposed that similar ultimatums be issued elsewhere in Bosnia. Pessimists predicted that the Serbs would move their firepower to other Muslim or Croat targets. What immediately followed was neither. It was an unexpected reconciliation between Bosnia's Muslims and its Croats and a new peace momentum.

Within the last few weeks, however, the predictions of the post-Sarajevo pessimists have come to pass: savage ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Banja Luka and a Serb siege of the Muslim enclaves of Maglaj and Gorazde. The slaughter now taking place in Gorazde is comparable to the slaughter that prompted decisive action at Sarajevo. Can NATO be decisive again?

Shalikashvili says no. NATO air strikes, he says, could be effective against Serbian artillery at Sarajevo but would not be against the infantry doing the killing in Gorazde. But must NATO be Demosthenes' boxer? Must Gorazde's defense come at Gorazde?

We think not. We urge the Clinton Administration to call on NATO to deliver to the Serbs the kind of Gorazde ultimatum that could stop the siege overnight: Lift the siege or prepare for air attack. Where? On what? That should be for NATO to know and the Serbs to find out. Serb military assets are many. NATO knows where they are.

Shalikashvili claims that this course would make NATO a belligerent on one side in a conflict in which it must maintain neutrality. This is nonsense. NATO is not neutral. If it were, the Sarajevo ultimatum could never have come about. The "evenhanded" neutralization of the virtually nonexistent Bosnian artillery along with the potent Serbian artillery at Sarajevo was a transparent charade.

For the rest of its self-defense, Bosnia does not need U.S. ground troops. It needs a U.S. President who will take seriously the Senate's 87-9 approval in February of a non-binding resolution calling for a unilateral U.S. lifting of the arms embargo against Bosnia. Ideally, a NATO Gorazde ultimatum would come in tandem with a lifting of the embargo by all the NATO members. Failing that, the Clinton Administration should offer its NATO allies a choice: Either issue a Gorazde ultimatum (an existing U.N. resolution is all the authorization needed) or plan on a unilateral U.S. lifting of the Bosnian embargo -- and therewith, sadly, a tacit loss of U.S. confidence in NATO itself.

* Having just returned from South Africa where I met so many fine Zulu people, I took offense to Anthony Hazlitt Heard's accusation of Zulus going "on the rampage laying into civilians" (Commentary, March 30).

Following the aforementioned quote, Heard admitted that the Zulus were fired upon from high-rise buildings.Hey, I'd run too if snipers were firing at me.

Then Heard evoked the name of God in his next untruth wherein he accused the Zulu demonstrators of attempting to "storm the ANC headquarters."

Perhaps Heard has been away from South Africa too long not to know that 10,000 Zulus could have easily stormed the ANC headquarters had they wanted to -- snipers or no snipers. I believe it is to the Zulus' credit that they did not storm the building even after being fired upon.

JERRY McGLOTHLIN

Fremont, Mich.

* I can just hear the fax machines ringing as neo-Malthusians in the environmental movement scramble to justify themselves ("Bringing Malthus Up to Date," Column Left, March 29). Alexander Cockburn actually scores more hits than misses in demonstrating that individual reproductive responsibility, as important as it is to our species' survival, is integrally connected to societal responsibility for equitable economic structures and ethical social relations. Those who decry the "population explosion," but fail to be at least as alarmed about the underlying "injustice explosion" that detonated when Eurocentrism began to dominate the planet, are perpetuating the notion that privileged people urge universal contraceptive access to protect their own advantages, rather than to work toward a sustainable future for all.

As the world's attention is drawn to these complex issues at the U.N. International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo this September, religious groups across the country are helping to redefine the population growth dilemma as more of a symptom than a cause of poverty. One of the most effective ways to begin the healing is to support the global "50 Years Is Enough" campaign in its efforts to reform the manifestly unfair economic and environmental practices of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

CAROL BENSON HOLST

Program Director

Ministry for Justice in Population Concerns

Burbank

* Cockburn shows how the far left can be at odds with the goals of mainstream liberalism. Cockburn is proud of disconcerting the Population Committee of the Sierra Club in California by discounting the menace of overpopulation.

Cockburn goes on to speak approvingly of single teen-agers who intentionally choose to bear children. He wants society to have to support its "surplus poor." I do, too, but within rational limits. Does Cockburn see no boundary to the drain on our finite resources by a potentially unlimited number of people clamoring for services? Are those of us who are particularly concerned about the delivery of contraceptive services to teen-agers all to be classified as racists? Does Cockburn really think it is beneficial to society for 14-year-olds to bear large numbers of children at public expense?

Before Cockburn so self-righteously rejects concerns about overpopulation, he should look at the squalor and human degradation of places like Calcutta, India.

EDWARD TABASH

Beverly Hills

* Obsession -- a fixation that clouds the mind and makes rational discourse almost impossible. Lest anyone question whether or not Cockburn has a virulent obsession with Jews and Israel, they need only read "Bringing Malthus Up to Date." In a column which otherwise focuses on the philosophy of the 19th Century economist, Cockburn's first two paragraphs gratuitously deal with the controversy between Louis Farrakhan and American Jews. "The whole uproar is fraudulent," Cockburn writes, "rearing a vast mountain out of a tiny molehill; just another way of hyping Israeli bond drives."

Excuse me? Cockburn has never missed an opportunity to attack Israel, but this latest effort is truly bizarre. How in the world is the Jewish community's anger over the anti-Semitic and racist sentiments of Farrakhan pertinent in a column focusing on capitalism, welfare reform and the poor? Cockburn's obsession is becoming, in the words of Lewis Carroll, "curiouser and curiouser."

CHERYL CUTLER AZAIR

Associate Director, ADL

Los Angeles

* In response to "Not Wrong, Just Overtaken by Other Facts," Column Left, March 31:

Michael Kinsley reports that George Stephanopolous found when he called his pal at the Treasury Department that he was breaking the rules when he complained about lawyer Jay Stephens' appointment to investigate the failure of Whitewater-connected Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan.

This phone call could be written off as part of the learning curve for a new politician in Washington were it not for two facts: (1) Stephens is a Republican who is known to oppose some of the actions taken by the Clinton Administration, and (2) at President Clinton's right hand is Stephanopolous.Stephanopolous' phone call suggests that an attempt was made from a power base to upset the appointment and interfere with an RTC investigation. Since Stephanopolous admits the purpose of the phone call, his action has the appearance of an abuse of power flagrantly displayed for purpose evident. Recall that abuse of power was the criminal action that influenced then-President Nixon to step down.

Kinsley's comment about the Wall Street Journal editorials and Rep. Jim Leach's (R-Iowa) honesty and record in Congress warrants response at a date now uncertain when more dust (or spray) has settled.

JOHN V. LANDRY

Rolling Hills Estates

* Facts that are known at this time made your headline "Californians' Approval of Clinton at High Point" seem totally unbelievable; then I remembered it was April Fools' Day!

SUSAN SPREEN

Mission Viejo

* A letter from Michael Markarian (March 28) claims that America's wildlife is only managed for the benefit of the 7% of the population that hunts.

According to the Wildlife Management Institute in Washington, licensed hunters provided $422 million in state funds for licenses, stamps and fees just for the 1990-91 hunting season.Taxes imposed by hunters on hunting-related equipment produced more than $160 million in 1991. Many other funding programs developed by hunters exist to benefit wildlife. Some of these programs date back to the mid-19th Century.

In addition, many conservation groups such as Ducks Unlimited provide more funding and volunteer hours to keep animal populations healthy for future generations of hikers, photographers and, yes, hunters.

However, out of the 1,150 species of animals in North America that benefit from these programs, only 145 (12.5%) are legally hunted. This hunting is strictly regulated by the state and is usually only attempted by hardy individuals who thereby gain a true appreciation of nature's balance.

DAN PRIEST

Mission Viejo

* If President Clinton had made money on Whitewater instead of losing it, he probably would have become a Republican.

EMMAJEAN MILLER

Los Osos

The audit staff of the city's Ethics Commission has reviewed Councilman Hal Bernson's campaign expenditures and committees and found too much disarray to extend the good bookkeeping seal of approval.

In a highly critical audit released Monday, the staff said that Bernson had used campaign funds for more than $158,000 in questionable expenditures, including foreign travel and expensive dinners. It could not find documents to verify how an additional $700,000 in campaign funds was spent by two of seven campaign committees controlled by Bernson.

Bernson's response: "They (the staff) have been biased, hostile and antagonistic because I won't knuckle under to (Benjamin) Bycel (executive director of the Ethics Commission) and his dictatorial tactics."

We can do without the bluff and bluster. City law requires routine audits of candidates' finance committees, and the Ethics Commission brings a welcome set of eagle eyes to the task. Besides, Angelenos did not vote to create the Ethics Commission to have it be warm and fuzzy with City Hall.

The findings of this latest audit covered some ground previously explored by a state attorney general's probe that cleared Bernson of using campaign funds for personal benefit.

It's time for the facts to come out, and the staff was right to send its audit on to the Ethics Commission's enforcement staff, the city attorney's office and the state Fair Political Practices Commission -- the agencies that enforce city and state campaign finance reform laws.

This is Bernson's second run-in with the Ethics Commission. Last November he was one of two local politicians who initially refused to comply with an Ethics Commission order to give the city treasury a sum equal to campaign contributions that turned out to be tainted; in Bernson's case, $10,000 was involved. The councilman was among 20 state and local candidates who unwittingly received laundered money. The Ethics Commission emphasized that none of the 20 had known that the contributions were improper. Only in January did Bernson agree to pay up.

Now Bernson and his staff are complaining that the ethics staff did not grant them enough time to respond to the audit. In fact, they had 45 days; that's 15 days more than usual. We would suggest that more precise bookkeeping in the first place might have left Bernson and company with much less to explain. The councilman and his staff should complete their studies and present their explanations. The public deserves answers.

Shame on Tommy. If alcohol and drug addiction is a weakness, Lasorda is the epitome of wisdom and decorum.

Surely, he knows better. As a life-long professional in a field littered with careers splintered by drug and alcohol abuse, the Dodger manager has consistently been exposed to the facts of addictive disease and is far more knowledgeable about it than the average person.

His anger at Darryl Strawberry's relapse and his apparent feelings of betrayal are understandable. But the irresponsibility of his public comments is not. As a highly visible leader in the megaworld of professional athletics, Lasorda should limit his ex cathedra pronouncements to baseball and leave the definition of alcohol and drug addiction to the medical experts.

That drug/alcohol addiction is a disease is unquestioned in the field of medicine. The American Medical Assn. so classified it many years ago, and addiction treatment and therapy is a well-accepted medical specialty. In addition, genetic and neurological research have proved that certain types of alcoholism are inherited.

The sad facts, however, are these: The disease has a painfully high relapse rate; most people who have it die from it, and there is no cure, only remission. If Lasorda is frustrated by this reality, imagine how Strawberry and his family feel.

Why didn't Lasorda just come out and say what is probably true -- that Strawberry broke his heart? Alcoholics and addicts hold the world's record for breaking hearts -- but not out of immorality, lack of character or stupidity.

Question: Will an active addict deny that he is using? Answer: Is the Pope Catholic? The symptom of denial is commonplace.

It's simply untrue that Dodger leaders couldn't directly confront Strawberry with their suspicions that he had relapsed. Based on their comments in the press, they had documented proof of unprofessional conduct, with unacceptable excuses. Given that, and Strawberry's acknowledgment of his disease and prior treatment, the Dodgers were well within their legal rights to take more aggressive steps. Indeed, it could be argued that the facts required them to intervene.

Interventions are an accepted and effective process for confronting the sick person, most often involving family members, close colleagues from work and a good friend or two. The goal of an intervention is to block all the psychological exits, leaving the addict with no excuses or viable rationalizations for his behavior.

The critical success factor is consensus on the consequences of refusing treatment and the commitment of all involved to follow through on them. While interventions often fail, most successful ones have a consequence that is work-related. Experience teaches that the typical alcoholic / addict in the throes of disease may well choose the loss of family over the loss of alcohol and drugs, but far fewer choose their drug of choice over their jobs.

Sobriety is a life-long challenge met one day at a time. Darryl Strawberry has an extremely hard road ahead, made immeasurably more difficult by his celebrity and visibility.

There are lots of us out here, trudging that same hard road. Hang in there, Darryl.

When Michael Fay, an 18-year-old American, was sentenced to a "caning" for vandalism in Singapore, the initial reaction in this country was one of outrage; even President Clinton criticized the sentence as excessive and reportedly is seeking to have it withdrawn. But almost immediately, there was a backlash of Americans asking: If severe corporal punishment helps to maintain public order in Singapore, would it not be good policy here?

I don't think so, although I am sometimes angry enough at criminals to be tempted to advocate it.

Singapore canings are brutal. A martial artist strikes the offender's bare buttocks (in Fay's case, six lashes) with a half-inch rattan cane moistened to break the skin and inflict severe pain. The loss of blood is considerable and often results in shock.

Corporal punishment is not necessary to achieve public order, even in Singapore. Other countries do not employ corporal punishment, yet their streets are relatively free of random violence.

There are also principled reasons for opposing corporal punishment.

From antiquity to the present, law scholars have generally agreed that to be just, the punishment should be proportionate in severity to the crime. Under this principle of "just deserts," murderers may be executed, but not speeders. How many of us would consider the brutal flogging of a teen-ager as a just desert for vandalizing property?

Fay's caning seems like excessive punishment to me. The Singapore authorities do not disagree. The caning may be overly harsh, they acknowledge, but it will, they say, deter other youths tempted to commit crimes against property.

The evidence for this assumption is sparse and unclear. In 1960, a British Home Office research group (the Cadogan Committee) undertook a study of 3,000 cases of violent robbery, virtually the only offense where corporal punishment was still being imposed in Britain. The researchers found that robbers who were flogged were slightly more likely to be again convicted of robbery with violence than those who were not flogged.

Yet the study is inconclusive. The difference between the two groups was not statistically significant. Besides, those who were flogged might have repeated their offenses not because they were flogged, but because the authorities lashed only those who were perceived to be the most violent and most likely to repeat their crimes.

It could also be argued by advocates of corporal punishment that the most violent robbers weren't walloped harshly enough. After all, they weren't caned on the buttocks by a martial arts expert whose thrashing could send them into shock. Corporal punishment, the advocates would contend, is a deterrent only if it is adequately severe.

That brings us to this question: Assuming that our Constitution was amended to allow corporal punishment, were we to start down that road, how would we know where to stop? Historically, corporal punishment has included burning, branding, blinding, mutilation and amputation. In some countries, people sentenced to death were drawn and quartered, that is, partly strangled and, while still alive, disemboweled and torn apart. If we abandon the just-desert principle, how far down the road of pain does the quest for deterrence carry us?

And if we permit corporal punishment to be judicially determined, how will we control its administration in our correctional institutions? Once the corporal punishment barriers are down, won't we be inviting prison guard and police brutality?

Another factor to consider: Our prisons are disproportionately occupied by members of minority groups. In 1991, the United States had the highest incarceration rate in the world, 426 per 100,000. Predictably, those who will be beaten and branded and mutilated in this new American justice system will be disproportionately young, male and black and possibly Latino. Aren't racial tensions in this country high enough as it is?

Finally, corporal punishment advocates might argue that beating and mutilation are cheaper than imprisonment. Not necessarily. It would depend on whether caning is the sole mandated punishment or an add-on. Note that Michael Fay was fined and sentenced to four months of jail time in addition to the caning.

The same offenses committed here might have earned Fay, as a first offender, a 30-day jail sentence, a fine and several hundred hours of community service, in the form of street and car cleaning, as a condition of probation. To me, that appears a just desert for spray-painting parked cars and harboring "stolen property" (a stash of street signs).

Corporal punishment may be tough, but it's not very smart, and neither is it cheap, just or necessary.

Back in the bad old days, the American media had only negative things to say about the Soviet Union. Not that there was really much information offered, but whatever it was, it was all negative. In TV reports even the skies over Moscow were always gray.

Now, of course, things have changed. Americans get a far greater quantity and variety of information concerning Russia. But, considering how many U.S. news bureaus are stationed there, it is still amazing to see what is missed.

For example, no note has been made -- at least in any of the mainstream media -- of what I think is a truly significant event.

On March 4, the influential Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Independent Newspaper) published the results of a monthly poll, conducted by the highly regarded Moscow-based Vox Populi Public Opinion Research Institute. The poll, "Russia's 100 Leading Politicians," is considered by both the Establishment and the public as an accurate reflection of a politician's rating. The latest results were a shocker.

For the first time in more than a year, Yeltsin slipped from first place to second. Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin took over the top spot. Acting quickly to heal whatever wound this news might have dealt to Yeltsin's ego, Chernomyrdin chastised the media for "sensationalizing meaningless political ratings" -- something he would hardly have done, had he indeed considered those ratings meaningless.

But there was more.

Vitaly Churkin, Russia's deputy minister of foreign affairs, a key player in putting the Bosnian Serbs in synch with the NATO-energized peace process, saw his standings in the poll catapulted from a tie for 99th place, in January, to a tie for 18th.

Third place went to Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, a name unfamiliar to most Americans, Russia-watchers included (but then, it took most of them a long time to pay attention to Vladimir Zhirinovsky).

Meanwhile, America's darling reformist Yegor Gaidar slipped from 3rd place to 9th.

Chernomyrdin, Churkin and Luzhkov have all demonstrated that, first, they firmly believe in Russia's inherent greatness and will stand up for its interests both in the "near abroad" (the former republics) and elsewhere; second, that they have faith in Russia's ability to solve its problems, and, most important, this troika has never hidden its distaste for Western recipes -- economic or political.

In a country not accustomed to polling, not involved in the game-playing that becomes inevitable when polling becomes at least as much of a political instrument as a method of gauging attitudes, the results of a monthly poll, which have been consistent for more than a year and suddenly undergoes dramatic change, should be taken seriously.

Between the end of the Gorbachev years and the summer of 1993, Russia offered the West a unique window of opportunity. The country was at a crossroads. Disenchanted and disillusioned with their past, the people were prepared to accept a radically different future. A George Marshall would have been quick to capitalize on this. He would have mapped out a strategic plan to channel funds and investments to pressure points in Russia. This time, America would not have to go it alone, as after World War II in Europe, but could work with its European and Japanese allies. The results would have been spectacular.

Alas, there was no George Marshall. In fact, there never existed any coherent policy, let alone grand strategy, toward post-Soviet Russia. Instead there persists the pernicious and arrogant view that America won, and Russia lost, the Cold War and therefore Russia should be treated as a defeated foe. A foe that must please America if it expects to be rewarded.

In Russia, a country that was not defeated and whose people never considered themselves vanquished, this policy has fed anti-American sentiment, set people against reformists seen as being pro-Western and slammed shut that window of opportunity.

It has brought to the forefront politicians who stand for a strong, proud Russia that marches to its own drummer.

They are neither Zhirinovsky-like ultra-nationalists, nor Communist Party ideologues. They are conservative pragmatists who will pursue Russia's interests, and they are here to stay.

Not long ago, I attended a news conference in Washington. Addressing the audience on the issue of Russian-U.S. relations, one of the most knowledgeable journalists in that area, Martin Walker of the Manchester Guardian, said: "The time when Russia agreed to play pet poodle to George Bush and Bill Clinton is gone for good." He did not say the bear was back, but I think the poll no one here has paid attention to says just that.

City residency requirements create an environment where employees are exposed to the good and bad of the city on a daily basis. It can also have the positive effect of motivating law-enforcement officers to take a more active role in improving the standard of life.

A failure to strongly encourage city employees to reside within Los Angeles promotes the occupying army mind-set the ACLU spoke of. An equally destructive byproduct of non-residency is the fact that these workers are supporting the tax base of other cities. Their children attend schools outside the city. They shop outside the city. And the extended commutes cause significant pollution.

Perhaps it is time to rethink the 1974 amendment to the state Constitution, which barred residency requirements. Regardless, the city should establish a goal of 100% residency. Incentives for living in the city could include additional points given in the civil-service promotion process, salary incentives, rental subsidies and low-and no-interest mortgage loans.

Milt Jackson always sounds best on his own, outside his role as vibraphonist for the Modern Jazz Quartet. That fact was underscored Tuesday at Catalina Bar & Grill when the 71-year-old vibist, long the physical force inside the intellectually heavy MJQ, pushed a strong, locally-based quartet in a commanding first set composed mostly of standards.

Credited for some 40 years as the artist who carried the vibraphone into the be-bop era, Jackson continues to sound fresh, finding new ways to make the blues sing while propelled by the strong tempos of the post-bop era. His work on Sam Jones' "Unit Seven" was typical as he filled the up-tempo workout with short, finely hammered lines that played to the tune's percussive attractions before racing through longer, melodic phrases.

Jackson was at his best on a Latin-paced "This Masquerade," which found him fortifying the theme with clever variations that emphasized the pop tune's gentrified blues elements. On John Clayton's "Serious Grease," he worked in a more rhythmic fashion to emphasize the piece's funky nature.

The set was filled with the kind of breaks, beat shifts and practiced endings atypical of pickup bands. Bassist Andy Simpkins supplied firm foundations and up-register decorations while pianist Art Hillary, one of the instrument's most distinguished spokesmen, opened up harmonic landscapes for Jackson's exploration. The upstart of the group, baby-faced drummer Willie Jones III, seemed especially attuned to his leader's attack, echoing Jackson's phrases with snare rattle and cymbal shadings.

* Milt Jackson at Catalina Bar & Grill, 1640 N. Cahuenga Blvd., Hollywood, (213) 466-2210. $12 cover ($15 Fri.-Sat.) and two drink minimum. Jackson plays two sets at 9 and 11 p.m., through Sunday. BILL KOHLHAASE

Mitchell Syrop's latest installation combines the logic of crossword puzzles with the awkwardness of high school and the unevenness of cheap wallpaper. At once chilling, goofy and mind-boggling, "Why I Wish I Was Dead" is the most ambitious, engaging and thought-provoking work he has made.

An expanded version of his 1992 exhibition at the Rosamund Felsen Gallery, Syrop's work-in-progress at the Santa Monica Museum of Art is a project he has worked on intermittently since 1974, when he was still an art student.

Its current manifestation includes five gigantic wall-mounted grids of taut monofilament from which hang thousands of 8-by-10-inch laser-printed senior portraits. A sixth web of monofilament runs between two walls, allowing Syrop to suspend yearbook photos in three-dimensions.

Being works in progress, more than half of the slots in the grids are still empty. Scattered around the floor are stacks of candidates for many of the blank spaces. Some recently printed images, to which hooks haven't yet been affixed, are push-pinned to the wall in the positions they'll soon occupy.

In the middle of the gallery, cardboard boxes packed with portraits are lined up next to Syrop's desk, where he is scheduled to work on and off for the duration of the exhibit. Despite the presence of a computer, scanner and printer, his quirky research is low-tech, hands-on and labor-intensive.

Syrop uses the computer only to enlarge, crop and reverse the photographs -- to ensure that the faces are the same scale, that clothing is an incidental trait, and that the heads tip at similar angles.

Culled from what must be a daunting collection of yearbooks from 1968-1976 (the year color photos where introduced), these black-and-white pictures of graduating seniors are arranged in groupings that share characteristics.

With an impressive sensitivity to detail, Syrop masterfully matches hairstyles, poses, facial features and expressions. Scanning his grids -- the largest of which has slots for almost 1,000 pictures -- is like watching a slow-motion, low-budget version of morphing: a fair-skinned boy with wide sideburns and bangs mutates into a curly-haired nerd with glasses and glazed eyes. And so on, until extremely different people are linked in a potentially infinite series of striking overlaps and strange similarities.

Syrop's art is exciting because there are no borders between his fluid groupings. Every trait that might establish the identity of a subgroup also belongs to at least one other cluster of students. The viewer's imaginative participation is required to make connections among myriad differences.

Although each of the wall-mounted grids contains only one category of people -- such as white men, black men, white women or teachers -- it isn't difficult to imagine that Syrop could find enough portraits to link all his grids. Boxes labeled "Spain" and "Asia" suggest that this might be in the works. His small, 3-D grid, which includes students and teachers, takes a step in this direction.

Even in its current state, Syrop's project is a noble antidote to forcing individuals into restrictive categories. His yearbook pictures are inspiring because they ask us to expand our capacity to discern differences within seemingly homogenous groups. By implication, Syrop's project invites us to imagine a social order with as many categories as members.

* Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2437 Main St., Santa Monica, (310) 399-0433, through May 15. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays. Patience Is Rewarded: Scot Heywood's paintings require considerable patience. At Ace Gallery, 14 powerfully understated works from the past three years generously reward the time you give them.

First, one's eyes must adjust from the hustle and bustle of the street before being able to discern whether Heywood's minimal abstractions are monochromes or consist of subtle combinations of different colors with matching values.

When capable of making these distinctions, the colors of the two-, three- and four-panel works seem to change. Gun-metal gray drifts toward olive-green; brick red softens into delicious burgundy; medicinal white melts into buttery, bleached gold; and the cold black of the void segues into the rich brown of the earth or the deep blue of the sky after sunset.

Although Heywood's paintings are hard-edged and geometric, they're not reductive. They don't strip art down to a single, essential experience or pursue a sterile idea of purity. On the contrary, they embrace the unpredictability of ongoing experience, challenging our visual acuity by focusing our eyes on hair-splitting distinctions.

To get us to focus on exactly what we're seeing, the 42-year-old, L.A.-based painter purges reference from his work. Although his triptychs echo the structure of Renaissance altarpieces and his horizontal diptychs recall the format of landscape paintings, neither of these genres inform his series.

More importantly, Heywood's abstractions don't look like watered-down versions of other more famous paintings. Wholly his own, they belong to an original body of work.

His most ambitious and eccentric series consists of four-part paintings divided diagonally and hung at 45-degree angles. Each looks like a baseball diamond with a fault running through it: Half the field seems to have slid out of position, causing second-base to travel halfway to first, which has ended up in the bleachers.

Because it's impossible to determine where the centers of these paintings are located, they demand to be apprehended intuitively. Initially, they appear to be off-balance and out-of-control. After awhile, they settle into an oddly classical equilibrium.

Our struggle to concentrate gradually relaxes until easy-going perusal takes over. More appropriate to Heywood's slow paintings, this drifting, indeterminate attention allows us to follow their complexity almost effortlessly.

* Ace Gallery, 5514 Wilshire Blvd., 2nd floor, (213) 935-4411, through April 30. Closed Sundays and Mondays. Punchless: In the past three months, three accomplished, L.A.-based abstract painters have exhibited sculpture along with their two-dimensional work. Unlike Roy Dowell's and Sabina Ott's successful forays into three-dimensions, Nancy Evans' fence-like constructions pack none of the punch of her paintings.

At Sue Spaid Fine Art, six acrylics on panel are Evans' best paintings. Less cluttered and more crisp than before, her new works flaunt a wide-range of painterly tactics.

Evans often coaxes pigment suspended in gel medium to behave like a collage. Even when seemingly torn, the surfaces of her layered paintings still seem gloppy and liquid. Contradictory fusions such as this charge her art with intrigue.

To Evans' credit, no two paintings look alike. It is as if she has momentarily paused on a path of rapid discovery to carefully pursue six separate strands generated by her wild, painterly experimentation.

Each of these paths could sustain a significant, extensive series. In the past, rampant, almost out-of-control sampling has defined Evans' method. Lately, refinement and sophistication have begun to enter the picture. More focus should ensure that her paintings will continue to move further away from her sculptures.

* Sue Spaid Fine Art, 7454 1/2 Beverly Blvd., (213) 935-6153, through April 30. Closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

The intersection of Las Palmas Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard doesn't exactly conjure up visions of elegance. Downtrodden buildings and graffiti-splattered restaurants line the street, which despite its fabled past has come to embody anti-glamour.

But a 4-month-old nightclub, the Buddha-themed Bar Deluxe, has taken a chance on the district, and it appears to be paying off. Much like the Lava Lounge -- which spruced up a nearby strip mall when it opened its tiki-style doors at the same time -- Bar Deluxe is drawing folks into the neighborhood. The very red and very dark bi-level club -- which contains numerous renderings of the rotund deity -- attracts a non-poseur crowd by offering an eclectic selection of music, drinks and food.

Country, zydeco and blues acts play upstairs a few nights a week, and Tuesday's deejayed selection of vintage punk is particularly inspired. From Jonathan Richman's "Dancing in a Lesbian Bar" to X's "Los Angeles" and ample Sex Pistols selections, the music suits the environment like a well-worn combat boot -- which you may need when it's time to leave Buddha's watchful gaze and hit the street. But with the words to "Los Angeles" -- X's homage to Hollywood's seedy underside -- fresh in your memory, anything less would be a bit disappointing.

* Bar Deluxe, 1710 N. Las Palmas Ave., Hollywood, (213) 469-1991. HEIDI SIEGMUND

HEAD'Salmonberries' Goes Off the Beaten PathKEVIN THOMAS

Bavarian-born filmmaker Percy Adlon has a special knack for making believable and engaging the seemingly most unlikely friendships and romances.

In "Celeste" he explored a loving bond between the ailing Marcel Proust and his sturdy, unsophisticated but unswervingly devoted housekeeper. In "Sugarbaby" he delved into a romance between a zaftig and confident mortuary worker and a handsome subway train driver, and in "Bagdad Cafe" he established a devoted, mutually supportive tie between an unresourceful stranded German woman and the overworked African American proprietor of a ramshackle motel and restaurant.

Now in the endearing, remarkably assured and stunning-looking "Salmonberries," a kind of serious -- yet humor-spiked -- counterpart of "Bagdad Cafe," Adlon takes on his greatest challenge yet, letting us wonder whether a friendship forged against all odds can turn into a romance. To tell his offbeat story -- and just as unexpectedly evoke the need for reconciliation between the reunited Germanys -- Adlon has selected a locale even more remote than the desert roadside compound of "Bagdad Cafe." It's the actual northwestern Alaskan outpost of Kotzebue, a tiny community of utilitarian tar paper houses, converted barracks and house trailers.

For 21 years it has been home to the local librarian, Roswitha (Rosel Zech), now 45, an elegant, formal East German emigre who has suddenly become the object of the attentions of a youth inarticulate to the point of rage. Not until the youth stops knocking books off shelves and instead abruptly disrobes does Roswitha realize that her suitor is a woman, played by k.d lang (whose haunting song "Barefoot" is heard on the soundtrack). Abandoned in Kotzebue as a baby, she bears the name of the town itself.

Craving friendship, love and a sense of identity, Kotzebue is so doggedly persistent that she breaks down the severe Roswitha's resistance to the extent that she actually enables this remote woman to confront a tragic past that has had her in its thrall the entire time she's been in Alaska. Roswitha's only joy has come in gathering salmonberries, but her increasing reclusiveness means that her shelf-lined bedroom is now crowded with jars of the preserved berries that she had intended to give away. With the utmost sensitivity, Adlon raises crucial questions of cultural and sexual identity.

There are a couple of deft moments from the late Chuck Connors as Kotzebue's seedy foster father and a wrenching scene played almost wordlessly by German actor Wolfgang Steinberg, but "Salmonberries," gorgeously photographed by Tom Sigel, is by and large a two-character story, and novice actress lang is as impressive as the veteran Zech. After lang asked Adlon to direct a music video for her, he wrote the script of "Salmonberries" especially for her. Unaccountably, this prize-winning film has had to wait for more than two years for a theatrical release.

* MPAA rating: Unrated. Times guidelines: It includes adult treatment of a lesbian in love with an ostensibly straight woman, and some coarse language.

'Salmonberries'

k.d. lang: Kotzebue

Rosel Zech: Roswitha

Chuck Connors: Bingo Chuck

Wolfgang Steinberg: Albert

A Roxie release of a Pelmele FILM Gmbh production. Writer-director Percy Adlon. Producer Elenore Adlon. Line producer Jamie Beardsley. Cinematographer Tom Sigel. Editor Conrad Gonzalez. Costumes Cynthia Flynt. Music Bob Telson. "Barefoot" performed by k.d. lang. Production designer Amadeus Capra. In English and German, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes.

* At the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 478-6379, through Wednesday.

A spokescreature for Empire Kosher Poultry is quoted as saying, "Above all, the tax-paying American must remember buck, buck buck buck receipts, buck buck buck, buck buck, oh yes and buccckk buck buck."In short, for the second straight year, Empire offers a consolation: If your tax return gets audited, send a copy of the audit notice to H & R Chicken, c/o Empire Kosher Poultry, P.O. 165, Mifflintown, Pa. 17059, and they'll send you a chicken. And if you pass the audit without owing any further money, they'll send you a kosher turkey. (Good luck, pally.) CHARLES PERRY

Why did turn-of-the-century French cuisine call for so many truffles? Sure, it was upper-crusty showoff cooking, but it's also true that there were just a lot more truffles in those days. About 2,000 tons of black truffles were harvested in 1914, but recent years have been averaging only five or six tons.One reason: A lot of France's truffle-bearing oak forests got in the way of one or another of this century's world wars. Tea Reading

Mary Mac Press, publisher of Mary Mac's TeaTimes, a bi-monthly newsletter dedicated to the gentle Victorian pleasures of afternoon tea-drinking, has branched out into the book world. It publishes a recipe collection "Easy Tea Treats for Busy Tea Lovers," three "Tea Time Zone Guides to Tea Rooms" (organized by time zone -- Pacific, Mountain/Central and Eastern) and a workbook-format guide "How to Open a Tea Room." If you can't inquire by mail (on unlined stationery, in black or brown ink) to P.O. Box 841, Langley, Wash. 98260, you can call (800) 331-1885. Fight Lactose Intolerance

If milk or ice cream upsets your stomach, you may be unable to digest lactose, a sugar found in all dairy foods. McNeil Consumer Products Co. will send you a free test kit to settle the matter: Call (800) HELP-KIT. McNeil also offers a lactose-intolerance newsletter and samples of Lactaid, a dietary supplement to make dairy foods easier to digest.

Hot Sauce in Christmas Colors

Hey! McIlhenny -- which has never changed anything, even its label, since 1868 -- is now selling a jalapeno sauce! Green Tabasco! Where will it all end?

Most people imagine government-sponsored conferences to be dull events. But when Edward L. Menning DVM, executive vice president of the National Assn. of Federal Veterinarians, spoke at a food safety summit hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington March 31, the audience encountered the Howard Beale of the food world.Menning delivered a dose of stomach-turning tales of modern meat plants that were more reminiscent of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" than the sanitary image the food industry portrays. "Even today, there is no way of telling what goes into a hamburger or hot dog," he said in one of his more printable remarks. Response from shocked attendees was initially slow in coming. One industry person simply said Menning's warnings were "remarkable." DANIEL P. PUZO

In India, vegetarian food is so highly developed that it can easily outshine dense, chunky, chewy meat dishes. Religion, scarcity or high cost of meat and generations of tradition make vegetarianism a basic lifestyle in that vast country.

Some vegetarians are very strict -- I have seen Jain priests with masks over their faces to keep them from accidentally inhaling insects. Others are more relaxed. Bengali vegetarians eat fish because it's abundant in that coastal state. So do inhabitants of the southern state of Kerala. And some vegetarians are willing to eat soups made with meat broth although they avoid meat itself.

Each region has its own specialties, its own way of seasoning. The western state of Gujarat, which is heavily vegetarian, leans toward sweet tastes. South Indian cooks perform incredible feats with lentils. Grains such as millet are important in the desert state of Rajasthan. And Punjabis adore simple greens with corn bread.

Certain hotels such as the Woodlands and Dasaprakash groups provide only vegetarian food. But all restaurants and hotels in India have plenty of choices for non-meat-eaters. Some glossy five-star hotels even set up twin lunch buffet lines -- one for vegetarians, the other for those who eat meat.

On Indian trains, you don't order by the dish but by dietary preference. The tray of food -- either with meat or vegetarian -- is brought to your seat, like an airline meal. At least that's the way it is in the second-class cars in which I have traveled. Chicken curry -- the usual "meat" entree -- was pretty good on some routes, not so good on others. But the vegetarian food was always wonderful. It's also a wise choice if you are worried about food safety.

Clever seasonings and tremendous variety make this food addictive. And there's plenty of it wherever immigrants from India have settled. Southern California's Indian restaurants always provide vegetarian options and a few serve vegetarian food only. A large part of the inventory at Indian markets here consists of the lentils, rice and spices that vegetarians employ with such artistry. Here is a look at how they cook.

"We are together cooking," says Phulan Chander, her Punjabi way of speaking spilling over into English. She smiles, thinking of husband Ramesh and the smooth way they work in the kitchen. "No fighting," she insists.

Their home in Hawthorne is indeed peaceful as they put together a multi-course vegetarian meal. The food is Punjabi -- except for a curry leaf here and there. This strongly flavored leaf appears in South Indian dishes, not northern food. But when you have a treeful just outside your kitchen, you are tempted to experiment.

This day, the Chanders are cooking the tiny black legumes called urad dal . Ramesh handles the dal while Phulan rolls out matti -- biscuit-like cakes that Punjabis eat with tea. Flavored with the aromatic spice ajwain , the cakes magically turn into multilayered pastries when fried. Already on the table is another tea snack -- cashews fried golden-brown and sprinkled with cayenne, black pepper and exotic-tasting chat masala.

Still to come are ravishingly spiced eggplant -- baingan bharta -- and potato dumplings in pale-yellow yogurt sauce. The dumplings, made with chick pea flour, are called pakoras. For cool contrast there will be raita , a yogurt relish containing tiny balls of deep-fried chick pea batter. These are boondi , and you can buy them ready-made in Indian shops, but Phulan makes her own, dropping the batter through the holes of a large spoon into hot oil.

Like most other Indian women, she bakes chapatis after her guests are seated so the breads stay fresh and hot. And she whips together an impromptu lassi that has a unique taste, unknown in Western cuisine. This comes from kewra , a liquid seasoning extracted from the flowers of the screw pine tree and so powerful that it has to be doled out by the drop.

Over and over as she cooks, Chander says, "I have too many recipes." This does not mean that her file is overloaded, just that she knows how to make many dishes. And she freely shares her recipes with customers at Bharat Bazaar, the Chander family's Indian grocery in Culver City.

The Chanders cook Punjabi style, but Sada Siva Rao serves the wildly hot dishes of Andhra Pradesh in South India. To experience the fiery intensity of Andhra food, eat at Rao's restaurant, the Bombay Grill in West Hollywood. Not everything is blistering hot, but when Rao cooks to his own taste, he ladles in heaps of blazing red chile powder and big spoonfuls of Southern-style masala -- spices ground with coconut. The trick is to temper the heat by eating a little curry with a lot of rice, he says.

Rao's tiny restaurant, tucked in the back of a mall near a kosher bakery, draws lots of studio people. And the conversation is often heavily spiked with English accents because Britishers who know Indian food gather there.

So do Indians who want foods they can't get elsewhere. One draw is homemade pickles: fat garlic cloves with sesame seeds, pickled fresh fenugreek leaves, spinach with coriander seeds and others. These are hot too, but one eats them in little bites with plain foods like such as rice and yogurt.

Rao cooks in a truly hot spot. His big range is next to the inferno-like tandoor oven. In this feverish setting he tosses handfuls of serrano chiles into a pot along with more chile powder than most of us would use in weeks. These zip up the intensity of mushroom senagapappu , chewy yellow chana dal cooked with mushrooms. Another load of chile powder goes into the tomato sauce for guttivankaya , an eggplant dish. Rao hasn't been able to get the baby eggplants he prefers for this dish, so he substitutes long, slim Japanese eggplant. These he cuts in half, then slivers in quarters, leaving the ends attached. Both dishes are hot enough to induce sniffles, tears and even serious inner pain. And Rao says the obvious: Season them to your own taste, which probably means using a lot less chile powder.

In the Punjab, there's a wonderful winter dish of spiced mustard greens -- saag -- that one eats with bright yellow corn bread called makki ki roti . At Nirula's snack shop in New Delhi, the saag is rich with butter, and the combination comes with a little cup of shakkar -- brown sugar crystals -- to add a tantalizing sweet taste.

Here in Southern California, you can try the saag and bread at Chameli, a North Indian vegetarian restaurant in Rosemead. Owner Hari B. Alipuria, who is from Patiala in the Punjab, remembers how his mother slapped the dough on a stone slab and baked the tortilla-like breads on a griddle that she sprinkled with cornmeal to prevent sticking. In Punjabi homes, the corn was stone-ground by hand, he says. That kind of cornmeal is not available in California, so Alipuria makes do with a supermarket brand.

Family tradition was to chop bushels of greens at night. Then Alipuria's father would get up early to simmer the saag for hours. Long, slow cooking brought out the full flavor.

Alipuria's wife, Linda, who reworked Chameli's recipe to household size, says many Punjabis season the dish with only butter and salt. In restaurants here, saag is well spiced, and it often includes spinach along with mustard greens.

Chameli's saag and corn bread do not ooze as much butter as they would in India because the chefs are instructed to reduce fats. The breads are lightly brushed with butter on one side only, then stacked. A pat of butter should go in the center of a bowl of steaming saag, though. Or one can skip the butter and sprinkle the saag with Chameli's alternative topping -- fried chopped ginger. Or make a good thing even better by using both.

Paneer bhurji looks a lot like scrambled eggs with tomato sauce, So you're surprised to find out that it is cheese -- not Western-style firm cheese but soft, freshly clotted milk stirred together with sauteed onions and tomatoes.

"It's one of our favorite dishes. I make it all the time," says Pammi Singh, whose husband, Lakhi, owns the Bombay Kitchen on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Although common in Punjabi households in North India, paneer bhurji is difficult to find in restaurants here.

At the Bombay Kitchen, vegetarians eat it with dal (lentils), whole-wheat paratha (a flat Indian bread) and a vegetable dish such as bhindi masala (spiced okra), aloo gobi (potatoes and cauliflower) or navratnam curry, composed of vegetables and nuts.

At home, Pammi Singh sometimes adds green peas to make paneer bhurji even more colorful. And she always has raita , a yogurt relish, on the table.

The Bombay Kitchen, only 8 months old, is still undergoing changes. One dish headed for the menu is the soothing ginger-lentil soup that Lakhi Singh's grandmother would brew up during harsh North Indian cold spells. It's the vegetarian version of chicken soup, good for whatever ails you even if the weather isn't cold.

Like the Chanders, Pammi and Lakhi Singh enjoy cooking together at home. "We experiment, and if it turns out well, we take it to the restaurant," she says.

Indian desserts are usually terribly rich, extremely sweet and very time-consuming to make. To get the rich taste and thick texture required for the many sweets based on milk, one has to boil the milk patiently until it reduces and the flavor deepens. Mira Advani, who was born in a part of India that is now Pakistan, has figured out how to get around this obstacle.

When she makes burfi , a candy-like sweet, she cuts down the cooking time by using ricotta cheese instead of milk. And she adds nonfat dry milk powder to make the mixture thicker. To get the right taste, though, she has to add butter. But she watches her diet strictly enough to afford an occasional treat. And she trims the fat grams somewhat by using fat-free ricotta.

Advani teaches vegetarian cooking at the Oaks at Ojai, the Palms in Palm Springs and at her home in West Los Angeles. Occasionally she eats fish, but for months at a time, she's totally vegetarian. "I just feel it keeps me healthy," she says. "It's a way of cutting down on fat. Of course, I love vegetables. They're good to eat and so colorful."

*

Pakoras are vegetable fritters. In this recipe, they're made only with potatoes, but Phulan Chander often combines as many as five vegetables, each cut into tiny pieces. The combination might include spinach for attractive green color, potato, eggplant, onion and cauliflower.

CURRY PAKORA

1 cup yogurt

3 cups water

3 tablespoons besan (chick pea flour)

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

1/8 teaspoon asafetida

1 medium onion, chopped

1 jalapeno chile, chopped

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 to 1 teaspoon ground fenugreek

4 curry leaves, optional

Potato Pakoras

Oil for deep-frying

Place yogurt in bowl and stir well. Add water and besan. Turn into blender and blend well to eliminate any lumps. Turn back into bowl. Stir in salt and turmeric.

Heat olive oil in large saucepan. Add asafetida and saute few moments. Add onion and jalapeno and cook until onion is tender. Add coriander, fenugreek and curry leaves. Add yogurt mixture and simmer 15 minutes. Just before serving, add pakoras. Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

412 calories; 928 mg sodium; 7 mg cholesterol; 21 grams fat; 45 grams carbohydrates; 14 grams protein; 3.08 grams fiber.

Note: If allowed to stand and then reheated, sauce will thicken.

Potato Pakoras

2/3 to 3/4 cup besan (chick pea flour)

1/2 russet potato, diced

2 to 3 tablespoons corn oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

Dash baking soda

1/3 cup water, about

Oil for deep-frying

Combine besan, potato, corn oil, salt, cayenne and baking soda in bowl. Add water to make dough stiff enough to shape.

Mold by hand into 12 balls. Drop into deep hot oil and fry until golden. Drain on paper towels. Makes 12.

*

This lentil dish appears creamy, but no milk is added. Indian shops can supply not only the urad dal (black lentils) but the big, dark - brown pods of cardamom, the garam masala and the ghee. Or use clarified butter instead of ghee. THE CHANDERS' DAL MAKHANI

1 cup whole unpeeled urad dal

6 cups water

4 whole black cardamom pods

2 thick lengthwise slices ginger root, unpeeled

2 bay leaves

2 tablespoons ghee

1/4 teaspoon asafetida

2 medium onions, chopped

3 tablespoons chopped ginger root

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/4 teaspoon cayenne

3 teaspoons garam masala

Salt

Place dal in large saucepan. Add water, black cardamoms, ginger slices and bay leaves. Cover and simmer over medium heat about 1 hour, adding more water if needed. Dal should be very moist, not dry. Let cooked dal stand several hours or overnight.

To finish dish, heat ghee in medium skillet. Add asafetida and onions and cook until onions start to brown. Add chopped ginger and cook 1 minute or so. Stir in cumin seeds, cayenne and garam masala. Add cooked dal and season to taste with salt. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until well blended and thick but still fluid. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

Each of 6 servings contains about:

168 calories; 96 mg sodium; 10 mg cholesterol; 4 grams fat; 25 grams carbohydrates; 9 grams protein; 1.61 grams fiber.

*

Roasting the eggplant adds a special flavor to this dish. ROASTED EGGPLANT WITH SPICES

(Baingan Bharta)

1 large eggplant

Oil

3 tablespoons ghee

1 medium onion, chopped

1 tablespoon chopped ginger root

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon amchoor (dried mango powder)

1 teaspoon garam masala

1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric

1/8 teaspoon cayenne

1 teaspoon salt

1 large tomato, chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro

Rub eggplant all over with oil. Grill over open flame or under broiler until skin is blistered all over, eggplant smells roasted and interior is very soft. Scrape off peel with knife. Place eggplant pulp in bowl and mash with potato masher.

Heat ghee in skillet. Add onion and ginger and cook until onion is tender. Add cumin, amchoor, garam masala, turmeric, cayenne and salt. Add tomato and cook until softened. Add mashed eggplant and cook until heated through, stirring to blend. Stir in cilantro. Makes 6 servings.

Each serving contains about:

111 calories; 455 mg sodium; 16 mg cholesterol; 11 grams fat; 5 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram protein; 0.5 gram fiber.

*

At first glance, you think these are sweet puff pastries, but there's no sugar involved, just a subtle spice taste from ajwain. Eat them freshly fried for the ultimate in flaky goodness.

PUNJABI FRIED PASTRIES (Matti)

2 cups flour

1/2 cup oil

1 1/2 teaspoons ajwain

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup water

Oil for deep-frying

Combine flour, oil, ajwain and salt in bowl and mix. Add water and mix to make dough. For each cake, roll dough between palms of hands into ball size of walnut or little larger. Roll out on lightly floured board to about 3 inches in diameter and 1/4-inch thick.

Pierce all over with tip of knife. Heat oil for deep-frying. Add cakes, without crowding pan. Fry slowly 15 minutes, until golden. Drain on paper towels. Makes 12 to 14 pastries.

Each serving contains about:

159 calories; 99 mg sodium; trace cholesterol; 11 grams fat; 15 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams protein; 0.06 gram fiber.

*

Chana dal (Indian garbanzo) is chewy when cooked, adding texture interest to this spicy dish. In the South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, where this recipe originated, a meaty mushroom called puttakokulu would be used. It's not available here, but ordinary mushrooms work just fine.

BOMBAY GRILL'S CHANA DAL WITH MUSHROOMS (Senagapappu)

1 pound chana dal

1/3 cup oil

Few shreds cinnamon stick

5 green cardamom pods

7 whole cloves

1 1/2 medium onions, chopped

9 serrano chiles

1/4 cup Ginger-Garlic Mixture

4 or 5 sprigs curry leaves, optional

1 pound mushrooms, with stems, quartered lengthwise

2 tomatoes, sliced

1 1/2 tablespoons ground dried red chile

1 tablespoon turmeric

2 teaspoons salt

2 1/2 tablespoons Masala With Coconut

1/3 to 1/2 cup cilantro

In bowl soak chana dal in water to cover generously 30 minutes.

Heat oil in Dutch oven. Add cinnamon stick, cardamom pods, cloves, onions and whole chiles. Cook slowly until onions are very tender but not browned. Add Ginger-Garlic Mixture and cook until liquid from mixture has cooked away. Add whole curry leaf sprigs.

Pour off soaking liquid until dal is barely covered with water. Add dal and remaining liquid to pot. Add mushrooms, tomatoes, ground chile, turmeric and salt. Simmer until tomatoes have blended into mixture and dal is tender but still chewy. Do not overcook. Stir in Masala With Coconut, then cilantro. Makes 8 servings.

Each serving contains about:

319 calories; 607 mg sodium; trace cholesterol; 11 grams fat; 43 grams carbohydrates; 16 grams protein; 3.27 grams fiber.

Ginger-Garlic Mixture

1/2 cup chopped ginger root

7 cloves garlic

3 tablespoons water

Combine ginger, garlic and water in blender. Blend until finely ground. Makes about 1/2 cup.

Masala With Coconut

8 green cardamom pods

10 whole cloves

1/4 to 1/2 stick cinnamon

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1 tablespoon white poppy seeds

1 tablespoon dried coconut powder

2 cloves garlic

Roast cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, cumin and coriander seeds lightly on griddle or in dry skillet. Combine in spice grinder with poppy seeds and coconut. Grind to powder, then grind with garlic. Makes about 1/3 cup.

*

Tiny purple eggplants, occasionally available at Indian markets, are best for this recipe. If you can't get them, substitute ordinary Asian eggplants.

SPICY SOUTH INDIAN EGGPLANT (Guttivankaya)

7 Japanese eggplants

Oil

6 green cardamom pods

8 whole cloves

1/2 stick cinnamon

5 serrano chiles

2 onions, chopped

1/3 cup Ginger-Garlic Mixture

4 sprigs curry leaves

3 tomatoes, sliced

1 tablespoon ground turmeric

1 tablespoon ground dried red chile

1 teaspoon salt

Water, optional

2 1/2 tablespoons Masala With Coconut

1/3 to 1/2 cup cilantro

Cut each eggplant in half crosswise. Cut each half in quarters lengthwise, leaving attached at one end. In skillet fry eggplant lightly in oil, until partly softened. Drain and set aside.

Heat 1/4 cup oil in large skillet. Add cardamom pods, cloves, cinnamon, whole serrano chiles and onions. Fry slowly until onions are very tender. Add Ginger-Garlic Mixture, then curry leaves and cook until liquid cooks away. Add tomatoes, turmeric, ground chile and salt and cook until tomatoes are very soft and cooked down to thick sauce. (If tomatoes are not juicy, add some water.)

When tomatoes are cooked, stir in masala. Carefully lay eggplant in pan. Turn heat to very low and stir gently just to mix with sauce. Do not break up eggplant. Cover and cook until heated through and eggplants are tender. Stir in cilantro. If you wish to drain off excess oil, turn mixture into colander and drain over deep plate. Makes 8 servings.

Each serving contains about:

51 calories; 301 mg sodium; trace cholesterol; 2 grams fat; 9 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram protein; 1.07 grams fiber.

*

Sada Siva Rao's wife, Vajayawada, makes sweet, milky, ginger-spiced tea for customers at the Bombay Grill.

SOUTH INDIAN GINGER TEA

1 1/2 cups water

1 1/4 cups milk

1 (1-inch) piece ginger root, unpeeled, pounded

4 to 6 green cardamom pods, pounded

1 tablespoon tea leaves

1 tablespoon sugar or to taste

Combine water and milk in saucepan. Add ginger, cardamom and tea. Boil until mixture turns brown from the tea, about 2 minutes. Stir in sugar to taste. Strain. Makes 2 cups, about 4 small servings.

Each serving contains about:

54 calories; 39 mg sodium; 6 mg cholesterol; 2 grams fat; 8 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams protein; 0.06 gram fiber.

*

This saag, from Chameli restaurant in Rosemead, is bursting with flavor. Serve it with Makki ki Roti (Punjabi corn bread), or with rice, dal (lentils) and the yogurt drink lassi.

CHAMELI'S SAAG

1 1/2 pounds mustard greens

3/4 pound spinach

1 (1 1/2-inch) piece ginger root, peeled and chopped

1 jalapeno chile, chopped

Salt

1 quart water

3/4 cup oil

3 medium onions, finely chopped

1 tablespoon chopped ginger root

4 teaspoons ground coriander

1 tablespoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

3 small juicy tomatoes, chopped

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

1 teaspoon dried methi leaves

4 inches ginger root, finely chopped

1 tablespoon butter

Rinse mustard greens and spinach thoroughly. Remove only coarsest bottom portion of stems. Chop roughly. Place in Dutch oven and add chopped 1 1/2 inches ginger root, chile, salt to taste and water. Boil, uncovered, about 30 minutes.

Heat 1/2 cup oil in large pot. Add onions and fry until tender but not browned. Add 1 tablespoon chopped ginger root, then coriander, cumin and turmeric. Fry 1 to 2 minutes. Add tomatoes, garlic and 1 tablespoon salt, or salt to taste, and cook until tomatoes are softened. Add methi leaves.

Drain any liquid remaining with greens and reserve. Place greens in food processor or blender and blend until finely chopped but not pureed. Add greens to onion mixture with reserved cooking liquid. Boil, uncovered, 40 minutes, until well combined and liquid is reduced but mixture is still moist.

Meanwhile, fry chopped 4 inches ginger root in 1/4 cup oil until lightly browned. Turn cooked saag into serving bowl. Place butter in center. Sprinkle with fried ginger, or serve ginger on side to add as desired. Accompany with Makki ki Roti. Makes 8 to 10 servings.

Each serving contains about:

258 calories; 150 mg sodium; 4 mg cholesterol; 23 grams fat; 13 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams protein; 2.02 grams fiber. PUNJABI CORN BREAD (Makki ki Roti)

3 cups water

3 cups yellow cornmeal

Butter

Place water in large saucepan and bring to boil. While boiling, add cornmeal. Stir to make soft dough.

Turn out onto board and cool slightly. Knead mixture thoroughly, occasionally picking dough up and slapping down hard on surface. Form mixture into 9 balls. With moistened hand, pat until each ball forms flat circle about 1/4-inch thick. Re-wet hand occasionally.

Place bread on ungreased griddle over medium heat. Cook until bread is browned on bottom and slips about easily on griddle. If using gas range, place cooked bread directly over flame for few moments to brown. Place on plate and brush with stick of butter. Cook remaining breads as directed and stack on plate so top of each roti butters bottom side of roti above. Makes 9 roti.

Each serving contains about:

414 calories; 882 mg sodium; 10 mg cholesterol; 24 grams fat; 46 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams protein; 2 grams fiber.

*

Indian vegetarian dishes rely heavily on pulses and dairy products, as in this delicately spiced soup.

BOMBAY KITCHEN'S GINGER SOUP

1/4 cup red or yellow lentils

4 cloves garlic

1 (2-inch) piece ginger root

1 tablespoon canola oil

1 medium onion, chopped

1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin

Salt, pepper

2 tablespoons low-fat yogurt

2 tablespoons besan (garbanzo flour)

1 teaspoon lemon juice

4 to 5 cups water

Chopped cilantro

Chopped green onion

Rinse lentils and set aside.

Grind garlic with ginger root to paste. Heat oil in large pot. Add garlic paste and saute 1 minute. Add onion and cook until light-brown. Add turmeric and cumin. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add yogurt and stir until smooth. Lower heat and add lentils, besan and lemon juice.

Stir 2 minutes. Add water and stir well. Bring to boil. Lower heat, cover and simmer on low heat 20 to 25 minutes. Serve garnished with chopped cilantro and green onion. Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

98 calories; 82 mg sodium; trace cholesterol; 4 grams fat; 12 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams protein; 0.97 gram fiber.

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If you prepare the paneer in advance, it takes only a few minutes to complete this easy dish. Serve it as part of an Indian meal, or even as a brunch dish, in place of eggs.

PAMMI SINGH'S PANEER BHURJI

2 quarts whole milk

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 tablespoons vinegar

2 cloves garlic

1 (1-inch) piece ginger root

2 tablespoons canola oil

1 medium onion, chopped

1 medium tomato, chopped

1/4 to 1/2 cup thawed frozen green peas, optional

1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric

1/4 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/4 teaspoon ground dried red chile

Salt, pepper

1 jalapeno chile, chopped

1 to 2 tablespoons water, optional

Chopped cilantro

To make paneer, heat milk in heavy saucepan. When milk boils, add lemon juice and vinegar. Stir until milk curdles. Remove from heat and cool. Strain through cheesecloth and squeeze out water. Set paneer aside.

Grind garlic with ginger root to paste.

Heat oil in wok or heavy skillet. Add onion and stir until light-brown. Add garlic paste, tomato, peas, turmeric, cumin and ground chile. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat until tomato is tender. Add jalapeno, then crumbled paneer and stir well. Cook over low heat 5 to 6 minutes. If mixture is dry, add water. Garnish with chopped cilantro. Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

332 calories; 323 mg sodium; 37 mg cholesterol; 17 grams fat; 30 grams carbohydrates; 17 grams protein; 0.67 gram fiber.

*

Although the cooking technique is non-traditional, this mixture tastes very much like classical Indian sweets. For variations, cooking teacher Mira Advani suggests substituting chopped almonds, pistachios or coconut for cashews.

MIRA'S CASHEW BURFI

Few strands saffron

1 teaspoon milk

6 tablespoons butter

1 (15-ounce) carton ricotta cheese

1 cup sugar

1 3/4 cups non-fat dry milk

1/4 cup cashews, finely chopped

1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom

Whole cashews, cut up, optional

Soak saffron in bowl with milk 15 minutes. Set aside.

Melt butter in skillet over low heat. Add ricotta and stir until cheese melts, 5 to 6 minutes. Add sugar and stir until dissolved. Add dry milk and stir until very thick. Stir in cashews, cardamom and reserved saffron.

Remove from heat and pour into buttered 9-inch-square baking dish. Cool, then refrigerate. Cut into squares to serve. Makes 12 to 15 servings.

Each serving contains about:

229 calories; 144 mg sodium; 35 mg cholesterol; 12 grams fat; 24 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams protein; 0.02 gram fiber.

Indian deity, plates and warmer in saag and makki ki roti cover photo from Chameli restaurant, Rosemead.

Fabric and serving pieces in Chander feast photo, H8, from Bharat Bazaar, Culver City.

caption

It was another writing group potluck. Chand Desai was assigned to bring hors d'oeuvres. He showed up with a couple sacks of blue corn tortilla chips and a big bowl of pale-green dip.

Dip.

What a perfect name for the stuff.

Dip, the slacker of hors d'oeuvres. Dip, adult baby food. Dip, the couch potato's staple and the dieter's nemesis. What else adds hundreds of calories to the pristine celery stalk and fat-free rice cake? Dip is temptation in its most inert, spineless form. Dip is the antithesis of delayed gratification. Dip is salty, gooshy and, if you're lucky, high in fat. (Low-fat dips are usually too awful to contemplate.) The only true virtue of dip is that it's easy to make.

Next time, I thought, I'll ask Chand to bring the mineral water.

This was, of course, before I dragged my first tortilla chip through that thick, lima bean-green goo. It was cool, smooth, creamy in texture -- and packed a hot, gingery wallop of flavor that was curiously familiar. I loaded another chip to see if I could trace the source of this familiarity. And another. I was mystified, and, therefore, kept dipping and tasting, dipping and tasting, which wasn't all that easy, considering there were about 10 other people going through the same whooshes of pleasure and mystification.

Finally, we coaxed the recipe from Chand. The secret of this cream-cheese-based dip was a classic Gujarati cilantro chutney one encounters with Indian appetizers such as samosas and pakoras. Laced with hot chiles, lemon and fresh ginger, cilantro chutney is the lawn-green sauce usually served in tandem with the milder, sweeter dark-brown tamarind chutney.

Chand's mother, Helen Desai, came up with this dip in her ongoing effort to make her favorite Indian flavors more accessible to the tender palates of her American friends. I myself have now brought it to countless potlucks, always with great success.

*

This dip goes with virtually any chip or raw vegetable. It also makes a cucumber sandwich sublime. GREEN CHUTNEY DIP

1 large bunch cilantro, leaves only

2 (1-inch thick) slices ginger root

3 cloves garlic, peeled

2 to 5 jalapeno chiles, seeded

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

Juice 1/2 lemon

3/4 cup water

Salt

Unsweetened coconut, optional

3/4 pound cream cheese, softened

In bowl blend cilantro, ginger, garlic, chiles, cumin, lemon juice, water and salt. Blended mixture should be classic chutney consistency, not too dry, not too thin. If too dry, add more water. If too wet, add unsweetened coconut. Mix with softened cream cheese. Serve with chips, pita wedges or crudites. Makes 2 cups.

Each 1-tablespoon serving contains about:

40 calories; 41 mg sodium; 12 mg cholesterol; 4 grams fat; 1 gram carbohydrates; 1 gram protein; 0.07 gram fiber.

Indian plate and background fabric in green chutney dip photo from Chameli restaurant, Rosemead.

Chandra Padmanabhan sets out the makings for yogurt morning and evening. In the heat of Madras, the milk quickly curdles, so she has fresh yogurt on hand all the time. She never has to rely on electric yogurt machines, thermos jugs or ranges with warm pilot lights. And she never has to wrap her bowl of fermenting yogurt in bulky blankets to make the warmth last. Or resort to buying yogurt at the market.

And that's a good thing, because south Indian vegetarians like Padmanabhan use lots of yogurt, which Indians call "curd." They put it into relishes, salads, sauces and beverages, and they stir it into rice as they eat.

"The last course is always the soothing, gentle curd rice, so good for the stomach," writes Padmanabhan, describing a typical meal in her book, "Dakshin: Vegetarian Dishes From South India" (HarperSan Francisco: $26). First published in India in 1992, "Dakshin" has since been reworked and re-photographed for Western distribution.

When Padmanabhan staged a luncheon in Madras early last year to show off the book, curd rice was included. The rice is rich and complex, seasoned with the spicy tastes of ginger and hot chile and the fresh herbal accents of cilantro and curry leaves. Chewy bits of lentil add nutty texture and protein. And the yogurt contributes a tart, mellow note. Usually, Padmanabhan adds diced green mango, but this time she had stirred in small green grapes from Hyderabad, along with cucumber and carrot.

Dakshina is the Sanskrit word for south. The food of this part of India is almost unknown in the United States, where Northern Indian food predominates. Yet it is very popular within India.

Southern cookery has its own vocabulary. Padmanabhan writes of thick, soupy, lentil-rich sambars ; thinner, spicy rasams , which are eaten like soup, spooned over rice and sometimes sipped from a glass; poriyals , which are dry vegetable curries; kootus , which are moderately moist, and pachadi , the southern equivalent of the north Indian yogurt raita.

The south is rice-eating country. Water accompanies meals, and the coffee is famous, as are the dosais , big lentil-and-rice crepes that are cooked on a griddle and eaten either plain or stuffed. Coconut palms grow profusely, so coconut meat and coconut milk appear in the recipes. Copra -- sun-dried coconut meat from which oil is extracted -- is also used in cooking.

One unique southern seasoning is the curry leaf, a pointy leaf that, according to Dakshin's glossary, has "a flavor reminiscent of curry powder." The glossary is an add-on for Western readers -- there was none in the original Indian edition -- and it's apparent that a Western editor unversed in Indian food wrote that definition, because the leaves actually taste nothing like curry powder. But they're available fresh in Southern California, so try them in Padmanabhan's curd rice. The dish resembles a rice salad and translates very well to our warm climate. CURD RICE

1 cup long-grain rice, cooked

1 small green mango, peeled and finely chopped, optional

1 cucumber, peeled and finely chopped

Salt

2 teaspoons oil

1 teaspoon brown mustard seeds

2 teaspoons urad dal, rinsed

2 teaspoons chana dal (Indian garbanzos)

1 fresh red chile, halved

1/2 teaspoon asafetida

Few curry leaves

2 small green chiles, finely chopped

1 (1-inch) piece ginger root, peeled and finely chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped cilantro

2 cups plain yogurt

1/2 cup milk

1 carrot, peeled and grated

Additional cilantro

Turn rice into bowl and mash. Add mango, cucumber and salt to taste. Mix thoroughly. Heat oil in heavy skillet. Add mustard seeds, urad dal, chana dal, red chile, asafetida and curry leaves. When seeds splutter, add mixture to rice. Add green chiles, ginger and chopped cilantro.

Mix thoroughly. Add yogurt and milk. Mix thoroughly again. Garnish with carrot and cilantro. Serve at room temperature or slightly chilled. Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

322 calories; 156 mg sodium; 17 mg cholesterol; 7 grams fat; 54 grams carbohydrates; 11 grams protein; 1.41 grams fiber.

The cash flow problems some wineries face may solve one of the problems impatient wine lovers face.

One of the trappings of the wealthy, the jet set, the in-crowd -- or whatever they're calling the sophisticated these days -- is the ability to pop into the wine cellar and pull out a 20-year-old bottle of red wine to serve guests.

Trouble is, few Americans are into aging wine. We are an instant-gratification society. But people who like well-aged wine don't mind paying for the privilege of having it.

Some retail wine shops do buy large amounts of red wine at release and age it for a decade before selling it. But there are three problems: Precious few shops want to tie up their money this way, those that do often have poor storage conditions and the price they end up asking for an old wine is generally too high.

In the last two or three years, however, a number of California wineries have been dipping into their own wine libraries and offering selected wines from the past. The reasons are numerous, but mainly relate to the fact that since 1986, per-capita U.S. wine consumption has fallen 25%, slowing cash flow at wineries.

Moreover, established wineries rarely get the public attention that is accorded to new, glitzy brands, and this is a way for them to toot their own horn. Older, well-established wineries, lacking a new story to tell, are finding out that selling their mature wines is quite a draw -- and not at all bad for the cash flow, either.

In most cases, these older wines have been stored perfectly at the winery (occasionally in subterranean caves), and are offered at such fair prices it may make the wine shop or restaurant owner look greedy.

In the past, most re-released older wines were in short supply -- five cases of this, 10 cases of that. But current offerings of older wines are in substantial amounts. In some cases, these wines were held back for a specific purpose, such as for export or for special restaurants. Then years passed before someone realized there was a lot of inventory that could be turned into cash.

One winemaker who knows of the greatness of perfectly stored red wine is Clos du Val owner Bernard Portet, who was born in France and reared at Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, where his father was director. There he gained an appreciation for mature wine, so at Clos du Val he created a huge wine library.

Knowing his wines rarely are showy when released but that they age beautifully, Portet was pleased last month to re-release 4,500 cases of eight different older red wines from his library.

"A wine doesn't have to be powerful in all of its elements to be enjoyable," said Portet the other day as we sat and sipped his spectacular 1984 Cabernet, a wine of immense richness and charm, one that still hasn't shown an age-induced change in color and whose aroma is only now giving evidence of its maturity.

"This is a wine that can age another 10 years," he said. "There's still fruit and the wine hasn't gotten to a peak."

The 1984 Clos du Val Cabernet, released in 1987 at a suggested retail price of $15, probably would command $50 in a retail wine shop today. The winery is offering it now with a suggested price of $27 -- not much more than many young Cabernets. For comparison, Clos du Val's currently available 1989 Cabernet Sauvignon sells for $18.

At the same time, Charles Krug Winery re-released more than 8,000 cases of its Vintage Selection Cabernets dating back to 1973, including 72 cases of its excellent 1974. And Dry Creek Winery in Sonoma; Sterling Vineyards in the Napa Valley, and Carneros Creek Winery in Carneros all are offering wide selections of wines dating back two decades.

Charles Krug's 1974 "VS" Cabernet is being offered at a suggested price of $50. Charles Krug's 1988 "VS" Cabernet sells for $28.50. I had a bottle of '74 Krug "VS" from my cellar two years ago and found it to be quite mature, but still holding lovely fruit.

"It's easy to forget that Charles Krug has made very good wine for a very long time," says a winery spokesman, adding that the re-release of such a large amount of wine didn't occur for a particular reason. "We just found that the library kept growing and we decided it was a good time to make these mature wines available," he said.

Clos du Val and Krug aren't alone. About a dozen other wineries are also re-releasing wines to add luster to their current-release list. Some of them are making a fuss about it; some of them are doing it very quietly.

One unpublicized program is at Sterling Vineyards. Visitors to the winery tasting room near Calistoga can buy dozens of wines from various vintages in several sizes of bottles, all at fair prices. A winery executive said the program is also open to callers. For a faxed list of what's available call the Sterling Collections line, (800) 726-6136. Wine will be shipped to states where such shipments are legal.

Another long list of older wines is from Carneros Creek, the first winery founded in the Carneros (1971). Owner/winemaker Francis Mahoney is now offering a huge selection of older vintages of its red wines, including Pinot Noirs back to 1976 and Cabernets back to 1972. For a faxed copy of the winery's offerings call (707) 253-9463.

Dry Creek Vineyards in Sonoma County is offering 42 red wines dating back to 1977. Dry Creek's 1984 Cabernet is available at $15 per bottle. For a faxed copy of available wines call (707) 433-1000.

The fact that so many wineries are re-releasing older wines at this particular time may be coincidence, though one winery executive termed the re-releases "a cry for help for these poor little guys whose distribution is drying up and who have to compete against better-funded wineries able to charge less for their wines."

Yet even as well-financed and successful a winery as Robert Mondavi occasionally offers a few older wines at its Napa Valley tasting room. Today the Mondavi Winery has nothing older for sale, but a winery spokesman said when a wine starts to reach maturity, it will be offered in select markets or at the tasting room.

Others who sell older wines regularly:

* Chappellet Vineyard always makes a 10-year-old Cabernet available nationally. The current 1984 Cabernet carries a suggested retail price of $25. It's an excellent wine and a bargain. About 4,000 cases are available, and a few restaurants are offering the wine at low prices.

* Chateau Montelena is offering its 1986 Cabernet, originally released at $30, at $45.

* Trefethen Vineyards, one of the few wineries to offer a white wine in its Library Reserve program, now has Trefethen's 1987 Chardonnay for $30.

* Louis Martini, which long has made older red wines available, is currently offering a six-pack of its Monte Rosso Cabernets that includes two bottles of the 1979 and one each of 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1985. The box sells for $110. Also, bottles of '79 Martini Zinfandel are $15 each. The winery will ship these wines to consumers who place mail or phone orders. For details call (707) 963-2736.

* Raymond Winery has a library ranging back to 1978. Pricing is modest -- though appears to be fairly casual. For instance, Raymond's 1981 Cabernet today would be about $35. For details call Raymond at (707) 963-3141.

Sometimes the only way to get older wines is to visit the winery. For instance, at Beringer Vineyards' Founder's Room, above its Rhine House tasting room, consumers may purchase samples or bottles of older Private Reserve Cabernets. Current vintages available are 1982 ($60), 1984 ($50), 1987 ($55), and 1988 ($40). Wine of the Week

1993 Joseph Drouhin Chablis "Premier Cru" ($20) -- Burgundy prices took a sharp rise a decade ago, particularly among the Chardonnay-based White Burgundies. It was the era of economic megagrowth, and Americans and Japanese were treating themselves. By 1988, an average bottle of French Chablis had reached the $25 mark and Premier Cru Chablis was close to $50. But the wines weren't necessarily worth those prices; high demand had induced some producers to "stretch" production, and the quality of White Burgundy had become less reliable.

In the last three years, however, the worldwide recession has chopped demand back, and almost all White Burgundy is coming down in price. By a happy coincidence, 1992 and 1993 were good vintages.

This gorgeous wine is not one of the fat-and-flabby Chablis of recent invention but a classic Chablis, lean and delicate. It has wonderful spiced apple and melon fruit and a fine, crisp finish with long aftertaste. Drouhin is known for good-value Chablis, and this wine has it. With discounts, some retailers will have this wine for $15 or so, and at that price it's the best high-quality White Burgundy value I've tasted in nearly a decade.

One of the astonishing things about browsing through the hundreds of Asian restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley is how often you come across a place that serves not just an unusual dish or two, but a whole cuisine that may be new to you -- an unusually Fujian-influenced Taiwanese seafood menu or perhaps a kind of noodleshop cooking practically unknown outside Inner Mongolia. No mini-mall restaurant is so small that it may not surprise you; no opulent wedding-banquet menu can safely be ignored.

Silver Wing is a tiny place in a mall with a Vietnamese supermarket near the far edge of Alhambra, one mirror-walled restaurant among many, with a cold case for salads and a dozen tidy tables. Even if you have been to Silver Wing five times, you may not be able to tell it apart from the other restaurants in the strip without referring to the photocopied menu taped up in a window. But Silver Wing is probably the only place in the area specializing in the famous dumplings and noodles and buns of Yangzhou, a small city north of Shanghai, and the breakfast is as delicious as you can imagine. (The breakfast menu is in Chinese, but a waitress will be glad to translate.)

Check it out some weekend around noon. Silver Wing is suddenly crowded with people eating dumplings; slurping from big, steaming bowls of soy milk; gnawing on freshly fried Chinese crullers that look a little like churros that have been surgically joined at the waist; digging into Chinese spaghetti. Salted soy milk, like a suspension of pulverized bean curd flavored strongly with pepper and black vinegar, is garnished with sliced crullers and a tiny dice of pungent, salt-preserved vegetables; sweet soy milk is bland, slightly chalky, subtly flavored, a cream-smooth analog to the hot tofu so popular at dim sum lunches. (Avoid the rice soup, which is just that: unflavored rice soup.) At breakfast there are also hot ovals of flaky sesame bread, stuffed with thin, cool slices of gelatinous beef or spiced pork, crunchy and soft and chewy all at once.

What are called "steamed slice rolls" -- ask for fried steamed slice rolls -- are little beehive-shaped things that are sweet like doughnuts, crunchy-crusted and dusted with cinnamon sugar. Cat's-ear noodles -- unfortunately listed on the typo-ridden menu as "stir-fried sliced douch with vegetables" -- are firm, delicious things that actually do look a bit like cat's ears, sauteed with the eggs, meat, crunchy black fungus and mushrooms you might associate with great mu shu pork. Dry bean curd Yangchow-style may be the single best dish in the restaurant, the thinnest julienne strips of dry tofu, the texture of soft cheese, tossed with tiny shreds of white-meat chicken, Chinese ham and a little black vinegar, a dish you do not eat so much as inhale.

Silver Wing serves a terrific version of the Yangchow region's famous lion's head meat dumplings -- baseball-size lumps of fat minced pork cooked slowly in a gravy of stock and soy, with a flavor whose intensity belies the meatballs' lightness. Little bamboo steamersful of cut up spareribs, heady with wine and ginger, are steamed under a thick coat of coarse rice crumbs and sit on a bed of yams. The usual Chinese vegetables are good -- string beans fried with salty crumbles of pork, spicy eggplant -- and there is a wonderful, delicate dish of salted vegetables sauteed with fresh soybeans and fragile tendrils of tofu skin.

There are almost too many kinds of dumplings to count: shiu mai shaped like little nuclear cooling towers, stuffed with a savory mince of pine nuts, pork and sticky rice; incredible pan-fried pork bao , juicy and gingery, garnished with chopped scallions; dumplings stuffed with a fragrant mince of preserved vegetables and pork; green-onion pancakes (just OK); garlicky pan-fried dumplings; wonderful sweet dumplings stuffed with chopped dates. I have been to Silver Wing maybe eight times in the last couple of months, and I have tried to order a different kind of dumpling on each visit, but I have barely made a dent in the menu.

* Silver Wing: 1265 E. Valley Blvd., Alhambra (in Quang Hoa shopping center), (818) 308-1890. Open Tuesday-Sunday, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Cash only. No alcohol. Lot parking. Takeout. Lunch or dinner for two, $10-$18.

We may talk all year about eating light, but when spring comes, we take it seriously. Down with the deep, hearty stews and soups of winter. We're ready for quickly cooked, brightly flavored dishes.

Lamb is often a popular spring selection, but in keeping with the lightness theme, I prefer fresh fish, especially salmon, which is easily and quickly cooked. With just minimal enhancement, the salmon here is given Asian overtones, both in the glaze and in the scorched onions in the accompanying crisp, almost salad-like stir-fry of fennel, sugar snap peas and red pepper. Steamed rice would complete the main course.

For dessert, a citrus mousse garnished with fresh raspberries and sauced with pureed raspberries just bursting with flavor and color captures the mood of the season.

*

Here, salmon fillets are coated with a sweet ginger glaze that complements them perfectly. To quickly mince fresh ginger, cut it into one-inch squares and remove the peel. Then drop the cubes one by one into a running food processor. Let the processor run until all the little flecks of ginger have stopped flinging around the work bowl.

GINGER-GLAZED SALMON FILLETS

1 1/2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger root

1 1/2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons hoisin sauce

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 (6-ounce) salmon fillets, all same thickness, rinsed, patted dry with paper towels

Combine ginger, honey, hoisin sauce, mustard, lemon juice and salt in small glass dish. Can be mixed up to 1 day ahead and refrigerated, covered airtight.

Arrange fillets on foil-lined baking sheet. Coat fillets with glaze, dividing evenly. Can be done several hours ahead and refrigerated.

Bake at 450 degrees until almost cooked, about 8 minutes for 1 1/4-inch thickness. Broil about 5 inches from heat source until glaze sizzles, about 1 minute. Serve hot or at room temperature. Makes 6 servings.

Each serving contains about:

294 calories; 755 mg sodium; 71 mg cholesterol; 11 grams fat; 7 grams carbohydrates; 40 grams protein; 0.14 gram fiber.

*

As with all stir-fries, this one must be cooked at the last minute so the vegetables stay crisp.

STIR-FRY OF FENNEL, SUGAR SNAP PEAS AND RED PEPPERS WITH SCORCHED RED ONION

2 teaspoons peanut oil

2 tablespoons sesame oil

1 large red onion, cut into thin strips

2 large trimmed fennel bulbs, cut into thin strips

2 medium sweet red peppers, cut into thin strips

3/4 pound sugar snap peas, stem-end trimmed

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Freshly ground pepper

1/4 cup orange juice

2 teaspoons seasoned rice vinegar

Heat peanut and sesame oils in 12-inch non-stick wok or skillet over high heat. When very hot, add red onion. Cook, stirring often, until onion is scorched on edges, about 2 minutes. Add fennel. Cook 2 more minutes, stirring often. Add sweet red peppers, peas, salt and pepper to taste. Stir well to combine.

Cook until peas are heated through but still crispy, about 1 minute. Stir in orange juice and vinegar. As soon as mixture is hot, about 10 seconds, remove from heat. Adjust seasonings to taste. Serve hot. Makes 6 servings.

Each serving contains about:

108 calories; 609 mg sodium; trace cholesterol; 6 grams fat; 12 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams protein; 1.75 grams fiber. CITRUS MOUSSE WITH RASPBERRY SAUCE

2 (8-ounce) containers low-fat lemon yogurt

Zest 1 lemon, removed with fine grater

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

2 tablespoons fresh orange juice

1 envelope unflavored gelatin

2 large egg yolks

1/2 cup sugar

4 large egg whites

1 (10-ounce) package frozen raspberries, pureed and strained

1/2 pint fresh raspberries

Put strainer over medium bowl and line with coffee filter. Put yogurt in filter and drain about 2 hours, refrigerated.

Combine zest and lemon and orange juices in 1 1/2-cup work bowl. Sprinkle gelatin over. Let stand until softened.

In top of double boiler off heat, beat egg yolks and 1/4 cup sugar until thick and light-colored. Place pan over -- but not touching -- gently simmering water. Cook just until heated through and smooth, stirring constantly. Add gelatin mixture, stirring until completely dissolved. Refrigerate until mixture begins to thicken but has not gelled, stirring often, about 10 minutes.

Whip egg whites with electric mixer at medium speed until foamy. Continue beating while slowly adding remaining sugar by tablespoon. Beat until whites hold soft, moist peaks. Fold into lemon mixture.

Gently fold in drained yogurt. There should be about 1 1/2 cups. Spoon mousse into 6 clear goblets. Use paper towels to clean smears. Cover each tightly with plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight. To serve, spoon pureed raspberries over and garnish with fresh raspberries. Makes 6 servings.

Each serving contains about:

245 calories; 81 mg sodium; 94 mg cholesterol; 3 grams fat; 49 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams protein; 1.91 grams fiber.

Rarely have I eaten a cheese br