Eclectic Mix Helps Frugal Gourmet Celebrate His Latest Book

The other night I went to a rather unusual party. Change that. It was a very unusual party.

This was a real mix. It included restaurant owners, food vendors, meal critics, food consultants and a whole cluster of vegetable, meat and fish merchants from the Pike Place Market. It even included an Ethiopian priest.

If it's permissible to use the cliche that the food table groaned, this one's groans of pleasure were almost audible.

Here are some of the things that caused all this pleasure: steak tartar, Ethiopian style; Armenian meat pies; Yugoslavian octopus salad; Jewish chopped liver; Russian dill and onion bread, and radish and egg salad, also Russian; Hungarian Liptauer cheese; Irving's cucumber salad (Jewish); and fish in coconut milk (Hawaiian).

The host of this party was my neighbor and friend, the Frug. That's my own affectionate shortening of his name, the Frugal Gourmet. The Frug is famous all over the country and in Canada for his Frugal Gourmet cooking shows on PBS television outlets.

The party celebrated completion (and into bookstores) of the Frug's fifth cookbook. This one is entitled ``The Frugal Gourmet and Our Immigrant Ancestors.''

Jeff Smith, the Frug himself, is a tall fellow with a white beard (he's only 52) whose energy is almost awe-inspiring. He's fast on the uptake, talks a blue streak, laughs a lot, works like a fiend, and enjoys his celebrityhood.

Just to give you an idea of his success:

Jeff Smith's first book, ``The Frugal Gourmet,'' circa 1984, has now sold 1.5 million copies. His second, ``The Frugal Gourmet Cooks with Wine'' (1986), has sold 850,000; the third (and my own favorite) was ``The Frugal Gourmet Cooks American'' (1987), which has sold 750,00 copies. His ``Frugal Gourmet Cooks Three Ancient Cuisines'' (1989) is at 500,000 and still climbing.

``This latest one,'' he smiles proudly, ``had an original printing of 400,000, but when these were all ordered, the publisher added 25,000 more.''

After Smith's boffo coming-out party for his book (the publication date is still to be announced), we met the next morning for breakfast at the Athenian, in the Market. Make no mistake, Jeff Smith is a child of the Market.

When he was 14 he worked for the old Rotary Bakery, where he was permitted to make doughnuts and clean pots and pans. He later worked for Ed Roesler at Brehm's delicatessen, then went on and got his divinity degree. He is still an active Methodist preacher who gives sermons all over the country.

With him that morning was Craig Woolam, his young assistant, who has been with Smith four years. Craig is something of a marvel himself; his cooking career began at home when he was 4 years old.

``I hardly remember this,'' he said, ``but when I was 4, I promised to serve my parents breakfast in bed. They stayed in bed, waiting patiently, while I went into the kitchen.

``My folks had bought a whole case of grapefruit and I couldn't get 'em cut right. I kept cutting grapefruit until I finally got the sections right. My folks later went into the kitchen and found 36 grapefruit halves scattered all over the place.''

Craig and the Frug travel everywhere together. Craig is a skilled chef in his own right, and it should be no secret that Craig has shared in the royalties of the last three of Jeff Smith's books.

``He worked so hard on this one,'' Smith said, ``that he gets a higher percentage of the royalties.''

The ``Immigrant Ancestors'' book includes recipes from no fewer than 35 ethnic cuisines.

Doing research for the past two years, Craig and his boss traveled to Rome, Budapest, Madrid, Hong Kong and Hawaii. ``And all over the U.S.,'' Smith says. ``We met some wonderful people, and between the two of us, we got it pretty well nailed down.''

The ``Immigrant Ancestors'' has none of what might be called ``precious'' cuisine. The recipes are solid, rib-sticking selections from Germany, Hungary, Ethiopia, Turkey, Norway, Italy and - well, you name the country, they've got it.

While the Frug takes sympathetic notice of modern health diets (low fat, low salt, etc.) he gives ethnic cuisine its proper due - where much cholesterol can be found.

For example, several dishes call for ``rendered lard.'' You can switch from this to a vegetable oil. ``But the real taste won't be there without rendered lard.''

``It's a funny thing about cholesterol,'' he says. ``A lot of people have to watch it, but some arrogant jerk like myself gets off easy. My cholesterol count stays steady at 175, no matter what I eat.

``But some people can't get theirs below 235 no matter how they diet. My wife, for example. She can read a cookbook and her cholesterol goes up.''

Smith and Craig work out of a huge, laboratory kitchen in a Market condo complex. He bought two units and combined them, knocking out walls and expanding the kitchen into one large enough to make a hotel proud to own.

Together, they test literally hundreds of recipes, sometimes as many as 40 a month, spending thousands of dollars on food.

No, the food is not wasted. Much of it goes to Seattle Table, an outfit that distributes food to various agencies that feed poor people. The rest goes to the Pike Market Ministry for distribution.

Enough said. Well done.

Emmett Watson's column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday in the Northwest section of The Times.