Colorful Chef Melts Calories From Recipes

It's only minutes from taping Program 13 of "Graham Kerr's Kitchen," a new series for PBS. Bright lights have energized the KCTS studio set, which resembles one of those to-dream-for Armstrong kitchen flooring ads in the magazines. A meticulously designed and decorated space, with hints of a dining area and a family room. Add a shower, a futon, and one could be comfortable living here.

The woman in charge of makeup, recombs the star's hair and rubs wax on the brass of his trademark suspenders to keep them from glaring on screen.

A few last-minute words with Robert Prince, who helps Kerr with off-camera food preparation, and it's another showtime for this trouper of the television cookers who has taped nearly 900 programs in a career that began as "The Galloping Gourmet" in the 1960s.

I'm seated in the control room, watching wall monitors as director andassistants select camera angles. It takes a lot of people to put on this one-man show. Today's subject is Egg Substitutes. For starters, the McKerr Muffin, a lower-fat version of the McDonald's breakfast specialty and the classic hollandaise-blanketed Eggs Benedict, which Kerr terms "edible pornography."

With all the zeal of the crusader for healthier eating that he has become, Kerr launches into his concept of MiniMax (minimum risk and maximum flavor in everything you cook).

He deftly builds his creation of homemade English muffin, a thin slice of Canadian-style bacon, scrambled egg substitute, mushroom caps steamed with lemon juice and cayenne pepper and a thin slice of skim mozzarellacheese. After a brief stopover under the broiler to melt the cheese, Kerr takes the dish to his nearby drafting table - if he hadn't gone into food, he wanted to be an architect - where he charted its nutritional profile. This revised recipe reduced the calories from fat from 38 percent to 15 percent.

But the proof is in the eating. Kerr took a generous bite, his eyes twinkled and he pronounced it "almost indecent."

Stop tape. And then something magical occurs. Kerr looks into the camera and says: "Larry, I'm sending the rest of this in to you. It hardly has been touched by human hands." How often had I watched television cooking programs and wanted to taste the creations. Immediately. Without waiting to make them myself. Seconds later the McKerr Muffin arrived. I loved it. So did others in the control room.

Few things please Kerr more than winning converts to his campaign to lower fat, calories and cholesterol in the diet. His wife Treena's heart attack in 1986 changed his eating habits. But at first his obsession to consume less fat, sugar, alcohol, salt, artificial color and flavor, and processed foods resulted in a diet of earthtone-colored meals with sensual appeal slightly above zero. So he set about exploring what he terms the "bright notes," ingredients such as lemon juice and ginger that spark the taste buds.

The consummate professional, Kerr taped the new 26-part series during a three-week period in July. Two programs a day, with morning rehearsal and a one-hour break between programs. All the 150 recipes were developed much in advance so that they can be included in "Graham Kerr's MiniMax Cookbook" (Doubleday, $25) as a companion to the television show, produced by KCTS and West 175 Enterprises. The show will air here at 5:30 p.m. Saturdays, beginning Oct. 10, on Channel 9, and will be made available to other PBS stations throughout the nation.

Kerr is one resilient cook and promoter. When his five-day a week program, "The Graham Kerr Show," taped at KING studios in Seattle and syndicated during 1990 and 1991, was canceled, he simply moved on to other projects. He enjoys the new format done without a studio audience. An admitted ham, albeit now one with low fat, he recalls that when he could get people to laugh at some of his jokes and kitchen high jinks he tended to play to the audience and carry matters a bit too far. He never watches his programs, saying he wants to hold onto the talent he has of talking directly to viewers without becoming self-conscious.

Judging by the 30-minute program I saw taped, which also included a recipe for a lighter version of Egg Foo Young, the series is smoothly produced with a pace that never drags. But it's leisurely enough to give the audience a chance to study techniques and absorb equal parts of the star's information and good humor.

Each show starts with a classic dish, such as Fettuccine Alfredo, then proceeds to restructure it for better health, replacing lost flavor with new ingredients. For an example, see his recipe for Creamy Pasta Primavera on page C 2.

This is the first series that has not been produced by his wife. The Kerrs, both 58, and good friends since they were 11, have moved from Kirkland to a home on Camano Island, where she is writing poetry. "Treena has always helped me, and it is time she did more for herself," Graham says. "She's doing some wonderful work."

Through his programs, the charismatic Kerr has helped inspire generations of cooks.

Diana Collingwood Butts of Medford, Ore., who co-authored "Bread in Half the Time," named Best Cookbook of the Year for 1991 by the International Association of Culinary Professionals, thanks Kerr for nurturing her food career. "When I was about 10, I would hurry home from school to watch `The Galloping Gourmet' with my mother, and we would drink cranberry tea served in glass cups during the programs," she fondly recalls.