Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 30, 1993 TAG: 9309010274
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DEBORAH S. HARTZ FORT LAUDERDALE SUN-SENTINEL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Now, at 49, Rosso is once again trying to change the way America eats with her newest book, ``Great Good Food'' (Crown, 1993, $19).
This time, she is working to cut the fat - but not the flavor - from Americans' diets.
And this time, she is working solo. Rosso and her long-time partner Lukins have split in a well-publicized dispute. That break-up, and the book itself, have generated controversy within the food community.
In the face of what she calls ``sniping'' criticisms of her book's accuracy, Rosso has been hard on the publicity trail, touting her book in almost 50 cities in two months.
``While people may question fads like eating oat bran, there's no question about how fat and cholesterol affect your health,'' says Rosso.
To help cut fat, Rosso uses fats and oils as flavorings instead of a cooking medium. She cuts the portions of meat and makes up for it with vegetables and grains (``I won't give up meat, but now I'll eat one lamb chop instead of three,'' she says). And she provides recipes that can be incorporated into your eating plan one at a time.
``If you do this, soon you'll find your cooking and tastebuds have flipped,'' she says. ``You really will enjoy low-fat foods better than anything high in fat. And eating lighter will just make you feel better.''
Always interested in food, Rosso became intrigued with nutrition in 1970 when her father, living in Kalamazoo, Mich., became one of the first successful heart bypass patients.
``Back then, people knew you should eat less meat and exercise more, but the rest of the diet and cholesterol business was pretty mysterious,'' she says.
Rosso was living in New York City and working in fashion and advertising at the time. But she wanted to understand more about her father's condition even as she cooked her way through Julia Child's butter-bound cookbook, ``The French Chef'' (Knopf, 1968).
It wasn't until 1977, however, that her interest in cooking took off. She and her friend Lukins opened the Silver Palate gourmet shop, which became known for its avant-garde foods during the late '70s and '80s. During that time they also published ``The Silver Palate Cookbook,'' which made them a household name.
``First it was a hobby, then it was an overwhelming hobby and then it was the most fun anyone could have,'' Rosso says.``It was a wondrous time.''
It also was a time of self-discovery.
``I was living the life of a real single with two bottles of Champagne in my refrigerator. Sheila and I would cook all day and go out at night. I'd get home late and leave for work early the next day. My apartment began to feel like a hotel,'' she says.
Rosso soon tired of being ``an orphan'' and decided it was time to ``reactivate my kitchen and make a concerted effort to entertain people in my home.''
At the same time, she began thinking about health issues again. She started to minimize fat in her cooking, adding low-fat recipes to her menus one at a time.
After selling the Silver Palate in 1988, Rosso married Bill ``Wills'' Miller. She stayed in New York for another year to finish another cookbook with Lukins: ``The New Basics'' (Workman).
But it would be the last time the two would collaborate.
The following year, Rosso moved to Saugatuck, Mich., where she and Wills took over the Wickwood Country Inn, and she began writing a newsletter called ``Cook's Notes.''
Then in Spring 1992, she had a falling-out with Lukins, who was recovering from a brain hemorrhage suffered the winter before. The dispute became the talk of the New York food community. It was reported in The New York Times that Lukins was distraught to have read about her ailment in a letter sent to subscribers of Rosso's ``Cook's Notes.''
The letter apologized for delays in distribution and explained that Lukins (who had no role in the newsletter) had fallen gravely ill: ``Every day,'' the note explained, ``she's a bit better, but, needless to say when one foot is lame, the other has to work a bit harder.''
The two have not spoken since. Rosso says she bears no hard feelings toward her former partner. She rues the day the letter landed in subscribers' mail slots. She told The New York Times it was written by an assistant who put it on her Saugatuck, Mich., stationery and lifted her signature from other documents. ``I didn't sign it,'' she says. ``I didn't write it. It wasn't great. But it's still my responsibility.''
Rosso has tried to put the break behind her, but controversy continues to dog her.
In the year since, she has published ``Great Good Food,'' using the low-fat recipes she developed for the inn and for her husband, who has high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
``I realized people were eating my food and not feeling deprived,'' she says. So about a year ago she began collecting and testing recipes for ``Great Good Food.''
One year is a relatively short period in which to test so many recipes. In fact, the quick turn-around has become part of the controversy surrounding the book. Some food experts say it would be virtually impossible to test 1,500 recipes in just 10 months, as Rosso claims.
``Any food writer or cook will tell you it might take you 14 tries to get to where you want to get on a recipe,'' food writer Suzanne Hamlin noted in the Times article.
Katherine Keck, one of Rosso's assistants, was asked by the Times to describe the testing process, but chose not to. ``Julee asked us not talk about anything about the book,'' she says.
The controversy, however, doesn't end there.
Several national magazines found recipes for everything from appetizers to desserts didn't work, and they simply killed stories on the book rather than become embroiled in the debate over it.
Food writer Florence Fabricant, in another New York Times story, also took a close look at the book and found a problem with its structure. It is not entirely clear whether it is arranged by season (if so, fresh apricots do not belong in an autumn recipe), by categories of dishes or by ingredients.
Some of the recipes that work well are a quick tomato sauce, tomatoes stuffed with couscous, grilled bluefish, buttermilk biscuits, walleyed pike in foil with herbs and malt vinegar as well as the frozen yogurts and Dream Creams.
But the book could have used more meticulous testing and editing, Fabricant writes.
At the same time, some menus use recipes that don't yield the same quantities. The salmon on a bed of lentils is for four; the accompanying lentil recipe, for six. The midnight chocolate torte calls for a 16-inch springform pan, a size that does not exist.
Another recipe lists ``unsweetened butter'' (did Rosso mean unsalted?). And the ginger in a chicken recipe is never used. The directions for preparing lamb and green peppercorn pasta are so confusing they are impossible to follow. A Mango Chicken Salad is so strong on curry flavor we wouldn't serve it.
A recipe for fresh tuna calls for five pounds of the fish - to serve four. (Four families, perhaps?) And pork is included in a recipe for Moorish kebabs in a section on the cooking of Morocco, a Muslim country - an unfortunate choice, Rosso acknowledges.
What does Rosso have to say about all the controversy?
``All new books have problems,'' she says of the editing errors. And those mistakes will be corrected for the second printing, she says.
Regarding the other criticisms, she is more circumspect. ``I don't believe in airing dirty laundry in public,'' she says in a recent telephone interview from her home in Saugatuck. In other interviews, however, she attributes the negative reaction to her dispute with Lukins and to excess angst from the closed-circuit world of food fanatics.
``I like the fact that I have a distance from the foodies,'' she told a New York Times reporter last month. ``New York is a small world. Given the chance to snipe, there are people who will snipe.''
by CNB