Fare Exchange: Requests, please; plus Garlic Chicken and Chiffon Cake

Welcome to Fare Exchange. Today we begin with an impassioned request: Please send requests.

You are excellent at giving answers and great at reminiscing, but there are days when the pot can only be stirred when you remember, and long for, the stewed tomatoes of your youth, or a favorite you sampled once at Fehn's, or the dish you tasted last week at a potluck supper.

Here's an example: One doesn't read much about dishes made with plain gelatin or Jell-O anymore, but gelatin salads and gelatin desserts are a tasty category. Got one to share?

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Marianne Hallbrooks is a garlic lover, as you will soon see. "To the reader who bought all that garlic at Costco, I have this wonderful cookbook. It is 'The Garlic Lovers' Cookbook, Volume II.' The book is very entertaining reading and, in addition to wonderful recipes for garlic lovers, it has lots of tips and interesting facts about garlic.

"This book could possibly be purchased at Amazon or from Celestial Arts, P.O. Box 7327, Berkeley, CA 94707, or maybe from the Gilroy Garlic Festival Association, P.O. Box 2311, Gilroy, CA 95020. The phone is 408-842-1625.

"There were so many simple and delicious recipes from that book to choose from; here is just one."

101 Garlic Chicken

10 whole chicken breasts, boned, split, skinned

Salt and pepper

2 cups of champagne

101 unpeeled cloves of fresh garlic (No, it's not a misprint. 101)

Place chicken in ungreased baking pan, 12-by-16 inches or 12-by-18 inches. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and pour champagne over it. Place garlic cloves around and in between pieces. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees about 1 hours. Remove chicken pieces to platter and arrange garlic around chicken. Tell guests to suck the garlic from the skins. It is deliciously sweet.

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It's helpful to hear reviews of recipes printed in Fare Exchange, and today Debbie Pataky praises last week's curried fruit. "You need to fix this; it is yummy. I love it spooned over my pound cake for dessert," she says.

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Anne Exum was one of the fortunate recipients of Kittie Stauffer's homemade champagne tarragon vinegar, mentioned last week. Ms. Exum says she has been eyeing the gift daily "and wondering what to do with it, other than splash it over chicken." There's your first good idea, and we hope to get the vinegar recipe that started it all and more good ways to use it.

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Who was your kitchen mentor? Who taught you cooking magic? We recently raised the question, and today Ginny Gaines gives the first of what we hope will be a good many examples.

For Ms. Gaines, the choice was simple: Mother. She included a recipe as proof of her mother's expertise.

My Cooking Mentor: Leila Welch Dugger

"I grew up on a farm and was unaware of the luxury it was to have your own food right at hand. We had a huge garden every summer and also had our own beef and chickens. We always had meat and always had vegetables and eggs and, for a number of years, our own milk. So it was a luxury to have all of that but also a lot of hard work.

"My mother was the youngest of seven. She and her sisters learned to cook quite young from her mother. She taught me young as well because, on a farm, everyone helped from a very young age. I walked with her to our garden and learned how to weed properly and actually what was a weed, as children don't usually distinguish which is which. I learned how to pick produce when it was at its best, young and tender.

"Then on to the kitchen, where I learned how to can and freeze all of that produce for the long winter. It was such a daily activity that I didn't realize how much I was learning or how much I would retain over the years.

"My mother was innovative, always trying new recipes. She knew the tried-and-true farm food, and we often cooked lunch (usually called 'dinner') for farm hands during haying season. We were in the kitchen all day during that time, and it was always hot, but I never heard her complain. She always told me, 'If your meal is ordinary, as sometimes that's all they can be, make either bread or a dessert and then it becomes a fabulous meal.' She taught me to stretch myself in all areas, but especially the kitchen, where you feed not only the body but the soul as well.

"I can still see her, in my mind, stirring the batter for this chiffon cake that is still a top choice at my house.

Chiffon Cake

1 1/8 cups plain flour (1 cup + 2 tablespoons

3/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Pinch salt (optional)

1/4 cup salad oil (canola, sunflower, etc. not olive)

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons water

2 egg yolks

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup egg whites (about 4)

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Mix and sift flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Make a well and add oil, water, egg yolks and vanilla. Beat until smooth. In a separate bowl, add cream of tartar to egg whites. Beat until it reaches fluffy peaks.

Fold first mixture into whites. Put into a 9-inch tube pan, one in which the bottom is not attached and can be removed easily. (Mine actually was my mother's, and was called an angel food pan).

Bake at 325 degrees about 1 hour

Ice with a simple confectioner-sugar icing that is fairly thin and can be drizzled on the cake when cooled. For granddaughters, tint it a pale pink to make a princess cake.

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Recipe or no recipe, the spirit of a cook -- the well-observed and imitated ways and reasons -- are their own cooking lesson. And having a parent as a cooking mentor would be true for many of us. Did anybody learn the culinary ropes from his or her father? Or a son or daughter? If so, tell us more.

And so comes the end refrain, "Pass it on."