COOK'S CORNER

Write to her at lcicero@miamiherald.com.

Linda Cicero has been charmed and challenged by Cook�s Corner readers for 25 years. She began the column while food editor of The Miami Herald, and has continued it through family moves to Denver and Northern Virginia. ''I have no formal culinary training -- my college degree is in journalism -- but I came from a home where food was important, and by 13, I was cooking dinner most nights. Today, nothing makes me happier than gathering family and friends in the kitchen, reveling in the camaraderie as we chop and whisk away.''

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COOK'S CORNER

Pakistani pudding is good anytime

Thanks to helpful readers, we've found just the recipe for M.W., whose Pakistani son-in-law wished to taste again a dish his late mother made for breakfast with rice, milk, carrots, raisins and pistachios.

COOK'S CORNER

He misses the Rascal House salt sticks

Q: We still miss the Rascal House! For two decades, we would travel from California, stay in a Sunny Isles motel and eat all of our meals there. We especially miss the salt sticks.
COOK'S CORNER

Bake-Off cake kindles sweet memories of Dad

Q: When I saw that you were celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Pillsbury Bake-Off with readers' favorite recipes, wonderful memories returned of my father and his baking. I still have the recipe booklet for the third contest with a copyright of 1952. I pulled it out this morning to locate the recipe for Starlight Double Delight, which won the first prize of $25,000 in the senior contest. My dad loved to bake this cake.
COOK'S CORNER

Boxed mix, fresh fruit make for a simple, scrumptious cake

Q: I am desperately searching for a recipe for banana cake to make for a friend whose mother always made it, but now has Alzheimer's disease. She remembers it had layers and used a yellow cake mix. I believe it had mashed bananas in both the cake and the frosting.
COOK'S CORNER

Raisin cookies are an old favorite

Q: Through moving I lost one of my favorite cookie recipes. I used to boil water and raisins together and let the raisins soak, then add them to the dry ingredients.
COOK'S CORNER

Canasta Cake is a Memphis favorite

Q: About 55 years ago in Memphis, Tenn., there was a department store called Goldsmith's that had a wonderful canasta cake in the bakery department. It was chocolate with white filling. I have looked for this cake for years and haven't been able to find the recipe. Hope you can locate it for me.
COOK'S CORNER

Bake-Off faves you've saved?

Flipping through Pillsbury's Best of the Bake-Off Collection (Wiley, $29.95), a re-release of the 1959 classic, I was struck by how many of the recipes from the first 10 years of the contest have become favorites. Who hasn't tried Hershey's Kiss-topped Peanut Blossom cookies, Orange Kiss Me Cake or Tunnel of Fudge?
COOK'S CORNER

Long-lost recipe serves up creamy lobster on toast

Q: I lost part of this recipe -- all I can read is that you boil the lobster, break it up into small pieces, then make a white sauce, adding mushrooms and Tabasco and cumin. Then you add diced hard-boiled eggs, pour over lobster and mix thoroughly, sprinkle with cheese and broil.
COOK'S CORNER

Cinnamon, allspice flavor a Lebanese tabouleh

K.L. of Davie asked for ''a truly authentic'' recipe for making Lebanese bulgur salad. She remembered that her mother would make it ''and wouldn't even let us taste it until it had chilled for a day.''
COOK'S CORNER

Solving the mystery of a great-grandmother's potato salad

There's nothing as satisfying as fulfilling a request for a recipe that was a loved one's specialty. S.P.G. turned to our readers for help recreating a potato salad made by her Russian great-grandmother that she believed was called oliveyeah, but did not contain olives.
COOK'S CORNER

Toasted pecan rice makes a great potluck dish

Q: Ten or more years ago, I ate at the Crab House in Boca Raton. One of the side dishes was the best rice I've ever eaten -- it had a sort of roasted pecan flavor. Any chance of getting the recipe?
COOK'S CORNER

Cold summer soup is rich and super-simple to make

We've had lots of fun trying recipes for quick and easy summer desserts. Now Kay Briggs of Canton, N.Y., moves the focus to the beginning of the meal with a very easy and delicious summer soup recipe.
COOK'S CORNER

Seafood booklet surfaces in Delray

A Miramar reader wrote that she was missing ''a beloved soft-covered Florida seafood cookbook'' that contained a recipe for mahi mahi (also known as dolphin), okra and plum tomatoes. To the rescue came William French of Delray Beach, with a recipe from his ''stapled, soft-cover, 36-page Florida Seafood,'' with a 1982 copyright by Barbara Malone. This simple recipe would work with any fish fillet.
COOK'S CORNER

Seeking sauce from Maurice's Steak House

Q: You are my last hope. In the late 1940s and early 1950s there was a steak house on Collins Avenue and about 70th Street called Maurice's Steak House. They served a mustard sauce there that was out of this world. Over the years I have misplaced the recipe and am hoping you or one of your readers perhaps has a copy.
COOK'S CORNER

Cobbler sure to please

Q: In the early 1970s, I made a cake/cobbler the whole family loved, and it was so easy. In a glass pie plate or 8-inch square glass baking dish, I melted butter, added flour and stirred in milk and sugar. I then dropped in any kind of fruit and put it in the oven to bake. It always turned out so good. Would you happen to know anything like this?
COOK'S CORNER

Dressing is sweet, tangy -- and pink

Q: Does anyone have a recipe for red onion-poppy seed salad dressing? It was served at a luncheon I attended, and it was very good. The caterer declined to share the recipe. The dressing was pink, slightly sweet and had a robust onion flavor. I would think that something more than red onions would have been added to make the bright pink color.
COOK'S CORNER

Quick coffee-cup cake sweetens summer days

Readers have responded enthusiastically to our call for quick and easy summer dessert recipes. Maryann Langford of Macon, Ga., shared ''a fun little recipe'' for 5-Minute Chocolate Coffee-Cup Cake that her college-age son -- and test cook -- plans to take back to school for late-night study snacks.
COOK'S CORNER

Mangoes great in easy cake

Q: Here's a coffee cake that my mother's longtime friend Claire Genicoff shared with me when I was bride in the early 1960s. It's easy and versatile, as you can use any fruit.
COOK'S CORNER

Boiled dressing perks up potato salad

Q: When I was little, my friend's mother made the absolutely best dressing on her potato salad. The only ingredients I remember are evaporated milk and mustard. It may have been a cooked dressing and it was very yellow. They were from the South, so it may have been a Southern recipe.
COOK'S CORNER

Easy recipes for sure-to-please summertime sweets

When the heat of summer truly sets in, it takes a lot of motivation for me to spend serious time in the kitchen. Desserts and snacks tend to be ice cream or a bowl of sliced fruit or berries.
COOK'S CORNER

Easy cake recipe is a keeper

Q: Do you have a simple muffin or snack cake recipe that will use up that last handful of chocolate chips, nuts or dried fruit that we all seem to have?
COOK'S CORNER

Cafeteria's big cookies recreated

Temple Carpenter vividly recalls the chocolate chip cookies at the Forum Cafeteria in the Dadeland Mall about 40 years ago. ``They were bigger than my whole head and cost 25 cents, or at least that's how I remember it.''
COOK'S CORNER

Mexican 'lasagna' a fusion fave

Quite a few readers consider Mexican ''lasagna'' a staple in their cooking repertoire, and wrote to help P.F. of Miami, who lost the recipe.
COOK'S CORNER

Sweet bread quick, easy

Ted of Pembroke Pines asked for help finding the recipe for a dough he used to make with baking powder, not yeast, that he rolled flat and spread with ''anything from canned peaches to cinnamon and chopped nuts,'' then sliced and baked.
COOK'S CORNER

Michy's short ribs are worth the time

Q: Do you know what Michelle Bernstein puts in her short ribs at Michy's? Can you get her recipe? A: The answer is anything but simple, but Chef Bernstein graciously agreed to share her recipe. To say that making this dish is ''very tedious'' but the results ''delicious,'' as she puts it, is an understatement.