She's an award-winning cooking teacher; the Julia Child Curator of Food Arts at Copia, the food museum in Napa, Calif., and, most recently, the author of a cookbook that's receiving raves online.

Carucci's chief delight, it seems, is learning and teaching. For her, it's a natural continuum. Inhale, exhale. Take in new information, give it to other people.

Her subject, of course, is cooking, and her first book ("Probably my only book -- I don't know if I have any words left") is Cooking School Secrets for Real World Cooks (Chronicle, $22.95). I was surprised to find that although it's packed with tips, illustrations, recipes, advice, anecdotes and explanations, it's a convenient-size paperback. This mountain of information is organized for accessibility and offered in reader-friendly prose. In our recent interview, Carucci praised the editors, designers, recipe testers, chef colleagues and her husband, Allen Rehmke, for their part in the project.

Cooking School Secrets makes a great gift for the recent college graduate setting up a new apartment and facing a kitchen alone for the first time. It's also a great refresher course for experienced cooks. Each recipe is explained so thoroughly that it's almost a class in itself. Not surprising, since the book is based on the author's eight years running her own school, Linda Carucci's Kitchen, in Oakland, Calif.

It's a book that begs to be used, and the reward isn't just recipes so tasty you forget they're instructional (do try the accompanying recipes for grilled marinated flank steak au jus and the savory corn pudding). You also have the pleasure of "meeting" Carucci herself in her writing. Her sense of enjoyment is an invigorating, illuminating force.

"In my proposal I said I don't want a big, heavy coffee table book with a big price tag," she says. "I don't want something that's going to make a dent in your belly when you read it in bed." But producing this usable, affordable cookbook was easier said than done. "On the surface, you wouldn't know there were 116 recipe testers -- that there were home cooks in Burlington, Vt.; Elgin, Ill., and Glendora, Calif., who told me they could find pomegranate molasses for the muhammara [a Middle Eastern condiment that also includes roasted red peppers and walnuts] or rice noodles for the Vietnamese grilled pork salad. Or that on the East Coast they told me their halibut fillets always come with the skin on." (West Coast halibut fillets come skinless.)

She realized the originally agreed-upon 150 recipes was just too much, and her editor agreed, then slashed the total by a breath-snatching 50. After Carucci had whittled down her "little darlings," the editor went over the revised recipe list and noted, "You don't have a chocolate cake in this book. You have to have chocolate cake."

And she had to have it in a week. She started with an idea from Lark Creek Inn in Larkspur, Calif., that sounds a bit quirky: This chocolate cake calls for beets. (It's true, but your kids won't know they're eating a root vegetable unless you tell them.) Then she experimented with two kinds of icing: chocolate ganache, using Nick Malgieri's technique, and her own adaptation of Hershey's cocoa fudge frosting.

Fifty of her testers could turn a recipe around in 48 hours, so she sent half of them the cake and ganache; the other half, the cake and fudge frosting. She expected this to determine which icing worked better, but it was a tie. Even her editor couldn't decide, so both frostings are in the book.

What kept her from writing it sooner? Carucci says it was the prospect of sitting alone at a computer terminal through 100,000 words and scads of recipes. She was associate dean of students at Occidental College in Los Angeles when, in 1983, she moved to San Francisco to attend the California Culinary Academy. She was one of its earliest "older students" (she was in her 20s at the time) and later became its dean. She has been a caterer and, since 1997, has operated her own cooking school -- all people-related occupations.

Furthermore, she says, she tested "off the chart" as an extrovert on the Myers-Briggs personality profile. That doesn't mean she has to be the life of every party, but that "I draw my energy from other people." Sit at a computer every day for a year? "What a dull, boring, horrible thing that would be for me." The recipe testers became her "lifeline," she says. "Every single morning I woke up and I ran to the computer" to see who'd checked in with triumphs, questions, comments, new problems, possible solutions. "It was like I was teaching online."

And learning, of course. She gleans information from every experience, even breast cancer, which was diagnosed about 15 years ago. She doesn't refer to herself as a survivor; the experience was a career-altering fact of her life. She left the academy -- "The guys couldn't handle it" -- and after free-lancing for a while, she started her school in 1997. She was back with her first love, teaching, working directly with people.

"If you're by yourself, how much fun can you have?" she asks. And enjoyment -- fun -- is one of the priorities lined up in her life. "That's one thing breast cancer does for you. I got to live. A lot of my friends in my support group didn't. So I just figure, it's got to be fun."

For more information about Linda Carucci's Kitchen in Oakland, Calif., visit www.LCKitchen. com. For more on Copia, the American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, in Napa, Calif., visit www.copia.org.

Meaty issues

Here are Linda Carucci's answers and comments on frequently asked questions concerning meat.

Q. What's that iridescent membrane I sometimes see on the surface of pork tenderloin, turkey breast and some cuts of beef?

A. Occasionally (when the butcher hasn't removed it first), you'll find a layer of silver skin, a shiny whitish membrane that separates muscle groups, running along the surface of certain muscles of meat. Silver skin is tough to chew and it shrinks and curls up when it cooks, so it's critical that you remove it before marinating or cooking. Use a boning knife to trim off the silver skin by slicing along the grain, parallel to the meat.

Q. Why does my roast sometimes come out with a solid red core and gray edges?

A. The roast with the red core was too cold when it went into the oven. For even cooking, be sure meats are at room temperature before cooking. This helps to achieve restaurant-quality roasts with a caramelized exterior and an interior that's evenly pink -- or medium-rare -- throughout.

Q. How do restaurants manage to serve hot, yet rare, prime rib?

A. This is a wonderful trick I learned when I worked in a restaurant that served prime rib. The whole roast would come out of the oven just before dinner. Then, as dinner service progressed, the chef would carve off pieces to order.

To reheat, he'd put a slab of meat on an aluminum pie plate, cover it with a large outer leaf of romaine lettuce, and pop it under the broiler. In this example, the pan gets hot and transfers heat to the meat, and the lettuce keeps the meat both red and moist under the direct heat of the broiler. By the time the lettuce starts to shrivel, the meat is hot.

Carucci's comments about flank steak and marinating:
I wouldn't even consider cooking a flank steak that hasn't been marinated to break down some of its fibers and boost its flavor. While it's not typical to include an acid, such as lemon juice, in an overnight marinade, the tough protein fibers of flank steak benefit from the acid's tenderizing effect without the steak becoming mushy.

You also could use this marinade for chicken legs and thighs, pork tenderloin or lamb chops. For the best results with flank teak, marinate overnight, cook rare and cut across the grain on the diagonal into one-quarter-inch-thick slices.

You'll notice that beyond the sodium in the soy and Worcestershire sauces, no additional salt is added to this marinade. By all means, do season with salt -- and pepper -- before grilling to create an integrated, flavorful crust. Seasoning after grilling would result in less flavorful meat, with discernible flecks of salt and pepper that are not as pleasing to the palate.

Grilled Marinated Flank Steak Au Jus

Makes 6 to 8 servings

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 flank steak, about 1-1/2 pounds
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard, preferably imported
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried leaf thyme,
• crumbled between your fingers
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more for sprinkling
• 1/2 cup boldly flavored extra-virgin olive oil
• Kosher salt

INSTRUCTIONS: Trim off any fat and silver skin from the flank steak, and pierce both sides all over with a meat fork to tenderize the meat and open its pores. Rub both sides of the steak with the crushed garlic. Place the steak and garlic in a 1-gallon zip-top plastic bag.

In a small bowl, whisk together the mustard, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, thyme and the 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Slowly drizzle the olive oil into the mixture as you whisk steadily to form an emulsion. Pour the marinade into the bag with the steak and seal the bag, pressing out as much air as possible. With your fingers, massage the marinade into the steak. Lay the bag flat in the refrigerator and marinate for 2 to 24 hours, turning the bag and massaging the meat periodically.

About 1 hour before serving, remove the bag from the refrigerator and allow the steak and marinade to come to room temperature. Prepare a hot fire in a charcoal grill, or preheat a gas or stove-top grill to high. Remove the steak from the marinade and blot off excess marinade with paper towels, removing any pieces of raw garlic. Season the top side lightly with salt and pepper. Discard the marinade.

When the grill is very hot (you can hold your hand over it for only 2 seconds), place the steak on it, seasoned side down. Don't try to adjust the position of the steak at this point, as the meat won't release from the grill until it's sufficiently seared. Cook the steak on the first side for 3 minutes for rare, or for 4 minutes for medium-rare. If you want to create cross-hatching, rotate the steak a quarter turn after 2 minutes, then cook for 1 or 2 more minutes.

Lightly sprinkle the top of the steak with salt and pepper, and turn to sear the second side. If desired, rotate the steak a quarter turn after 2 minutes to achieve cross-hatching. After 3 minutes total cooking on the second side, test the internal temperature of the steak. Because flank steak is very lean, it's advisable not to cook it beyond rare (125 degrees) or medium-rare (130 degrees). Insert the thermometer on a slant into the center of the steak to test. If the steak is not done, continue grilling and test again after 1 minute. (If your thermometer has a plastic -- not glass -- housing covering the dial, don't leave it in the meat while it's on the grill, or the plastic will melt.)

When the steak is done, transfer it to a cutting board, preferably one with a trough or well to capture the juices when carving. Tent it with aluminum foil, or cover completely with an inverted bowl, and let stand for 5 minutes to allow the juices to retract into the meat. Using a carving knife, and holding it at a 45-degree angle, cut the steak across the grain into thin slices. If the steak is more rare than you prefer, place individual slices back on the grill. The residual heat will continue to cook them until they reach your desired doneness. Arrange the slices, shingle-style (overlapped close together, see page 179) to retain heat, on a warmed platter. Use a spoon or metal bench scraper to scoop up juices and drizzle them over the sliced steak.

Nutrition facts per serving: 371 calories, 29 g fat, 7 g saturated fat, 48 mg cholesterol, 4 g carbohydrates, 26 g protein, 583 mg sodium, 0 g fiber

Savory Corn Pudding

Makes 6 to 8 servings

INGREDIENTS:

• 7 ears sweet corn
• 1-1/2 cups whole milk, divided (see Note)
• 2 teaspoons unsalted butter, for baking dish
• 5 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon all-purpose flour
• 1/4 pound Monterey Jack cheese, coarsely shredded on the large holes of a box grater to yield 1 cup
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh chives, divided
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon Tabasco sauce (see Note)

INSTRUCTIONS:
Cut off the kernels from the ears of corn and reserve 1 cup. Place the remaining corn and 1 cup of the milk in a blender. Hold the blender lid in place as you gradually increase and decrease the speed. Process at the highest speed for a full 3 minutes. If necessary, interrupt blending to scrape down the sides. You should have a thick, smooth puree.

In the meantime, position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees. Prepare a bain-marie (hot-water bath): Choose a roasting pan large enough to hold a 9-inch round or square baking dish with 2-inch sides. Line the bottom of the roasting pan with a paper towel (to prevent the pudding from sliding around) and set aside. Butter the bottom and sides of the baking dish and set aside. Bring a kettle of water to a boil. Set aside.

In a bowl, whisk the eggs lightly. Add the blended corn mixture and whisk to combine. Sprinkle with the flour and whisk to blend thoroughly. Add the remaining 1/2 cup milk, the cheese, all but about 1 teaspoon of the chives, the salt, the Tabasco, and the reserved corn kernels and stir to combine. Pour into the prepared baking dish and sprinkle with the remaining 1 teaspoon chives. (The pudding can be prepared to this point up to 24 hours in advance, covered, and refrigerated. Bring to room temperature before baking.)

Pull out the oven rack halfway. Place the baking dish on the paper towel in the bain-marie and place in the center of the oven rack. Carefully pour the hot water from the kettle into the bain-marie to reach halfway up the sides of the baking dish. Gently slide the oven rack into place. Bake the pudding until the blade of a paring knife inserted in the center comes out almost clean, 45 to 60 minutes, depending on the depth of the baking dish. The top of the pudding should be firm and pale and the edges should begin to pull away from the sides of the baking dish.

Remove the bain-marie from the oven. With oven mitts and/or a long, wide offset spatula, carefully transfer the baking dish from the bain-marie to a cooling rack. Let cool for 5 minutes for pudding to set up a bit before serving.

Note: To make an even richer pudding, substitute half-and-half or heavy (whipping) cream for the milk. Likewise, to cut back on some of the fat, substitute a 12-ounce can evaporated low-fat milk for the whole milk. Evaporated milk gives baked custards a very creamy texture.

The Tabasco sauce here is just enough to add a bit of complexity, without overpowering the sweet corn flavor. If you prefer, substitute 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper.

Nutrition facts per serving: 268 calories, 15 g fat, 7 g saturated fat, 238 mg cholesterol, 21 g carbohydrates, 15 g protein, 522 mg sodium, 2 g fiber

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