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Chef and restaurateur Wolfgang Puck has lots of irons in the fire these days. Spago Beverly Hills opened last week and the Wolfgang Puck Food Co. recently introduced SEVEN new frozen entree items to their frozen-food line available in supermarket freezer sections. That adds up to a total of 23 items in the Puck frozen food line - including 10 pizzas and 13 entree items.

The newest entree additions are Italian Vegetable Lasagna with Carmelized Red Onions, Ricotta Cannelloni With Sweet Roasted Pepper Sauce, Cheese & Mushroom Risotta With Fresh Garlic and Arborio Rice, Eggplant Parmesan With Tomato Basil Sauce, Mushroom Tortellini With White Wine Sauce, Cheese Tortellini With Red Bell Pepper Sauce and Spicy Chicken Tortellini With Cilantro Sauce. All are single servings that come in 12-ounce packages with a suggested retail price of $3.49 each. The entrees range from 360 to 520 calories and 13 to 28 grams fat each.

You can cook the entrees in a microwave or conventional oven. We opted to try the microwave oven as the times ranged from 5 1/2 to 7 1/2 minutes, depending on the item, and had excellent results.

During a tasting session at the Wolfgang Puck Cafe on Sunset Boulevard recently, Puck said he started offering frozen foods and frozen desserts more than a decade ago. After finding out that several Spago customers were buying the pizzas at the restaurant and freezing them, Puck added frozen pizzas to the line. ``We made a lot of mistakes as we went along,'' he told the group, ranging from trying to sell the pizzas in Army base stores in Norfolk, Va., and other nonpremium stores to trying to sell rich frozen desserts (and no lighter ones) in the summer when consumers prefer lighter options. Although the original desserts, which were frozen clones of Spago desserts, are no longer on the market, ``they were very successful from November to April,'' noted Puck.

The items, including the new ones, in the entree line, said Puck are ``things that people cannot do that easily at home. I tell people to spend more time in the bedroom than in the kitchen,'' he joked. Unlike some of his frozen-food competitors, whose entrees have many additives and appear to have been fabricated by chemists, Puck is out to offer real food (from a restaurant point of view) that is very flavorful, good-tasting and not too high in fat and salt - via the freezer case.

``We are not health food, but everyone is concerned with what they put in their body,'' he said.

Puck's wife, Barbara Lazaroff, agreed. ``Lots of food has unnecessary chemicals,'' said Lazaroff, adding that it is important that the company's products be made with fresh, top-quality ingredients and look and taste good. ``If you buy good-quality ingredients, you have to have somebody who cares how toprepare them; it is important how they are treated,'' stressed Puck.

Lazaroff tossed out a few other tidbits during the event introducing the products. Puck doesn't cook for her at home. ``He has exploded more coffee (and pots) and burned more toast than you can imagine.''

Although the new entrees were sampled at the tasting (from large amounts in chafing dishes), it seemed fairer to assess them when cooked individually at home. Favorites were the Italian Vegetable Lasagne (terrific!), Eggplant Parmesan and Spicy Chicken Tortellini - they were excellent. Although the Cheese Tortellini were good, the sauce, which was on the skimpy side, seemed a little grainy to some tasters. The Mushroom Tortellini tasted delicious but had a brownish, somewhat unappealing appearance. A sprinkling of fresh chopped parsley would have helped. If you have a hankering for risotto, the Cheese and Mushroom Risotto had excellent flavor. Overall, tasters rated these entrees flavorful and appealing - but perhaps a bit pricey. However in some cases, if you're eating light, you could split them, if you add a big salad. One minor carp - some of the tortellini packaging is the same size as the pizza packages and takes lots of freezer space, which for those with almost full freezers may create a problem. Other items, such as the risotto, lasagne, cannelloni and eggplant Parmesan, have more compact packaging.

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Photo: (1--2--Color) no caption (Wolfgang Puck, frozen food)