NEW & NOTEWORTHY.

TIPS AND TRICKS: Seems like reference books for home cooks continue to be published at a dizzying pace. And for cooks, both novice and experienced, needing help or advice, they're a boon.

The latest addition to bookstore shelves is ``Brilliant Food Tips and Cooking Tricks,'' by David Joachim (Rodale; $29.95). Its 604 pages are packed with more than 5,000 kitchen tips, hints and shortcuts and more than 900 recipes. Also included are 170-plus step-by-step illustrations and 200 sidebars for information such as how baking works. Particularly useful are the more than 25 tables and charts that run the gamut from a guide to pan sides and choosing the right oil or apple to edible flowers and their uses and emergency substitutions.

Sprinkled throughout are chef's tips (scallops are one of the safest shellfish to eat raw) and fascinating facts: On average, Americans eat 18 acres of pizza every day; a raisin can revive the bubbles in flat champagne; you can salvage bland-tasting corn on the cob by boiling it with 1/2 cup sugar to every 4 quarts of cooking water; using different glazes when baking breads will produce crusts of varying colors and textures.

``Everything here (in the book) is designed to help you develop a keener sense of food and cooking by revealing the little details that most cookbooks don't tell you,'' writes Joachim, a cookbook editor, author and spokesperson for Rodale cookbooks.

Entries are organized alphabetically and include a brief description followed by time solving, problem solving or flavor tips, healthy hints and recipes. Unlike some of its counterparts, this volume has an extensive index (hurray!) to assist in locating information and entries. One minor annoying feature (which can be overlooked due to all of the other pluses) - many of the recipes - probably to save space - appear in paragraph form mixing together ingredients and directions, which makes them more difficult to cook from.

This is an indispensable companion to keep handy in the kitchen - and it's a bargain to boot. It's bound to help you cook smarter and faster.

- Natalie Haughton

< FREEBIE LEAFLET: To help cut calories this summer, Sweet 'N Low is offering ``Sweet Spells: Create Mealtime Magic.'' The brochure is filled with seven recipes ranging from Citrus Chicken and Pina Colada Squares to Chocolate Buttermilk Cake With Raspberry Sauce. Also included is a substitution chart - how much of the product to use in place of granulated sugar. For a free copy, send a self-addressed, stamped (34 cents postage) business-size envelope to: Sweet Spells, Brooklyn Premium Corp., 60 Flushing Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11205. Allow four to six weeks for processing.

- N.H.

DINING OUT: Encino's Plaza de Oro has two new eating places.

California Crisp Cafe, specializing in salads, sandwiches, rotisserie chicken, pizzas and pastas, with 13 mall food court and office building fast-serve outlets, opens its second expanded location locally, this one serving breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Simon's Cafe, an independent Mediterranean restaurant with a menu of primarily Moroccan, French and Italian fare, has replaced Robair's Bistro. Simon's offers spicy beef cigars, goat cheese quiche, couscous salad, Moroccan-style salmon, lamb tagine, osso buco, flame-grilled veal chops and Merguez sausages. Prices range from $4 to $9 for starters and salads, $9 to $18 for pastas and entrees and $4 to $5 for desserts.

The new California Crisp Cafes retain the chain's basic fast-serve policy of counter-ordering, but food is delivered to tables on china - no plastic here. Other than large pizzas, all items are priced below $8. The first location is already operating in Westlake Village at 5794 Lindero Canyon Road. A third is due in Pasadena in October.

California Crisp Cafe, 17201 Ventura Blvd., Encino, [phone].

Simon's Cafe, 17209 Ventura Blvd., Encino, [phone].

- Larry Lipson

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(1) no caption (``Brilliant Food Tips and Cooking Tricks'')

(2) no caption (``Sweet Spells: Create Mealtime Magic'')