Regional dishes add flavor to our lives.

Byline: Home Cooking by Jim Boyd The Register-Guard

PATTY MARPET of Eugene is "the queen of Jewish cuisine," a friend wrote when nominating Marpet for the Home Cooking column.

She and her husband, Charles, a manufacturer of cabinets, furniture and other millwork designed by architects, have raised three daughters.

She is active in the Temple Beth Israel synagogue and is on the board of directors of Hillel at the University of Oregon, an organization for Jewish students.

She has never done any professional cooking but she has cooked meals for large groups at the temple and for the student group.

"I've done a Passover Seder for 125 people at Gerlinger Hall for about three or four years now. They are on spring break this Passover, so I am lucking out," she said with a laugh. She said she's also cooked a Seder for 200 at the synagogue.

The Seder (pronounced say-dur) is both a religious ceremony and a feast on the first two evenings of the weeklong observance of Passover. It commemorates God's freeing of the Jews from their enslavement by the Pharaoh in Egypt. Passover begins at sundown on March 27.

Specialty: "I particularly like Mediterranean and regional Italian," she said. "I think they use a lot of fresh vegetables and interesting combinations of herbs. And because I have a very large vegetable garden, when I can't find something in the stores - for years I could never find a cranberry bean or a fresh fava bean. So I grew them, because there were wonderful recipes that used them in Italian cookbooks."

She said her interest in Italian and Mediterranean cooking allowed her to discover flavors "that we don't usually have in bland American cooking."

How she began cooking: "I believe I started cooking when I was in college. It was cook or starve," Marpet said. "And I really didn't have much experience, so I went out and purchased my first cookbook."

She lived in an apartment with three roommates who agreed to share the cooking.

"What we had decided - this was back in the '60s - was it sounded the easiest to become macrobiotic (a diet based on soy and rice). So my first cookbook was something called 'Zen Cookery,' ' she said, explaining that her macrobiotic diet phase lasted for a couple of years.

"Then I decided that if you were on this macrobiotic diet, you only ate with people who were macrobiotic and you could only go to restaurants that were macrobiotic, and it was a little limiting, both socially and food-wise," she said. "So I expanded and purchased my second cookbook, which was called 'Alice's Restaurant.' '

The "Alice's Restaurant Cookbook" had some interesting recipes - pasta recipes, for example - that led her toward Italian and Mediterranean cooking. "I think my all-time favorite was called 'Chicken Marengo,' ' she said.

Her biggest cooking success: "Probably the first time I was able to do Thanksgiving dinner from soup to nuts," she said.

"After many years of vegetarianism and different sorts of things and getting back to more traditional things, it had been years since I had ever cooked a turkey.

"I was living out in the country and we had turkeys. One was called Thanksgiving Dinner. That was his name, and he ended up as Thanksgiving dinner. So this was a Thanksgiving definitely right from killing the turkey, plucking the turkey and cooking the turkey and all the fixings. I think that probably was in about 1973."

Her biggest cooking failure: "I think Beef Wellington was. ... Not that it didn't turn out fabulous, but it didn't tell you in the cookbook that it was going to take you a day and a half to make it," she said. "So when I started at 2 in the afternoon thinking I would serve Beef Wellington (that night), I was thoroughly mistaken. ... It was served the next day."

Marpet said it was her husband who requested the dish of beef baked in a pastry crust.

"Boeuf en Croute," she said. "My husband decided he wanted something 'en croute,' and I believe it was a few days before Father's Day or something, and I thought, 'Oh, sure, I could do that.'

"And I have a large collection of cookbooks so I just, you know, found one and there it was: Boeuf en Croute. So I'm like, OK, great, Beef Wellington. I can do it. You know, they didn't tell you that it was going to take hours for this brown sauce to cook and then you had to roll out the pastry and you had to chill it, roll it - it took forever. This was not something you could start at 3 in the afternoon and serve for dinner at 6."

Her favorite cookbooks: "Marcella's Italian Kitchen" by Marcella Hazan, "Jewish Cooking in America" by Joan Nathan, and any in the "The Beautiful Cookbook" series.

Why this recipe was chosen: This is a Middle Eastern recipe that Marpet has made for years and that is one of her personal favorites.

"It's easy to do," she said. "It can be done on the grill in summer. It can be done in the oven during the winter. I grow a lot of eggplants in my garden, so I'm always looking for new eggplant recipes. This is one that you can make ahead of time and keep in the refrigerator for a number of days."

Grilled Eggplant, Pepper and Tomato Salad

3 long Asian eggplants

1 large yellow bell pepper

1 large red bell pepper

6 Roma tomatoes

1 medium onion, chopped fine (about 1/2 cup)

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons wine vinegar, or to taste

1/2 cup flatleaf parsley, coarsely chopped

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat the grill to high. Grill the eggplant whole, until very soft and charred all over, using tongs to turn it. The skin should be completely black. Grilling will take 20 to 30 minutes.

Char the peppers in the same way, about 10 to 15 minutes, then the tomatoes about 5 minutes. Cook the tomatoes just enough to blister the skins, but not so much they become soft (the centers should remain firm).

Transfer the charred vegetables to a plate to cool.

Note: Marpet said the grilling can be done in a 375-degree oven. Turn eggplants and peppers frequently.

Scrape the charred skin off the eggplant, peppers and tomatoes with a paring knife. Core and seed the pepper. Dice the vegetables into 1-inch cubes and transfer to a mixing bowl. Stir in the onion, garlic, oil, vinegar, half the parsley, salt and pepper.

Just before serving, taste and correct the seasoning. Sprinkle the remaining parsley on top. Serve with grilled pita bread chips.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings.

Note: The cooking instructions given here are copied almost word for word from a recipe that Steve Raichlen, author of cookbooks on grilling, allowed to be printed in "Jewish Cooking in America." When Marpet saw the recipe, she recognized the dish as being, with slight differences, the same as she prepares. A Jewish cab driver from Gaziantep in southern Turkey taught Raichlen the recipe. Like many Middle Eastern salads, it is best prepared a day or so in advance.

To nominate a cook for this feature, mail it to: Home Cooking, P.O. Box 10188, Eugene, OR 97440; contact Jim Boyd at 338-2363, or [phone]; or e-mail it to jboyd@guardnet. com.