EATING WELL

Timed to accompany his new PBS show of the same name, this latest grab bag from TV-chef Wolf (What's Cooking, 1989) starts off in a typically random manner with an unprepossessing Senate bean soup (already represented in who knows how many cookbooks) and then another soup dish composed of fried catfish, bread-and-catfish dumplings, and vegetable matchsticks that comes from a Salzburg hotel whose chef claims it was Mozart's favorite. To this second recipe are attached a boxed paragraph on Salzburg's outdoor food market and another two-paragraph box of Mozart trivia. Many of the other recipes—from a Club Med sweet-and-sour pork to a German purÇed mixed-fruit dessert—come from other restaurants both famous and far-flung; and the boxed notes scattered among them—on the soil of Idaho, apropos the potato; on the making of Pecorino Romano cheese—are even more haphazard than is customary. There's one on the turkey that manages to be both stale and inane. The recipes, though no more of a piece and no more necessary in today's overstuffed market than the notes, at least have more sense and style.