FRANCINE PRINCE'S NEW JEWISH CUISINE

What's new (besides the use of the food processor) about the variously Jewish recipes that Prince has devised for this collection? A not-too-strict attempt to control amounts of today's dietary no-no's: There's a fat-free chicken broth (though pages later there are also directions for rendering chicken fat), a ``lighter'' kibbeh and a trimmer gefilte fish, knishes baked instead of fried, and an avoidance of sugar that results in the overuse of frozen apple-juice concentrate in everything from challah to honey cake to stuffed cabbage to an ersatz Chinese chicken dish. Also new, in a way, to American-Jewish cooking are a number of dishes in the Sephardic (mostly Middle Eastern) vein along with the more familiar Eastern European fare. Then there are Prince's own inventions: main-dish strudels (turkey/lentil; chicken/kasha) and others less traditional and Jewish only because ``permitted.'' The anchor of tradition, though, and of conformity to Jewish dietary law, makes this a lot more viable than the author's last offering, Francine Prince's New Diet for Life Cookbook (1989).