DINNER AGAINST THE CLOCK

Mrs. Kammen -- The Making of a Cook -- is still guiding the absolute amateur toward higher cuisine mostly with French names even if it's only Frankfurters Comme a la Maison (she has taught over there and has her own school in Boston). All of this is most efficiently organized from equipment on to servings yielded (or expanded) and the time necessary from the vegetable washed to served. The bulk of the book deals with meats, animal by animal (only ten steak recipes or variants thereof), fish, with a few salads, vegetables, desserts and breads as well as soups, sauces, eggs, etc. Even if you may pause over something called Kidney Crunch, these sound like attractive, medium expensive to expensive dishes accessorized to achieve that continental-cosmopolitan elegance that the young woman alone or just-married likes to display. If she's not up to Julia or Simca.