Oven

In the market for a new microwave oven? The latest models are smaller and sleeker than their predecessors, and they do a lot more, too. Touchpads preset to the right cooking times and temperatures let you bake potatoes and cook frozen pizza at the touch of a finger. Many brands allow you to put something in the microwave, then program cooking to start hours later. But deciding which oven is right for you depends on form (where you're putting it) and function (what you need it for)

For an unforgettable dinner, consider this sublime roast pork. Modern culinary technology can't beat slow, oven-roasted pork gently flavored with sage and garlic. At the table, the roast awaits the carving ceremony, a nice touch at a sit-down event. With the exception of boneless tenderloins (their cooking time is critical), oven-roasted meats are entertaining stand-bys. Slip them into the oven at your convenience. If carving is something you'd rather do without an audience, slice and plate the roast in the kitchen.

Surrounded by trays of cookies and bowls of batter, Marie Connell added heaping tablespoons of spices to a 20-quart mixing bowl as she prepared her ginger cookie dough. "Molasses gives it a real nice old-fashioned flavor," said Connell, who was mixing a batch of her favorite ginger cookies - one of seven varieties that she sells at stores from Chester and Delaware Counties to the Main Line. "I'm real generous with the spices," Connell said as she measured the ingredients on the sunlit counter of a commercial kitchen in Wynnewood where she makes her MyHouse Cookies.

The proof is in the pound cake, the strawberry shortcake, the carrot cake, the more than 600 peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies she makes each week, and the applesauce cake. "I'm from the old country. . . . I believe in making everything from scratch," said Maria LaMonica, a native of Sicily who was hired in 1995 as a cafeteria worker at Washington Township High School and was promoted a year later to be the district's first full-time baker. She bakes for more than 3,000 high school students, teachers and staff, as well as for the food service's catering business.

When you're planning that big holiday dinner, there's always plenty of information on how to roast the turkey or bake a pie. But what about the mashed potatoes? How do you keep them hot and prevent them from turning gluey? Nothing seems to work. You make them at the last minute. You reheat the potatoes after draining them. You heat the milk and butter, and you mash the potatoes in the hot pot. Yet they still taste lukewarm. That's because as you mash, you mix room-temperature air into the potatoes.

The sedentary winter months have passed, and it's time to turn our thoughts to spring improvements. Not the clean-the-junk-drawer or reseed-the-lawn kind, but something a bit more personal. In that spirit, I offer you Sly's Quick Cure For Internal Cleansing. Let me start by saying that I'm not a doctor or nutritionist. I'm Italian. As such, I have little interest in liquid diets, juice fasts, herbal detox programs, or anything else that separates me, my teeth and my tongue from the actual textures, tastes and chewy challenges of three-dimensional food.

The oven wouldn't work, but it was a good stove, not something to be cast away lightly. I called a friend who knows about these things and he gave me the name of an appliance repair man. Tom was friendly on the phone. I was hopeful he might bring us good news but braced for the worst. He was even more friendly in person. He had grown up in our neighborhood before moving out to the suburbs. He remembered dances at the Catholic school across the street. He talked as he checked out the oven: "Well, it's an old one, but the problem is really simple.

Depending on how you feel about change, you could say that the owners of the Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant have done a lot for suburban renewal. The third Iron Hill establishment, which opened here in June 2000, is a warehouse-size building that had been an A&P supermarket and later Eckerd Drugs. Judging from the lunchtime crowd that jammed the restaurant recently, Iron Hill has helped to transform the borough's staid image, just as it has for West Chester, Chester County's seat.

The brown-brick, art deco building at 19th and Lombard Streets, constructed in 1929 as the Philadelphia School of Occupational Therapy, was a modest two stories, but perhaps it suggested higher aspirations. Above a bluestone water table, two-story brick pilasters capped with decorative sandstone chevrons reached skyward. In 1939, an unadorned third story was added, to provide the successful school with additional space. More recently, the building served as physicians' offices and laboratories for Graduate Hospital.

THE FEB. 6 issue's CUTTING BOARD in the Food section gave instruction on preparing baked potatoes that left out the first and most important step: Liberally pierce potatoes with the tines of a fork BEFORE baking. Failing to do so will cause the potatoes to explode in the oven. You'll then be left without a consumable potato and with a heck of a messy oven to clean. Eileen Cleary Glenside