Food: Most of '88 Recipe of the Year: Eat and Be Well

Still shakily insecure after the crash of '87, food trendies this year looked for safer culinary havens. They snuggled up to take-out food in the barefoot safety of their own living rooms, or sought out comfort foods (pasta and pizza, meat loaf with mashed potatoes and gravy, creamy desserts) in small, moderately priced Italian trattorias and American bistros. Many of them shunned the lavishly styled and priced restaurants, which in general took an almost unprecedented beating. The beef industry fought back even while the promise of immortality via good health made a superstar of cholesterol- reducing oat bran. And Oprah Winfrey's public skinnying down with the Optifast liquid diet may just make real food obsolete by the century's end.

THE BIGGEST BOOK FOR THE BUCK Weighing in at 7 lbs. and priced at $50, the new American edition of the French food encyclopedia Larousse Gastronomique, edited by Jenifer Harvey Lang (Crown), comes in at only 45 cents per oz., less than the price of fine veal or salmon. Rewritten and modernized in France, then translated in England and its measurements and ingredients Americanized, this essentially French work expands sections on China, Japan and the U.S. Too bad that the text and illustrations are so lackluster.

CINDERELLA FOOD OF THE YEAR Discovered to be a crunchy ally in the dietary war against cholesterol, previously unglamorous oat bran has experienced a jump of 600% in sales this year for the Quaker Oats Co. alone. Health buffs are sprinkling this supposed miracle on virtually everything, even high-fashion muffins. Only the farmers seem unenchanted. Oat bran still brings a far lower price than corn and barley, and so is not likely to be given more acreage.

HIGHEST-PRICED PASTA The single most expensive pasta extant is the soft egg raviolo (the singular of ravioli) that is a $36 hot ticket at San Domenico, the best new Italian restaurant to open in Manhattan in the past five years. The large silky square of pasta enfolds spinach, ricotta cheese and a whole egg yolk that poaches as the raviolo cooks. But the reason for the price lies in the topping of hazelnut butter and a fine, if sparse, mincing of white truffles.

THE BIGGEST BEEF Considered a villain by anticholesterol forces, beef has taken a drubbing in sales in recent years. Now, thanks in part to a diligent advertising campaign ("beef: real food for real people") and undoubtedly to the natural longing for this most American of meats, sales are increasing in many parts of the country, in some areas as much as 20%. But many butchers bow to the times and trim all visible gristle and fat.

FOOD FASHION COLOR Beet red is the shade showing up in a few trend-setting new American boutique restaurants. It is valued primarily by chefs for its color, even though the beet's earthy flavor is anathema to many customers. In some places beets can't be given away, according to one chef in Dallas. However, they are glossing (and hopelessly muffling) ingredients such as lobster and ice cream at Rakel, and are adding heft to rabbit salad and halibut at Bouley, both in New York City.