Instructions: Pecan-cornmeal catfish is an appealingly crispy preparation, assembled quickly. The fish is coated with a nutty mixture and deep-fried in small batches.

If the thought of deep-frying leaves you even slightly dubious, be reassured.

Cooking" (Meredith Books, $29.95) are ahead of you. The premise of this cookbook is to make sure recipes and techniques are made super clear, with explanations packed into helpful places.

Next to this recipe, for example, youll find these comments: "The trick to producing crispy deep-fried foods is no trick at all. Just keep the fat at a constant high temperature. This is done best by using a heavy, flat-bottomed pan and a deep-fat thermometer to monitor the oil temperature."

To ensure crispiness:
Heat cooking oil to the temperature listed in your recipe, typically 365 degrees to 375 degrees. Youll need enough oil to cover the food youre frying.

To avoid a pasty coating, dip the food in the batter and wait for the excess to drain off.

Cook in small batches and add the food slowly. Avoid crowding; freely bubbling fat makes for a crispy crust.

Watch the oil temperature and dont let it drop below the temperature specified.

Stir the food several times to ensure even cooking. After frying, drain the food on paper towels. Keep finished batches warm in a 300-degree oven while you finish frying.

CRUST
Try to make it yourself, and eventually you will be successful

It crumbles, but in a bad way.

It comes out so dry it makes Mojave sand seem moist.

It shrinks in the oven like your favorite jeans in the dryer.

And, in my case, there is never enough darn counter space to roll it out with justice.

Enough already. The time has come to vanquish crust phobia - that affliction that prompts excuse after excuse about why you rely on store-bought or frozen crust.

Youre thinking youve tried. You cant do it. Youre a total dough dud.

But remember, even the best bakers have had crust catastrophes. Beth Hensperger, a baking authority and Mercury News Food & Wine columnist, readily admits that in her early days, shed do anything to avoid making crusts.

In the baking world, pie crust is one of the hardest things to do, she says. Only puff pastry is harder. But once youve got it, youve got it.

So how do you gratify that lust for crust? With a little know-how. And a lot of practice.

First, there are many recipes and many techniques, each of which will make a good crust, depending upon the objectives. Were sticking to the simplest methods here. Although blind-baking - cooking the bottom crust, and in some cases the top, separately from the filling - guarantees no underdone crusts, its more complicated, so well leave that for another time.

Second, remember that working fast is a good thing, and the refrigerator and freezer are your friends. Thats because you never want the butter or shortening to get too soft or too warm. Some pastry chefs chill their flour, mixing bowl and rolling pin beforehand, too.

Third, forget that adage to mix well as you do in most other cooking. For a super flaky crust, you never want one homogenous blob of dough. What you want are streaky leaves or flakes of visible butter.

Thats why the butter needs to be extremely cold going into the oven. It needs to hold up long enough for the dough on either side of it to begin to set.

Once those leaves melt, steam from the dough forms, and puffs the layers apart.

Voila - flakiness.

Choices, choices

With all that in mind, lets get started:

All-purpose or pastry flour? Either will work, although pastry flour or any such flour lower in protein produces less gluten, and therefore a more tender crust, explains Shirley Corriher, author of Cookwise (William Morrow and Company, Inc., $28.50).

To sift or not to sift? Skip it, most experts say.

Butter or shortening? Thats personal taste. Gayle Ortiz, co-owner of Gayles Bakery in Capitola, is an all-butter gal. She hates the greasy film shortening leaves on the palate. Corriher, however, likes some shortening because it holds its shape better over a variety of temperatures, creating flakiness more easily.

Mix by hand? In a food processor? Or by electric mixer? Depends. Corriher says she was taught to make tender, flaky crust as if it were one word, tenderflaky. Nothing could be further from the truth, she writes. The techniques needed for tenderness are completely different from those for flakiness.

For ultimate flakiness, do it by hand to keep the fat in large flakes.

A food processor or electric mixer is quicker, but produces a less flaky crust. Yet if youre after a very tender crust, use appliances, because they incorporate the fat better.

But dont think you have to choose between tender or flaky. If you watch someone like Marion Cunningham, shes an artist, Corriher says. Shell work the shortening into the flour, flattening it, so shes making big oatmeal-like flakes, and some of it shes smearing in, so shes really coating it with flour. So you can do both at the same time.

How much should you touch the dough? As little as possible, because the warmth of your hands warms up the butter or shortening. Many bakers dump the flour and butter chunks out onto a counter, then use a rolling pin to flatten butter into the flour. Use a dough scraper to push the mixture back into a pile or to transfer it to a bowl. Use a spatula to stir in the water.

How should the dough feel after water is added? It should have some resistance, but still be pliable, and not sticky.

Choosing a pan

Pan type? Corriher likes a heavy, dull or dark aluminum one because it absorbs heat faster and bakes more evenly. Hensperger likes Pyrex or glass pans because you can see how well the crust is browning. If youre using a glass pie plate, which cooks very fast because it cooks both by conduction and radiant energy that goes through the clear glass directly to the crust, Hensperger advises turning the oven temperature down 25 degrees. The only drawback to glass pans? They will shatter if unbaked pies are frozen in them, then placed directly into a hot oven. Whatever pan you choose, be sure to lay the dough gently into the pan; never stretch it, or it will shrink in the oven.

If youre still feeling overwhelmed, remember it doesnt all have to be done at once. Make the dough one day, then roll it and bake it the next.

Or do what I do. Make a galette or crostata instead. I love the rustic look of these open-face, free-form tarts. I also love their simplicity. No double crusts. No crimping borders. No pie pan, even. Just an open-sided baking sheet lined with parchment paper to make it easier to transfer to a wire rack or serving plate.

Just roll dough into a circle and place on a baking sheet. Slather on some mascarpone sweetened with sugar before adding dried or not-too-juicy fruit

(plums, pears, apples, apricots rather than berries). Whatever the filling, be sure to leave a 1 1/2 inch border between the edge of the dough and the filling.

Fold dough edges back over onto the fruit, creating a pleated border and leaving most of the fruit center exposed. Brush crust with cream, milk, egg or egg white, sprinkle with sugar, and bake at 425 degrees for 20 to 40 minutes, depending on the filling.

For those still feeling crust-challenged, take solace in this: The first crusts were horrid. In Pie Every Day (Berkley Books, $14), Pat Willard writes, When the first European settlers came to America, the pie recipes they brought called for crusts that acted as cooking pots. They were as dense and tasty as baked clay - if they could be eaten at all.

Any crust you make will be better than that.

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