Instructions: The Village Pub in Woodside, California serves a most voluptuous dish: wild salmon gently cooked in olive oil. A lot of olive oil.

Were not talking a spritz or a drizzle. Were talking submerging the fillet in four cups of olive oil and leaving it to bask in a warm, unctuous pool for 20 minutes.

In this day and age of Zone diets, Weight Watchers points and huffing-and-puffing cardio craziness, the dish has been the restaurants top seller since Day One.

What gives?

Its just so delicious. Its spoon-tender, says executive chef Mark Sullivan, who has prepared as many as 40 orders of the dish a night since the Village Pub opened three months ago and has taught two regulars how to make it at home. People dont get too freaky about olive oil.

Or apparently about vast quantities of grapeseed oil, melted butter or even rendered duck fat.

Those fats are essential for oil poaching, a trend popping up on Bay Area menus.

From Chef Chus in Los Altos to Silks in San Francisco, chefs are touting oils ability to enhance flavor, texture and color, particularly in seafood.

Just how guilty should diners feel about lapping up these dishes?

Actually, not very. Even registered dietitian Lynne Hill, who does the first to take us to task when we publish high-fat dishes, gives the technique her seal of approval.

The key is draining and blotting after poaching. If thats done, only one or two teaspoons of oil or fat should remain on each serving, she estimates.

Thats not out of this world, Hill says. There are a lot of other cooking methods that would impart much more fat.

Think of taking a bath. With warm water, in no time youre shriveled. But add a generous pour of bath oil, and youre silky soft. The same thing happens to fish, shrimp, lobster - even vegetables - cooked in oil thats warm, but not sizzling hot as for deep-frying.

Its a way of cooking that combines tried and true methods: poaching, blanching and immersing in oil. Poaching is cooking in water or stock on a low simmer to bring out a more delicate flavor and texture. Blanching is partially cooking in stock or water briefly to seal in vivid colors. And immersing food in oil, which many cuisines have relied on for generations, tenderizes and preserves.

The French have a rich tradition of confit, in which duck or goose or pork is cooked slowly in a large amount of its own fat until tender, then stored in a container, completely covered with fat.

The Italians have long used oil to preserve olives and tomatoes. The Chinese have been oil-blanching for centuries. And back in the 1800s, says Berkeley cookbook author and food history buff Mindy Toomay, the French were cooking salmon in melted butter in much the same way.

Sullivan learned the method 10 years ago working at an Avignon restaurant in the south of France. But he never dared put it on a menu until now.

I was leery, he says, because it was off the path of conventional cooking.

Not anymore. At Farallon, tuna confit salad has been a bestselling lunch dish since the San Francisco restaurant opened in 1997. Lunch chef Brad Barker even gets complaints from diners if the dish is absent from the menu.

Taking a saute pan, he pours in a couple of inches of grapeseed oil - which he prefers over extra-virgin olive oil for its milder flavor - and brings it almost to a boil (180 degrees) with thyme and garlic. After placing the ahi into the pan and covering it, he turns off the heat.

In about 10 minutes, the fish is removed with a spatula, and served cold with Yukon potatoes, tomatoes and frisee. The oil is strained and used at least once again. Best yet, while most chefs serve the fish medium-rare, with this method even medium-well fish remains moist.

The oil doesnt extract flavor, it helps keep it in, says Barker, who often makes the dish for the staff meal, too.

At Chef Chus, chef-owner Larry Chu specializes in an age-old Chinese method of oil-blanching, in which vegetable oil is brought up to a slightly higher temperature (275 to 300 degrees), using two cups of oil to one cup seafood or meat.

The method, detailed in Asian culinary authority Ken Homs new cookbook, ingredients and seal in flavor. It also shortens cooking time and creates a uniform texture. Once blanched briefly, ingredients are then cooked again, usually stir-fried or steamed.

Some restaurants go even further. Thomas Keller of the French Laundry poaches lobster in butter thats been melted but remains emulsified. Ron Siegel picked up the technique cooking alongside Keller and used it to win the Japanese Iron Chef cooking competition. He features the lobster dish occasionally at Masas in San Francisco.

Rather than tossing lobster into a pot of boiling water, which tends to make the meat seize and toughen, Keller says, this delicate method infuses the lobster with a buttery taste and leaves the meat so tender that some diners swear its not completely cooked, though it is.

Then there is Silks, which poaches Atlantic salmon in two quarts of melted duck fat.

The Silks chefs were inspired to create the dish this year after cooking a lot of duck confit. The new salmon confit, expected to be back on the menu come winter, is served with potato hash, sauteed fennel, and garlic cloves also caramelized in duck fat.

The dish sold really well, better than we expected, says executive chef Selu Garcia. People were intrigued by the duck fat, how it would go with the salmon. It really gave it an added richness.

All this leaves one retired heart surgeon, Dr. Gary Silver of San Joses OConnor Hospital, salivating. Silver nagged patients to watch their cholesterol, but he understands the lure of exceptional food. He dines once a month at four-star restaurants and volunteers every Saturday morning behind the counter at Lous Living Donut Museum in San Jose.

If youre going for a culinary dining experience and youre worrying if its butter or what, go someplace else. Go to Fresh Choice, says Silver, who advocates a lifestyle of no smoking, plenty of exercise and a good dose of common sense. But if youre going to one of the top restaurants in the country, go to enjoy yourself, go to enjoy the cooking.

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