CRANBERRY TWP - How well does Walter LaSota cook?

Well, when he retired after more than 25 years of cooking for the residents of the Allegheny County Jail, the inmates sent him a letter thanking him for elevating the level of cuisine to which they had been accustomed.

And they didn't bang their tin cups in protest of his leaving, since he'd changed to foam cups to keep them from burning their hands when the metal cups were filled with soups he had made in bathtub-sized pots.

LaSota, now 90, still cooks for large crowds - although his days as chief steward in the kitchen of the jail are over.

When he first hired on, he vowed everybody - guards,

the

warden and his family and LaSota himself - would eat what he prepared for the inmates. After a while, "Judges would come over to eat rather than go to downtown restaurants," he said.

During his long career at the stove, LaSota has cooked on troop carriers and in hotels, in nursing homes, church kitchens and now, for the most part, in his own home.

For the past 15 years, folks attending functions at Harmony-Zelienople United Methodist Church have enjoyed his fare. He and his wife, Dee, 76, have catered weddings and graduation parties since he retired for the second time from the Methodist Home in Mt. Lebanon.

"He's a wonderful cook," said Shirley Burkett, coordinator of elderly ministries for the church. "He makes a real good chili for chili suppers and pancakes for pancake breakfasts for the guys. His potato salad, ham salad and chicken salad are excellent. He's cooked so many dinners for the Together Class, and I hear he'll be doing one again next month."

LaSota said it's nothing for his phone to ring and for people to say, "I hear you make potato salad. I heard you make the best. Can you make potato salad and ham salad for me?"

"He makes the best," agreed Dee with pride for her husband of 22 years. "He makes the most delicious roast beef and gravy," she added.

Making a roast beef is one of his favorite things, and other people "don't make gravy like I make gravy," LaSota said. He also favors stuffed pork chops and chicken breasts. "I like just plain American cooking."

He came by his culinary gift naturally. "My mother was a French chef when she came to this country. She cooked in big hotels," he said, explaining she later married and settled on a farm in Michigan.

Since LaSota's mother was ill during his childhood, she would have him prepare food and bring it into the bedroom for her to check. She died when he was 9 years old and he came to the Pittsburgh area to live.

By the age of 19, he was already cooking for large crowds. His first wife, to whom he was married for 44 years, predicted he'd be great at cooking before he knew it. When he entered the military, he was assigned to cooking school, but found his way into the kitchen almost immediately after boot camp. "I was cooking for 270 right off the bat," he said.

"In the service, everything was dehydrated. I taught recruits how to prepare powdered eggs and the guys loved them," said LaSota. On a troop transport ship, he was once asked to prepare creamed fish on toast for hundreds to eat. Without ever having heard of such a dish, he prepared one anyway, declaring "All you have to do is make a good cream sauce."

Once when cooking at the Roosevelt Hotel in Pittsburgh, the chef, who never shared recipes, called in sick without having made the baked beans. LaSota replicated the chef's secret recipe to everyone's surprise. "It was my job to arrange the shelves and the chef didn't put things back neatly. I could tell what he used," said LaSota with a sly grin.

LaSota makes his own horseradish and swears by a few name brands like Hellmann's mayonnaise for his coveted potato salad. He still buys his ingredients by the gallon.

His knives and other hand tools are in tip-top shape to make preparation easy. The soup pot is smaller now, about four gallons, but he might make several batches to fill the order. About the only bow to his age he gives himself is to allow himself ample prep time.

"I never asked for a job; jobs came to me. If you do your stuff and you do it right, someone will come looking for you," said LaSota.

Although Dee, the mother of four from her first marriage, certainly knows her way around a kitchen and does some baking, she rarely addresses the stove since she married Walter. "I ask her what she wants, and I cook it."

"I've enjoyed my life cooking," said LaSota.