NOT FROM SCRATCH1 To test the theory that any cook can fake a dinner party by jazzing up grocery stores' prepared foods and passing them off as homemade, I recently served such an Asian-inspired meal to my friends -- without disclosing the provenance of the meal's ingredients. Being a chef made the process easy, but getting away with it was trickier. When chefs entertain, expectations are high. At the end of the meal, I reaped the compliments before exposing the ruse. Even the food snobs were fooled. In the interest of science, I set aside some of my usual standards, which allowed me to discover credible ingredients I would have otherwise ignored. Kitchen Basics brand stocks are excellent, though still nowhere close to the quality of homemade stocks. Imagine Brand Organic soups are nicely textured, though a bit bland; minimal doctoring makes them sing. Because of overexposure to casseroles as a child, I could not overcome my aversion to condensed soups. I tried other convenience foods: jarred chopped ginger and garlic, and canned whipped cream, whose lack of integrity did not, in my opinion, justify the scant amount of time their use saved. I regularly work time-saving prepared foods into party menus, especially for appetizers. For this Asian menu, I refashioned 18 pieces of sushi by sprinkling them with soy sauce, topping them with a small dollop of mayonnaise mixed with wasabi paste, passing them under the broiler for a few seconds and garnishing them with slivers of pickled ginger. The next course required only five minutes to turn a carton of butternut squash soup and a smattering of ingredients into a bold, Thai-style yellow curry and coconut soup with salmon. Whole Foods Market's rotisserie chickens, for example, can be quite succulent if they have not been sitting around too long. I opened a can and two jars to make a black bean and ginger sauce that earned rave reviews. For a side dish, cellophane bags of baby spinach and carrots, microwaved with red bell pepper, sesame oil and ginger, took three minutes to prepare. Chai floats, assembled in moments, were a refreshing end to the meal. This was the first, and last, time I used canned whipped cream. I succeeded in faking out my friends, but the joke was on me. My guests considered my shortcut food every bit as good as my made-from-scratch fare. The experiment went so well that my ego could barely handle it. David Hagedorn is a chef and former restaurateur. http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/living/food/14543632.htm continue..