I KNOW THAT ON A normal weeknight most folks don't sit down to a supper of roasted foie gras with peppered pineapple and 100-year-old balsamic vinegar. I didn't care.

This was foie-gras night, the evening of the annual take-your-palate-for-a-ride dining experience known as the Great Chefs' Dinner. It was held last week at Linwood's and Due restaurants in Owings Mill.

Without a doubt, it was the best roasted foie gras with peppered pineapple that I have ever eaten on a Tuesday night. And it was just a warm-up. The big hitters, the fish and meat dishes, were yet to come.

Starting eight years ago, a local agency fighting child abuse, now called the Family Tree, brought in celebrated-out-of-town chefs who figure out new ways to wow a crowd of about 200 diners who pay about $200 each to attend a fund-raising dinner. One year, Washington's Jean-Louis Palladin surprised the assembled diners by serving sturgeon, a fish better known for its eggs, called caviar, than its flesh. The sturgeon, resting on a bed of sauerkraut, was magnificent. A few years after that, Larry Forgione came from New York to pan-roast venison and sprinkle it with nuts and cherries. He also served foie gras in a roasted corn soup.

This year, chef Alessandro Stratta flew the red-eye from Las Vegas, bringing with him a handful of assistants as well as supplies of fresh produce, fish and meat from around the globe. Asparagus from Mexico. Black truffles from France. Meyer lemons from California. Foie gras from New York. Sea bream, or Daurade, from the Mediterranean. Scallops from Maine. Lamb from Colorado.

At one point in the meal, I thought of awarding a prize to the ingredient that traveled the greatest distance to attend the event, the way it is done at high-school reunions. I think either the fish or the truffles would pick up the prize.

I spoke with the chef hours before the feast, when he and his crew of white-clad assistants were busy peeling asparagus and roasting tomatoes in the basement of Linwood's in a kitchen normally used for catering work.

Stratta is 34 but could pass for 24. He's the son of a hotelier, and his family hopped around the world, living in Pakistan, Italy, Colombia and various spots in the United States. Along the way, he graduated from the California Culinary Institute in San Francisco and worked in the kitchens of European restaurants where he did everything from plucking chickens to skinning wild boar.

At one point in his European training, he worked for Alain Ducasse, whose restaurants earned the coveted three-star-status award by the Michelen restaurant guide. In America, he worked as line cook at Le Cirque before moving to the Phoenician in Scottsdale, Ariz., where he was named Best Chef in the Southwest last year by the James Beard Foundation. Recently, he moved on to the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas to open his 90-seat, dinner-only restaurant, called Restaurant Alex Stratta.

He told me his approach to cooking is to use few flavors, often three, in a dish. He said his signature dish of roasted foie gras matches the goose liver with the flavors in the pineapple and balsamic vinegar. He explained that for a dish with a few ingredients to succeed, each ingredient must be very strong, the top of its class, so to speak.

Hunting down perfect peppers or 100-year-old balsamic vinegar can get expensive, he said. But he said that, at this point in his career, he was fortunate to be in Las Vegas, where hotels are luring high rollers to their casinos by serving fine food in their restaurants.

While his ingredients might cost a pretty penny, the dishes that he creates are not supposed to be pretentious, he said. "The last thing you want to do is make people who are eating your food feel uncomfortable, like they are being put in some kind of odd spot," he said. "It should be fun."

At dinner that night, the chef's notion of enjoying an evening with far-flung ingredients worked for me. After polishing off a course of seared sea scallops from Maine and asparagus from Mexico dotted with a hollandaise sauce flavored with black truffles from France, I was a contented eater.

While the crispy Mediterranean sea bream with fennel on oven-dried, flown-in-from-somewhere-sunny tomatoes was not to my taste, the rack of Colorado lamb flavored with rosemary and basil and served with surprising sweet stewed peppers was a dish I could be happy eating for the rest of my life.

The dessert, a chocolate mousse with passion fruit and marinated raspberries, had an otherworldly glow to it. Stratta told me that his pastry chef, Christophe Ithurritze, had come from Las Vegas, toting a spray gun.

The spray gun looked like the kind I might use to spray-paint the backyard fence. But instead of paint, this device was filled with liquid French chocolate that was sprayed on the mousse.

It sounded easy, but spray-painting chocolate mousse was not something I was going to try at home, even on a Tuesday night.

Pub Date: 03/03/99