SMELL THE house up." That is Monsignor Nick Amato's advice for domestic happiness.

A house filled with the aromas of cooking, he says, becomes an inviting abode, a place where you want to linger, to sit around a table, eating and talking.

Amato practices what he preaches. He is an accomplished cook, combining the kitchen wisdom and recipes he picked up from his late mother, Mary, with the techniques and style he learned as a young man working as a cook in Napoli, a Long Island restaurant.

When I met Amato, he was in the kitchen of a Little Italy restaurant, chopping garlic and exclaiming, "That is a great aroma! It ought to be made into a body lotion."

Usually he cooks for himself at the rectory of his parish, Our of Lady of Grace Catholic Church in Parkton. But on this night he and Aldo Vitale, proprietor of Aldo's Ristorante Italiano, were preparing a meal for a group of parishioners who had won a raffle as part of a fund-raising effort for the parish school. The prize was a dinner for eight cooked, in part, by the monsignor.

The meal featured appetizers of shrimp, fried calamari, escargot with shiitake mushrooms, fresh sea bass, veal saltimbocca, flourless chocolate cake, tiramisu and cannoli. The "primo" course, the one Amato was chopping the garlic for, was a dish he had dreamed up -- Penne and Scallops Ala Nicola, scallops in white wine, garlic and parsley served over penne pasta.

Before the guests arrived, Amato, 61, and Vitale, 57, stood in the kitchen, comparing notes on the cooking beliefs of their mothers. They often laughed at the similarities, even though Amato grew up in Brooklyn and Vitale in Italy. "We could be brothers," Vitale said.

In both cases, the center of their home was the kitchen, they said. Everyone congregated in there, in a room that was warm and lively. From that room came a stream of meals and aromas.

In addition to the smells of supper on the stove, some supplemental scents were tossed in by Amato's mother, who was a native of the village of Castelvetrano in Sicily.

"She would put a whole onion in the oven, near the pilot light, so the aroma of roasted onion would waft through the house," Amato said. "When she peeled an orange, or a lemon, she placed the peeling near the other pilot light, the one on the stove top," he said. The singed peeling would emit a citrus perfume.

The aromas and the kitchen-centered life were examples of what Amato called a "culture of the home," a culture he said that encouraged sharing and communication.

For example, he said that on weeknights at his home, dessert was always shared fruit. If you peeled an orange, he said, you were expected to pass a section or two of it to other family members who, in turn, would give you a piece of their apple or melon. "It was good for communication," he said.

There were some drawbacks to growing up in such a culture, he said. He recalled, for example, that as teen-agers trying to fit in at school, he and his brother and sister were embarrassed by the meatball sandwiches served on thick homemade bread that their mother packed in their school lunches.

"We used to say, 'Ma, give us some bologna on Wonder Bread like the other kids,' " he said. "She never would. She didn't like that Wonder Bread and she didn't trust American bologna. Italian salami, yes. American bologna, no."

But overall, he said, it was a good way to grow up. "I worry that kids these days are missing that feeling of the kitchen being the heart of the home. You don't get many pleasing aromas from a microwave."

Amato acknowledged that the pace of life has quickened considerably since the days of his mother, who died in 1987 at the age of 81.

But he still tries to keep the memory of "those wonderful 4 o'clock to 6 o'clock" aromas alive. Each Saturday morning, he cooks a week's worth of meals and tosses individual portions in freezer bags. During the week he opens the frozen entrees and reheats them, making sure "they smell the house up."

Then he sits down to dinner.

Penne and Scallops Ala Nicola

Serves 2 as entree, 4 as first course

1 tablespoon salt for pasta water

1 pound penne pasta

6 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 pound bay scallops, rinsed and drained

1 cup curly leaf parsley, chopped fine, plus few sprigs for garnish

1 pinch of crushed dried red pepper

salt to taste

1/2 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup pasta water, saved from pot

1 cup Italian bread crumbs, as needed

Bring large pot of water to a boil. Then add the tablespoon of salt. Throw in the penne pasta and stir. Cook al dente, approximately 8 minutes.

In another pan, saute garlic in oil until lightly browned. Add the scallops and saute for 3 minutes. Add parsley, red pepper and salt to taste. Add white wine and pasta water. Sprinkle enough of the bread crumbs over the scallops in pan until sauce thickens a bit.

Drain the cooked pasta, but do not rinse. Toss the pasta back in its pot and add the scallops and sauce. Stir gently. With the fire off, cover the pot and let the mixture sit for 3 minutes, allowing the flavors to blend. Serve garnished with a bit of parsley (never grated cheese) on top.

-- From Monsignor Nick Amato