LIDIA BASTIANICH-AMERICA’S TOP CHEF

NEW YORK - In the first hours of 1994, chef Lidia Bastianich flew to war wounded Croatia and planted an olive grove in the soil of her birthplace.

She calls the 550 tiny trees "a symbol of peace." In a few years, the olives will yield oil 'to be used on salads at Felidia, the-highly praised Manhattan restaurant she runs with her husband Felice. "I said, 'I gotta bring life, somehow, in my own little way -- at least to this land where I came from, she said. "The land was sort of dying."

Like many of her fellow expatriates, Lidia Bastianich remains passionately devoted to the land her family fled when she was just 12.

But Bastianich's star status as a chef and author has given her the wherewithal to help her homeland.

Felidia, where the average meal costs $50 per person plus wine, won an "excellent" rating from the New York Times. It opened in 1981 with the couple's savings from running two earlier restaurants in the New York City borough of Queens.,

Felidia specializes in the rich dishes of the rugged Istria peninsula, where her family lived. It offers the typically Istrian pasutice, diamond shaped pasta served with seafood or vegetables; delicate ravioli or risotto with wild mushrooms; and veal with polenta.

Her wizardry has won Bastianich a place on Julia Child's "Master Chefs" television program, and a cooking series of her own is in the works. But she is inventive in other ways, as well.

Her olive grove is planted next to her old family house in Busoler, a village of about 40 houses, on soil "that was so much alive when my grandparents were there, when I was born." She installed the latest irrigation technology to help the grove's caretaker, who is a sculptor and a friend.

Lidia Bastianich, who is of mixed heritage, says she first learned to count in Italian but also spoke Croatian.

Neighboring farmers may reap some benefit from her project. "Every time I go back, they keep asking me, Lidia, bring me this, bring me that from America!" she says with a smile as she dashes around her East 58th Street restaurant.

I will offer them the equipment at cost, no profit to me, and that way they can help themselves," said Bastianich.

She co-founded the Istrian International Business Association, a U.S. based, non-profit group to help struggling Istrian business people network with their American immigrant compatriots; for money and expertise, they can turn to a parallel joint venture fueled by a $100,000 start up fund.

During the brutal battles that have killed more than 200,000 people and left at least 2 million refugees in the former Yugoslavia, the Bastianiches helped send tons of pasta, baby food, medicines and toys to the area.

In her auto biography cookbook, "La Cucina di Lidia," she describes her childhood among three generations of relatives:

"I was raised in a world where food was the center of life . We would sit around the table, and an overwhelming feeling of security, love and belonging would blanket me.

"Stories were told, and words of wisdom spoken," she writes. "But the principal ingredient of those meals was the certainty that we were cherished, wanted and needed right there, at the table; the feeling that we all would gather there forever."

In New York, each family member works to preserve that spirit while, staying at the culinary peak in a city of 33,000 restaurants.

Felice Bastianich rises at 7 a.m. and goes straight to the markets in Queens Astoria neighborhood to buy the best produce and the other items.

Presiding over the coat check is Lidia's mother, Erminia Motika, 73, who arrives at 8:30 a.m. and oversees deliveries, reservations and a smooth start to the day.

She left Istria with her husband and children 35 years ago.. After two years in refugee barracks in Trieste, Italy, they immigrated to New York.

Lidia Bastianich, now 47, won a scholarship to hunter College and majored in anthropology. She left college to marry and have children, but this year she's picking up her studies where she left off.

She envisions a combined study of sociology, anthropology and just “hands-on cooking" that would enable her to help in areas of the world that have hunger problems.

"I want to end my life doing humanitarian work," she says.