Modern Southwest Cuisine

Part owner and chef at Saint Estephe, a gourmet restaurant in Manhattan Beach, Calif., Sedlar has developed ""Modern Southwest Cuisine,'' combining the traditional ingredients of American Southwestern cooking with the techniques and sensibilities of nouvelle French cuisine in such inventive and tempting dishes as white chocolate corncobs with almond buttercream, caramel sauce and mango corn, and frog legs with gazpacho beurre blanc and mousselines of red and green pepper. Sedlar turns casual tacos into elegant hors d'oeuvres, filling miniature tortillas with French-style ingredients like truffled scrambled eggs or foie gras, or substituting salad leaves for the tortilla in radicchio tacos with smoked chicken, asparagus and red chili mayonnaise. He utilizes Southwestern Native American designs to decorate his multifaceted creations, which ravish the eye in such color photographs as Kachina mosaic of caviars with endive feathers and chocolate-truffle antelope torte with caramel-lime sauce. (October 31)