AIRWAVES

Forget Mark and Brian, Kevin and Bean and the other ditsy duos of morning radio. If you’re stuck on the 10 for 45 minutes, you might as well learn how to blacken catfish. And all you have to do is ask Melinda Lee. Everybody does. When her Food News Hour comes on KNX 1070 at 10 a.m., 250,000 listeners don’t touch that dial as Lee and co-anchor Chris Lane track down recipes, discuss trends and analyze food-preparation techniques.

“Melinda?” a caller asks, “Can I add cashew nuts to a chicken salad recipe that calls for toasted almonds? I’m not very good at almonds.”

“Melinda? I’m going to have lots of figs and would like a recipe for fig cookies. I tried one last year, but the cookies molded.”

“Melinda? Where can I buy sausage casings?”

Eighty percent of the time, Lee spouts an answer off the top of her head in a jolly, booming voice. She spews out measurements, temperatures and cooking times as if she’d made the dish in question just this morning. And she very well may have. In addition to having been anchor of the Food News Hour for six years, she ran a full-service Malibu catering company for 11 years and is a food and party consultant.

Melinda is as much a therapist as a nutritionist. “You burn almonds? Everyone does. It’s so easy. Of course you can use cashews. It will be smashing.”

Her ability to soothe the savage chef is at the heart of her success. Lee knows she’s not dealing with professionals--many of her listeners are men who don’t know how to melt butter, bewil dered brides, people who’ve suddenly “gotten into” canning or baking bread and a surprising number of people, Lee says, who don’t cook at all.

“Half the show isn’t even about food,” Lee says, “it’s about sharing. Saying, ‘Oh hell, well it fell. Put a flower on it and call it something else.’ ”

Too bad the traffic anchors can’t make us feel as good about choosing the wrong morning route.