Too many cooks make judging difficult when the time comes to hand out annual Tastemaker awards for the best U.S. cookbook. This year, after sifting through 92 entries, the judges pared the list to a prestigious few, including Food Writers Craig Claiborne and James Beard, as well as Jacques Pepin, 44, onetime chef for Charles de Gaulle. Pepin's book, La Methode, won the grand prize. Gathering to receive their awards, the three pitched into a melange of asparagus, zucchini, cauliflower, carrots, tomatoes, eggs and rack of baby lamb. What was it such eminent cuisiniers prepared as the camera recorded each deft whip and slice? "A mess," confessed Pepin, doffing his apron and sitting down to tomato bisque, piccata of veal, and pommes parisiennes, with a '78 Widmer Cayuga, all done by someone else.

Such a nice boy he was in Breaking Away, even if he did have that curious craze about speaking Italian and that frenetic fancy for bicycling down the highway behind a truckload of Cinzano. That's nothing compared with Actor Dennis Christopher's latest role. In Fade to Black, Christopher is a psychotic who works in a Hollywood film warehouse and gets his jollies by disguising himself as famous movie bad guys and bumping people off. While emulating Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death, he pushes an aunt down a flight of stairs. As James Cagney in White Heat!, he machine-guns a Hollywood producer. Then comes the grand finale atop Graumann's Chinese Theater, but that's another story. Says Christopher of his role reversal from All-American boy to cinema psychopath: "I don't intend to make a career of playing villains."

A boy's best friend is his mother, of course. So Britain's Prince Andrew, 20, kept Mum dutiful company as Queen Elizabeth II sheltered against the weather at the Badminton Horse Trials. But it's nice to make new friends. With the Queen and Prince Philip off on a state visit to Switzerland, Andrew hosted a dinner in his Buckingham Palace apartment for a single guest: Carolyn Seaward, 19, a Devonshire lass who as Miss United Kingdom is best known for her measurements (35-24-35). "Absolutely wonderful," gushed Carolyn apres he. "We just relaxed and listened to music and chatted. The Prince talked about my modeling career and a little about the navy." Yo-ho-ho.

Few modern monarchies are closer to the people they democratically monarch than The Netherlands' House of Orange, and last week new Queen Beatrix, 42, and her family demonstrated why. Her coronation in Amsterdam's Nieuwe Kerk as successor to her mother. Queen Juliana, 71, who was abdicating after 32 years, was a blaze of pageantry and color. But a block away from the monarchist crowds, in a city lately famous for noisy dissidents, clamored a raucous group protesting not only the coronation but also the country's tight housing policies. Did the royals realize that the dissenters were railing all over their party? Indeed they did. At one point during the day's celebrations, Juliana wagged a stern maternal finger at the demonstrators.

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