Sheila Lukins

[The Scream]

After reading Julia, Madhur, Alice, Paula, etc.. The thing I loved most about The Silver Palate cookbook was that it was so much fun. Fun to shop for and cook from.

 

RIP

[Lauren]

The Silver Palate was the first 'real' cookbook I owned (as opposed to the Good Housekeeping one my grandmother gave me when I was very young). I felt so sophisticated when I cooked from it, which I did, a lot. I bet, over the years, I've cooked more from that book than any other I've owned.

 

RIP.

[foodie52]

She did have some major health issue. One of her hands was useless because of it, or maybe even her arm, which is why you never saw that arm/hand in her photo (Parade Magazine comes to mind...)

[H. du Bois]

I'd never heard of either her or the Silver Palate until someone gave me her cookbook as a gift in the late 90s. The things I made from it were really good - an apple pie made with macintoshes (my favorite apple), a wild mushroom tart from which I learned the trick of soaking dried wild mushrooms in apple brandy, a sherry orange cake which got eaten, every crumb, at a party where people couldn't stop picking at it.

 

I didn't try her famous Chicken Marbella recipe until I cooked it in England a few years ago. The Brits were wild for it, and begged me to make it again. I still make it from time to time - fairly recently, for friends with small children who ate every bite.

 

Not everyone can pull off what she did. I still use her books - would never give them away.

[bloviatrix]

Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso were in many ways Julia Child's spiritual daughters. They got many of us into the kitchen and introduced us to the joy of cooking and entertaining. Whereas Julia was steeped in French cuisine, the Silver Palate ladies introduced more of a modern, American approach to cooking influenced by a variety of cuisines and cultures. We forget how ingredients that we take for granted like balsamic vinegar and sun dried tomatoes were basically unheard of in the US before they wrote The Silver Palate Cookbook.

 

New Basics was one of the first cookbooks I bought when I graduated from college. I spent hours pouring over the pages developing meals from it. When I first started to entertain in the early '90s everything I cooked was from that book. One of my favorites was Chicken Curry with Asian Pears. The recipe required mango chutney, which I would always make from scratch. It was my "fancy" main course for awhile. My copy of The Silver Palate is tattered and splattered and with a broken spine. I still make chicken marbella on occasion - it's one of those dishes that has so much flavor, is great when you're feeding a crowd, and tastes great re-heated.

 

Thank you Sheila for everything.

[Chad Ward]

Which is your favorite soup?

 

I loved the gorgonzola cream tortellini with vermouth.

Beef and Red Wine Broth, p. 61. I've made plenty of other meals from the book, but this was the one I made over and over for my wife and me because it was such a great winter soup and kept us safe against the Ohio cold. I'm no longer married to her, and I haven't lived in the Midwest in a long time. I made plenty of other things from the Silver Palate for dinner parties, potlucks, and every other time I wanted to show off for nearly a decade, but the red wine & beef broth was just for the two of us. It was special.*

 

 

* there is an inner margin strip with sandwiches that go with this soup. I have checkmarks next to the ones I made. The page itself is rippled with ancient red wine stains and the spine is broken down to the glue. The Blue Cheese soup with bacon on the same page is also damn tasty.

[galleygirl]

She did have some major health issue. One of her hands was useless because of it, or maybe even her arm, which is why you never saw that arm/hand in her photo (Parade Magazine comes to mind...)

I believe she had a stroke....

[little ms foodie]

my uncle gave me “The New Basics Cookbook”, it was my first cookbook and I still consider it a go to. I remember the first time I grilled a whole side of salmon and didn't realize how long it would take- we ate at 10:30pm in the dark but it was delicious!

 

RIP, way too young

[shelora]

My copy of the Silver Palate is worn, torn, stained and tattered and held together with an elastic band. That book saw me through some fun and delicious times. Thanks, Sheila. Rest in peace.

[Sneakeater]

A friend who was the Chicken Marbella Queen of the Upper West Side in the 80s made it last night, for the first time in something like 15 years, as a sort of offhand memorial to Sheila Lukins at Rosh Hashonnah dinner.

 

You know what? What a great recipe. Really.

[H. du Bois]

You know what? I'm glad you said that. I'd always been reluctant to cook it due to the backlash against its popularity, without ever having experienced its popularity in the first place (due to either geography or milieu, I'd missed out on the Silver Palate train in the 80s). When I finally did, I thought it was a perfect recipe. Not only was it delicious, but it was dead easy to cook, with all of the work done the night before. Can't ask for better than that.