Friday, Sep. 11, 2009

Beloved 1982 cookbook in demand after co-author’s death

Judy Burnstein of Daniel Island remembers when she first got a copy of “The Silver Palate,” which awakened her to a new culinary world.

“I was in Augusta and was just learning to cook, branching out from my Southern roots. That cookbook just seemed so sophisticated,” she says.

“I just thought if I cook that food, I would be as chic as that book. I was barely 30.”

With the recent death of one its authors, Sheila Lukins, there’s likely to be renewed interest in the cookbook that was fresh and exciting in the 1980s.

Lukins died at age 66 from a brain tumor diagnosed just three months ago. She had been Parade magazine’s food editor since 1986, taking over for Julia Child.

“The Silver Palate” cookbook (Workman) celebrated its silver anniversary with a new edition in 2007, but it went platinum long ago. Sales of the 1982 classic are at 2.65 million, and it’s said to be in the Top 10 best-selling cookbooks of all time.

Lukins and co-author Julee Rosso wrote their cookbook five years after pioneering the concept of gourmet takeout food in their shop, The Silver Palate. The tiny place on New York’s Upper West Side opened in 1977 and before long became the hottest culinary destination in the city.

Marion Sullivan, culinary programs specialist at the Culinary Institute of Charleston, celebrated her daughter’s graduation from college in New York with family in 1988. Although they had visited the city many times, going to The Silver Palate was on their “must-do” list for a mother-daughter day.

“In all of New York, that is what we planned and what we did, and we just thought it was wonderful,” she recalls.

The cookbook, Sullivan says, not only had very good food, “it was so friendly and happy. It made you feel like you could open it up and cook from it, and it made you feel happy while you were doing it.”

Lukins, who also was an artist, drew the whimsical illustrations that pepper the book. “The Silver Palate” also was different for its layout and content that included quotations, tips, advice and explanations.

“It taught us a lot; we didn’t know what arugula was,” says Judy Reinhard of Sullivan’s Island, the former proprietor of a Charleston kitchen store.

“All of a sudden, all of our peers were cooking out of it, and it was sort of a competition. ‘Have you made the puttanesca?’ It taught us a lot of flavor combinations we wouldn’t have considered, like garlic and anchovy dressing — oh, wow!”

While the cookbook introduced new ingredients, the recipes and techniques weren’t intimidating, says Burnstein.

“People wanted sophisticated food but not on the level of Julia Child. There wasn’t a whole long list of ingredients; a recipe fit on a page.”

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