Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 22, 1994 TAG: 9407200001
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOYCE GEMPERLEIN KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Waking up from the first of what would be two emergency brain surgeries, she pulled off her oxygen mask, and murmured to her husband and two daughters: ``I want nachos grande.''
That was in December 1991 and Lukins - co-author of ``The Silver Palate Cookbook'' and two others that revolutionized the way many Americans cook - is still looking for her next meal. In fact, three months after her stroke, she was working again - traveling around the world, no less - eating and taking notes for her first solo effort, the 450-recipe ``Sheila Lukins All Around the World Cookbook.'' (Workman, $27.95 hardcover, $18.95 softcover).
The details of Lukins' illness are harrowing - her subsequent jaunts in two years to 33 counties and the Mexican food joke she made in the hospital don't reflect the seriousness of her condition. Lukins was not expected to live, much less cook, travel or write again. At the most, doctors thought she might survive in a vegetative state, she said.
Lukins, now 51, has spent the last three years with some electric shock treatments and much physical and occupational therapy. She has learned how to read and tell time, to walk and put on a blouse. With psychotherapists and friends, she has, among other things, learned to cope with a slight limp, small seizures that occur now and then, and a recurring sadness that comes with illness.
Sitting in a Burlingame restaurant recently, Lukins, a tiny, nonstop talker, picked up a chunk of bread and a table knife. She demonstrated how her bewildered body and mind tried to bollix up her life's work and passion.
``This is an onion,'' she said of the bread she held in a left hand that still cannot feel soft touch or other sensations. With a table knife, she sawed at the bread, the knife as aimless as if wielded by a child. ``I had to relearn how to chop an onion!''
On her first trip after the stroke, to Cuba, she could hardly walk.
``And the stroke affected the part of my brain that controls emotions, so I had some very difficult moments, but ... I never lost my memory and my speech. Or the ability to talk with food in my mouth!''
But she had made a deal with her agent and publisher to write an international cookbook nine months before the stroke. And she had not lost her knack at creating recipes.
Workman was eager for a Lukins' book because of its success with ``The Silver Palate,'' which was published in 1982; ``The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook'' of 1985; and ``The New Basics'' of 1989. The books have combined sales of 5 million copies. Lukins also has a following as food editor of Parade magazine, the Sunday supplement with some 73 million readers.
The Silver Palate books are credited with introducing cooking ingredients such as sun-dried tomatoes, balsamic and flavored vinegars, chutneys, goat cheese and tomato coulis into the vernacular of the everyday cook in the United States.
Julee Rosso, Lukins' co-author on the Silver Palate books and co-creator of the Silver Palate carryout shop and gourmet products company in New York City that began it all, recently wrote a low-fat cookbook, ``Great Good Food'' with Crown-Turtle Bay publishers. After ``The New Basics,'' the two - Rosso was by all accounts the marketing whiz of the team and Lukins the actual food genius - split to do their own work.
The breakup has since become acrimonious, reportedly due in part to comments Rosso published about Lukins' illness. Rosso's book was generally trashed by the press for containing innumerable recipes that do not work.
The Rosso book or their relationship are not topics Lukins likes to discuss. In fact, when she thought that the subject was about to come up, she mumbled that she might just get up and walk out.
Lukins said her goal in writing ``All Around the World'' was not to attempt to emulate the Paula Wolferts, Diana Kennedys or Carol Fields of culinary literature. They are among cookbook authors who are relentless hunters-and-gatherers of the authentic in foreign cuisines.
She set out to be impressionistic, she said.
``I don't do pure fusion,'' she said, referring to a cooking style that packages the flavors of one country's cuisine in the same recipe with another's. Recipes in ``All Around the World'' are, instead, World Cuisine plus Sheila Lukins.
Eyes widening, she recounted her reaction to the pyramids of baharat (spices) she encountered at the Misir Carsisi, the Egyptian Market in Istanbul, Turkey.
``The colors! I saw colors of spices like I was on LSD!'' she said.
And then, touching her curly reddish-brown hair caught up in black plastic butterfly clips, she moved on to tell a tale of finding the best jerk seasoning in Jamaica. ``Everywhere I went it was for a specific reason.''
She often traveled with her husband, Richard, and children, Annabel and Molly, or beloved assistant Laurie Griffith. She worked with Griffith on the recipes in her apartment in the Dakota, where John Lennon lived and Yoko Ono still does.
Although Lukins thinks lower-fat cooking is here to stay, she didn't include nutritional analyses in ``All Around the World.'' ``It's not that kind of book. That doesn't interest me,'' she said. But she and her editor went through each recipe and took out all fat unnecessary to achieve the desired flavors.
She said she thinks her new book fits in well with lower-fat cooking. ``I hope it puts spices in the kitchen cupboards of America. They are the way to flavor lost through lower-fat cooking.''
Lukins said her favorite flavors are Mediterranean ones, although ``I love any intense flavors.''
In the end, she hopes that ``All Around the World'' will broaden the reach and imagination of home cooks the way the Silver Palate books did.
``I love to cook,'' she said, chewing on a calamari tentacle. ``That is the bottom line. I love, love, love to cook. And, in doing this book, I saw the world - much of it, anyway.''
Then Lukins took out a piece of hotel stationery and began a list of places she still wants to visit, eat in and interpret in her own kitchen - ``Kazakhstan, I didn't get there,'' she said as she scribbled. ``Goa, Vietnam ...''
by CNB