Hail the Queen of Celebrations: Sheila Lukins

Americans love to celebrate, says Sheila Lukins, co-founder of The Silver Palate, author of six cookbooks, columnist for Parade magazine and grandmother extraordinaire. (“Some might think I am simply obsessed with my first granddaughter,” she said, “they would not be wrong.”)

There are, of course, the big, standard holidays –– Thanksgiving, Christmas, and, for her family, the Fourth of July. Each is an excuse to call her two daughters and their husbands back to her sprawling apartment in New York City, an excuse to take out the best china, polish the silver, decorate like mad, and cook.

“I pull out all the stops,” she says. “That festive feeling helps make memories: it’s part of what makes Grandma’s house special, it makes them want to come back.” Lukins has one granddaughter and another on the way and is loathe to limit herself to official holidays.

“My 3-year-old granddaughter loves sitting at my table so much, that I invent reasons to celebrate, I did the same for my daughters when they were young,” says Lukins. “I’ll declare the daffodil celebration when the flowers start to bloom in Central Park, or “The Feast of the Very Best Chicken,” or the “Ripe Tomato Party. I am shameless. But children love the focus and the decorating, the sense of occasion.”

Her willingness to invent holidays finally lead to Lukins’ book, Celebrate! (Workman, 2003). There are, she says, three secrets to making parties that bring the family home: advance planning, great food and over-the-top décor.

“I call it setting the scene,” she says, “and I want to give them something to talk about and remember.”

Picking a color from the season, she spreads fabric on her 16-seat table, covers it with a vintage lace cloth, and begins heaping the center like a royal table of yore. Spring might find a bounty of potted tulips and jonquils and tall vases of asparagus banked by mounds of fiddlehead ferns in the center of her table. Summer might bring pots of herbs, cabana-like colors and napkin holders made of cheap sunglasses. In the fall, she fills the apartment with mums, heaps grapes and clementines on big platters, and places apples in wooden bowls at child height around her living room.

“I always have things that the children can find and be surprised by,” says Lukins who taught art to children before cooking and celebrating claimed her life, “and I always have a special juice to pour for them while the grown-ups sip champagne.”

Hors d'oeuvres are neither child-friendly nor fun, she says. “I want to get them to the table as quickly as possible. The point of a family occasion is not elegant nibbles, it’s about getting together around a groaning board, about bounty and about getting something that you didn’t even know you wanted.”

“That is why I love to pass big platters,” says Lukins. “It makes the meal feel like a feast and it makes it participatory.”

She cooks as much as she can far ahead of time –– “to give me more time to set the stage and play with my granddaughter, which is all I really want to do these days,” she says.

One-pot dishes –– a curry, braised short ribs, chicken and dumplings, a very special chili, a bouillabaisse –– are great choices because their flavor actually improves with time. She also likes to serve big birds and standing rib roasts: “The drama creates a sense of occasion, people love them, and those big pieces of meat practically cook themselves, so I don’t have to worry about cooking stealing any of the time I have with my granddaughter. I also make a lot of the side dishes ahead of time.”

Deep in the winter, Lukins has been known to invent holidays for other cultures, particularly those in warm and sunny places. Recently, a fantasy celebration of India allowed her to use vivid saris on her table, a forest of orchids and brightly painted elephants as a centerpiece, and bangle bracelets as napkin rings.

The bracelets and elephants are the sorts of things she buys cheaply when traveling and adds to her “table prop” closet to use as décor and gifts. The chicken curry is so good, she says, “that I keep making up new holidays for the country of India in order to have the chance to serve it.”