Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins (Workman: $11.95 paperback; $19.95 clothbound).

The second Silver Palate book (the first one was a runaway best seller with more than 700,000 copies sold) fits right in with the yuppie genre cookbooks. This means that you will be inspired to cook, cook, cook (whether or not you do the cooking yourself) for good looks and impressing friends.

And what you get are ideas, ideas, ideas for giving your party menu a touch you would never have thought of in a million years: pasta with toasted bread crumbs, baked lima beans with gingersnaps, chicken legs stuffed with couscous, chicken chili, Bloody Mary soup, goat cheese popovers, arugula souffle, Mexican egg salad, rhubarb sorbet. Silly things that seem, in this age, to speak to a wide, affluent audience.

In fairness to the authors, they have gone one step further by making the book fun to read. There are numerous tips on handling food, decorating a table, garnishing a dish. There are ingredient definitions, famous quotations, restaurant recommendations--a hodgepodge of information that makes using this cookbook more like reading a joke book.