Ina Garten
Ina Garten
Ina Rosenberg Garten is an American author and host of the Food Network program Barefoot Contessa, and a former staff member of the White House Office of Management and Budget. Known for designing recipes with an emphasis on fresh ingredients and time-saving tips, she has been noted by Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, and Patricia Wells for her cooking and home entertaining...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChef
Date of Birth2 February 1948
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
If it's a cocktail party, I generally make five or six different things, and I try to choose recipes that feel like a meal: a chicken thing, a fish or shrimp thing, maybe two vegetable things, and I think it's fun to end the cocktail party with a sweet thing.
I measure everything, because I always think that if I've spent so much time making sure this recipe was exactly the way I want it, why would I want to throw things into a pot?
When I wrote 'Barefoot in Paris,' I wanted to make simple recipes that you could make at home that tasted like French classics.
I love Alton Brown's show 'Good Eats,' about the chemistry of food. It's really thoughtful.
You don't have to do everything from scratch. Nobody wants to make puff pastry!
The thing about all my food is that everything is a remembered flavor. Maybe it's something I had as a child or maybe it's something I had in Milan, but I want it to taste better than you ever thought.
I love to take something ordinary and make it really special.
I use other cookbooks for inspiration. I must say I tend to cook from my own cookbooks for parties.
All my life I dreamed of an apartment in Paris where I could cook, and now I have one, on the Left Bank.
When I thought my professional career was over, it hadn't even started yet.
My favorite fall or winter lunch is big steaming bowls of soup. I usually invite people for around 12:30 and have two hearty soups like shrimp corn chowder and lentil sausage soup, which can be made a day or two ahead.
In the summer you want fresh, light and sort of quick things; in winter you want things that are comforting, so your body really tells you you want to go towards potatoes, apples, fennel, things that are warm and comforting. And loin of pork.
Take one flower that you like and get lots of them. And don't try to 'arrange' them. It's surprisingly hard to do a flower arrangement the way a florist does one. Instead, bunch them all together or put them in a series of small vases all down the table.
I don't like sitting at a table that's too large, where everyone is too far apart. That's a party killer.