Ina Garten on her new cookbook, Denver visit and simple food
For nearly 20 years, prolific cookbook author and TV host Ina Garten has perfected the art of creating elegant yet casual home-cooked meals.
She has persuaded cooks and amateurs alike in her unruffled, “how easy is that,” style, that they, too, can produce a spread as perfect as the one she serves her friends, or husband, Jeffrey Garten, on her shows and in her cookbooks.
It’s what Garten does best. The self-taught cook with the trademark pearl earrings and blue denim shirt is the creative force behind the best-selling Barefoot Contessa cookbooks and the award-winning Food Network TV series. Her brand is a unique blend of simple yet refined recipes prepared and artfully plated for friends and family in the cozy comfort of home.
In her latest book, “Cook Like a Pro, Recipes & Tips For Home Cooks” (Clarkson Potter, Oct. 24, 2018), Garten sets out to help home cooks feel more confident while preparing food that “looks and tastes like it was homemade by professionals.”
“It’s still home cooking, which is what I do,” Garten said. But there are “teachable moments” sprinkled throughout the book to ease the stress for cooks who need help with her recipes. “I’ve learned that a happy, relaxed host is the most important ingredient at any gathering,” said Garten, who is scheduled to be at the Paramount Theatre in Denver on Dec. 4.
Garten spoke to The Denver Post in October from her New York City apartment, where she tests recipes twice a week. Her office, TV studio and main test kitchen are in East Hampton, N.Y.
The inspiration for her latest book grew out of her online Ask Ina web page in which she responds to cooking and entertaining questions.
Like her 10 previous books, all best-sellers, Garten’s latest is filled with full-page color photographs of recipes such as Autumn Sangria with cinnamon sticks and Apple Brandy. It is the first recipe in the book and comes with a tip on how to seed a pomegranate. (Cut the fruit in half holding it over a bowl or a piece of parchment paper, whack the skin a few times with a wooden spoon and voila.) Garten notes that the sangria recipe was borrowed from chef Bobby Flay.
Garten had no training in the food business when, in 1978 at the age of 30, she made a dramatic career leap from nuclear energy budget analyst with the Office of Management and Budget at the White House to owner of a specialty food store, called the Barefoot Contessa, on Long Island. She had taught herself to cook for friends and her husband, Jeffrey, in Washington, D.C., using Julia Child’s cookbooks, but she had no experience running a business or professionally preparing large takeout entrees for strangers.
Over the course of 18 years, she learned many painful lessons as she built a hugely successful business. In this new book, she writes about peeling 40 pounds of butternut squash or baking 50 chocolate cakes in one day because a baker didn’t show up. One of the most valuable lessons she learned was what people really wanted to eat at home. It wasn’t the lavish meals that one might order at a high-end restaurant.
In the beginning, when she made fancy take-out dishes like pork loin stuffed with prunes marinated in a French brandy or fresh chickens on a bed of fresh herbs, “nobody would buy them,” she said.
“And I thought, ‘People want really simple food,’ (so) I just made a platter of roast chickens,” she said. “I would make big salads and roast carrots and mashed potatoes and I learned very quickly that’s what people want to serve at home.”
The lessons of simplicity, flavor and accessibility, with ingredients available at the grocery store, proved invaluable when she began writing recipes for her cookbooks.
“I realized the fact that I don’t have a professional culinary education ironically worked in my favor because I know how hard it is to cook,” she said. “It’s still hard for me.”
A Brooklyn, N.Y., native, Garten grew up in the 1950s in Stamford, Conn., where her surgeon father had his practice. It was the era of Wonder Bread, canned food and casseroles. Her mother did all the cooking, which was nutritious but not fancy, while her job was to study. “I remember wanting to cook because I was always searching for flavor,” she said.
To this day, she said, her recipes are “all about flavor.”
“In my recipes, every ingredient has to pull its own weight, and I want the flavors to be perfectly layered so no one flavor smacks you in the head while the next one is so subtle that you hardly notice it,” she said.
In her new book, Garten works her flavor magic with simple touches: a splash of red wine on her Chicken Marbella marinade, a squeeze of lemon on her Pork Souvlaki and a sprinkle of orange zest on her Orange-roasted Rainbow Carrots. A spot of coffee brings out the flavor in her Chocolate Chevron Cake.
In the early 1970s, newly married to Jeffrey, who was in the military, Garten lived in various places, including Colorado Springs for six months.
“I used to come to Denver all the time,” Garten said. “We had friends who lived in Breckenridge … (and) we’d go skiing with them.”
She first encountered high-altitude baking while trying to make danish with yeast. “It kept rising and rising and I couldn’t get it to stop,” she said. “I ended up with the biggest danish I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“I do know how hard high-altitude baking is,” she added, “but since I can’t test it at sea level, I refer people to a chart on the internet that’s helpful.”
Garten has been praised by people in the food industry for sticking to proper technique and thoroughly testing her recipes — practices that grew out of her scientific background.
“I start with an idea and then I test it … and I’m very specific and deliberate about it, the way a scientist would test something. Except I end up with red wine braised short ribs instead of nuclear material,” she said with a laugh. After testing a recipe as many as 20 times, she hands it off to team members to retest at home so she can see what mistakes might be made, and what editing is needed.
Garten sold her specialty food store in 1996, thinking, “it’s prob- ably the end of my professional career, and little did I know it hadn’t even started yet.” In 1999, she published her first cookbook, “The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook,” with an introduction by Martha Stewart. It quickly sold more than a million copies, marking the start of her career as an author and her entrée into the culinary big leagues. The Food Network quickly came calling and, after turning them down several times, she agreed to host her own show in 2002.
Nowadays, Garten, 70, is happy with her life and wants to keep doing what she’s doing. It’s a lifestyle that leaves “time to myself and time to spend with Jeffrey,” she said.
She listens to music while she cooks — from Motown to Taylor Swift and music from Paris, where she has a home — “music that’s upbeat and fun.”
And she carefully nurtures her brand, which contributes to a diverse fan base — from people on her Ask Ina web page to those in fur coats on New York’s Madison Avenue who greet her with an “Oh, darling, love your cookbooks,” and truck drivers who holler out the window, “Hey, babe, love your show.”
She is working on book No. 12. “I’m just at a point in my life where if I can just keep doing these two things (writing cookbooks and hosting her TV show). I’d be happy to do it until they drag me out by my feet,” she laughed.
Roasted Eggplant Parmesan Serves 6 Most recipes for eggplant Parmesan require that you fry the eggplant, which leaves my kitchen — and me! — a greasy mess. Instead, I roast the eggplant, and it’s so much better. From “Cook Like a Pro,” by Ina Garten. Ingredients 2K pounds eggplant, unpeeled, halved lengthwise, and sliced N to k inch thick O cup good olive oil 1 tablespoon dried oregano Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 1 (24-ounce) jar marinara sauce, such as Rao’s K cup julienned fresh basil leaves 1 pound fresh buffalo mozzarella, thinly sliced 8 ounces garlic and herb goat cheese, such as Montrachet 1K cups freshly grated Italian Parmesan cheese For the topping: 1L cups fresh bread crumbs from a country loaf 4 garlic cloves, minced N cup chopped fresh basil or parsley leaves N cup good olive oil Directions Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and arrange three racks evenly spaced. Lay the eggplant in one layer on three sheet pans and brush both sides with olive oil, using all the oil. Sprinkle with the oregano, crushing it lightly in your hands, then sprinkle with 1K tablespoons salt and 1K teaspoons pepper. Bake for 15 minutes. Turn the slices and rotate the pans in the oven and bake for another 10 minutes, until tender. Leave the oven at 400 degrees. In a 10×14×2-inch ceramic baking dish, spread L of the marinara sauce. Arrange a third of the eggplant on top in one layer. Scatter a third of the basil, a third of the mozzarella, a third of the goat cheese, and a third of the Parmesan on top. Repeat twice, starting with the marinara and ending with the Parmesan, making sure each layer is evenly distributed. For the topping, place the bread crumbs, garlic, and basil in a food processor and pulse to combine. Add the N cup olive oil and 1 teaspoon salt and pulse to moisten the crumbs. Sprinkle the mixture evenly over the dish. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, until bubbling and golden brown. Allow to sit at room temperature for 10 minutes before serving.