Q&A with Ina Garten

When it comes to making dinner — from an easy weeknight meal to an elegant holiday feast — no one knows better than Ina Garten. The Barefoot Contessa host and bestselling cookbook author is famous for her beautiful but accessible recipes and seemingly effortless entertaining style. This season, she shows us how to pull off a festive, relaxed holiday meal with strategies from her newest cookbook, Make It Ahead, and also told us all about her food philosophy, background and the tools and ingredients she can’t live without. Read the Q&A below, then see Ina’s holiday menu and how-to tips here!

 

How did you begin cooking?

When my husband Jeffrey and I were first married, we took a 4-month camping trip to Europe. The markets in France knocked me out (I was cooking dinner for us on a camping gas stove!). After the trip, I decided to really teach myself how to cook. I bought the two volumes of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and I was hooked.

 

How did you choose the name Barefoot Contessa?

In 1978, I was working on nuclear energy policy in the White House and I saw an ad in the New York Times for a specialty food store for sale in a place I’d never been—the Hamptons. That store was called Barefoot Contessa, because the woman who started it was Italian and her family nicknamed her for the famous movie of the same name starring Humphrey Bogart and Ava Gardner. For me, the name Barefoot Contessa connotes both elegance and earthiness, which is a style I admire.

 

What sets your cookbooks apart?

When I started to write cookbooks, the popular books had 500 recipes in them. I thought, “Who needs 500 recipes?” I wanted to do a book that had 75 really good recipes that I could make over and over again. My cooking experience was from running a specialty food store so, as opposed to restaurant food, I knew what people wanted to eat at home, like roast chicken, roast carrots, and spinach gratin.

 

How did you make the move from cookbooks to television?

I started writing cookbooks in 1997; my first book was published in 1999. In 2000, Food Network decided to shift its programming from fancy French chefs to home cooks, and they approached me about doing a show. I didn’t think for a minute that I could do it, but, fortunately, they kept pursuing me. In 2002, I promised to do a test of thirteen episodes, thinking then they would leave me alone—and, happily, that was twelve years ago!

 

How would you describe your cooking style?

I like to take the idea of something that’s very familiar—like Lipton Onion Soup Dip—and start from scratch, making it with slowly caramelized onions and fresh sour cream. You know the flavor, but the dish is better than you expect. In this book, my Crunchy Iceberg Salad with Creamy Blue Cheese Dressing is my twist on the classic wedge salad with blue cheese dressing. The flavors are familiar, but the diced celery, radishes, scallions, and Roquefort cheese make it refreshingly different.

 

What’s your weeknight go-to meal?

I’m a big fan of a simple roast chicken with the vegetables—carrots, fennel, onions, and potatoes—roasted in the same pan. It’s easy, so delicious, and you have the entire meal done in one dish! It looks as though you’ve spent the entire day cooking, but the whole thing takes fifteen minutes to prepare and then an hour to roast.

 

What’s the most important ingredient to you?

A chef once said to me, “The biggest mistake people make cooking is how they use two ingredients that everyone has in the house: salt and pepper.” There has been a maxim that’s now been debunked that any amount of salt is bad for you—it turns out that there was absolutely no basis for it. Salt brings out the flavor in most ingredients—both savory and sweet. If you salt while you cook, things taste perfectly seasoned. If you salt them at the end, they just taste salty.

 

What’s the best cooking advice you’ve ever received?

Keep it simple! I cook to bring out the intrinsic flavors of the ingredients I’m cooking with. A little coffee added to chocolate makes the chocolate taste better, but you don’t know the coffee is there. A splash of Cassis added to cooked plums makes them taste plumier. I love to find the one ingredient that really unlocks the flavor of the dish.

 

What is your most prized kitchen possession?

I have three categories of things in my kitchen that I can’t live without—and with them, I can make lots of perfectly delicious meals — Wusthof knives, All-Clad pans, and a stack of half-sheet pans.

 

What is one thing that’s always in your fridge or pantry at home?

When I’m testing recipes, there’s always the moment that I think, “This needs something but I’m not sure what.” For those moments, I always have sea salt, Dijon mustard, and Grand Marnier in the pantry; dishes of lemon and garlic on the counter; a big chunk of Parmesan cheese in the fridge; and fresh thyme growing in the garden. One of those ingredients usually does the trick!

 

What was the inspiration for your new book Make It Ahead?

That’s simple! I asked my assistant, what’s the most frequent question people ask us, and her answer was—“Can I make it ahead?” When I had a specialty food store, people would take our dishes home and serve them later or the next day. So, I had to make dishes ahead—and I learned to make many things that were even better when they were made ahead. I wanted to share what I learned with home cooks, who often have to cook ahead to accommodate their families’ busy schedules.

 

What is your favorite holiday tradition?

Hands-down, my favorite holiday is Thanksgiving. I love the meal, Thanksgiving doesn’t have the gift-giving pressure of Christmas, and it’s a time to be with the people you love most. We eat dinner around 4 p.m. and then everyone comes into the library to watch an old movie and eat homemade salted caramels. That’s my idea of heaven!

 

Find more of Ina’s tips and recipes for holiday entertaining here.