Description
Price: $35.00 - $15.52
(as of Jun 03, 2025 18:07:11 UTC – Details)
Ina Garten celebrates the 25th anniversary of her first cookbook with a special anniversary edition.
The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook is the book that kicked off America’s obsession and love for Ina Garten. When it was originally published, Ina was known for the delicious food she prepared at her gourmet shop in the Hamptons, called The Barefoot Contessa. After running it for more than twenty years, Ina sold her shop and decided to try her hand at writing a cookbook. The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook was born.
Packed with fabulous, easy recipes that won her a loyal following, this instant classic includes time-honored favorites like Ina’s Perfect Roast Chicken, a creamy French Potato Salad, and irresistibly fluffy Coconut Cupcakes. Ina reveals her secrets for entertaining with ease and style, sharing plenty of make-ahead tips for to take the stress out of having people over. Crab Cakes with Rémoulade Sauce can be stored overnight in the refrigerator and sautéed just before the guests arrive. Cheddar Corn Chowder can be made days ahead, reheated, and served with a salad and bread for a delicious autumn lunch. The batter for the Raspberry Corn Muffins can be mixed a day before and popped into the oven just before breakfast.
Featuring a new jacketed cover, a new foreword from Ina, and updated recipes, this twenty-fifth anniversary edition is a must-have cookbook for Ina fans, whether they’ve been collecting her cookbooks and watching her shows for decades or they’re discovering The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook for the first time.
Publisher : Clarkson Potter
Publication date : April 6, 1999
Edition : 1st
Language : English
Print length : 256 pages
ISBN-10 : 0609602195
ISBN-13 : 978-0609602195
Item Weight : 2.34 pounds
Dimensions : 7.88 x 0.91 x 10.3 inches
Part of series : Barefoot Contessa
Customers say
Customers find the cookbook’s recipes well-written and suitable for everyday cooking, with beautiful pictures and high-quality fresh ingredients that are readily available. The book is easy to follow and serves as an excellent resource for entertaining, with one customer noting its relaxed approach to cooking at home for family. While many customers consider it a great gift item with good value, some find it not worth the money.
B. Marold –
Careful selection of durable recipes. Good first cookbook
This first cookbook by Ina Garten, the founder and once owner of the Long Island catering and upscale deli, `barefoot contessa’ is a delightful cross between the high end Martha Stewart `Entertaining’ and the very local and very Southern `The Lady and Sons’ by Paula Deen. By delightful coincidence, all three have shows on the food network. This book shines by being more accessible than Martha Stewart’s work for large scale entertaining and by being more selective in its recipes than Paula Deen’s books. Deen and Stewart’s works both have their virtues, but Garten shines in making the best of its particular strengths.Both Stewart and Garten claim Julia Child as a culinary godmother, and both do us a service by making Child’s style of food easier to make for the non-foodie.The greatest value of Garten’s selection of dishes and her recipes for same are that they were all prepared at `the barefoot contessa’, so there is no question that the recipes work. This claim is boldly made on the dust jacket. I will add the opinion that since the dishes were a staple of Garten’s store and catering business, they were popular with a fairly discriminating clientele. Having seen pictures on Garten’s TV show of `the barefoot contessa’, I can see the store’s customers probably had pretty high expectations of their food purveyors.I can back this observation up by the opinion that I find almost all of Garten’s recipes very appealing, reasonably healthy, and reasonably easy to make. This is so true that I expect this will become my first choice book when I simply do not know what I want to make, and do not want to spend a lot of time, or at least a lot of effort in the preparation.That said, I have to recommend this book as both an excellent first cookbook and an excellent resource for entertaining. By being restaurant and catering recipes, most recipes have the added virtue of being able to remain appetizing after 8 hours in a chilled display case. There are very few prepared or commercially processed ingredients and there are very few expensive and delicate ingredients like foie gras or truffles.I found a few gaffs, mistakes which Ms. Garten’s food network on screen talent have repudiated. My favorite geek Alton Brown, my hero Mario Batali, and my imaginary sweetheart Sara Moulton have all reputed the folklore that salt toughens cooking beans. If this were a teaching cookbook or a book by a reputed culinary authority, I think less of the book, but Ms. Garten has succeeded in her primary goal. Another weakness is the `glossary of kitchen terms’. A single picture defines each of only six terms. I’m sure that these pictures may be of some value to amateur cooks, but the simplest of sentences in explanation would have made them 100% more useful.As I have suggested above, Ms. Garten has not given us a replacement for Martha Stewart’s classic. In a discussion of a crudite platter for example, Ms. Garten gives us a three thinly texted pages while Martha gives us eight oversized pages packed with recipes and step by step lessons.Ms. Garten’s book does outdo Martha in one regard, at least for people living in the New York metropolitan area. Her tables of sources for both food and equipment is very thorough and up to date. My only objection is her many references to Eli Zabar’s breads and stores. Once would have been quite enough. An even better suggestion would have been to rate the suppliers in the list at the end of the book.I highly recommend this book to anyone, especially as a first cookbook for people living in the New York area.
bandguy54 –
Love me some Ina!
I love Ina’s books. This is the first one, and I had never added it to my collection. I’m glad I have it.
Cecebe Girl –
The Barefoot Contessa is always good!
Iâm a fairly new convert to the barefoot Contessa cookbook. I have to admit, enjoying all of her cookbooks and I find that her recipes are fool proof. The pictures of the food are excellent and inspiring..
Marchada –
Cook friendly
Absolutely love this cookbook and never had any of hers and I shall be buying more of them. So nice we can get older cookbooks that we are just now hearing about from a friend. Her recipes are tried and true and come out just the way they’re supposed to when you cook them.
LisaB –
Beautiful
Itâs a beautiful cookbook but it has more deserts than I would like.
Annie –
Flawless Recipes
I’m not a chef and would consider myself about average, maybe slightly above average (but determined) in my ability to cook. I had been seeking one cookbook for quite some time that gave me a solid core of recipes that I could turn to repeatedly and A) not have to worry if I’d hit the mark each time I prepared the meal; B) not be so complex and ingredient spastic that I’d be in the kitchen the entire day/night; and finally C) where the cost to make the meal wouldn’t be prohibitive due to ingredients I wouldn’t normally keep on hand and/or only use for one single recipe (screw that.)I’m single and I live alone thus, I wanted recipes that could be made for guests but also that could be reduced so that I could make them for myself (I like to cook once on the weekend for my upcoming work week.) And this is certainly a great book to fit all of these qualifications.These recipes are flawless and very simple to put together though that doesn’t equal simple or boring tastes. On the contrary, the tastes can be quite complex.Because these recipes are so clean and put together with a subtle elegance a person should *not* substitute subpar ingredients and expect superior flavoring. When a recipe calls for fresh herbs or spices (or fresh grated, fresh roasted, fresh milled, fresh squeezed, etc.) there is a reason for it. If this same person then gets dull food because of using margarine, old spices, jarred or prepackaged ingredients, they can’t then complain about the recipe since they didn’t follow it.I don’t own a full size food processor (just a 1 1/2 cup version good for pretty much only chopping). Nor do I own a stand mixer. I have just my two hands, a hand-held mixer, wooden spoons and one whisk and so sometimes recipes (particularly deserts) can be a challenge for me. I’ve not found that to be the case for these recipes.FWIW, Parmesan smashed potatoes – I can honestly say that at 47 years of age, these are the best mashed potatoes I’ve ever eaten in my life.Excellent cookbook in design, layout, index, content.Flawless recipes – they WORK.Perfect execution of the recipes is a breeze due to clear and easy to read instruction.
Lee A. Fennell –
Top Quality
This book is just like Ina Garten-Top Quality!
Konne A. –
Clear easy effective recipes
Iâm a big fan of Ina Garten and often go to look for her recipes. Having an in a book is concise and easy to use.
Henrietta –
I have a number of I.G.’s books and love them and I find the recipes work well (unless I make a mistake!). I’ve ordered this one after close inspection of it at a friend’s house.The “translation” of meaurements isn’t a problem – I bought a set of plastic Tala measuring cups based on an 8 ounce (240g) cup from my local “pound” shop for under £4. They weren’t labelled as American but the sizes marked on the handles were correct. When a “stick” or half a stick of butter is asked for I weigh it (a “stick” of butter weighs 1/4lb (4 ounces or 113 grams). Perhaps it’s younger cooks who get in a tizzy over this as they have never cooked in pounds and ounces. The knack is to remember that American measuring cups are imperial not metric and standard British measuring cups are metric not imperial and so to forget what you learned at school when cooking “yank” style.A lot has been said on reviews about her excessive use of salt which I agreed with until an American friend put me straight. Apparently “kosher salt”, which I.G. uses extensively, is not as “salty” as the table salt available here and doesn’t contain additives such as iodine. Because kosher grains occupy more volume (for equal weight) the volume of kosher salt should be increased – it’s usually suggested that when using kosher salt you should use double the amount of the table salt you would usuually use. So that lays that complaint to rest. Kosher salt is available on Amazon and Tesco sells it – allbeit in tiny containers. It is expensive though and a reasonable substitute would be coarse-grained sea salt with no additives.I hope this lays to rest some of the panicking about cooking from I.G.’s books that regularly crops up on these reviews.I don’t even mind the American ingredients we can’t buy in the UK (although it’s worth a search on Google). Those bits of the books are still interesting to read and one can dream, can’t one?
Cliente de Amazon –
This is a really good book. All the recipes seem simple enough to prepare at home and the instructions are really explicit. The photography in the book is amazing, already made the crab cakes and they came out perfect. I would highly recommend this book to anyone looking for somewhat classic dishes with a little extra refinement. If your are looking for showstoppers I would recommend you try another one of Ina Gartenâs books, this is really more of a compilation of dishes you would find at a European or American deli. In terms of buyer experience, the book arrived really quickly and in perfect condition.
Cliente Amazon –
Sono libri con ricette molto soddisfacenti.E’ una catena che conosco già , molto valida con ricette semplici, buone e belle da presentare
Woolripper –
A gift for a friend. One of her best cook books. Delicious recipes. Esay to read.
P J King –
I received this book as a Christmas present from my husband, as I love watching the Barefoot Contessa on TV. The recipes are easy to follow and the book has lovely photographs with each recipe. As always her recipes are great.Only comment it the index, it is not that easy to find specific recipes..