Ina Garten has given us a new book on `cuisine bourgeois', and one immediately wonders if the world really needs another book on everyday French cooking, since we already have great works from Julia Child and Elizabeth David, excellent works from Patricia Wells and Richard Olney, and hundreds of others, including an excellent volume from Garten's mentor, teacher Lydie Marshall, author of the excellent book `A Passion for My Provence'. The questions become doubly appropriate with the recent appearance of Food Network colleague Tony Bourdain's really excellent book of bistro recipes, `Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook'. To complete the picture of my general skepticism about book is the fact that Ms. Garten's book lists at a higher price than Bourdain's book, yet it has substantially fewer recipes and none of Monsieur Bourdain's really excellent tutorials on cooking technique. Yet, here is the key to Ms. Garten's enterprise and audience.
Ina Garten has no intention of emulating Julia Child in her writing or even in her TV shows. She is squarely in the tradition and style of Martha Stewart. Like Stewart, she started in the culinary business as a caterer and she was, for many years, a major contributor of culinary material to Martha Stewart's magazine. All you need to do is compare the design of Garten's books with either Bourdain's book or even Julia Child's books, and the difference is evident. Bourdain limits himself to pictures of dishes and series of pictures illustrating culinary techniques. Garten pictures lots of dishes, but she also pictures lots of pottery, table settings, and flowers as well. Each chapter has a prelude on marginally culinary matters. The brief chapter on wine is excellent, but it could have been lifted straight out of `Martha Stewart Living' as `Wine and Food Pairings 101'. Other prefatory essays cover flower arranging, table settings, cooking schools in Paris, and cooking equipment stores in Paris.
All this means is that Ina Garten's books are as much about lifestyle as they are about cooking, and Ina will probably be the very first person to agree with this statement. And, this is a perfectly legitimate enterprise. In fact, although Jamie Oliver is an exceptionally talented chef (whose passion and skill with food may even put Bourdain in the shade) writes books that are as much about lifestyle as they are about cooking. It's just that it is a different lifestyle than the one being celebrated by Ms. Garten.
I believe the recipes in all of Ms. Garten's books are very good for the home cook. As she says in many of her books, these recipes were done for 60 servings a day at her shop, `Barefoot Contessa' so they had to be simple and they had to be good. This doesn't mean I didn't find a few oddities here and there, especially in her headnotes to some recipes. One puzzling comment was her apologizing for using cremini mushrooms as an unusual ingredient in a recipe, when I can find cremini mushrooms in every larger food store in the Lehigh Valley, including ones which make no pretense to carrying gourmet ingredients. A few pages later, she uses celery root, fennel, morels, and Belgian endive in recipes. All of these ingredients are either hard to find or expensive. Another puzzle is her blanching thinly sliced fennel bulb for a fennel salad. Neither Marcella Hazan nor mentor Lydie Marshall blanches fennel for their several salads that use this ingredient. I know exactly why Garten does it, because I considered doing the same thing when making Mme. Hazan's fennel salads, but I just couldn't bear giving up the fine crunch of raw fennel. The solution is to slice very, very thinly and possibly to salt the fennel and let set as you do for cabbage in making cole slaw.
Another oddity with Ms. Garten's recipes is that although she emphasizes easy recipes, her Moules Marinieres (Mussels in White Wine) recipe has many more ingredients and a slightly more complicated procedure than Tony Bourdain's recipe for a dish of exactly the same name. Personally, I would go with Bourdain's recipe as it adds the wine right after cooking the shallots in butter in order that the wine will deglace the pot and almost all alcohol will cook off before more ingredients are added to the pot. Ms. Garten uses the very understandable technique of mixing olive oil with the butter for the initial sautee, and the wine is added mixed with water, tomato, and spices. Bourdain's recipe is simpler, but requires just a little more attention and skill to attend to the hot butter and add the wine before it gets too dark. An even more interesting comparison between Garten and Bourdain is with their boeuf bourguignon recipes. Garten complains that traditional recipes that keep the dish in the Dutch oven on the stove for three hours, the meat comes out dry and the veggies mushy. I have seen this happen and it doesn't surprise me that Garten is wary of it, as her instructions are to barely cover the meat with liquid and bring to a boil, then into the oven for 75 minutes. Thus, she is treating the dish like a braise while Bourdain, who simmers the dish gently on the stovetop for 120 minutes, treats the dish more like a stew, with strong admonishments to check the dish every 20 minutes for sticking. Again, Bourdain's recipe has fewer ingredients and is somewhat simpler, as it doesn't require the oven or a step to burn off the alcohol.
This is not to say Garten's recipes are not as good as Bourdain's. Only that the two authors have two different audiences. Garten is writing for the virtual tourist in Paris and the seeker of advice for entertaining in the Parisian style. Bourdain is writing for cooks. I have done several recipes from Garten's books, including this one, and I have never been disappointed.
Highly recommended for a virtual taste of the Parisian lifestyle.
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| MODERN COMFORT FOOD | COOK LIKE A PRO | BAREFOOT CONTESSA FOOLPROOF | BAREFOOT CONTESSA AT HOME | BARFEOOT CONTESSA BACK TO BASICS | COOKING FOR JEFFREY | |
| A collection of all-new soul-satisfying dishes! | Cook with confidence no matter how much experience you have in the kitchen! | Garten shares her secrets for pulling off deeply satisfying meals that have the “wow!” factor we all crave… | Filled with signature recipes that strike the perfect balance between elegance and casual comfort. | Explore the techniques behind Ina Garten’s elegant food and easy entertaining style—nearly a hundred brand-new recipes that will become trusted favorites. | Garten shares the beloved recipes she's been cooking for her husband over the course of their marriage |
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 28, 2004
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Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 22, 2007
Top reviews from other countries
Sean Cawood
Interesting 'slant' on a cookbook
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 1, 2010Izzy
she said they were very good, no nonsense French food
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 9, 2015mimi
easy french food with ian garten
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 10, 2014
Bill Blogs
A good read for cooking fans
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 13, 2015
