Product Description

Ina Garten, who shared her gift for casual entertaining in the bestselling Barefoot Contessa Cookbook and Barefoot Contessa Parties!, is back with her most enticing recipes yet—a collection of her favorite dishes for everyday cooking. In Barefoot Contessa Family Style, Ina explains that sharing our lives and tables with those we love is too essential to be saved just for special occasions—and it’s easy to do if you know how to cook irresistible meals with a minimum of fuss.

For Ina, the best way to make guests feel at home is to serve them food that’s as unpretentious as it is delicious. So in her new book, she’s collected the recipes that please her friends and family most—dishes like East Hampton Clam Chowder, Parmesan Roasted Asparagus, and Linguine with Shrimp Scampi. It’s the kind of fresh, accessible food that’s meant to be passed around the table in big bowls or platters and enjoyed with warm conversation and laughter.

In Ina’s hands tried-and-true dishes are even more delicious than you remember them: Her arugula salad is bright with the flavors of lemon and Parmesan, the Oven-Fried Chicken is crispy without excess fat, and her Deep-Dish Apple Pie has the perfect balance of fruit and spice. Barefoot Contessa Family Style also includes enticing recipes that are memorable and distinctive, like Lobster Cobb Salad, Tequila Lime Chicken, and Saffron Risotto with Butternut Squash.

With vivid photographs of Ina cooking and serving food in her beautiful Hamptons home, as well as menu suggestions, practical wisdom on what to do when disaster strikes in the kitchen, and tips on creating an inviting ambience with music, Barefoot Contessa Family Style is the must-have guide to the joy of everyday entertaining.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2024 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-29
• Released on: 2002-10-29
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This second book follows the same basic premise as Garten's phenomenally popular Barefoot Contessa Cookbook: simple, elegant home cooking with good ingredients and a minimum of fuss. It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to include ordinary chicken noodle soup and mashed potatoes and gravy in a cookbook, but Garten pulls it off with heart and style. Dinners are conceived as crowd-pleasers, with a big nod to Italian home-cooking: oven-fried chicken, penne with five cheeses, Sunday rib roast, risotto, lasagna. Like other cookbooks with a specialty-shop pedigree (such as Silver Palate), Garten's book is inflected with a certain catering mentality-a lot of salmon, sun-dried tomatoes, the inevitable Curry Chicken Salad, the forgiving and easy Chicken with Tabbouleh. However, these recipes manage to seem not dated but just reasonable solutions to the eternal problem set of practicality, flavor and time. With photographs of the dishes on nearly every spread and a nice, open format, Garten's book is easy to use. Sections on desserts, kids, and brunch complete this fine snapshot of real-life cooking and the joys of eating in.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Garten's first two books featuring recipes from the Barefoot Contessa, her gourmet takeout shop in East Hampton, NY, have sold more than 400,000 copies. Her latest repeats the appealing format of those titles, offering sophisticated but easy recipes and an attractive design featuring dozens of color photographs, mostly closeups of the recipes but including some casual shots of the author, friends, and family. Garten's "family style" cooking includes dishes like Chicken Noodle Soup and Parker's Fish & Chips (separate chapters are devoted to breakfast and kids' foods), but there are also elegant dishes like Tuna Tartare, Saffron Risotto, and Lobster Cobb Salad, not exactly everyday fare. Sure to be popular.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Ina Garten made her name as a premier supplier of prepared foods in Long Island's Hamptons' carryout Barefoot Contessa. Her latest cookbook continues the traditions of her earlier work. In Barefoot Contessa Family Style, Garten serves up dinners centered on homey comforts. Mashed turnips are made palatable to even the fussiest eater by topping them with crisply fried shallots. Squash gets enriched with brown sugar and plenty of butter. Basil, cheddar, and ricotta cheese enliven otherwise bland corn pudding. For a patriotic party, nothing surpasses the sentiment of Garten's flag cake, with its precise rows of red raspberries marching between stripes of whipped cream. Blueberries and more piped whipped cream create a field of stars. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

The tequila lime chicken was the best grilled chicken I've ever had!
I had never heard of Ina Garten before I bought this book, and so had no idea about Barefoot Contessa or anything, but the tequila lime chicken was the most tasty grilled chicken I've ever tried. I am really excited to try more of these recipes. Some of them seem a little simplistic to me and are things that I already know how to make (like mashed potatoes) but the dessert section looks great and I am considering buying one or two of the other BC books. Very impressive and the photographs inside the book are gorgeous. I would recommend adding this to any cookbook collection.

Simple recipes
Description: simple, straight-forward, everyday, delicious, must try, great cook book. I was impressed by the easy going, not fancy yet absolutely flavorful recipes. Also try FINGER LICKING DIFFERENT!

The Contessa is a Winner!
This cookbook is absolutely fabulous!!! The recipes are simple, yet elegant. My favorite is the Tequila Lime Chicken!