The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook

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?

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 Garten’s 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.

Sono libri con ricette molto soddisfacenti.E' una catena che conosco già, molto valida con ricette semplici, buone e belle da presentare

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.

You can't go wrong with Ina Garten!