Ina Garten
My extravagance is my garden - it's the first thing I look at every morning when I wake up. It gives me so much pleasure.Collection: Morning
I absolutely adore Thanksgiving. It's the only holiday I insist on making myself.Collection: Thanksgiving
I love to take something ordinary and make it really special.Collection: Food
If you think about a Thanksgiving dinner, it's really like making a large chicken.Collection: Thanksgiving
Instead of going out to dinner, buy good food. Cooking at home shows such affection. In a bad economy, it's more important to make yourself feel good.Collection: Good
I try to greet my friends with a drink in my hand, a warm smile on my face, and great music in the background, because that's what gets a dinner party off to a fun start.Collection: Smile
Grilled cheese and tomato soup is the ultimate comfort meal.
I've lived in the Hamptons since 1978, when I first bought my store Barefoot Contessa.
My favorite fall or winter lunch is big steaming bowls of soup. I usually invite people for around 12:30 and have two hearty soups like shrimp corn chowder and lentil sausage soup, which can be made a day or two ahead.
There's something really wonderful about a party where you help yourself. Of course, first you get what you really want. But 'family style' service also really encourages people to connect with one another.
I always like to have flowers on the table. I think they make it look special.
Creme Brulee is the ultimate 'guy' dessert. Make it and he'll follow you anywhere.
The most important thing for having a party is that the hostess is having fun. I'm very organized. I make a plan for absolutely everything. I never have anything that has to be cooked while the guests are there. The only thing I might have to do is take something out of the oven and carve it.
I'm really a scientist. I follow recipes exactly - until I decide not to. And then I'll follow something else exactly. I may decide I could turn this peach tart into a plum tart, but if I'm following a recipe, I follow it exactly.
If it's a cocktail party, I generally make five or six different things, and I try to choose recipes that feel like a meal: a chicken thing, a fish or shrimp thing, maybe two vegetable things, and I think it's fun to end the cocktail party with a sweet thing.
I worked for the Office of Management and Budget in the White House, on nuclear energy policy. But I decided it would be much more fun to have a specialty food store, so I left Washington D.C. and moved to the Hamptons. And how glad I am that I did!
The dirty little secret is that I grew up in a household where there were no carbohydrates allowed, ever. No cookies, no bread, no potatoes, no rice. My mother was very extreme in terms of what she served. Since I left home more than 40 years ago, I've been making it right for myself.
The thing about all my food is that everything is a remembered flavor. Maybe it's something I had as a child or maybe it's something I had in Milan, but I want it to taste better than you ever thought.
I learned that the hardest party to pull off successfully is Saturday night dinner. This meal is expected to be elaborate: appetizers, first course, dinner, dessert, and coffee. People arrive at 7:30 or 8 p.m. and stay for hours - definitely past my bedtime - and they all go home exhausted.
People have more fun if they don't eat so much they have to be taken home in an ambulance.
My mother would never let me in the kitchen. I always wanted to cook, but I was never allowed to. Her view of the world was, 'Cooking is my job, and studying is your job.' I think, in retrospect, she didn't like the chaos. She was very orderly. It had to be her way.
I always have music. I love it to be very upbeat. When you're having drinks, I like something like Cesaria Evora. During dinner, I like the much more traditional - old Frank Sinatra and things like that.
I measure everything, because I always think that if I've spent so much time making sure this recipe was exactly the way I want it, why would I want to throw things into a pot?
I use other cookbooks for inspiration. I must say I tend to cook from my own cookbooks for parties.
In the summer you want fresh, light and sort of quick things; in winter you want things that are comforting, so your body really tells you you want to go towards potatoes, apples, fennel, things that are warm and comforting. And loin of pork.
I don't like sitting at a table that's too large, where everyone is too far apart. That's a party killer.
They say that gardens look better when they are created by loving gardeners rather than by landscapers, because the garden is more tended to and cared for. The same thing goes for cooking. I only cook for people I love.
The most overrated tool: a pasta maker. Why make it when you can buy it? It's a lot of work!
I love Alton Brown's show 'Good Eats,' about the chemistry of food. It's really thoughtful.
I time everything. I'm a scientist at heart.
Never let 'em see you sweat. Guests feel guilty if they think you've worked too hard to make dinner for them - which of course you have!
When I wrote 'Barefoot in Paris,' I wanted to make simple recipes that you could make at home that tasted like French classics.
You don't have to do everything from scratch. Nobody wants to make puff pastry!
I like almonds as a snack - keeps your energy up but doesn't fill you up.
Take one flower that you like and get lots of them. And don't try to 'arrange' them. It's surprisingly hard to do a flower arrangement the way a florist does one. Instead, bunch them all together or put them in a series of small vases all down the table.
I've taught myself how to use good, fresh ingredients and to prepare them as simply as possible by cooking only to enhance their intrinsic flavors.
You can be miserable before you have a cookie and you can be miserable after you eat a cookie but you can't be miserable while you are eating a cookie.Collection: Food
Fun is the most important. If you do stuff for money, it never works out.Collection: Fun
Food is not about impressing people. It's about making them feel comfortable.Collection: People
One of the great gifts that you can give people is to cook for them.Collection: Women
Anyone who tries to make brownies without butter should be arrested.Collection: Trying
Every once in a while, a cookbook comes along that simply knocks me out.Collection: Cookbook
I get up every day, do the best that I can do, and go home and have a good time.Collection: Home
When I thought my professional career was over, it hadn't even started yet.Collection: Careers
I think that I had a very clear vision when I started writing cookbooks what I wanted it to be, and that you would open the book, that you would look at the photograph and go, that looks delicious. And then you would look at the recipe and say, I can actually make that and I can make it with ingredients I can find in the grocery store.Collection: Book
My mother would never let me in the kitchen. I always wanted to cook, but I was never allowed to. Her view of the world was, "Cooking is my job, and studying is your job." I think, in retrospect, she didn't like the chaos. She was very orderly. It had to be her way.Collection: Mother
It's so important that you don't put the stuffing in the bird, where in order for the stuffing to get cooked you have to overcook the turkey. It's better to do it on the side.Collection: Order
All my life I dreamed of an apartment in Paris where I could cook, and now I have one, on the Left Bank.Collection: Dream
I think there are two ways of eating, or cooking. One is restaurant food and one is home food. I believe that people have started making food that is easy that you want to eat at home. When you go out to a restaurant, you want to be challenged, you want to taste something new, you want to be excited. But when you eat at home, you want something that's delicious and comforting. I've always liked that kind of food - and frankly, that's also what I want to eat when I go out to restaurants, but maybe that's me.Collection: Believe
When I first started writing cookbooks, I remember thinking to myself, what makes me think I can write a cookbook? There are these great chefs who are really trained. And, as I started, I realized, actually, what is my lack is actually exactly right, because I can connect with - cooking's hard for me. I never worked on... And that's why my recipes are really simple, because I want to be able to do them.Collection: Writing