10 Favorite Ina Garten Recipes | Alexandra's Kitchen (2024)

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10 Favorite Ina Garten Recipes | Alexandra's Kitchen? ›

Modern Comfort Food: A Barefoot Contessa Cookbook (2020)

We think Ina's newest cookbook is her best yet. It's Ina 2020, a soothing combination of nostalgia and authority.

Modern Comfort Food: A Barefoot Contessa Cookbook (2020)

We think Ina's newest cookbook is her best yet. It's Ina 2020, a soothing combination of nostalgia and authority.

Garten was originally employed by the Federal Power Commission and later at the White House Office of Management and Budget.

The Simplest Dish In The World To Make, According To Ina Garten. After testing recipes for various projects all day, Ina Garten prefers to make something simple, quick, and ready straight out of the oven. Her favored dish is roast chicken.

He also served in the United States Army from 1968 to 1972, during the Vietnam War, holding the rank of Lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division and Captain and aide-de camp to the commanding general of the US Special Forces.

Garten. Barefoot Contessa, her famous store, was located where Rag & Bone now operates. Barefoot Contessa closed permanently in 2004, but Ms. Garten still owns the building.

Go-To Dinners

Cooking night after night during the pandemic inspired her to re-think the way she approached dinner, and the result is this collection of comforting and delicious recipes that you'll love preparing and serving.

She writes, "They both have a huge range of white china. For example, my large serving bowls are Crate and Barrel brand, and my Pillivuyt and Apilco dishes are from Williams-Sonoma."

Does Ina Garten use a microwave? ›

In addition to quick oatmeal, Ina Garten has also been known, on occasion, to use her microwave for simplifying what are usually more complicated cooking techniques. For example, she uses her microwave to not only melt butter but make clarified butter, in which the milk solids have been removed.

If you're looking for a Barefoot Contessa-approved set, check out the Maison pattern from Crate and Barrel, a mainstay Ina has said she owns over the years. Another, pricier option is the White Dinnerware set from Pillivuyt, a French brand Ina recommends for serving ware as well.

Garten, who married husband Jeffrey nearly 55 years ago when she was 20 years old, said that her own childhood is the main reason why she didn't want to expand her family. “I'm actually writing a memoir right now and it's kind of looking back at my childhood. It was nothing I wanted to recreate,” she shared.

One of those places was Washington, D.C., where Garten worked as a budget analyst for presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter.

Ina Garten once worked in the White House and worked her way up, which eventually put her in charge of writing the nuclear budget for the United States. She also managed to earn her MBA from George Washington University at the same time. Despite her success, she decided she wanted a different life.

In 1999, Ina wrote her first book, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, which was one of the best-selling cookbooks of the year. The book invites readers into her specialty food store and shares the recipes that made it such a success.

Ina Garten has built an incredible career, which started with writing budgets at the White House. With the support of husband Jeffrey, she then ran a grocery store that launched her cooking journey. Garten has since written 13 cookbooks, and "Barefoot Contessa" has been on TV for 20 years.

Garten, a TV host and prolific cookbook author, has a brand that melds aspirational and accessible, contributing to a diverse fan base: rich women in fur coats who appreciate her show, truck drivers who profess a love of her books as they drive by and, more recently, the 1.6 million people who follow her on Instagram.

Garten ran the Barefoot Contessa store for 18 years — eventually moving it from Westhampton Beach to a bigger location in East Hampton — before she sold it to two of her employees in 1996. Three years later, Garten published her first cookbook with recipes from her store. Then, Food Network came calling.