Barefoot Contessa Family Style,
By Ina Garten
Reviewed by Publishers
Weekly, Library Journal
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.
