Bacon Quentin - Barefoot Contessa, how easy is that?: fabulous recipes & easy tips

I get enormous pleasure from cooking and entertaining, but as much as I love good food and recipes that have interesting, complex flavors, there are two real secrets to my cooking.

First, probably like you, Im not a trained professional chef so the recipes need to be easy enough for me to make. Second, I have a very short attention span, and if a recipe goes on for pages and pages, using lots of complicated techniques and special equipmentforget about it! (If anyone asked me to make spun sugar, Id have a meltdown!) When you get right down to it, I cook pretty much the same way you do; its just that after thirty years in the food business, I may have a little more experience. Frankly, all of us are so busy these days with jobs, families, friends, and houses to take care of that we dont really have the luxury of cooking all day anymore, and even if we did, who would want to?? Personally, Im good for about two hours making a dinner party and thirty minutes for a weeknight meal; more than that and I have better things to do. But Im still not willing to sacrifice any of the pleasure of making a delicious dinner for my husband, Jeffrey, and my friends. This book is all about saving you time and avoiding stress. These arent recipes with three ingredients that you can throw together in five minutes before dinner.

These are tried-and-true Barefoot Contessa recipes that are easy enough to make but still have all that deep, delicious flavor that makes a meal so satisfying. Ive tested the recipes endlessly, so I know they work; Ive anticipated the kinds of problems you might encounter at homeand Ive solved them before the recipe gets into the book. These are recipes youll make over and over again and youll feel confident that theyll turn out perfectly every time. If you think thats easy, its not!

First, it starts with simple ingredients. I always ask myself, Does every ingredient earn its place in this recipe? If I cant clearly distinguish it or it doesnt enhance the flavor of another ingredient, out it goes. Fewer ingredients mean less shopping and less prep time.

Second, are they ingredients that you can easily find in a grocery or specialty food store? Theres no point in writing a simple recipe if it means you have to go to three different produce markets to find three different kinds of wild mushrooms in order to make the recipe. Ive seen recipes that call for gelatin sheets (where do you find those, except in a restaurant kitchen?) or a teaspoon of glace de viande. When I see ingredients like that in a recipe, I just put the book back on the shelf. Instead, I love recipes with ingredients you can find in any well-stocked grocery store and that are called for in the quantities they come in. If canned tomatoes generally come in 28-ounce cans, you wont find a recipe of mine that calls for 32 ounces of canned tomatoes. What exactly are you supposed to do with the rest of the can? When I call for 9 ounces of Major Greys chutney, you know when you find a 9-ounce jar, youve got exactly the right chutney.

My spent a fortune and ended up with a shelf full of expensive liquor youll never use again.

The next thing I look for is a way to take shortcuts that make a recipe even easier without losing all the great flavor. For my , instead of making beef stock from scratch, I start with canned beef broth and cook the soup with lots of inexpensive oxtails. Its one step instead of two and youd never know that I didnt spend hours roasting beef bones in the oven! Spanish onions are twice as big as yellow onions so theyre easier to handle and faster to chop. When a recipe calls for two onions, I often use one Spanish onion instead. You also wont find a lot of recipes in my books for food that is sauted, stir-fried, or made by other labor-intensive techniques. You also wont find a lot of recipes in my books for food that is sauted, stir-fried, or made by other labor-intensive techniques.