Ina Garten - Barefoot in Paris

Copyright 2004 by Ina Garten
Photographs copyright 2004 by Quentin Bacon

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
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Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, New York,
New York
Member of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc.
www.crownpublishing.com

CLARKSON N. POTTER is a trademark and
POTTER and colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.

Printed in Japan
Design by Marysarah Quinn

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Garten, Ina.
Barefoot in Paris: easy French food you can make at home / Ina Garten; photographs by Quentin Bacon. Includes index.
1. Cookery, French. I. Barefoot Contessa
II. Title.
TX719.G219 2004
641.5944dc22 2004003280

eISBN: 978-0-307-95607-1

v3.1

F irst, I want to thank my wonderful friend and assistant, Barbara Libath, who works side by side with me every day. After I wrote and tested each recipe in this book, Barbara retested them again to make sure they really worked. The look on her face when she took a blue cheese souffl or lemon meringue tart out of the oven has kept me motivated for the entire year. I cant imagine doing this without her.

So many other people keep me going. My extraordinary and supportive editor, Pam Krauss, and my family at Clarkson Potter/Publishers, including Jenny Frost, Lauren Shakely, and Marysarah Quinn, all make me feelagainst all reasonas though I know what Im doing. Thank you, especially, Marysarah, for your beautiful book design. My wonderful agent, Esther Newberg at ICM, is brilliant at the business side of books and lets me focus on the fun stuff: the writing.

Thank you to the endlessly creative team of people who helped me make this book: Quentin Bacon for the gorgeous photographs; Rori Trovato, who makes the food look so deliciousand has such a good time doing it; and Miguel Flores-Vianna, who brings such style to all our shoots. I love you all dearly and Im so grateful that you make it all so joyous.

I also want to thank the people who have developed my interest in French food. To Julia Child, who taught us all. Weve never met, but your books gave me, and a whole generation of cooks, a foundation for cooking real French food. Thank you also to Anna Pump of Loaves and Fishes in Sagaponack, New York; Patricia Wells, author of The Food Lovers Guide to Paris and lots of wonderful French cookbooks; and Lydie Marshall. Youve all inspired me.

But most of all, thank you to my sweet husband, Jeffrey, who encourages me to do whats fun first and who takes me to Paris and shows me the time of my life.

Shopping in the market on Boulevard Raspail.

I t all started with a dress. When I was three years old, my grandparents went to Paris and brought me back a ruffly, off-the-shoulders party dress that we called my Paris dress. I felt really pretty in it. I didnt know where Paris was, but I knew I couldnt wait to go there.

When we were first married, my husband, Jeffrey, took me to Europe for the first time on an American Express tour: three cities, six nights! Id dreamed of going to Paris for so long and it was, as every first-time visitor finds out, even better than expected. I think there might have even been a few tears. Paris is really a womans citygorgeous people, elegant restaurants, wide boulevards with alles of trees, beautiful gardens and parks. What I couldnt get over, though, were the street markets: every day in different parts of the city, farmers and food purveyors would set up stalls and sell their incredibly delicious produce, farmhouse cheeses, and homemade baked goods. I couldnt wait to go home and start cooking French food.

A few years after that, Jeffrey and I went back to France, this time for a four-month camping trip. With our little Renault 4, a Day-Glo orange tent, sleeping bags, and a map of the campgrounds, we traveled all over France. It sounds impossible now, but we had a budget of five dollars a day and we lived really well. For breakfast Id go off to a local bakery and buy croissants and crusty French rolls hot out of the oven. For lunch, wed hit the market and collect slices of pt, wedges of fragrant Brie, and some fresh peaches. I can still taste how good they were. Wed find a bench in a gorgeous little park and wed eat our lunch. For dinner, Id set up a little gas stove near our tiny tent and Id cook dinner or heat up some cassoulet or beef bourguignon from a local charcuterie. Ill never forget pulling into one campsite in Normandy. The owner of the site offered to bring us some coq au vin, chicken cooked in wine, that shed made for her husband that night. Now I really wanted to go home and cook French food!

And thats exactly what I did. After the camping trip, we moved to Washington, D.C., where we were both working for the government. Food, however, was becoming my passion. I bought Julia Childs Mastering the Art of French Cooking, volumes one and two, and for the next seven years, I cooked my way through those wonderful books. Id work on the Presidents nuclear energy policy all day and Id rush home and cook all night. It was the best cooking education I could have had. I held a dinner party almost every weekend and all week long Id spend my evenings preparing for it. How crazy was that?

By 1978, after years of working in the White House, I was ready to take a chance in the food business. I bought Barefoot Contessa, then a small specialty food store in the Hamptons. I really didnt have a clue what I was doing, I just used my experience cooking for friends to teach myself how to cook for customers in the store. The beef bourguignon and raspberry tarts that I sold in the store were the same as the ones I would make for six friends on Saturday night. Now, though, I had to learn to keep a recipe really easy because I needed to cook a hundred quarts of beef bourguignon and two hundred raspberry tarts!