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Go-To Dinners: A Barefoot Contessa Cookbook
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • America's favorite home cook presents delicious, crowd-pleasing, go-to recipes that you'll want to make over and over again!
Even Ina Garten, America's most-trusted and beloved home cook, sometimes finds cooking stressful. To make life easy she relies on a repertoire of recipes that she knows will turn out perfectly every time. 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. You'll find lots of freeze-ahead, make-ahead, prep-ahead, and simply assembled recipes so you, too, can make dinner a breeze.
In Go-To Dinners, Ina shares her strategies for making her most satisfying and uncomplicated dinners. Many, like Overnight Mac & Cheese, you can make ahead and throw in the oven right before dinner. Light dinners like Tuscan White Bean Soup can be prepped ahead and assembled at the last minute. Go-to family meals like Chicken in a Pot with Orzo and Hasselback Kielbasa will feed a crowd with very little effort. And who doesn't want to eat Breakfast For Dinner? You'll find recipes for Scrambled Eggs Cacio e Pepe and Roasted Vegetables with Jammy Eggs that are a snap to make and so satisfying. Ina's "Two-Fers" guide you on how to turn leftovers from one dinner into something different and delicious the second night.
And sometimes the best dinner is one you don't even have to cook! You'll find Ina's favorite boards to serve with store-bought ingredients, like an Antipasto Board and Breakfast-for-Dinner Board that are fun to assemble and so impressive to serve. Finally, because no meal can be considered dinner without dessert, there are plenty of prep-ahead and easy sweets like a Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie and Beatty's Chocolate Cupcakes that everyone will rave about.
For Ina, "I love you, come for dinner" is more than just an invitation to share a meal, it's a way to create a community of friends and family who love and take care of each other, and we all need that now more than ever. These go-to recipes will give you the confidence to create dinners that will bring everyone to your table.
Even Ina Garten, America's most-trusted and beloved home cook, sometimes finds cooking stressful. To make life easy she relies on a repertoire of recipes that she knows will turn out perfectly every time. 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. You'll find lots of freeze-ahead, make-ahead, prep-ahead, and simply assembled recipes so you, too, can make dinner a breeze.
In Go-To Dinners, Ina shares her strategies for making her most satisfying and uncomplicated dinners. Many, like Overnight Mac & Cheese, you can make ahead and throw in the oven right before dinner. Light dinners like Tuscan White Bean Soup can be prepped ahead and assembled at the last minute. Go-to family meals like Chicken in a Pot with Orzo and Hasselback Kielbasa will feed a crowd with very little effort. And who doesn't want to eat Breakfast For Dinner? You'll find recipes for Scrambled Eggs Cacio e Pepe and Roasted Vegetables with Jammy Eggs that are a snap to make and so satisfying. Ina's "Two-Fers" guide you on how to turn leftovers from one dinner into something different and delicious the second night.
And sometimes the best dinner is one you don't even have to cook! You'll find Ina's favorite boards to serve with store-bought ingredients, like an Antipasto Board and Breakfast-for-Dinner Board that are fun to assemble and so impressive to serve. Finally, because no meal can be considered dinner without dessert, there are plenty of prep-ahead and easy sweets like a Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie and Beatty's Chocolate Cupcakes that everyone will rave about.
For Ina, "I love you, come for dinner" is more than just an invitation to share a meal, it's a way to create a community of friends and family who love and take care of each other, and we all need that now more than ever. These go-to recipes will give you the confidence to create dinners that will bring everyone to your table.
Readers Top Reviews
ElizabethJillian
I received my first Ina Garten cookbook, which coincidentally was her first, at a wedding shower for my first marriage - that's a lot of firsts! She was instrumental in teaching me how to cook food like these recipes - interesting, easy, delicious. Now, it's 23 years later and I am a much more confident cook, thanks in large part to the 20+ years I have spent reading her books and watching her shows. Will I get as much out of this book as I did some of her earlier ones? Candidly, no. Many if not most of these recipes I could now cook without a recipe at all (although I am actually very eager to try her "recipe" - really cooking tips - for basmati rice, as I have always struggled with rice). For Ina fans, as other reviewers have mentioned, there isn't that much "new" here - although the flavors and visualization of these recipes reflect the evolution in cooking that has happened since she began (particularly the vegetables) and there are certainly some interesting combinations presented, as well as plenty of eye-catching, of-the-moment trends in food presentation and styling, such as the boards that are included in each section. A select few recipes do seem to push things a little too far towards out and out recycling - for example a recipe that appeared in a previous book is here again, except this time it's cupcakes with no other changes. And I have always had a problem with the waste in her stock recipes - three chickens that are cooked only for stock?? Ina, tell us to pull them out after 40 minutes to save the meat and then put the bones back in for four hours - no one needs to waste upwards of 30 dollars of chicken! But, if this was my first Ina Garten cookbook, I'd love it. And, if I were newer to cooking and new to Ina, she'd be a revelation. I realized as I read this that I had been hoping for a slighter different Ina. Perhaps an "intermediate" Ina. But that's on me - right on the cover of this book it says - "easy dinners." So, if you love Ina, and you want to see what she's up to right now, I would definitely recommend this book. But just don't expect a different Ina - this is the same Ina we've all fallen in love with - and for good reason
Diane CharlesEliz
Loved by person I gave it to as a birthday gift. Very Pleased
Old Georgia GeekD
Ina Garten has been one of my "go-to" cooking resources for decades. I love the simple twists she has to layers flavors in traditional meals. But, I just can't get excited about this book. Beautiful photos and publication values, and a number of recipes that I would like to try - at some time. I keep thinking I'll go back and look through the book again and find something I want to run to the supermarket to prepare immediately. So far that hasn't happened. There are lot of "Vegetables and Side Dishes" that intrigue when I'm looking at them. But every time I start to look at the ingredient list, all I can think of is that I can't afford to make it. For example, the Honey-Roasted Delicata Squash sounds wonderful, but 2 pounds of this special squash and the 4 shallots would cost close to $20.00 at today's prices in my local supermarket. So, I would have to take the concept and use acorn squash and onions and see how it works. LIght meals: Lobster and Avocado Sandwiches: Unlike most of us, Ina was blessed to have an extra pound of lobster meat leftover from some other meal. From my research, sixteen ounces of lobster would come from about 3 lbs. of live lobster, costing about $60. Add 3 avocados to that, at today's prices, and you are adding another $10.00 to the cost. Again, I could consider trying this recipe with some imitation seafood mix, and cut down on one or two of the avocados. It doesn't feel right to review this book without trying out the recipes, so I will update when and if that happens. Meanwhile, I wish Ina would consider a cookbook for folks who live on ordinary food budgets that have been further hammered by the past year's inflation.
Cat@50Old Georgia
I love all things Barefoot Contessa, and this book has simple but delicious recipes, beautiful pictures, her easy to read twist, and practical applications. I got in spiral bound and it lives in my kitchen! It also has great ideas for making leftovers into brand new recipes for the day (or two) after the original meal. Not just reheating the same food, but transforming the ingredients into wonderful new menus.
S. K. SmithCat@50
Have loved Ina Garten cookbooks for many years but the addition of a spiral cookbook is the BEST. So easy to use a spiral book and I wish more cooks would put their books out like this. Ina of course is the “Queen” of cooking and I have used her recipes for many years. Looking thru Go To Dinners has again confirmed why I love using Ina’s recipes. Not fussy, simple ingredients, and lots of love added to each recipe. Thank You Ina.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Introduction
"I love you, come for dinner!"
Isn't that the invitation we all want to hear? It promises an evening of good food, warm conversations, and the chance to share our lives with family and close friends. But to me, "come for dinner" is more than just an invitation to a meal; it's a celebration of community. Dinner nourishes our bodies, but it's the connection with people we love that nourishes our souls, and that's what I actually crave the most.
If the pandemic has taught me anything, it's how satisfying it is to be in the actual-rather than Zoom!-company of people we love. I need that closeness and connection more than anything else in my life; it gives me a reason to live. So when I say "Come for dinner!" it's really my way of saying "I love you, you matter to me." And of course you can expect a delicious meal, too!
It wasn't always that way for me. As a child, I dreaded dinnertime. My mother prepared food without enthusiasm (or much flavor) and my father was a stern taskmaster whose idea of dinner conversation was peppering me with questions about my school work until my stomach was tied in knots. As soon as it was over, I would rush back to the safety of my bedroom.
But that all changed when I married Jeffrey! All of a sudden, I had the freedom to create whatever kind of home I wanted and I knew one key to making that home a happy one was to have lots of good friends. So I threw a lot of dinner parties. I bought Craig Claiborne's brilliant The New York Times Cookbook and spent my days trying out recipes and invited friends for dinner almost every week. I'm not sure my parties were all that great in the beginning (yes, I had a few disasters!) but I was so happy and Jeffrey was so supportive that it all helped me overcome my childhood dinnertime anxieties. I was learning not only how to cook but also how to create an atmosphere where friends could have a wonderful time together.
These days dinnertime has a different kind of importance for me. It's the end of the day, I've accomplished everything I need to get done, and now it's time to put work aside, relax, and have some fun. It's my time to connect with Jeffrey and my friends. I love when people walk in the door and the house smells good. I want each person to look forward to having something they love to eat. My idea of heaven is a Roast Chicken with Spring Vegetables (page 128) or Overnight Mac & Cheese (page 157) coming out of the oven and, for dessert, Beatty's Chocolate Cupcakes (page 233) or Lemon Meringue Squares (page 222) waiting on the counter to make everyone look forward to dessert. They're delicious, they're reliable, and they taste even better than you imagine.
Restaurant food is wonderful but there is something soulsatisfying about making and eating a real home-cooked dinner right at your own kitchen table. Cooking a tried-and-true recipe that I know everyone will enjoy, maybe with some great music in the background, is like taking a deep yoga breath at the end of a stressful day. It just makes me feel really calm.
The pandemic has had a huge impact on what I think of as dinner-and what I look for in a "go-to" recipe. When I planned a party before the pandemic, it was always a multicourse extravaganza. But then the pandemic happened and everything seemed like so much more work. I started making simpler dinners for Jeffrey and me. I often made a lighter, easier, all-in-one-dinner like a Warm Vegetable & Grain Bowl (page 98) or Roasted Shrimp Panzanella (page 110). They were delicious, satisfying, and everything we needed and wanted for dinner. I began to question why I had been so rigid about what constituted dinner before-was this how I should be cooking for friends now? If I love eating this way, wouldn't my friends like it, too?
I also decided to relax my whole concept of what is considered "dinner." Why wouldn't the Easy Eggs in Purgatory (page 68) that I would normally make for Sunday brunch be great for dinner with big shards of toasted bread? Well, it turns out, it is! Or a big assembled platter of Provençal Orange Salad (page 113) with a rotisserie chicken that I picked up on the way home? It's a satisfying winter dinner that involves no cooking at all! A roast beef sandwich from the deli might not feel like "dinner" but an indulgent Lobster & Avocado Sandwich (page 92) does. It's a bit unconventional but it sure is delicious!
And just because a recipe is easy to make, it shouldn't skimp on flavor or style. Summer Skillet with Clams, Sausage & Corn (page 145) is a classic summer meal but it's all...
"I love you, come for dinner!"
Isn't that the invitation we all want to hear? It promises an evening of good food, warm conversations, and the chance to share our lives with family and close friends. But to me, "come for dinner" is more than just an invitation to a meal; it's a celebration of community. Dinner nourishes our bodies, but it's the connection with people we love that nourishes our souls, and that's what I actually crave the most.
If the pandemic has taught me anything, it's how satisfying it is to be in the actual-rather than Zoom!-company of people we love. I need that closeness and connection more than anything else in my life; it gives me a reason to live. So when I say "Come for dinner!" it's really my way of saying "I love you, you matter to me." And of course you can expect a delicious meal, too!
It wasn't always that way for me. As a child, I dreaded dinnertime. My mother prepared food without enthusiasm (or much flavor) and my father was a stern taskmaster whose idea of dinner conversation was peppering me with questions about my school work until my stomach was tied in knots. As soon as it was over, I would rush back to the safety of my bedroom.
But that all changed when I married Jeffrey! All of a sudden, I had the freedom to create whatever kind of home I wanted and I knew one key to making that home a happy one was to have lots of good friends. So I threw a lot of dinner parties. I bought Craig Claiborne's brilliant The New York Times Cookbook and spent my days trying out recipes and invited friends for dinner almost every week. I'm not sure my parties were all that great in the beginning (yes, I had a few disasters!) but I was so happy and Jeffrey was so supportive that it all helped me overcome my childhood dinnertime anxieties. I was learning not only how to cook but also how to create an atmosphere where friends could have a wonderful time together.
These days dinnertime has a different kind of importance for me. It's the end of the day, I've accomplished everything I need to get done, and now it's time to put work aside, relax, and have some fun. It's my time to connect with Jeffrey and my friends. I love when people walk in the door and the house smells good. I want each person to look forward to having something they love to eat. My idea of heaven is a Roast Chicken with Spring Vegetables (page 128) or Overnight Mac & Cheese (page 157) coming out of the oven and, for dessert, Beatty's Chocolate Cupcakes (page 233) or Lemon Meringue Squares (page 222) waiting on the counter to make everyone look forward to dessert. They're delicious, they're reliable, and they taste even better than you imagine.
Restaurant food is wonderful but there is something soulsatisfying about making and eating a real home-cooked dinner right at your own kitchen table. Cooking a tried-and-true recipe that I know everyone will enjoy, maybe with some great music in the background, is like taking a deep yoga breath at the end of a stressful day. It just makes me feel really calm.
The pandemic has had a huge impact on what I think of as dinner-and what I look for in a "go-to" recipe. When I planned a party before the pandemic, it was always a multicourse extravaganza. But then the pandemic happened and everything seemed like so much more work. I started making simpler dinners for Jeffrey and me. I often made a lighter, easier, all-in-one-dinner like a Warm Vegetable & Grain Bowl (page 98) or Roasted Shrimp Panzanella (page 110). They were delicious, satisfying, and everything we needed and wanted for dinner. I began to question why I had been so rigid about what constituted dinner before-was this how I should be cooking for friends now? If I love eating this way, wouldn't my friends like it, too?
I also decided to relax my whole concept of what is considered "dinner." Why wouldn't the Easy Eggs in Purgatory (page 68) that I would normally make for Sunday brunch be great for dinner with big shards of toasted bread? Well, it turns out, it is! Or a big assembled platter of Provençal Orange Salad (page 113) with a rotisserie chicken that I picked up on the way home? It's a satisfying winter dinner that involves no cooking at all! A roast beef sandwich from the deli might not feel like "dinner" but an indulgent Lobster & Avocado Sandwich (page 92) does. It's a bit unconventional but it sure is delicious!
And just because a recipe is easy to make, it shouldn't skimp on flavor or style. Summer Skillet with Clams, Sausage & Corn (page 145) is a classic summer meal but it's all...
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