From casual get-togethers, such as the Pizza Party--which includes recipes for Caesar Salad with Pancetta, California Pizzas that your guests can assemble themselves, and Ice-Cream Sodas--to the elegant Academy Awards dinner--where your guests will enjoy Raspberry Vodka, Rori's Potato Chips with Caviar Dip, Smoked Salmon with Mesclun, Filet of Beef with Gorgonzola Sauce, Roasted Cherry Tomatoes, Garlic Roasted Potatoes, and Chocolate Ganache Cake--Garten's parties are well thought out and well organized. Divided by season, you'll look forward to Summer's Outdoor Grill, which starts with Real Margaritas, followed by Endive and Avocado Salad, Grilled Herb Shrimp with Mango Salsa, Spaghettoni al Pesto, Tomato Fennel Salad, and Peach Raspberry Shortcakes for dessert. Autumn brings beautiful menus like the one where you cook with your guests and end up with a feast of Potato Pancakes with Caviar, Salad with Warm Goat Cheese, Rack of Lamb, Orzo with Roasted Vegetables, and Apple Crostata. Winter's menus bring soul-warming food, such as Seafood Chowder, Butternut Squash and Apple Soup, and a recipe for possibly the world's best Chocolate Chunk Cookies. Spring offers menus such as the Sunday Breakfast, with a main course of Roasted Asparagus with Scrambled Eggs, and the Jewish Holiday Party, with Chicken Soup with Matzo Balls.

Filled with funny party anecdotes, a bit of Ina Garten history, and clever hints and tips to help guarantee the success of these recipes, this collection, subtitled "Ideas and Recipes for Easy Parties That Are Really Fun," delivers on every count. --Leora Y. Bloom

Garten's first book was simply recipes from her catering business. They were probably the best she had. This book adds value to a simple collection of recipes by organizing courses into party menus designed for sixteen different family and close friend occasions. The third book seems to be composed of leftovers.

The choice of events to celebrate is a bit quirky in that traditional occasions such as Christmas, Graduation, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Mardi Gras / Carnavale, and St. Patrick's Day are not included. Rather, ten out of the sixteen are `moveable feasts' in that the menu is appropriate to just about any occasion. Some are limited by season such as `Outdoor Grill' and `Canoe Trip', but many are generic indoor excuses to have a good time, such as `Sunday Breakfast', `Pizza Party', and `Fireside Dinner'.

Unlike Stewart's book, there is really not much serious advice on how to organize for parties. Much of it is common sense plus clever ideas for special events, such as the idea to pack picnic portions in Chinese takeout cartons.

Garten has the advantage of claiming with full justification that her recipes are all specifically developed and test to work in a small party environment, as she has been in the catering business doing just this thing for many years. On reading her recipes and seeing many of them done on her Food Network TV show, I believe almost all of these recipes are simple and short in prep time, if not very cheap. The few recipes which take more than a page of large type are the baked goods. As Garten says herself, many are more a matter of `assembling' than they are of cooking.

Next to books from publishing house Alfred A. Knopf, cookbooks from Clarkson N. Potter have the most distinctive style. Where Knopf's books tend to follow the sedate style of Julia Child's classics, Potter's books for Stewart and Garten go for lots of large, glossy, very good photographs. Following the maxim that one eats with their eyes before their mouth, this may even help sell cookbooks with it's appeal to the visceral. Unfortunately, a rational look at the content versus the price suggests this book is a bit short on value. I will give Garten credit for referring to recipes in her earlier book rather than filling pages in this book with repeated recipes. I may be visually challenged, but photographs in cookbooks rarely create a positive impression and often create a negative impression if they are poorly done. In this book, I think they are a wash. They are too caught up in being artistic to give great value to the culinary, but they are not bad photos, so, they do nothing for my appreciation of the recipes.

At $35 list price for sixteen menus and about eighty new recipes, I say this is only a modest value for the cost. The tie-in to the TV show adds some value, but not much. I would recommend Sheila Lukins' book `Celebrate' as a serious resource for family gatherings. I already suggested Martha Stewart's book as a better source for larger events.

I recommend this book to any Ina Garten fans plus anyone who already has the other volumes recommended in this review, and simply needs more ideas. Professional caterers are an obvious choice. The book delivers the expected content in an attractive package. Nothing more.


Excellent Book for Foolproof Entertaining   May 29, 2001
 41 out of 42 found this review helpful

Ina Garten has brought sanity and great food to entertaining at home.

The great thing about this book is the style everything is served and prepared in, though it uses a bit more fat than I would cook with for everyday meals. She is a friend of Martha Stewart but her recipes are very un-Martha like in preparation. Ina does not have a staff of hundreds to make everything just perfect for that dinner party for the magazine. This lady runs a business on her culinary skill - she does what works with a minimum amount of fuss - it tastes wonderful AND looks great.

I have received rave reviews for the Sour Cream Coffee Cake, the Happy Birthday! meal, and the Chocolate Ganache Cake. The Chocolate Cake went over big. It was so easy to make, it was an afterthought while putting together a meal for six at the very last minute.

You will not be disappointed with this cookbook.


Finally! A cookbook for the rest of us!   June 19, 2001
 37 out of 41 found this review helpful

I love to cook and bake but I run screaming from complicated recipes. This cookbook contains simple recipes for really great-tasting food. It is uncomplicated and the adjoining photographs are simple and elegant. Never have I found a cookbook where page after page I have found recipes that I actually want to try.

I made the ceasar salad the first day I bought the book, the sour cream coffee cake the second. Both turned out fantastic! Tomorrow I shall conquer the delicious-looking rugelach.

The book is touted for parties but don't let that fool you. These are great recipes for simple family dinners as well as large parties. The book is also sprinkled with Ina Garten's advice and past experiences.

I thank Ina Garten for this wonderful new cookbook - but moreover, my husband thanks her!


Terrific--divine recipes, with only some teensy flaws   January 24, 2002
 28 out of 30 found this review helpful

This cookbook offers easy-to-follow, easy-to-prepare recipes that nonetheless produce delicious and elegant results. It offers tips for planning parties and creating menus aimed at getting the cook out of the kitchen and into the living room to spend more time with guests. Most of the recipes use ingredients that can be found in any supermarket, which is a big plus, and many of the recipes can either be prepared quickly or in advance. The recipes are broken down by season and then by occasion, which enhances the usefulness of the book, and the recipes are printed in a large font that's easy to read. Plenty of sumptuous photographs, too. This cookbook will be of use not only to anyone who enjoys entertaining, but to those of us who enjoy creating great meals even in the absence of a special occasion.

There are some flaws, however. First, there's way too much name-dropping. Who cares if the author parties with the rich and famous? Do we really need to know this? Secondly, the menus often call for dishes or components which the reader is directed to locate in the author's other cookbook, "The Barefoot Contessa". There's no reason that those recipes couldn't have been reprinted here to save the reader the bother of hunting down and purchasing another book. I couldn't help but cynically wonder whether this wasn't a bald-faced attempt to boost sales. Thirdly, the oven temperature is missing from the recipe for "Rori's Potato Chips"--a minor error which will no doubt be corrected in subsequent editions. Apart from these flaws, I nonetheless recommend this cookbook wholeheartedly. After checking it out of my local library and taking it for a test-drive, I decided that it was well worth purchasing.


More of a lifestyle than a cookbook, but fun to look through   June 3, 2004
 26 out of 32 found this review helpful

This book has gorgeous photos and is fun, but it's not really designed for a regular person's life. Garten's idea of parties, which she writes in the introduction, are mostly small gatherings. This means that the book isn't very helpful for larger groups.
There are some tips on organizing the party, but not as much I would have liked, such as a timeline of how when to prepare things. Of course, when you are only doing a small party this isn't as important, but even for the tea for 25 she doesn't tell you how you should store things or what you should make first and last.

My major complaint would probably be the cost of the recipes. Wow. This book is about how we might like to entertain our closest and dearest friends if we had a vacation house in the Hamptons and a BMW (oh wait...). So, really the book is about an ideal lifestyle most of us just wish we had.

It's a fun read and has some interesting recipe ideas, but is not all that practical.