Barefoot in Paris: Easy French Food You Can Make at Home

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Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com Review
Ina Garten's much loved cookbooks, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, Barefoot Contessa Parties!, and Barefoot Contessa Family Style, offer relaxed yet stylish dishes that don't tax the cook. Her food works wonderfully for entertaining but shouldn't be limited to such times. Barefoot in Paris finds Garten (almost inevitably) in France, "translating" native dishes for the American home cook. The result is rewarding, and should get those reluctant to "cook French" to do just that. Covered are classics like Celery Root Remoulade, Boeuf Bourguignon, and Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic, but also "newer" dishes like Zucchini Vichyssoise and Avocado and Grapefruit Salad. If Garten ranges wide from typical Parisian fare--in, for example, recipes like Rosemary Cashews, Tomato Rice Pilaf, and a distinctly American Brownie Tart--these nonetheless embody the French approach. Her sweets, including the likes of Peaches in Sauternes, Plum Cake "Tatin," and an exemplary Creme Brulee, are particularly tempting. Included also are asides like "About French Table Settings," and "If You're Going," a resource guide, that, practicality apart, give readers a sense of French culinary life. With color photos, this is winning addition to the Barefoot collection. --Arthur Boehm

Product Description
Hearty boeuf Bourguignon served in deep bowls over a garlic-rubbed slice of baguette toast; decadently rich croque monsieur, eggy and oozing with cheese; gossamer creme brulee, its sweetness offset by a brittle burnt-sugar topping. Whether shared in a cozy French bistro or in your own home, the romance and enduring appeal of French country cooking is irrefutable. Here is the book that helps you bring that spirit, those evocative dishes, into your own home.

What Ina Garten is known for—on her Food Network show and in her three previous bestselling books—is adding a special twist to familiar dishes, while also streamlining the recipes so you spend less time in the kitchen but still emerge with perfection. And that’s exactly what she offers in Barefoot in Paris. Ina’s kir royale includes the unique addition of raspberry liqueur—a refreshing alternative to the traditional creme de cassis. Her vichyssoise is brightened with the addition of zucchini, and her chocolate mousse is deeply flavored with the essence of orange. All of these dishes are true to their Parisian roots, but all offer something special—and are thoroughly delicious, completely accessible, and the perfect fare for friends and family.

Barefoot in Paris is suffused with Ina’s love of the city, of the bustling outdoor markets and alluring little shops, of the bakeries and fromageries and charcuteries—of the wonderful celebration of food that you find on every street corner, in every neighborhood. So take a trip to Paris with the perfect guide—the Barefoot Contessa herself—in her most personal book yet.

Customer Reviews: Read 73 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Ina Does Parisian Lifestyle. Excellent for Virtual Tourist October 28, 2004
195 out of 236 found this review helpful

Ina Garten has given us a new book on `cuisine bourgeois', and one immediately wonders if the world really needs another book on everyday French cooking, since we already have great works from Julia Child and Elizabeth David, excellent works from Patricia Wells and Richard Olney, and hundreds of others, including an excellent volume from Garten's mentor, teacher Lydie Marshall, author of the excellent book `A Passion for My Provence'. The questions become doubly appropriate with the recent appearance of Food Network colleague Tony Bourdain's really excellent book of bistro recipes, `Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook'. To complete the picture of my general skepticism about book is the fact that Ms. Garten's book lists at a higher price than Bourdain's book, yet it has substantially fewer recipes and none of Monsieur Bourdain's really excellent tutorials on cooking technique. Yet, here is the key to Ms. Garten's enterprise and audience.

Ina Garten has no intention of emulating Julia Child in her writing or even in her TV shows. She is squarely in the tradition and style of Martha Stewart. Like Stewart, she started in the culinary business as a caterer and she was, for many years, a major contributor of culinary material to Martha Stewart's magazine. All you need to do is compare the design of Garten's books with either Bourdain's book or even Julia Child's books, and the difference is evident. Bourdain limits himself to pictures of dishes and series of pictures illustrating culinary techniques. Garten pictures lots of dishes, but she also pictures lots of pottery, table settings, and flowers as well. Each chapter has a prelude on marginally culinary matters. The brief chapter on wine is excellent, but it could have been lifted straight out of `Martha Stewart Living' as `Wine and Food Pairings 101'. Other prefatory essays cover flower arranging, table settings, cooking schools in Paris, and cooking equipment stores in Paris.

All this means is that Ina Garten's books are as much about lifestyle as they are about cooking, and Ina will probably be the very first person to agree with this statement. And, this is a perfectly legitimate enterprise. In fact, although Jamie Oliver is an exceptionally talented chef (whose passion and skill with food may even put Bourdain in the shade) writes books that are as much about lifestyle as they are about cooking. It's just that it is a different lifestyle than the one being celebrated by Ms. Garten.

I believe the recipes in all of Ms. Garten's books are very good for the home cook. As she says in many of her books, these recipes were done for 60 servings a day at her shop, `Barefoot Contessa' so they had to be simple and they had to be good. This doesn't mean I didn't find a few oddities here and there, especially in her headnotes to some recipes. One puzzling comment was her apologizing for using cremini mushrooms as an unusual ingredient in a recipe, when I can find cremini mushrooms in every larger food store in the Lehigh Valley, including ones which make no pretense to carrying gourmet ingredients. A few pages later, she uses celery root, fennel, morels, and Belgian endive in recipes. All of these ingredients are either hard to find or expensive. Another puzzle is her blanching thinly sliced fennel bulb for a fennel salad. Neither Marcella Hazan nor mentor Lydie Marshall blanches fennel for their several salads that use this ingredient. I know exactly why Garten does it, because I considered doing the same thing when making Mme. Hazan's fennel salads, but I just couldn't bear giving up the fine crunch of raw fennel. The solution is to slice very, very thinly and possibly to salt the fennel and let set as you do for cabbage in making cole slaw.

Another oddity with Ms. Garten's recipes is that although she emphasizes easy recipes, her Moules Marinieres (Mussels in White Wine) recipe has many more ingredients and a slightly more complicated procedure than Tony Bourdain's recipe for a dish of exactly the same name. Personally, I would go with Bourdain's recipe as it adds the wine right after cooking the shallots in butter in order that the wine will deglace the pot and almost all alcohol will cook off before more ingredients are added to the pot. Ms. Garten uses the very understandable technique of mixing olive oil with the butter for the initial sautee, and the wine is added mixed with water, tomato, and spices. Bourdain's recipe is simpler, but requires just a little more attention and skill to attend to the hot butter and add the wine before it gets too dark. An even more interesting comparison between Garten and Bourdain is with their boeuf bourguignon recipes. Garten complains that traditional recipes that keep the dish in the Dutch oven on the stove for three hours, the meat comes out dry and the veggies mushy. I have seen this happen and it doesn't surprise me that Garten is wary of it, as her instructions are to barely cover the meat with liquid and bring to a boil, then into the oven for 75 minutes. Thus, she is treating the dish like a braise while Bourdain, who simmers the dish gently on the stovetop for 120 minutes, treats the dish more like a stew, with strong admonishments to check the dish every 20 minutes for sticking. Again, Bourdain's recipe has fewer ingredients and is somewhat simpler, as it doesn't require the oven or a step to burn off the alcohol.

This is not to say Garten's recipes are not as good as Bourdain's. Only that the two authors have two different audiences. Garten is writing for the virtual tourist in Paris and the seeker of advice for entertaining in the Parisian style. Bourdain is writing for cooks. I have done several recipes from Garten's books, including this one, and I have never been disappointed.

Highly recommended for a virtual taste of the Parisian lifestyle.

3 out of 5 stars

Ina, you can do better than this! October 29, 2004
102 out of 122 found this review helpful

Believe me when I say it pains me to give Ina Gartne a 3 star review. As a cookbook addict, I would list her as one of my five favorites and long awaited Barefoot in Paris. Boy, was I pissed when I read it through. If you know anything-and I do mean ANYTHING- about French cooking; if you have another cookbook with any French recipes in it, then you really don't need this book. Turn to Julia Child, Tony Bordain's new book, Les Halles, or (gasp!) an actual French chef, like Jacques Pepin.

There is something missing here, and it's hard to put my finger on it. It lacks the freshness that her three previous books all have. There is nothing here that I haven't seen a hundred times before. Croque monsieurs? Creme brulee? Steak bearnaise and soupe au pistou? Please, Ina; you're insulting our culinary knowledge.

On top of the oh-so-obvious recipes we have to listen to her chatter "All my life I dreamed of an apartment in Paris, and now I have one, on the Left Bank!" Despite my devotion to her first three books, the constant referrals to ritzy East Hampton, working at the White House and Steven Spielberg always annoyed me.

I give this book three stars because like her other books, I'm sure the recipes work. But that's about it. I found very little new to learn here. Every time I go to open it up, I change my mind and turn to my other new cookbook, Feast, by Nigella Lawson. Trust me, she serves up a far more interesting, entertaing book that gives way more for your money!

3 out of 5 stars

Cook Beware! May 3, 2005
101 out of 104 found this review helpful

The Barefoot Contessa cookbooks (I own all of them) can always be counted on if what you seek is a guaranteed "hit." Ina Garten's new book contains some of those. But, it seems to me that the book was rushed to press, because this book contains numerous oversights and glitches. I am a very experienced and confident home cook, and the "Ile Flottante" (floating island) recipe, for example, had me on my knees in despair. The intro assures us that it will be "worth every minute it takes to make." I lost track of the minutes it took to make this thing. The directions for making the caramel were so vague that my first attempt resulted in what I later learned is known as "crystallized" sugar. So, I turned to my faithful "Joy of Cooking" for clearer directions on how to make caramel (it's enormously nuanced, and definitely doesn't belong in a book that calls itself "easy.") Then, the meringues were supposed cook in 20 minutes. I have a brand new oven and an independent over themometer, and these took a good 40 minutes. The recipe says to "set aside" the caramel, which you later pour over the merigues--well, my caramel sat for about an hour, and when I went to pour it it was hard as a rock. Etc. Etc. She writes that her Moroccan Couscous is easy to reheat--but fails to explain how to reheat it without drying it out. The salmon with lentils recipe fails to mention when you add the lentils. Do you see what I mean? There are numerous oversights of this nature, making this a perilous book for any but an experienced cook. Glossy photos and a $35.00 sticker price cannot overcome sloppy basics. You can do better, Ina!

5 out of 5 stars

The Barefoot Contessa Says Oui, Oui! November 9, 2004
89 out of 101 found this review helpful

Ina Garten is my idol, my idea of a great cook. Besides reading and using her many cookbooks, she can be seen weekly on the Food Network Channel. Her cooking is supreme and delicious, and she is able to show us that her recipes are simple and easy for all.

Now The Barefoot Contessa goes to Paris. Ina Garten had always dreamed of Paris since her parents brought her a dress from Paris when she was three years old. She and her adored husband, Jeffrey, first went to France and camped out and cooked over a fire and were able to eat very well for a mere pittance. The next time they went to Paris it was with style. Now, they own an apartment, and Ina Garten gives us the best recipes of the day. Plus, she tells us the best places to buy specialty foods,
cheese, pastries and chocolate, wine, cook and bake ware. The best place to buy flowers, and the very best restaurants with a small snippet of info for each.

The cookbook is separated into the usual sort of recipes- "To Start", Lunch, Soup and Salads, Dinner, Vegetables and Dessert. Beef Bourguignon- Ina tells us how to make this lucious stew within 90 mins. - easy and delicious. Beef au Poivre, all the flavor without the hassle- Veal chops with Roquefort Butter and Lamb with White Beans. The veggies are wonderful- green beans done the French way, Cauliflower gratin, and Asparagus with Hollandaise. The desserts are to die for, Meringue Chantilly, Pear Clafouti, Chocolate Orange Mousse, Chocolate Truffles and of course, Creme Brulee. Every recipe I have tried from Ina Garten's cookbooks has been superb. She never steers us wrong, and always has wonderful hints and great information about the food we are about to eat!

The pictures in this cookbook were photographed by Quentin Bacon, and they are lovely and vibrant. This is a beautiful cookbook, lovely to look at, and just wait until you make this food and present it to your family and/or friends. Yum, yum, So very highly recommended. prisrob

3 out of 5 stars

I love Ina and sadly returned this book to Amazon. November 10, 2004
49 out of 68 found this review helpful

I have never been a fan of French cooking, but since I love Ina Garten and her 3 previous cookbooks, I was ecstatically looking forward to this one. I got it, read through the whole book and returned it to Amazon the next day. I really enjoyed the text and it makes me want to fly to Paris tomorrow, but there was not one recipe in the whole book that I wanted to try. I collect cookbooks and try lots of new recipes, but this one just didn't do it for me. I can't really put my finger on it. I guess my advice is if you aren't fond of French cooking to begin with, this cookbook won't make you any more enamoured of it. I thought it might make me a convert because I love her other cookbooks so much, but sadly it didn't. I give her an A for effort and storytelling. I am sure the recipes are delicious if you can get that far!!!

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