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Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics is the essential Ina Garten cookbook, focusing on the techniques behind her elegant food and easy entertaining style, and offering nearly a hundred brand-new recipes that will become trusted favorites.

Ina Garten's bestselling cookbooks have con-sistently provided accessible, subtly sophisticated recipes ranging from French classics made easy to delicious, simple home cooking. In Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics, Ina truly breaks down her ideas on flavor, examining the ingredients and techniques that are the foundation of her easy, refined style.

Ina Garten is one of the country’s most beloved culinary icons and the author of five previous cookbooks. She can be seen on Food Network, where her shows, Barefoot Contessa and Back to Basics, are among the network’s most watched. Ina also writes a column on entertaining for House Beautiful magazine. Visit Ina at BarefootContessa.com.

Simple recipes with lots of flavor have always been Garten's hallmark, from her days as the owner of her gourmet take-out shop, Barefoot Contessa, in Long Island's Hamptons to her current Food Network shows. Here, she emphasizes finishing touches that brighten a dish and "bring out [its] essence," whether it's a squeeze of lemon juice or a final scattering of fresh herbs. Each recipe chapter opens with a page of ideas for easy entertaining (e.g., "10 No-Cook Things To Serve with Drinks") or other tips. Garten's previous cookbooks have sold more than six million copies, and her new Food Network show, Back to Basics , premieres in the fall, so her latest title is sure to be in demand.

[Page 108]. Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

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The sixth cookbook from the Barefoot Contessa juggernaut contains exactly the kind of appealing, simple-yet-just-gourmet-enough recipes Garten devotees adore. There's nothing very surprising (Garten tries to claim an ingredient-focused premise), but her formula works. She offers such dishes as Lobster Corn Chowder, Creamy Cucumber Salad, Tuscan Lemon Chicken, Tagliarelle with Truffle Butter (which has just five ingredients, plus salt and pepper), and Brownie Pudding. Garten suggests tips on such things as setting the table and "10 things not to serve at a dinner party." Her tone can be charmingly pretentious, but she comes down to earth with admissions like "I have to admit that pastry still makes me anxious. When I discovered puff pastry, it was such a relief." Recipes are short and simple, and she often squeezes in insightful hints for making things work perfectly. (Oct.)

[Page 60]. Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.