Ina Garten
Appearances
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
You know, what's really great is roast pork loins because they're very small and you can marinate them and roast them really simply. Serve them with like a potato and apple and fennel puree and some shaved Brussels sprouts. It'd be a great holiday meal. And it's not like cooking a whole ham.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
What happened was, and I actually started this at the store in the 80s. I started roasting Brussels sprouts instead of boiling them. And they were so good because they're like crispy and they're more like French fries. They're fantastic. So then I started, thought, well, if you can roast Brussels sprouts, maybe you can roast butternut squash. So we started roasting butternut squash. And
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
String beans. I mean, we roasted everything. And the best part is it's the easiest thing in the world. You put whatever vegetable it is on a sheet pan, olive oil, salt and pepper, and into the oven.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
A hundred percent. I think it brings out the flavor, it caramelizes the sugars in it, and it's much more delicious.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
A lot. I have drawers and drawers of scarves. She's absolutely right. I have them everywhere. I just love having a scarf around my neck. I just think it feels good. David, I was just thinking to myself, can we just do this again tomorrow? We can do it all day. This is so much fun. Okay. Thank you. Ina Garten, thank you so much. So much fun to talk to you, as always, David. Thank you.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
We're not cooking. We'll cook in person. How's that?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
Nothing worse than having your wife laughing at you. Your very, very smart wife laughing at you.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
My mother was making dinner. My father was an ear surgeon. And my mother was very, I think now I might say that she would be diagnosed with Asperger's, didn't have relationships, and she had no interest in food. So she would get dinner on the table, but there was no joy in it.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
And no child likes Harvard Beach. You might develop a flavor for it, a taste for it afterwards, but not when you're 10. And it sounds like dinner was not a joyful time. It wasn't a joyful time. And my parents, particularly my father, was a very stern taskmaster and would grill us about whatever was in school. He would criticize us. So when dinner was over, I had a nice knot in my stomach.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
And they would always want me to eat faster. So they would say, every time your brother takes a bite, you take a bite. And I'd be like, I just can't.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
A hundred percent was when I got married. I was never allowed in the kitchen. So my mother never taught me how to do anything. And I mean, she didn't see any joy in it. She felt that my job was to study and it was her job to make dinner. And I think she wasn't comfortable with me being in the same room with her. So she would always say, you go study. And so I was in my room my whole childhood.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
And I think I was pretty lonely. I think that that's why Now, cooking for friends and Jeffrey and doing the show, Be My Guest, where I'm connecting with people, is so satisfying.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
I prefer to cook by myself. You do. And I do. Cooking's hard for me. I mean, I do it a lot, but it's really hard. And I just love having the space to concentrate on what I'm doing so I make sure it comes out well. Cooking's I mean, when you go to the butcher and you order a chicken, it's a different size every time. It's a different kind of chicken.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
I mean, you know, some chickens, they're allowed to add water to it. You have no idea what you're going to get. So it's, I mean, just the simplest thing is chicken can be complicated. I do find it hard. I'm not confident that it's going to come out well. And I have to say, I'm surprised when it does. Maybe I have high standards.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
Well, probably as soon as we got married because it wasn't like we had the money to go out for dinner. So when we were engaged, before we got married, I remember going out and buying Craig Claiborne's The New York Times cookbook. And I went to, what was it called? It was a store like, I think it was called Caldor. And I bought an entire set of kitchen equipment.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
And I just was really excited about being able to cook. But I remember within the first month, I made a challah. And I remember thinking, that's what you're going to start with? But I did. I really love things that challenge me, that I think I can't do, and then make them and show myself that I can do them.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
It actually does come full circle, doesn't it? Because once I've learned how to cook, and then, of course, I got Mastering the Art of French Cooking, both volumes, and worked my way through those. So I learned the French techniques from Julia Child. And I really believe in simplifying things. But what happened in the pandemic is we were also completely stressed.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
We didn't know what we could do, what we couldn't do. I was making a recipe every day for Instagram so people could figure out what to do with those white beans that they had in their pantry.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
Exactly. So many white beans and whatever they had. I was making recipes for my cookbook, for this book. And I was cooking lunch and dinner for Jeffrey and me every single day. And by sometime around May or June, I was like in bed with the covers up over my head. And I thought, I really need to simplify. So it is true that I came full circle, but for a different reason.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
I think there's one thing everybody should know how to do, which is a roast chicken. And I do it in all different forms. I do it with potatoes and fennel. In this book, I have a spring roast chicken or roast chicken with spring vegetables, things like asparagus. You can put almost any kind of vegetable in a roasting pan and a chicken on top of it and put it in the oven.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
It's the easiest thing in the world. And the only thing you have to do is make sure you don't overcook the chicken. People get really nervous.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
Any kind of roast chicken. Or the chicken in a pot, which is just as easy as can be. You put it in a big pot with chicken stock and vegetables. And then you add saffron to give it a little heat. And then orzo. And you've got a whole dinner all in one pot.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
He's just so appreciative. And I think it's one of the reasons why I love to cook. Because if you cook for somebody who doesn't appreciate it, there's no satisfaction in it. One day I made him a cup of tea and he said, oh, this is the best tea I've ever had. And I was like, Jeffrey, it's a cup of hot water and a tea bag. It was a particularly good tea. But I mean, still, nothing goes by him.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
He really appreciates it, which I love.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
You know, I thought of it as a party. When you walked in the door, I wanted all of your senses engaged. I wanted you to smell something wonderful. I wanted you to see a wonderful display of produce. I wanted to hear great music, but it was old-fashioned like Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra or whatever was fun to listen to. There were samples of things all over the store so you could taste things.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
And people would just come in just because it was fun. And I thought if they're going to come because it's fun, they'll always come when they're hungry. And I think that's what worked. It wasn't really about the food. It was about the feeling of being in the store.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
You know, I didn't think anybody would want to watch me cook on TV, actually. Food Network kindly made me an offer, and I kept saying no, and they kept coming back. And there was someone there, Eileen Opetut, who just kept saying no. make me a better offer. And I kept saying to her, no, I just don't want to do this. And she just kept coming back.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
And finally, I had heard about a show that somebody said was a really good cooking show. And it was Nigella Lawson's show. And unbeknownst to me, they went to London, found her producer, told me that they were coming to East Hampton on like in two weeks. And I was like, whoa, whoa. I said I wasn't going to do this. And Eileen said, just do 13 shows, thinking how hard could that be?
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
And they arrived on my doorstep. And I thought, OK, let's see what we can do. And one of the things I think about in life is you've got to jump in the pond. Right. You say no to things without really understanding. Like I said no to Instagram before I understood what it was. And I kept saying no about TV. I was just like, I love writing cookbooks. I want to keep doing that.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
I am the same person you see on TV. I found a coach recently. Right. Right.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
Go ahead. Do you know what I believe? I think we should eat real food. And if it's delicious, it's worth cooking for. My favorite expression is, if you eat a low-fat diet, it's not that you live longer. It just seems longer.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
Exactly. That's really daunting. You know what I would do is I'd make potato latkes. I think that would be great.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
I do. And what you can do is you can prepare them in advance, put them on a sheet pan and reheat them in the oven, warm them in the oven.
The New Yorker Radio Hour
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
Okay, I really don't know the answer to this, and I will say that I also wonder whether a bay leaf makes a difference. And there are a couple of things that I use bay leaves in, and I've always wanted to make them without the bay leaves to see if it made a difference, and I never have. So I'm not sure.