Leading up to Thanksgiving, we took a trip to the home of Ina Garten, the legendary cookbook author and TV star. For one glorious afternoon, the Barefoot Contessa gave us a master class on the art of hosting. She answered our questions big and small — seating arrangements, whether to have bread at the table, what to do with that difficult relative, how to zest correctly. Plus, she walked us through two of her signature recipes, which you can enjoy this holiday.For photos and recipes from our visit with Ina Garten, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Chapter 1: Who is Ina Garten and why is she famous?
Ina Garten.
And if you know anything about Ina, you know that she's written over a dozen best-selling cookbooks. I have almost all of them. And that she's been married to her beloved husband, Jeffrey, for more than 50 years. So now it's about 7.40 a.m. and we have hit our first big patch of traffic. And that she lives in the Hamptons. Oh, we're in East Hampton.
in a stately home that if you've ever seen her TV show is instantly recognizable. And I just missed her house. Except if you're the one driving. I'm so busy talking to you that I just missed her house. Now back to that moment that Ina Garten is having.
She just wrote a memoir about her childhood and her marriage and her improbable journey from working as an analyst in the Ford White House to purchasing a small specialty food store in the Hamptons that becomes wildly popular under her ownership. Okay, and we have just arrived at Ina Garten's house.
all of which put her on a path to becoming a kind of guru for a relaxed, real, not too prim or glamorous way of entertaining at home. Wow.
Hi. Hello.
Nice to see you. I hear you all the time. May I hug you? I insist. Oh, I'm so happy to see you, Michael. Thank you so much for coming.
And so after a few emails... Ina, to our delight, agreed to meet with us in her home studio.
Welcome to the barn.
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Chapter 2: What are the key elements of successful hosting?
So it was... Bad? It was bad. It was really bad. Could you feel it? Like, was it tangible?
I think I was so busy making omelets, I didn't even think about it until afterwards. And I knew it was a quiet party. And with 20 people, you can't connect with them. Mm-hmm.
But you keep at it, quite obviously. So what does it look like for you to grow into a more confident, less omelet-centric host?
I think by the time Jeffrey and I got to Washington, I had been to France, and I was really interested in the food. And I started working my way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And so my first parties were very elaborate affairs. You know, they were fancy. It was fancy food. And so I picked the most complicated things. Which is how I taught myself how to cook.
So I'm glad I did. And then one day we were invited to somebody's house for dinner. It was a guy. And I said to Jeffrey, oh, this is going to be a disaster because no men cooked in the 70s. I mean, they just didn't. And we went there and he served a simple filet of beef that was roasted, simple vegetables. It was an absolutely simple, elegant meal. And I remember thinking to myself, this is it.
Everybody had a wonderful time. His hair wasn't on fire. He wasn't cooking from Julia Child. He wasn't making some elaborate thing. And at that moment, I decided to change how I cook. And so the thing that I expected to be a disastrous dinner turned out to be a lesson I'll never forget.
The lesson being that cooking is part of hosting, but it is not the totality of hosting.
And the simpler the meal is, the more fun everybody has. The irony is it's not about impressing your guests with a great dinner. It's about making a dinner that's perfectly delicious, that allows everybody to have a good time together.
Right.
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Chapter 3: How can you make guests feel welcomed?
And I think people are shocked that when I have six people for dinner, I do this. Because otherwise, all day I'm like, oh my God, should I start the dinner? And then I look at my schedule and I say, 5 o'clock, I have to turn the oven on. It's literally that detailed. 5.15, put the meat in the oven. 5.45, take it out. It's really detailed. But then I know that before 5 o'clock, I'm fine.
I can relax. And it's hard. It's a complicated thing to get everything out on the table at the same time when it's perfectly cooked. And that's the only way I know how to do it is to make a schedule.
Okay, so now that we've talked about the food, the table, what's on the table? So let's talk about levels of how much we're supposed to even care about this. I care about it. Then it's important. My mother and I have been fighting for as long as I can remember about whether it's okay to use paper or plastic plates. How do you set the table and how much fuss do you put into it?
And why does it even matter? Well, first I would say paper and plastic are nice for a picnic on a boat, but I'm not sure that they belong on a table. I knew it. So that should settle that. I think the table should be lovely, but I really like a modern table that's simple.
I think there's nothing more horrifying than sitting down to a really fancy dinner table where there are like six glasses at each place setting. And you know you're going to be there forever because there are six courses, each with a different wine. Right. Or a different fork or a different knife. Oh, my God. It's just horrible. So modern simply means? As simple as possible.
As simple as possible, but it can still be beautiful. And I use the same things over and over again. I like really good napkins, good linen napkins. I have a wine glass, a water glass, a dinner plate, tableware, and that's the table setting. And then what I like to do is have garden flowers from the flower shop or from my garden.
If you do little vases filled with flowers in the same color palette as the napkin, then it all feels coordinated and you can move those vases around until they look great. I think things that are fancy are actually meant to impress rather than make people feel comfortable. And I feel that way about food, I feel that way about table settings.
If for the holidays you don't have enough chairs of one kind of chair, then who cares? It's fun. Just put chairs around the table. If you only have six white dishes in one pattern and you have six white dishes in another pattern, just mix them all up. And I think that makes something feel simple and elegant and fun, which is, at the end of the day, you just want your friends to be there.
Right. Everything we're talking about here is really just a tool to bring people together. It doesn't really matter which tool we use. Exactly. Okay. Once the dinner's underway, the food is out, the conversation's going, I have to imagine once in a while in this line of business you're in, you went into the problem of a guest, a relative, a problem person. And how do you deal with that?
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Chapter 4: What should you consider when seating guests?
We must have the same uncle, the disruptor.
The dominator.
Oh, the dominator. Yeah.
Chapter 5: How do you decide what food to serve?
What do you do? You don't do anything.
That's pretty hard to think of what to do except to invite them to come join you in the kitchen and say, this isn't okay. But how do you do that? It's very hard to do. And probably everybody would like to do it. I mean, I try and change the subject. I try to change the subject. Yeah, I think that's the only thing you can do. And I think everybody's so grateful that you do.
At this point, I think some of our listeners might be thinking to themselves, Serve the food already, Michael. Be done with it, Ina. This is not how I think about dinner. You guys are overthinking the whole thing.
Are we overthinking these details, you and I? I don't think so. I think it's really important. Right. And I think it's a skill. You get better and better at hosting people. And I think, I mean, you and I obviously find it's really worth doing because it's the glue between people.
I think with that, It might be time for us to think about cooking.
Oh, you're going to come cook with me?
Would you do the honors of throwing us to the break?
We'll be right back.
Bravo! So Anna, tell us what you have picked for us to cook for the holidays. And why? And how it fits into this conversation we've been having about bringing people together in ways that are simple, efficient, and without the host's hair on fire.
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Chapter 6: What should the table setting look like for a dinner party?
There's no wrong way to do it, period. Okay, so we need eight and a half ounces of mango chutney, which is exactly what I have. Can you describe this chutney? Well, it's mango, but it's got raisins in it, and it's chutney, so it's both sweet and sour. Half a cup of Dijon mustard. I can do that. I'll just dump it in. One cup of light brown sugar. Now I need the zest of one orange.
I've always had a zesting question. Is the zest of an orange or a lemon or a lime simply when you've covered all the surface area with one or two goes, like how deep do you go into the skin?
It's called the pith, which is the lighter part. And you don't want any of it because it's bitter. So you just go absolutely, just the absolute surface where it's really dark orange or dark lemon. And then we need a quarter of a cup of freshly squeezed orange juice. I love a juicer.
That was a tool I didn't know I needed.
Okay, we're ready to go. So, got a food processor, garlic in. Garlic in. Okay, so just turn the food processor on. Okay. Until it's all pureed. This is the best glaze, it's so good.
Okay, and just describe this. You're bringing this over to this enormous, amazing, precooked, pre-sliced ham, threaded with string.
Just to hold it all together. Mm-hmm, because it's pre-sliced. Because it's pre-sliced. And then we're gonna pour the glaze over it.
Yeah, this glaze is just like that.
All right.
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Chapter 7: How to handle difficult guests during a dinner?
Okay, how about a cranberry martini? So you want to make it with me? I would love to make it.
Okay. I feel like everyone listening to this wants to know if the giant pandemic martini cup actually exists.
It absolutely does. Would you like your martini in that glass? No. I have it right here.
It's here? It's here. Can I just see it?
Oh my word.
This is like a... It's glass? It's like a birdbath. It was given to me as a joke, but I mean, I had to use it. And there's two of them. And there are two of them. They're like vases. Well, you don't want to drink that by yourself. So let's make that cranberry martini. You're gonna love this.
So, first thing we need is three quarters of a cup of cranberry juice, and it's actually cranberry juice cocktail, so it's got a little sugar in it.
Into the measuring cup goes the 20. Three quarters of a cup.
Half a cup of good vodka. Ooh, this is from the freezer. It's from the freezer, yeah. Quarter of a cup of triple sec. Which is a sweet liqueur. Orange liqueur, exactly. Is that perfectly measured? And now we need a cup of ice. And this is the key to cocktails with ice, is you have to shake it for 30 seconds.
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Chapter 8: What is the takeaway from Ina Garten's approach to hosting?
Doesn't it seem like more than 30 seconds?
Yeah. Seems like two days.
Especially when you're thirsty. That's 30 seconds. Okay, I'm getting the glasses in the freezer.
These are beautifully chilled martini glasses to the touch.
This is a day to cheer. It's really nice. Isn't that good? Yeah. You know what I love? It has no bite. It has no bite, exactly. But also, the flavors are layered perfectly, and it doesn't have that hit of vodka, even though you and I know how much is in there. The orange and the cranberry kind of bubble up a little bit. It's not too sweet, not too tart.
I think I'm going to have to sell my whole family on this one, because it just feels like a perfect Thanksgiving cocktail.
Thank you. It's delicious.
That would be the ham. Ham's ready. Okay. Well, it smells pretty good, doesn't it? It does. That's the first test. How's that look?
I love the way the ham has kind of opened up and it's kind of fanning out.
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