Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(89)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

There is not much that I can add to the reviews already written, but as an admitted Francophile, I wanted to put my 2 cents in. As all have stated, this is an incredible book, not just of French cooking, but a slight peek into the French way of living and thinking. Obviously, Ina loves Paris, and all that is French, and you get that feeling as she deviates from strictly recipes, and goes into the various nuances of French life.

Those nuances are scattered throughout the book and peppered (no pun intended) in the introductions to her recipes. The photography and food styling is excellent as usual, and as long as you aren't expecting a Jacque Pepin or Julia Child style of French cooking, then you will enjoy Ina's more simple, peasant-style fare. She talks about the visual preparation of the French table and all the ways that you can make your dining experience as simple, fresh, and carefree as the dishes. And for those who are fellow "Parisians", she guides you through the streets and markets of Paris and gives you a tour of sorts, of that magical city.

INTRODUCTION

TO START:
All about French wines
Raspberry Royale
Kir
Cassisa l'Eau
Cheese Straws
Blioni with Smoked Salmon
Cheese Puffs (Gougeres....ummmmmmmm!!!)
Rosemary Cashews
Radishes with Salt and Herbed Butter
Potato Chips

LUNCH:
French Table Settings
Croque Monsieur
Blue Cheese Souffle
Salad with Warm Goat Cheese
Eggplant Gratin
Pissaladiere (a French pizza of sorts)
Goat Cheese Tart
Scrambled Eggs with Truffles
Herbed Baked Eggs
Spinach in Pastry Puff
Mussels in White Wine
Seafood Platter (with mustard sauce, cocktail sauce, mignonette sauce)

SOUP and SALAD:
All about French flowers
Winter Squash Soup
Provencal Veggie Soup (and homemade chicken stock, and pistou)
Zucchini Vichyssoise
Seafood Stew (and seafood stock)
Lentil Sausage Soup
Brioche Loaves
Celery Root Remoulade
Endive, Pear, and Roquefort Salad
Avocado and Grapefruit Salad
Fennel Salad
Warm Mushroom Salad
Green Salad Vinaigrette

DINNER:
All about French cookware (this was a blast; will make you want to visit!)
Lemon Chicken with Coutons
Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic (this was very mild in flavor)
Roast Duck
Chicken with Morels
Loin of Pork with Green Peppercorns
Boeuf Bourguignon
Filet of Beef au Poivre
Steak with Bearnaise Sauce
Veal Chops with Roquefort Butter
Roast Lamb with White Beans
Rack of Lamb Persillade
Roasted Striped Bass
Scallops Provencal
Salmon with Lentils

VEGETABLES:
About French cooking classes
Asparagus with Hollandaise
Vegetable Tian
Zucchini Gratin
Tomato Rice Pilaf
Roasted Beets
Matchstick Potatoes
Brussels Sprouts Lardons
Cauliflower Gratin
Morocccan Couscous
French String Beans
Sauteed Wild Mushrooms
Potato Celery Root Puree
Carmelized Shallots
Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Herbed New Potatoes

DESSERTS:
About French cheese
Meringues Chantilly
Plum Raspberry Crumble
Ile Flottante
Lemon Meringue Tart (and lemon filling)
Pear Clafouti
Coeur a la Creme with Raspberries
Raspberry Sauce
Creme Amglaise
Baba au Rhum (rum-soaked doughy pastries with shipped cream; sooo good!)
Elephant Ears (very light, flaky, and delicate)
Mango Sorbet
Ice Cream Bombe
Plum Cake Tatin
Chocolate Orange Mousse
Brownie Tart
Pain Perdu
Peaches in Sauternes
Coconut Madeleines (dip the ends in chocolate!)
Strawberry Tarts
Pastry Cream
Profiteroles (the ultimate elegant French dessert!)
Chocolate Truffles
Creme Brulee

RESOURCES:
French ingredients to try
French cookware you'll want to have
Going to Paris? Then here's your guide with every place you'll want to visit to make your journey magical and complete (the best part, Ina!!!)
Credits and Index
Conversion Chart

Merci Ina!!

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!

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, Crème 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

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!

First, let me say that I like Ina Garten. She has an infectious personality. Her television show, while fun, owes much to Nigella Lawson's. Her recipes are largely simple, use few but very fattening ingredients, and owe a great debt to Anna Pump and Junior League cookbooks. She is not an original cook, but she is a good guide to the quick and easy. Her presentation style is pure Hamptons...casual simple elegance.

While I have all four of her cookbooks, I do feel that they are very slim volumnes and often vague at best in their instructions. She has a very positive and unpretentious attitude with a seemingly unlimited food budget. But what I really like about Ina is that she never refers to her weight. She is a woman who cooks and eats fattening foods and just refers to this behavior as a bit naughty with a twinkle in her eye.

This book, however, is a great disappointment. The "French" recipes have been dumbed down, which is in keeping with her quick and easy style. It reads as one that was pasted together very quickly to make the Christmas rush. The recipes are a blend of very simplified old classics, such as Croque Monsieur, Pissaladiere, Mussels in White Wine, Rack of Lamb Persillade, Scallops Provencal, Boeuf Bourguignon, Asparagus with Hollandaise, Vegetable Tian, Coeur a la Creme with Raspberries, Baba au Rhum, Ice Cream Bombe, Chocolate Orange Mousse, Profiteroles, Madeleines, and Creme Brulee.

The organization is very odd. For instance, why is her narrative "About French Cookware" under the Dinner chapter, and "About French Table Settings" is in the Lunch chapter?

If you really want to cook French food I would recommend Julia Child's The Art of French Cooking Vol. 1 as your most trusted guide.

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.

This book is much like Ina's other books in that it has very clear instructions, lots of color photographs and a lot of her personal opinions. The recipes are not, I repeat not, pure French, but one talented woman's unique take on them.

Ina has inhereted a style that began with the original Loaves and Fishes, The Silver Palate, etc. If you have liked the food you have made from the recipes in these books and you generally like French food, you should enjoy this book. Fans of her other books will enjoy this as well. I have.

I tend to buy a lot of cookbooks. Too many as a matter of fact. Over time I tend to cull my collection. I know that this, as are my other books by Ina, will be a keeper.

I am true-blue Ina Garten follower! I have been watching her for years and have each of her (equally) amazing books. I find her style and way to welcoming and educational. She has NEVER presented something that I haven't been able to make on my own. Yes - sometimes her ingredients are on the wicked side - but, there is nothing that is keeping you from altering some of the cream and butter steps. Ina is all about doing what feels and tastes good to you. She is never pushy or overbearing.

"Barefoot In Paris" is her newest venture - and I think one of the strongest in her collection. I loved all the personal commentaries before each of the sections (To Start / Lunch / Soup & Salad / Dinner / Vegetables / Dessert) and all the wonderful recipes that are like a passport to Paris.

Some highlights of the book include:
Cheese Puffs
Blue Cheese Souffle
Eggplant Gratin
Mussels in White Wine
Lentil Sausage Soup
Endive, Pear & Roquefort Salad
Chicken w/Fourty Cloves of Garlic
Roast Lam with White Beans
Salmon with Lentils
Moroccan Couscous
Brussels Sprouts Lardons
Chocolate Orange Mousse
Creme Brulee

I also really love her "Ingredients you'll want to try" section as well as the "If You're Going" section with amazing tips and places to visit, should I ever get my dream trip to Paris. But - until that day I can book with Ina and take a mini-vacation with amazing new book.

Congrats to Ina on her new accomplishment!

Cheers!

As endearing as Ina is, she missed the mark with this collection of recipes. Her enthusiasm is evident, and she obviously had a great time putting it together, but I agree with the previous remark that there are few recipes I am eager to try.
If you are new to French cooking or are put off by the haute cuisine attitude of French chefs, you might find the narrow focus useful, and her charm and practicality will put you at ease with the classic recipes.
But if you are looking for something innovative, pass this one up. I'll keep my copy because it's signed, but I'm going back to Julia for French country.

I found the book a bit thin in both content and quality. Most of the hints (Table dressing, flower arranging, etc.) and recipes are very American and not all that unusual to the American public. I agree with the other reviewer, enough of the name and place dropping, let's just get down to what really matters.

But she is still her sweet self and I'll keep the book, but supplement it with some French bistro and Provincial cookbooks.