Seven Lessons I Learned From Ina Garten’s Memoir

Ina Garten’s memoir — Be Ready When the Luck Happens — is out this week, and it made me realize something…

I discovered Ina in my mid-twenties, just as I was figuring out my way around a kitchen. I used her seminal first cookbook, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, so often that many of those recipes feel like members of my family: Coconut Cupcakes, Turkey Meatloaf, Roasted Carrots, Outrageous Brownies. Recipes that are famous enough that I don’t even have to elaborate, because I imagine you can picture them, too. I also distinctly remember how different the book felt from Martha Stewart and Gourmet magazine and other big food names of that era — Ina’s food was messy and real, without making any sacrifices in quality.

But Ina’s path to Barefoot Contessa Superstardom didn’t play out in a straight line. Raised by demanding, controlling parents — a joyless, emotionally bereft mother and an abusive father prone to unsettling bouts of anger — her life changed, as most of her fans know, when she met her famously adoring husband Jeffrey. She was only 16, visiting her brother at Dartmouth College, when Jeffrey, also a student there, spied her on the college green, and “in an instant was smitten.” The two of them married young, moved from military base to to base (Jeffrey was ROTC), spent a formative summer camping through Europe, and supported each other as their careers skyrocketed, often living apart in different cities and even continents to make things work. One of the more notable revelations of the book was that the couple separated briefly, right after Ina bought the Barefoot Contessa specialty store in the Hamptons and struggled to redefine her role as an equal partner in their marriage. There were other surprising tidbits — she can fly planes (!) — but for me, the most compelling thing about the memoir was the way she discussed her philosophy around food.

Good food is simple food.
Ina seemed to fall in love with quality-ingredient driven meals when she and Jeffrey camped their way through Europe in 1972 (above). She describes the perfect sandwich: “In the United States, a sandwich [was] two slices of bread from a plastic bag… Instead, the French take a length of a crusty baguette, one thin slice of delicious ham or prosciutto, maybe a little cheese, maybe a little butter or Dijon mustard, and voilà! The best sandwich you ever ate…the delicacy of it all is perfect.”

Three main flavors, max.
I haven’t been able to get this rule out of my head since I read it. “I don’t think there should be more than three prominent flavors in any recipe,” Ina writes. “My brain just can’t process more than that without becoming overloaded.”

But really bring out those flavors.
The goal is to help each ingredient taste like the best version of itself. “How can I make chicken more ‘chicken-y’ or chocolate more ‘chocolate-y’?” she asks. This is something that most cooks know inherently, but it helps to hear it again: “Almost every recipe, whether savory or sweet, needs an edge. Savory things tend to need something acidic, and sweet things tend to need something bitter to give them more depth of flavor.”

There’s a strategic way to enjoyably entertain.
The first time she and Jeffrey tried to have a “grown-up” party, they invited 20 people to brunch, none of whom knew each other –“bad idea.” Everyone sat in a big circle in the living room, saying very little. “To make things worse,” she writes, “I had decided to make an omelet for each person, which had to be prepared one at a time, so I was stuck in the kitchen for the entire party… while Jeffrey was in the living room trying desperately to keep the conversation interesting. Total disaster!”

Brightness is crucial, for both taste and visuals.
“Why is [chicken salad] always so beige?” she asked herself when she was developing a recipe for the Hamptons store. “I started with grilled lemon chicken and added raw sugar snap peas, julienned red and yellow peppers, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and good California olive oil. The colors were bright, the ingredients were fresh, and the lemon juice gave it all an ‘edge’ that made everything taste better.” (How good does that sound right now?)

When it comes to quality, be ruthless.
Ina is obsessed with using high-quality ingredients in her cooking, but it’s also a theme of any work she puts into the world. On choosing what recipes to feature, she asks herself: “Would a customer get out of bed, put on their clothes, get into a car, drive to town, find a parking space, and walk to the store to buy this dish? That was a hard test to pass, and I wanted only those recipes in the store and the book.”

Be yourself.
One of the more entertaining stories in the book is when her friend, the famous photographer Richard Avedon tells her that the design of her first cookbook, was “the worst I’ve ever seen.” Which made sense, sort of. His style was stark and minimalist, the opposite of Ina’s style: happy, casual, bountiful. She listened to his criticisms — who wouldn’t? It was Richard Avedon! — ultimately realizing that the reason for her success was that she wasn’t trying to be anyone else. She was only trying to be Ina.

Thank you for the inspiration, Ina. We love your cookbooks and your memoir.

P.S. Coming home dinners and the embarrassing food blunders I’ve made along the way.

(Photos courtesy of Ina Garten.)