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

So many great recipes, but I especially love the Matchstick Potatoes - Frites. Perfect with Filet of Beef au Poivre and Wild Mushrooms. This is / was my first Ina / Barefoot cookbook, but it has been joined by 11 others since. Thanks, Ina.

Easy French Recipes doable ideas that take you right back to France and especially Paris! Oo la la!

She never disappoints with her creative and simple recipes.

I adore and respect this author so much. Follow her show on the Food Network and recommend all her books to people all the time. Unlike many Americans who profess to know France and her food, the author is the real McCoy, going so far as to have a home there. Her books are easy to read and her recipes are full of nothing but the freshest items, along with easy to follow directions. Watch her show on the Food Network and one quickly sees that she isnt afraid to be human. She 'oops' when she has flour flying, or something misses the bowl, just like the rest of us. She makes it fun to try new foods. This is a book that goes well with the best seller Why French Women Don't Get Fat. As for the recipes, I love the Blue Cheese Souffle on page 50 that is simple and delicious. Mussels in White Wine on page 68 is something living here in California is a treat to make. And loving cauliflower like I do her Cauliflower Gratin on page 156 is a recipe I make a lot, even though I admit the one I make is a tad different. And anyone who loves true French food should approve her Brioche Loaves on page 92. I use Brioche for my bread pudding. And her Boeuf (Beef) Bourguignon recipe is like the one I have used for decades and is a winner, and on page 120. Go back a few pages to 113 and another favorite of mine is Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic. Garlic mellows as it roasts so do not fear a sharp bite. Lastly her dessert section is wonderful simply because the desserts are not heavy, but refreshing and a perfect end to a meal. PS: The photos are perfect and if I do say so the author and her husband look like newlyweds and so in love, which is such an added treat.

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

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

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!

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.