Barefoot Contessa

Strawberry Shortcake

“Whoah,” you’re probably thinking, “am I on drugs? What’s going on here? That picture, it’s so good, so professional, so unlike any picture I’ve ever seen on this blog before. What gives?!”

I’ll tell you what gives: I didn’t take that picture! (Collective gasp.) No, that picture was taken by my new best friend for the next year or so. Say hello to Elizabeth Leitzell (here’s the link to her website), the new snapshot photographer who’ll be coming along with me taking pictures of me cooking with famous chefs for the cookbook I’m writing for Artisan. Last week, I cooked a dinner for her and my book intern Tyla Fowler (the blogger behind Without a Microwave) as a gesture of good will before the cookbook work begins.

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The Recipe Tweaker

This morning I tweaked a recipe and I wasn’t even cooking. I was reading Twitter (as I do every morning after reading The New York Times, Google Reader, and checking Facebook) and I saw my friend Elise Tweet about her beet hummus. I clicked to the recipe (see here) and then I Tweeted to her: “Have you considered adding horseradish to your beet hummus? I wonder if that’d work?” She Tweeted back: “love the idea of adding horseradish to the beet hummus. yummmmmmm.” That’s what’s known as a Tweet tweak and it’s just one example of the many tweaks I’ve been tweaking, lately, in my newfound life as a recipe tweaker.

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A Dessert Party at Ina Garten’s House? How Bad Can That Be?

[Hey, this is Adam The Amateur Gourmet. I’m on vacation in Barcelona, Spain and while I’m gone I’ve asked some awesome people to fill in for me. I first met Jacob Strauss, the Food Network Addict, at the Miami Food & Wine Festival when I was hosting The FN Dish. Jacob’s a great guy and his blog is really sharp and funny. Here Jacob gives an account of every gay food lover’s dream–meeting Ina Garten. Take it away, Jacob!]

I still have a hard time believing it really happened. Last year I appeared on a Food Network special called Dear Food Network that was filmed at Ina Garten’s massive plantation cozy estate in East Hampton, New York. Yes, the Ina Garten, Barefoot Contessa herself.

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The Best Beans of Your Life

If someone asks my friend Diana what I got her for her birthday this year, she’s very likely to answer: “Beans. I got beans for my birthday.”

That sounds like a negative thing, but in the case of Diana’s birthday dinner, it was entirely positive. These beans, like the beans Jack trades his cow for, were no ordinary beans: they were magic beans. Specifically: the Barefoot Contessa’s Baked Beans, which bake in the oven for six hours with bacon and ketchup and maple syrup and come out a deep rusty red and taste smoky, zippy and intense. In other words: the best beans of your life.

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Mayonnaise-Based Sauces

Growing up, there was nothing I hated more than mayonnaise. NOTHING.

The idea of putting mayonnaise on a sandwich repulsed me. It still does, actually. I mean: if it’s a burger and there’s mayonnaise on it, I’ll overlook it because it blends with all the juices and the ketchup and the mustard and makes something of a sauce. But a turkey sandwich with JUST mayo? Blech! Nothing repulses me more.

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Burnt Sticky Buns

What’s there to say when you burn your sticky buns? It’s a pretty unkind thing to do. On a Sunday morning, you pique everyone’s interest with rumors of sticky bun making; then you roll them, pop them in the oven, and fill the apartment with a wonderful smell. And then you burn them. What kind of a person are you? Not a very good one, I imagine.

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The Best Broccoli of Your Life

You know you’ve done something right with broccoli when the person you made it for describes it to someone else the next day as “better than biting into a steak.”

Those were Craig’s words and they were a marked change from the first words he uttered about the broccoli, before he bit in: “You made broccoli for dinner? Broccoli and sweet potatoes?”

Then he did bite in and his eyes lit up. “Oh my God,” he said. “This is the best broccoli I’ve ever had in my life.” Later he said: “If parents made this broccoli for their kids, kids wouldn’t hate broccoli. They’d beg for it.”

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