Ina Garten Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe. Host Kerry Diamond is on the road, so I'm here to tell you about today's episode with Ina Garten. I'm Jessie Sheehan, and I host Cherry Bombe's baking podcast, She's My Cherry Pie. There's no doubt about it, this has been Ina Garten's year, her bestselling memoir “Be Ready When The Luck Happens” was published this October and since then everybody's been buzzing about Ina nonstop. I know lots of you have read the book or you've listened to the audio version, which Ina reads herself. And some of you super fans have even done both. The interview you're about to hear took place back in December, 2022. Ina talks about the cookbook she had just released,
“Go-To Dinners,” and also chats with Kerry about her podcast “Be My Guest with Ina Garten,” her childhood dinners, TikTok butter boards, and of course Jeffrey. My favorite part is their discussion about Ina's holiday traditions in Paris. Stay tuned for their chat.
Kerry Diamond:
Today's episode is presented by Kerrygold. Have you noticed that butter is having a moment? I've seen handbags sculpted out of butter, little couches made from butter pats, tiny butter cherubs, even butter colored nail polish and fashion. The world is butter obsessed. But you know who loves butter more than most? The folks at Kerrygold. They've been perfecting their craft for decades using milk from Irish grass-fed cows to create their famously rich, creamy golden butter. There's a reason Kerrygold is beloved by everyone from home cooks to the world's top culinary creatives. It's just better butter. Kerrygold salted pure Irish butter has a butterfat content of 80%. The unsalted version has a butterfat content of 82% and that beautiful yellow color, it's thanks to beta-carotene found naturally in milk from grass-fed cows. Want to get in on the fun? Get yourself some Kerrygold and whip up some flavored compound butter, fill some fancy butter molds, or sculpt one of those gorgeous butter mounds for your next dinner party or get together. Visit kerrygoldusa.com to learn more, get recipes and find a stockist near you.
Jessie Sheehan:
After you listen to Ina and Kerry, I would love for you to tune into my show, She's My Cherry Pie. Every Saturday I talk to the top bakers and pastry chefs around. We learn about their careers and do a deep dive into one of their signature bakes. Just in the past few weeks, I've talked to superstar Christina Tosi, Dominique Ansel, and Prue Leith of “The Great British Bake Off.” When you wake up this Saturday, make yourself a cup of coffee or tea and tune in. You can find She's My Cherry Pie wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaking of Ina, the newest issue of Cherry Bombe's print magazine is all about Ina. If you haven't seen it yet, it is gorgeous. From the pink cover to all the stories, pictures, and recipes inside. You can get a copy at your favorite local bookstore, culinary store or magazine shop, or at cherrybombe.com.
One more thing. Early bird tickets for Cherry Bombe's Jubilee conference are on sale right now. Prices will go up January 1st, so don't delay. As someone who's been to Jubilee six times, I'm telling you you don't want to miss this event. Jubilee 2025 is taking place on Saturday, April 12th at the Glass House in Manhattan, and it's an amazing day of connection and community. If you're looking to network with other creatives and brand representatives or you just want to be inspired, meet great people and try incredible food and drink, you should check out Jubilee. Visit cherrybombe.com for tickets and more information. Now let's hear from Ina.
Kerry Diamond:
Ina, welcome back to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Ina Garten:
Hi, Kerry. So great to see you.
Kerry Diamond:
Always great to see you. How are you today?
Ina Garten:
I'm good, I'm great.
Kerry Diamond:
And tell me where we find you.
Ina Garten:
In my closet, in my apartment in New York.
Kerry Diamond:
So let's talk about this gorgeous book, “Go-To Dinners.” I lost track. Is it 13 or 14?
Ina Garten:
It's 13.
Kerry Diamond:
13.
Ina Garten:
Sometimes I lose track too.
Kerry Diamond:
It's your baker's dozen.
Ina Garten:
Well, it's interesting because in the back of my mind, something was worrying me that thirteen's an unlucky number, but it didn't seem to pan out that way.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah.
Ina Garten:
It's a baker's dozen. I like that better.
Kerry Diamond:
It's a lucky number for people in the food world. It's definitely a lucky number for you because every two years I'm like, how is she going to do it? How is Ina going to do something fresh and different and you always manage to do it? Why did you decide to focus on dinners for this book?
Ina Garten:
Well, I think I started working on it during the pandemic, in the beginning of the pandemic actually. And I found that I was working on recipes for a book. I mean, I'm always kind of working on developing recipes. I was doing recipes for Instagram to explain to people what to do with that, those white beans and ramen noodles that they bought in their pantry and didn't know what to do with them. And then at some point I thought, oh my God, I have to make lunch and dinner for Jeffrey and me. So it was like such a crazy cook-a-thon. And at some point around between March and May, I just got in bed and pulled the covers under my chin and I thought, I have to do this differently because I just can't keep cooking this much. And I was exhausted as we all were because on top of everything else, we were really stressed.
So I thought, we don't really need a big dinner. We found that we were really happier if we have one thing like eggs and purgatory, which is a tomato sauce with poached eggs on top and big shard of crusty bread. And that was great for dinner. And so I thought, well, maybe I'll do a chapter in this book that's like breakfast for dinner, dinner doesn't always have to be dinner, classic meat, vegetable starch kind of thing. And I started exploring it and we found that having a big bowl of ramen chicken noodle soup or overnight mac and cheese and a big salad was so easy and it was just delicious and satisfying, and we have never looked back after that.
And then I started thinking, well, if it's fun for us and satisfying, why wouldn't it be fun for friends when I invite them over? And so I started doing that. I remember making waffles for some friends, waffles and bacon. I don't know what else I made with it. And they just went crazy. I mean, not for seconds, they went back for thirds. So I thought, this is fun. It's just shake it up, time to shake it up a little bit.
Kerry Diamond:
The sense of lightness and liberation really comes through in the book.
Ina Garten:
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and sometimes it's just a board. It's like a plowman’s lunch, which is big shards of cheddar cheese and hard-boiled eggs and celery sticks and just kind of the things that you'd get at a British pub and it's just great. And there's nothing, you can even buy hard-boiled eggs in the grocery store now, so don't even have to turn on the stove.
Kerry Diamond:
So you talk about dinner at sense of fun during dinnertime, but in the very beginning of the book you talk about your childhood and dinner was not a fun time for you. Why was that an unhappy meal growing up in your household?
Ina Garten:
My parents were authoritarian. You did what they wanted you to do. It was like shut up and eat your dinner, no matter what it was. And they were always pushing us to achieve, which makes me want to shut down. I like to decide what I'm going to do and then go do it and I'll do it really well, but it has to be my decision. It can't be somebody else's. And so I really rebelled against that and my rebellion was to withdraw. And so when we were at the dinner table, you ate what my mother made and if you didn't like it, they were angry with you, which was really bad.
My mother had no sense of joy about cooking. She just got dinner on the table. It was a pretty lonely, unhappy place. Then when I first got married, I just remember looking around going, "ha, I can do anything I want." Anything. I can cook whatever I want. I can do whatever I want. I can go wherever. It was just a sense of liberation and also living with somebody who just thought whatever I did was wonderful, was such a transformation for me and such a liberation. It's just what you were saying that I kind of rebelled and I still do.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's take a quick break. This episode is presented by Meridian Printing, the family owned printing company based in East Greenwich, Rhode Island. Meridian has printed Cherry Bombe magazine for the past several years, and it's always a pleasure working with the team at Meridian. They are meticulous and professional and care more than any other printer we've ever worked with. They are amazing partners. When I wanted to print three covers of our icons issue, they said, "no problem." When I wanted to put a Molly Baz poster in every copy of our Molly issue, they said, "we got it." And they were amazing about helping us get the pink shade just right for our new Ina Garten issue. If you have an idea for a magazine or a zine or maybe you want to do books on demand, you should talk to the team at Meridian Printing, visit meridianprinting.com for more information.
I read that your mother was a dietician, was that correct?
Ina Garten:
She was, yeah. She didn't work as a dietician when I was growing up, but when she got out of college, that's what she did professionally and I think she was an austere person to start with. So her idea of fun is to just deny yourself something. There were whole categories of food that were just not allowed, and most of them were starches, carbs. There was no bread, there was no potatoes, there was nothing, no pasta. There was nothing warm and cozy. It was all grilled chicken and canned peas, which I mean nobody wants. I'm sorry. At least I don't.
Kerry Diamond:
Your dad was a surgeon. Was he home for dinner every night?
Ina Garten:
He was home for dinner every night. Yeah, for better or for worse because he used to quiz us during dinner so I had like a knot in my stomach.
Kerry Diamond:
What would he quiz you about?
Ina Garten:
Oh, geography, maths, whatever it was. It wasn't a real conversation. It was the kids have to do what the parents want, and it was a fifties time. It's what people did then, but they weren't warm and fuzzy.
Kerry Diamond:
It's amazing. Your meal times are the absolute opposite. Everything you do is warm and fuzzy now. Are you still working on your memoir?
Ina Garten:
I am, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
How's it going?
Ina Garten:
It's going great. I mean, I hope it's interesting for people. It's interesting for me going back because I'm always looking forward. I never look back. And for example, I have a box of letters that Jeffrey wrote to me when I was in high school and college, and I've still kept it, but I've never looked at it and looking through it, it's just like, "oh my God, that's amazing." One letter, he said, "someday I'm going to take you to Paris." And we had no recollection of that. It was just so, so that's been really interesting is kind of connecting the dots.
I mean, when I lived in Washington and I worked in the White House, I was renovating all the houses. I was teaching myself how to cook. I went to business school at George Washington, I mean all at the same time. And I think, how did I do that? But it just seems so natural at the time. So in that sense, it's been really empowering to just go back and see that there were kind of seeds of that in the beginning that I've continued and followed through that it was there. I just hadn't developed it.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay. I have tears in my eyes just thinking about a letter that young Jeffrey wrote to young Ina saying, one day I'm going to take you to Paris.
Ina Garten:
Isn't that lovely? And actually it was even more poignant than that because he said, "in the beginning, we probably won't have enough money, so maybe we'll go camping", which is exactly what we did. "And then maybe if we have a little more money, we can stay in a hotel", which we did. And the last part is, "and someday maybe we'll be able to rent an apartment." And it was like the yellow brick road. He just laid out the path to exactly what we did and the way we did it, it was really quite, and he had no recollection of it. So that part is very interesting. Kind of an examined life is more interesting. So that's been fun.
Kerry Diamond:
I can only speak for myself, but I'm guessing a lot of us Ina fans would buy an entire book of just the Ina and Jeffrey letters. So if you don't want to write that memoir, you can just compile all the letters.
Ina Garten:
I'll tell you, everybody has this thing about Jeffrey, which I find so charming. And we were going through London at Passport Control just entering London. And the passport guy, this British guy is reading the passport. He goes, he looks up and he goes, "oh, it's you." And we're like, "what? Are we going to get arrested?" He said, "my wife always says to me, why can't you be more like Jeffrey?" This was in London. I just love that.
Kerry Diamond:
That's so funny. I was shocked to read you weren't a fan of leftovers.
Ina Garten:
The thing about leftovers to me is always, maybe I had a lot of leftovers as a child, I don't know. But I always feel like it's never as good as the first day. I just find it boring because I've already had it and it never has the same flavor the second day. And so I just didn't like it. And in this book I thought, here we are stuck in our houses. Don't know if we can get more groceries, can't leave, can't order out from a specialty food store. And I thought, I really have to deal with leftovers because I always, you make a roast chicken, there are leftovers. And I realized if I took the leftovers and actually did something completely different with them, then it wouldn't feel like leftovers. My goal was to make them actually better in the second round. There's a wonderful recipe for roasted kielbasa with vegetables that was inspired by Sam Sifton at the New York Times.
And he roast kielbasa with, I did fennel and onions and peppers, and it's just such a simple dinner and so delicious. But you end up with a lot of kielbasa at the end. And so I thought, well, I love split pea soup with some kind of sausage in it, so I'll just saute the kielbasa and make a big pot of split pea soup and put the kielbasa in that. And then there was still some leftover, so I sauteed it. And with toothpicks, some serve it for orders with a pot of mustard and it's just great. So here's one dish that ended up in three different ways that was, it was just great in each one and it was different.
Kerry Diamond:
My favorite thing is always just put an egg on it, poached egg, fried egg.
Ina Garten:
Yeah, exactly. That's wonderful.
Kerry Diamond:
You also lean into the board trend very much in this book. You talked about the plowman's lunch earlier.
Ina Garten:
It's what farmers would take out to the field. So it's, I've been doing board stuff for a long time. Even at Barefoot Contessa, I did huge country dessert platters that people would pick up. I would do all kinds of like a salmon nicoise platter. I was doing that in the eighties, so I took it. I just continued it.
Kerry Diamond:
The boards, pre TikTok.
Ina Garten:
Pre TikTok, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
You're not on TikTok, are you?
Ina Garten:
No.
Kerry Diamond:
Any plans?
Ina Garten:
I always say you can't say no to something until you try it. We're kind of investigating it right now, but not yet. What we're not on is Twitter. I have to say. I resigned from Twitter about two weeks ago and I'm just delighted.
Kerry Diamond:
Same, same. I'm so disappointed though. It was such a great way to talk to people. But back to boards. So tell us about some of the boards in this cookbook.
Ina Garten:
One of the things we have is a dessert board. And it came from an experience I had in the south of France. We were at a restaurant that's on the beach. I mean, not near the beach, actually on the beach. It was just wonderful in Cannes. And some 3 waiters came out with this enormous rectangular board. And on it were pieces of cake, cookies, fruit, shards of chocolate, just right down the middle of the board. And they just plunked it down at this huge table where people were having a party and it looked so spectacular.
It was so much fun because you could have a cookie and some fruit or you could have a piece of a fruit tart and you can help yourself. And I thought, there's nothing on that platter that you can't buy store-bought. You can go to a bakery, you can go to a grocery store, you can go to chocolate shop and just get everything on that board. So that was the genesis of that dessert board, which is fun. I mean, if you put it down in the middle of the table, people just kind of go crazy.
Kerry Diamond:
They do. Everybody loves a board. What are your thoughts on the butter board?
Ina Garten:
I'm not a big fan of the butter board. I don't know why butter on wood, it just feels like it's on the floor. Just I can't get past it, but I haven't tried it, so I shouldn't knock it.
Kerry Diamond:
That's so funny. I am pro butter board, but the butter board has been more divisive than I thought something like that could be.
Ina Garten:
Oh, seriously. What do people say about it?
Kerry Diamond:
I think you either love or hate the butter board. There are very few people who are just neutral about the butter board. So Ina, you talked about the Breakfast for Dinner chapter, which I think is my favorite chapter.
Ina Garten:
Thank you.
Kerry Diamond:
Could you tell us a little bit more about that chapter and another favorite recipe from it?
Ina Garten:
Well, I always love my scone. That's always, and scones with jam and butter and they're just heaven. I'm trying to think what are the other-
Kerry Diamond:
And you do a cream scone, right?
Ina Garten:
Yeah, cream scone is actually, the cream is put on it. And actually, I had a conversation with Emily Blunt on my show, “Be My Guest,” and we were talking about whether you put the cream on first and then the jam on second, or whether you put the jam on first and the cream on second, which surprisingly really makes a difference because it's what you taste first. And she was saying, I can't remember now. I think the Queen puts the jam on first and then the cream on second. But her father does it the other way around. But I think the first thing that I did as breakfast for dinner, and it's the simplest thing once you get the hang of it, is a Gruyere omelet. I mean, you get all of the ingredients already and it's ready in five minutes and it's just a great, no, it's a big shard of bread or something. It's a really satisfying dinner. And that's how I started saying, well, wait a minute, it's really kind of breakfast or lunch. And why can't that be dinner? Why is it you always have certain prescribed things?
Kerry Diamond:
No, I think an omelet with a salad is the best meal. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
Ina Garten:
Isn't it great?
Kerry Diamond:
You mentioned in “Go-To Dinners” that you're a morning person, so that kind of also explains breakfast for dinner. And you said that you never understood how chefs could work so late into the night. And I was wondering, does this mean we'll never have an Ina Garten restaurant?
Ina Garten:
Not for that reason, but we will definitely not have an Ina Garten restaurant. I think that's the hardest work on the planet. It's just grueling. Everybody crammed into a small space. And I remember the book that was written about Mario Batali's restaurant, Bill Buford's book, about when he said, "I just couldn't figure out where to go in the kitchen." And he said, "not that I didn't know which station to go. I didn't know where my body was going to fit." And that just has always stayed with me. It's just extraordinary. And that if you have to change your taunts from your right hand to your left hand, you're already in the weeds. And so that kind of pressure, I understand why people get an adrenaline rush from it, but I couldn't do that anymore. So no, I love what I do.
Kerry Diamond:
There are a lot of unexpected restaurant openings this year from like Martha Stewart, Priyanka Chopra even opened one. Molly Yeh opened one, but no.
Ina Garten:
Yeah, no, I had a specialty food store for 20 years. I've had enough of the retail experience.
Kerry Diamond:
You got your film.
Ina Garten:
It's hard and I did catering for 15 years, so I know what that's like.
Kerry Diamond:
You mentioned “Be My Guest,” your TV show, which I love so much, a TV show and podcast and it combines cooking and interviewing. And I was wondering how are you enjoying the interviewing part?
Ina Garten:
It's been amazing. The show is on Discovery Plus and Food Network. I have found the interviews stunningly interesting that each person has a story that shows you that they could never have been where they are if they hadn't pushed through some extraordinary, really overwhelming difficulty. And I think that's been a revelation. It's not that these people are successful because they were smarter or more talented, and granted they are, but there are a lot of talented people. But when they hit a wall, they figure it out and they get around it and sometimes their lives would not have been what they are if they hadn't hit that wall.
Kerry Diamond:
What was the wall for you?
Ina Garten:
When I bought my first store in 1978, it was called Barefoot Contessa. It was about 400 square feet, which is about the size of the closet I'm in right now. And I signed the deal and I took over the lease. The woman who sold it to me had, and I didn't understand what an assignment was about. She assigned a lease to me, which she didn't have the right to do, neither she nor I really fully understood what we were doing. And thank God, because if I'd known I wouldn't have done it and the rest would've been different. And after two years, the landlord found out that he had a tenant that he'd never met before. And I totally, as a landlord, I understand what his shock was and we couldn't come to terms with extending the lease. So I had spent all of my earthly goods on this business and I didn't have a lease.
And so I thought, "oh my God, it's over. What am I going to do?" And I just pulled myself together and just by chance there was a building across the street that was not 400 square feet, it was 4,000 square feet and it was an old grocery store in West Hampton Beach. And Jeffrey and I put together a deal where we took over that building. I was so in over my head, I can't even tell you any normal person would've just gotten out. But I figured it out and I pushed past it and thank good... The rest is history.
But I remember standing in that building with the bank president who had lent me some money and now I needed more because the building was completely falling apart. And I thought, if he doesn't lend me the money we're finished, we're just finished. And he said to me, at some point, he said, "what did you used to do before you had a especially food store?" And I said, "well, I used to work on nuclear energy policy in the White House." And I said to him, "what did you used to do before you were bank president?" And he said, "I used to teach second grade and we had a good laugh." And he said, "the loans approved,” I mean, that's the way business was done then. It was just so fortunate that I had an empathetic bank president.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. I didn't know about that story before the bigger space.
Ina Garten:
Yeah, that was a scary moment. In fact, I got into bed in a friend's house for two days because the bank president was on vacation and I had no idea whether this was going to happen. And she gave me tea and toast for two days until that meeting.
Kerry Diamond:
So that was your wall. Do you have a list of dream guests for the show?
Ina Garten:
Well, the ones I've had so far are so dreamy, I don't even know where to go. I've just finished filming with four more guests, Stanley Tucci, who of course is everybody's dream guest. Laura Linney, who was just absolutely amazing. Nora Jones, the singer is just incredible. I mean, there was one fact I came across that there were 6 billion downloads of her album, 6 billion. There are only 7 billion people in the world. It's just extraordinary. And Misty Copeland, who just breaks my heart, she's so wonderful. So I mean, it's pretty hard to get better than that.
Kerry Diamond:
How do choose your guests, Ina?
Ina Garten:
I choose people I think would be interesting to spend the day with. It's really that simple. It's not like I'm looking for a certain type of person. Mostly they have some interest in food, which was really fun. But Nathan Lane was a guest and he didn't have any experience cooking. And so my director said to me as we were starting, I was going to show him how to make mussels because I know he likes mussels. And my director said, "why don't you switch with him? Why don't you teach him how to make mussels?" And I did. And he was just so wonderful. And in the end, he learned how to make mussels with saffron cream from “Go-To Dinners,” which is just great. And he took it home.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, he did?
Ina Garten:
He did.
Kerry Diamond:
I love that.
Ina Garten:
We gave it to him for dinner.
Kerry Diamond:
I listened to that. It's also a podcast, which folks might not realize.
Ina Garten:
It is a podcast.
Kerry Diamond:
I listened to the Nathan one and it was so good. I love him and I learned a lot about him that I had never known.
Ina Garten:
Wasn't that interesting? I mean, talk about barriers that you have to get past. It's just extraordinary. Grew up in a Catholic school. His mother was Catholic and he's Nathan Lane. He's just extraordinary.
Kerry Diamond:
And that Nathan's not even his name. I learned that.
Ina Garten:
That he adopted the name Nathan Lane and then ended up in “Guys & Dolls” as Nathan Detroit, which is who he named himself after.
Kerry Diamond:
I love that. And Stanley, you finally met Stanley in person.
Ina Garten:
Yes, I did meet Stanley and amazingly, at nine o'clock in the morning, he made me my first martini and then I had to film with him all day.
Kerry Diamond:
No one believes that was your first martini. You know that, right?
Ina Garten:
I don't know why. I just thought, I feel like a martini is too strong for me. I would just fall over, I don't want it. But the way he makes them, he's specific about the alcohol. He's specific about how you stir it so that you dilute it just right. And it was absolutely delicious.
Kerry Diamond:
And are you going to have another martini or are you... One was enough. As long as Stanley makes it. That's funny.
Let's take a quick break. Cherry Bombe's next Jubilee conference is taking place in New York City on April 12th. Early bird tickets are on sale right now at cherrybombe.com. If you're an official Bombesquad member, be sure to check your inbox for special member pricing. Jubilee is a conference we started in 2014 as a way to bring women together for networking, conversation and community. It's a beautiful day filled with friends, new and old, great talks and panels and amazing things to eat and drink. This year's Jubilee will be our biggest and our best one yet. Visit cherrybombe.com for early bird tickets. Prices will go up January 1st. The link is in our show notes.
All right, so what are you and Jeffrey doing for the holidays?
Ina Garten:
Well, actually it's for the past 20 years since we've had an apartment in Paris, we go to Paris and my favorite thing to do in Paris is actually go shopping for Christmas dinner. And we always invite somebody for dinner. And I love to go to the butcher and I love to go to the produce store and the street market in front of our apartment. And we go to Berthillon, that wonderful ice cream store on, I think it's on Ile de la Cité and get Prune and Armagnac ice cream for an apple tart that we've gotten from Poilane.
So the first year we were there, I made a list of places that I needed to go shopping and Jeffrey said to me, "save that list because that's why you're in Paris because you want to go to those places." And he was so right. The whole experience there. It's not just about having the dinner party, it's about shopping and then being with friends in this magical place. And then after, we usually do it two in the afternoon, and if it's nice day we go walk to Luxembourg Gardens, it's just heaven. Absolutely heaven. It's like being on another planet.
Kerry Diamond:
What do you make for your main?
Ina Garten:
The pork in Paris is just unique. It's extraordinary. And so I have traditional Christmas dinner, which is roast pork with a puree of potato, eggplant, fennel and sauteed Brussels sprouts, shaved Brussels sprouts that are sauteed. And then I get some wonderful cheese. The Vacherin is in season then, we have a salad and a little Vacherin and then an apple tart and prune and Armagnac ice cream for dessert. I mean, it's just heaven. It's just amazing. And can I tell you about the pork, which is interesting. The first time I went to get pork, I said to the butcher who was tying it up and getting it ready for me. And I thought, well, I'll practice my French. And so I said to him, "how do you cook it?" And what he told me sounded so outrageous. I just thought I must have misunderstood his French or I obviously didn't understand him.
He said, "put it in a cold oven at a certain temperature, turn the oven on and cook it for", I can't remember what it was like an hour and a half, "and then take it out and let it rest." And I thought put it in a cold oven. It was such an odd, so I actually took the pork roast that he gave me, cut it in half. I have two ovens and I did half of it his way and half of it my way and his way was so extraordinary, I couldn't believe it. And I came back to the United States to try and do it here and it didn't work here. Their pork is just somehow different, but it was such an interesting kind of French moment. I said to him, "can you write it down?" Because I thought I must have misunderstood. And he wrote it down and he said to me in French, and he said, "if you lose the paper, you can call me at home on Christmas day." Isn't that sweet?
Kerry Diamond:
I love that. So you started in the cold oven, did he brown it? Did he say brown at first or anything like that?
Ina Garten:
No, you know what it was, it's that the heat comes up slowly around protein and it cooks it. It's like a slow roasting rather than hitting it with high heat. So no, it came out perfect. It was browned, it was perfect. You cook it at a lower temperature for a longer time, but you put it in a cold oven, which is interestingly hard to remember because you come into the kitchen and start cooking, you turn the oven on and then I always go, oh, no, no, no, don't turn the oven on.
Kerry Diamond:
Right. That would make me so nervous starting something with a cold oven.
Ina Garten:
I actually didn't trust it and I tested Baptiste first and went back and got another one for Christmas day.
Kerry Diamond:
And what cocktails are you making this Christmas?
Ina Garten:
Well, usually when I'm doing a big meal, I make something fairly simple like a cranberry martini is always good, which is delicious. Which I did actually for the New York Times for Thanksgiving.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, that's right, you did that fun Thanksgiving project with them.
Ina Garten:
They said to me, "can you do a store-bought is fine, Thanksgiving." And I thought, "well, who can do that? I can't do that." And then I hung up the phone, I thought, well, maybe I can. And I started thinking about using Pepperidge farm stuffing mix for bread pudding rather than making my own bread. And I started playing around with it and it was like, this is fun. So I ended up doing it. It was fun and they were great. My goal was that the finished product didn't taste anything like the store-bought product. So it was I think mushroom and Gruyere bread pudding and it was just fabulous. It was really delicious.
Kerry Diamond:
That was so fun.
Ina Garten:
People tried it. They loved it.
Kerry Diamond:
I loved seeing that. I didn't cook this Thanksgiving. I just did the cheese plate so, but... Exactly. So that's the Christmas dinner. You know what I wanted to ask you, just since everybody loves Jeffrey so much, how does Jeffrey know what to get you gift-wise?
Ina Garten:
Jeffrey's really smart. He always likes to take me shopping, because I'm not easy. And I think maybe on our third anniversary he bought me something that stayed in the box that wasn't a good idea. So I mean, my birthday is, and our anniversary is around the holidays, so he always wakes up one morning. He said, "let's go to Place Vendome", and I know what that means. So it's just really lovely. So buys me something that I love.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, that's fun. That's perfect.
Ina Garten:
Such a smart husband.
Kerry Diamond:
So you don't have to drop hints or give him a list or anything like that.
Ina Garten:
Oh yeah, no.
Kerry Diamond:
And what do you get him?
Ina Garten:
He hates presents. I just show him a good time. I make him dinner and on his birthday we do. We just do fun stuff, hates presents, makes it easy.
Kerry Diamond:
You really do have the perfect husband, Ina.
Ina Garten:
But we buy stuff, each other stuff all year. So it's not like the one time.
Kerry Diamond:
What's become the most popular recipe, something always bubbles up as the most popular.
Ina Garten:
Very interesting. I always say overnight mac and cheese. When I posted it on Instagram when I was doing Instagram and then I put it in the book, you cook the pasta, you put it in a mixture with milk and cheese and everything else, and you let it sit overnight in the refrigerator and then just put it into a dish and put it in the oven. You don't have to make a bechamel. It's really easy and it's so good. So I think that's probably high on the list.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, that's fun. And what's your absolute favorite in the book?
Ina Garten:
In the book? What's my favorite? That's a tough one.
Kerry Diamond:
Or maybe the most personal.
Ina Garten:
Well, I always love to do a roast chicken with whatever seasonal vegetables. So I mean, certainly the roast chicken with spring vegetables is wonderful. But one thing I love is the smoked salmon in a croissant with mascarpone, and it was inspired by something I had at La Mercerie in New York, which I adore. It's just so surprising. So if somebody comes over for brunch or something, it's really fun to serve that. And it's totally store bought, I mean, I like to reheat the croissant, but that's not really cooking and slice them in half and do a mascarpone filling with smoked salmon and a lot of arugula, which is interesting because it's peppery and it's just delicious. So that's one of my favorites.
Kerry Diamond:
I love arugula so much. Then you also have that great recipe for the chicken in a pot with orzo, and you and Nigella had talked about that when you did the talk at the King's Theater earlier this year, and you two were so funny. You actually had sort of forgotten whose recipe was whose.
Ina Garten:
It was really true. It was so funny because I had been working on that for years. I'd always wanted to do chicken and a pot. It's kind of like a really old-fashioned, old country recipe, but it always came out tasting like chicken soup. And I thought, well, why do I want to make something that just tastes like chicken soup? So I kept working on it and then Nigella came out with her book “Cook, Eat, Repeat,” and she had chicken in a pot with it and she put orzo in it and I thought that's what I was missing, something with substance.
I had been thinking maybe I wouldn't put some kind of a, something like matzo balls in it, something with substance. But the orzo was such a great idea, and then I thought she had put saffron in it, but it turns out it was me that put the saffron in. So it's chicken in a pot with all kinds of vegetables, with saffron and orzo, and interestingly what you do is you cook the whole thing together and then at the end you put the orzo in, turn the stove off and just let it sit and it cooks in the stock from the chicken, so end up with soup, orzo, and chicken and it's just fabulous dinner. That's something I've made a lot actually.
Kerry Diamond:
I flagged that recipe to make, that sounds so good for the winter. And I have this beautiful saffron from diaspora that I want to use for it.
Ina Garten:
How great.
Kerry Diamond:
That's so nice.
Ina Garten:
Isn't saffron magical? I just adore it.
Kerry Diamond:
It's so beautiful. The smell, everything about it, it's a beautiful ingredient.
Ina Garten:
And so many people don't know that it's the stamens of crocuses, a particular crocus, and you can't get the powder. You have to get the real thing because just a little bit of it really just flavors something so much. And it's expensive because there are people that just pick off the stamens of crocuses, what a job.
Kerry Diamond:
I think the expense scares some people, but you really just use the tiniest bit.
Ina Garten:
A tiny bit, yeah.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah, so a little does go a long way. Well, Ina, thank you so much for your time and congratulations on this beautiful book. I love my Ina library. I have all your books lined up in my bookcase. I love the rainbow of colors, I love how every book is the same size and it just brings me a lot of joy when I look at my Ina section.
Ina Garten:
Thank you, Kerry. So great to talk to you. Have a wonderful holiday, big kiss.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. I would love for you to subscribe to Radio Cherry Bombe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a rating and a review. Anyone you want to hear on an upcoming episode, let me know. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Joseph Hazan is a studio engineer for Newsstand Studios. Our producers are Catherine Baker and Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial coordinator is Sophie Kies. Thanks for listening everybody. You are the Bombe.