COOK THIS: Cook Like a Pro by Ina Garten
Twice a month our writer cooks from the book and decides if these farm-to-table recipes are worth the investment.
Ina Garten’s appeal is two-fold: she’s a jovial-but-firm kitchen taskmaster, but is also a complete enabler when it comes to upping the butter, sugar and salt content of your diet. Note that of her 11 books, there is no “Barefoot Contessa Light” to be found. Her new book, Cook Like a Pro (Clarkson Potter; $35) is a complement to her latest television series of the same name, and is focused on helping you achieve professional results at home through both her famously rock-solid recipes and helpful cooking tips. The recipes are for when you have company over, because presumably, if you’re going to cook like a pro, you want to impress people other than your family. Think filet of beef, eggplant Parmesan and panna cotta. Interspersed among the recipes are sections on measuring ingredients, choosing the right knife, baking techniques, etc.
Like most things from the ‘80s, Chicken Marbella seems to be making a comeback. I tackled Ina’s updated version which brings together the seemingly bizarre combination of chicken pieces, prunes, green olives, capers, dried oregano and garlic. The chicken is marinated overnight for maximum flavor, then baked surrounded by white wine and with brown sugar sprinkled on top. The result was a bewitchingly complex mix of salty, sweet and sour deliciousness, if actually a little too sweet for my personal taste.
It’s an accepted fact that the main thing standing between your own home cooking and those dishes you order in a restaurant is the extra salt and butter they add. So if you’re cooking from an Ina Garten recipe, you’re already pretty close to cooking like a pro. If your bookshelf is home to a collection of Barefoot Contessa books, you can probably skip this—just open any one of them and follow the recipe to a T. Instead, go out and buy Cook Like a Pro for someone new(ish) to the kitchen, because this is a great intro to Ina and her classic recipes.
Excerpted from Cook Like a Pro: Recipes & Tips for Home Cooks by Ina Garten. Copyright © 2018 by Ina Garten. Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.
Wendy Underwood tests out cookbooks weekly on Instagram at @kitchenvscookbook.
[post_recipes]
Follow us
Republish!
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Want to republish a Modern Farmer story?
We are happy for Modern Farmer stories to be shared, and encourage you to republish our articles for your audience. When doing so, we ask that you follow these guidelines:
Please credit us and our writers
For the author byline, please use “Author Name, Modern Farmer.” At the top of our stories, if on the web, please include this text and link: “This story was originally published by Modern Farmer.”
Please make sure to include a link back to either our home page or the article URL.
At the bottom of the story, please include the following text:
“Modern Farmer is a nonprofit initiative dedicated to raising awareness and catalyzing action at the intersection of food, agriculture, and society. Read more at <link>Modern Farmer</link>.”
Use our widget
We’d like to be able to track our stories, so we ask that if you republish our content, you do so using our widget (located on the left hand side of the article). The HTML code has a built-in tracker that tells us the data and domain where the story was published, as well as view counts.
Check the image requirements
It’s your responsibility to confirm you're licensed to republish images in our articles. Some images, such as those from commercial providers, don't allow their images to be republished without permission or payment. Copyright terms are generally listed in the image caption and attribution. You are welcome to omit our images or substitute with your own. Charts and interactive graphics follow the same rules.
Don’t change too much. Or, ask us first.
Articles must be republished in their entirety. It’s okay to change references to time (“today” to “yesterday”) or location (“Iowa City, IA” to “here”). But please keep everything else the same.
If you feel strongly that a more material edit needs to be made, get in touch with us at [email protected]. We’re happy to discuss it with the original author, but we must have prior approval for changes before publication.
Special cases
-
Extracts. You may run the first few lines or paragraphs of the article and then say: “Read the full article at Modern Farmer” with a link back to the original article.
-
Quotes. You may quote authors provided you include a link back to the article URL.
-
Translations. These require writer approval. To inquire about translation of a Modern Farmer article, contact us at [email protected]
-
Signed consent / copyright release forms. These are not required, provided you are following these guidelines.
-
Print. Articles can be republished in print under these same rules, with the exception that you do not need to include the links.
Tag us
When sharing the story on social media, please tag us using the following: - Twitter (@ModFarm) - Facebook (@ModernFarmerMedia) - Instagram (@modfarm)
Use our content respectfully
Modern Farmer is a nonprofit and as such we share our content for free and in good faith in order to reach new audiences. Respectfully,
-
No selling ads against our stories. It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads.
-
Don’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually.
-
You have no rights to sell, license, syndicate, or otherwise represent yourself as the authorized owner of our material to any third parties. This means that you cannot actively publish or submit our work for syndication to third party platforms or apps like Apple News or Google News. We understand that publishers cannot fully control when certain third parties automatically summarize or crawl content from publishers’ own sites.
Keep in touch
We want to hear from you if you love Modern Farmer content, have a collaboration idea, or anything else to share. As a nonprofit outlet, we work in service of our community and are always open to comments, feedback, and ideas. Contact us at [email protected].COOK THIS: Cook Like a Pro by Ina Garten
by Wendy Underwood, Modern Farmer
January 23, 2019
Modern Farmer Weekly
Solutions Hub
Innovations, ideas and inspiration. Actionable solutions for a resilient food system.
ExploreShare With Us
We want to hear from Modern Farmer readers who have thoughtful commentary, actionable solutions, or helpful ideas to share.
Submit
Where are the ‘tips’ referenced in the recipe?