Barefoot Contessa Family Style: Easy Ideas and Recipes That Make Everyone Feel Like Family

As always a great book. Yummy recipes.

Nice cookbook and can’t beat the price.

Very good recipes and pictures. Easy to follow along.

love this cookbook series!

I bought a used hardcopy and it looks brand new. I really like the list of recipes in this book and feel that I will definitely be using it. I just got the book, but I immediately picked out the maple oatmeal scones and they turned out perfect. I love them and will be making them regularly.

This is Ina Garten's third cookbook. It leaves the caterer's shop and party platter to concentrate on meals, which do well made at home.One of the first things I sense is that there is little difference in the style of menu in this book than there is in the first two. The second and more revealing aspect of this book is the degree to which it is visiting old material rather than trying to present something new.There are three signs of this tendency in the book. The first is the number of references to sources of recipes in both classic cookbooks such as Julia Child's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking' and recent, well known cookbooks such as Danny Meyer and Michael Romano's `Union Square Café Cookbook'. Other cookbooks are quoted as well. The second is the appearance of patently classic recipes, which have appeared in many other books. Two of the most common are a recipe for a Caprese Salad (Tomato, Basil, and Mozzarela) and roasted leg of lamb. Repeating classic recipes like this becomes more of an issue in a book of this size (88 recipes) and price ($35 list). This book has very little new in the way of basic recipes to offer a person who already owns ten (10) cookbooks, let alone someone who owns over 200. The third is the number of recipes for relatively simple staple items which have the feel of being added to bulk up the page count. These are chicken stock, croutons, iced tea, mashed potatoes, and sautéed carrots. To be sure, each of these has some twist to offer, but that twist is a bit expensive at over $.40 per recipe. Especially given the fact that many of these recipes have appeared on Ina's Food Network show and are therefore available on the Internet on the Food Network web site for free.There is an up side to this book, especially for people with few cookbooks and little time to watch the Food Network.First, as with the earlier books, these recipes are typically easy to make with virtually no expensive or difficult to find ingredients.Second, the book has a recipe index, something that every cookbook should have.Third, the book has a healthy number of breakfast food recipes. This would seem to be the main feature which sets it apart from the other two books and which places it `in the home'.Fourth, a large percentage of recipes are for desserts. If one has no interest in having a dessert book laying around, this book will put you in good stead with recipes for some classics like key lime pie and angel food cake plus some very good special event desserts such as an American Flag cake. If you want the read deal on desserts, I strongly recommend Wayne Harley Brachman's latest book, `American Desserts'.Ina Garten' three books together will run you over $100 list price. For less than $20, you could get an excellent general purpose cookbook such as `The Joy of Cooking' or `James Beard's American Cookery' with over 1000 recipes. The extra tariff buys you the cachet of recipes from a well-known culinary celebrity who should know what she is doing to keep things both simple and economical in the kitchen. You also get full page, average or less than average quality photographs of all recipes and chatty commentary on the recipes from Ms. Garten.Basically, Ina is simply running out of original material, just like her Food Network colleague Paula Deen, whose second cookbook also had a lot of filler. The difference is in the relative price Ms. Garten and Ms. Deen are charging for leftovers.Again, this is a good book if you simply do not own other cookbooks and you can get it at a good discount. For the rest of us, I give it only four stars so you think twice before buying the name, again.

Interesting

I am the quintessential "ambitious but inexperienced" cook to whom Ina Garten's book are supposed to cater. Prior to using this book, my lasagnas would make messes, rather than good dinners. Where other recipes fail to deliver, EVERYTHING I have tried from this book has succeeded. Speaking of the turkey sausage lasagna... I made endless substitutions, right down to using vegan Tofurky sausage and pureed cottage cheese instead of ricotta. It turned out wonderfully, and my non-vegetarian "please don't put meat sustitute in my food" husband loved it. Following the recipes exactly might be important in some cases, but the cooking process seems to be the magical element in many others. In fact, my spouse doesn't really care for sauce-less veggies but loved the roasted asparagus recipe when I used baby broccoli instead.I appreciate the footnotes that help me when I want to stray from the original recipe, or make something ahead of time. This really increases the utility of the recipes.While the ingredients might be expensive at times, at least they end up producing "mmm's" at the table rather than ending up in the trash or dog bowl.And yes, there is a lot of butter used throughout, but the food turns out so elegant and rich it takes only a portion to be satisfied, and this calorie watcher has not gained weight despite eating the mashed potatoes.If you combine the ideas in this book with those from the t.v. show- make one main dish, a salad/veg & dessert- you will have a complete lovely dinner without needing 2 ovens and 2 hours. This book has made me feel inspired and successful, despite being quite average in the kitchen. If I can now make good tiramisu, so can anyone.

Llego excelente todo gran libro

Family Style is old fashioned (published in 2002) and recipes are very basic. I am disappointed with it - having read it from cover to cover there are no recipes I am inspired to try. Certainly the least favourite of my many Ina Garten Cookery Books.

I find Ina Gartens cookbooks are always a worthy and welcome home addition .

Book arrived in perfect condition! Really love Ina Garten’s cookbooks! So far made 3 recipes from this and always turned out so good and family loved it! I have tons of cookbook collections but her cookbook is by far the best one! Easy to follow recipes and realistic Ingredients! Love it so much! If you can, collect all her cookbooks! It is worth it!

I love all Ina Garten's books. Having first heard about her 8 years ago, I couldn't find her cookbooks anywhere and asked a friend to bring me one back from the US. I now have all her cookbooks and use them regularly. The recipes are fresh, easy to follow and very adaptable to the UK. Ina inspires - from her cooking, to her tips for table settings, flowers, herbs, the list goes on. I can't recommend her cookbooks enough and every recipe I have made has always worked and gone down a treat.