For dinner with Sarah tonight I made Ina Garten's French Apple Tart from Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics. It turned out very well (more on that later).
Garten is one of the few Food Network chefs that I actually like (Rachel Ray is obnoxious, Alton Brown tries too hard, and Paula Deen is too peppy for comfort... though admittedly, they all have some great recipes). She has a relaxed style, and her recipes are all fantastic. She's really good at balancing flavors and creating food that's both subtle and powerful. Furthermore, while she appreciates and encourages simple food, she's not obsessed with speedy shortcuts the way so many cooking shows are. However, her philosophy and processes are just not very well suited to college, or, as a girl from rural South Carolina-- anyone else I know. For example, 80% of her recipes call for some kind of expensive, exotic booze. In a section called "how to cook like a pro," Ina advises the novice cook to buy the best possible cookware, (like Le Creuset), and the best possible ingredients. For entertaining, Ina stresses the importance of making flower arrangements a day in advance, and ironing napkins. Ina doesn't trust oven dials -- she gets an oven thermometer to get the oven at the precise temperature. On her show, Ina doesn't break a sweat-- she has so many fancy appliances she barely chops or mixes anything by hand.
That's all nice and great, and don't get me wrong, I would like a set of Le Creuset cookware as much as the next girl, and good ingredients can certainly make all the difference, but a cheap pot in the hands of a good cook is a million times better than an idiot with a Kitchenaid. If someone asked me to make a list called "how to cook like a pro," being OCD about oven temperatures and buying expensive stuff are the last things I would think of.
Finally, the thing that bothers me the most about Ina is that she's extremely wasteful. When Ina makes biscuits, she cuts out biscuits from a large sheet of dough with a cookie cutter, and then she throws away the rest. Why not reassemble the scraps and re-cut with the cookie cutter? Good home cooks do this (I know for a fact that Deb at Smitten Kitchen does). If you're worried about the biscuits turning out a bit lumpy (which is just a cosmetic difference, it doesn't affect taste at all), just cut pieces with a knife and have square biscuits. Duh.
So yes, today I used an Ina Garten recipe, but I did it in our crappy oven with a crappy sheet pan and cheap rum instead of apple Calvados. Instead of using a food processor, I opted for easier cleanup and mixed the dough by hand in a bowl, which only took me two more minutes than if I'd used the Cuisinart. I also used raspberry preserves instead of apricot jelly, because that's what we had on hand. And after I cut the edges from the pastry, I stuck the remaining dough together and created a smaller, irregularly-shaped tart on the side (which didn't taste any different than the square ones). Most importantly: It was delicious!
Very astute Ina observations. Have you ever seen her go into her pantry on the show? The thing is like a walk-in closet chock full of luxury ingredients, all organized by category, of course, and labeled accordingly. I do like her, though, in spite of her bourgeois excesses...
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