The New Yorker Radio Hour - The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

With the Food Network program “Barefoot Contessa,” Ina Garten became a beloved household name. An essential element of her success is her confiding, authentic warmth—her encouragement for even the most novice home cook. Garten is “the real deal,” in the opinion of David Remnick, who has known her and her husband for many years. Although she is a gregarious teacher and presence on television, Garten prefers to do her actual cooking alone. “Cooking’s hard for me. I mean, I do it a lot, but it’s really hard and I just love having the space to concentrate on what I’m doing, so I make sure it comes out well,” she says. Garten joins Remnick to reflect on her early days in the kitchen, and to answer listener questions about holiday meals and more. Her latest book is “Be Ready When the Luck Happens,” a memoir.This segment originally aired on December 16, 2022.Plus, Alex Barasch picks three of the best erotic thrillers after being inspired to study the genre by his recent Profile of the director of the new film, “Babygirl.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Ina Garten is not just a household name, she's beloved. With the help of her Food Network program, the Barefoot Countessa, not to mention all those viral videos, Garten has 14 million cookbooks in print. Her success doesn't come from pioneering recipes or being in the foodie avant-garde. It's got more to do with the foodie. the confiding, authentic warmth that tells you that you two can make cock a vint, or a roast tenderloin,

or some roast carrots even, just follow the recipe. You can do it. Her approach to food is classic and above all accessible. I've known her for a while, and I must tell you that the person you see on TV is the one you get in person, funny, unpretentious, a shrewd businesswoman and a master of every chicken recipe known in the history of chicken, when she's She goes on book tour. She doesn't come to a bookstore. She sells out the Kennedy Center. She's pretty successful.

A couple of years back, Ina Garten published a book called Go To Dinners, and I asked her to join me on the program. Now, I have to start out by telling you the last time I had a famous cook on the show, I may have told you this. It was Jacques Papin. And on the radio, with my laptop in the kitchen, I made crapes with him. Wow. Exactly. with my wife Esther laughing at me in the corner of the kitchen, so we're not going to, we're not going to cook.

We're just going to talk. We're not cooking. We'll cook in person. How's that? Exactly. I'd love to do that. Nothing worse than having your wife laughing at you. It's a daily, your very, very smart wife laughing at you.

This is now an hourly occurrence. Now, you write in the preface of this book, early in the book, you said that when you were growing up, you had dreaded dinner time. Why was it dreaded? Was the food so terrible? What was your, was it your mom that was making dinner? My mother was making dinner. My father was a ear surgeon.

And my mother was very, I think now I might say that she would be diagnosed with Asperger's, didn't have relationships, and she had no interest in food. So she would get dinner on the table, but there was no joy in it. What was dinner on the table? What was it? I had boiled chicken, canned peas. What would I say? She was a dietitian by training and didn't believe in carbohydrates, so we never had bread or potatoes or polenta or anything absolutely delicious.

I mean, we didn't even have frozen vegetables. We had canned vegetables. I particularly remember Harvard Beats, one of my least favorite things in the world. And no child likes Harvard Beats. You might develop a flavor for it, a taste for it afterwards, but not when you're 10. And it sounds like dinner was not a joyful time. It wasn't a joyful time. And my parents, particularly my father, was very stern taskmaster and would grill us about

whatever was in school. He would criticize us. So when dinner was over, I had a nice knot in my stomach. And they would always want me to eat faster. So they would say, every time your brother takes a bite, you take a bite. Oh, my God. And I'd be like, I just can't. When is the first time you picked up a frying pan in earnest?

It wasn't just when you got married later on. A hundred percent was when I got married. I was never allowed in the kitchen. So my mother never taught me how to do anything. And I mean, she didn't see any joy in it. She felt that my job was to study, and it was her job to make dinner. And I think she wasn't comfortable with me being in the same room with her. So she would always say, you go study.

And so I was in my room, my whole childhood. And I think I was pretty lonely. I think that that's why now cooking for friends and Jeffrey and doing the show be my guess where I'm connecting with people is so satisfying. In other words, you like to cook with people around, not by your lonesome in the kitchen? I prefer to cook by myself. You do. And I do. Cooking's hard for me.

I mean, I do it a lot, but it's really hard. And I just love having the space to concentrate on what I'm doing, so I make sure it comes out well. Cooking's hard. I mean, when you go to the butcher and you order a chicken, it's a different size every time. It's a different kind of chicken. I mean, you know, some chickens, they're allowed to add water to it. You have no idea what you're going to get. So it's, I mean, just the simplest thing is chicken can be complicated. I do find it hard. I really, I'm not confident that it's going to come out well. And I have to say, I'm surprised when it does. I think, do you remember the... Maybe I have high standards. Do you remember the first time you made a dinner in earnest for you and Jeffrey? Well, probably as soon as we got married, because it wasn't like we had the money to go after dinner. So when we were engaged, before we got married, I remember going out and buying Craig Claibor and the New York Times Cookbook.

And I went to, what was it called? It was a store like, I think it was called Caldor. And I bought entire set of kitchen equipment. and I just was really excited about being able to cook. But I remember within the first month, I made a holla. And I remember thinking, that's what you're going to start with? But I did. I really love things that challenge me that I think I can't do

and then make them and show myself that I can do them. I get the feeling, and this is far from your first book. You've had many books before this. But Go To Dinner's is a, book in a way made for Eina Garten back then? In other words, these are in some ways the least intimidating recipes you could imagine. You're almost telling the reader, you know, darling, I know you think you can't do anything, but even you can do this. It actually does come full circle, doesn't it? Because once I've learned how to cook, and then, of course, I got

mastering the art of French cooking, both volumes and worked my way through those. So I learned the French techniques from Julia Child. And I really believe in simplifying things. But what happened in the pandemic is we were also completely stressed. We didn't know what we could do, what we couldn't do. I was making a recipe every day for Instagram so people could figure out what to do with those white beans that they had in their pantry. It's 3,000 pounds of white beans. Exactly. So many white beans and whatever they had. I was making recipes for my cookbook for this book. And I was cooking lunch and dinner for Jeffrey and me every single day.

And by sometime around May or June, I was like in bed with the covers up over my head. And I thought, I really need to simplify. So it is true that I came full circle, but for a different reason. No, I've admitted this to you before. But I'm now admitting it to everybody who's listening. To relax. I don't cook. I watch cooking videos. I watch you. I watch Jacques Papin. I watch this Seshwan guy who has, who's going 300 miles an hour making incredible food, but I can't cook. Hold my hand and tell me

what I need to know initially. If I'm having four people over, six people, whatever it is, what do I need to know? What do I not need to be nervous about? And what would you recommend I start with? I think there's one thing everybody should know how to do, which is, a roast chicken. And I do it in all different forms. I do it with potatoes and fennel. I do it. In this book, I have a spring roast chicken or roast chicken with spring vegetables with things like asparagus. You can put almost any kind of vegetable in a roasting pan and a chicken on top of it and put it in the oven. It's the easiest thing in the world. And the only thing you have to do is make sure you don't overcook the chicken. People get really nervous. So you think this is the easiest thing.

This is the point of entry. Any kind of roast. chicken, or the chicken in a pot, which is just as easy as can be. You put it in a big pot with chicken stock and vegetables, and then you had saffron to give a little heat, and then or so, and you've got a whole dinner all in one pot. I have to ask you, I'm lucky enough to know Jeffrey, but I think for most people who watch you, they see Jeffrey at the end of your show, and he'll be saying something like, this is the best soup I've ever had, or this chicken's unbelievable. or something like that, and you think to yourself,

he can't possibly be this nice and this brilliant at the same time. He's just so appreciative, and I think it's one of the reasons why I love to cook, because if you cook for somebody who doesn't appreciate it, there's no satisfaction in it. I made him, one day I made him a cup of tea, and he said, oh, this is the best tea I've ever had. And I was like, Jeffrey, it's a cup of hot water and a tea bag. It was a particularly good tea, but I mean, still, he just, nothing goes by and he really appreciates it, which I love. Now, you ran a store, you owned a store from 1978 to 1996, a long time, the barefoot contessa.

And why did that hit the way it hit out in the Hamptons? It was an incredible success. You know, I thought of it as a party. I wanted, when you walked in the door, I wanted all of your senses engaged. I wanted you to smell something wonderful. I wanted you to see a wonderful display of produce or I wanted to hear great music, but it was old-fashioned like Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra or whatever, you know, whatever was fun to listen to. There were samples of things all over the store so you could taste things.

And people would just come in just because it was fun. And I thought, if they're going to come because it's fun, they'll always come when they're hungry. And I think that's what worked. It wasn't really about the food. It was about the feeling of being in the store. It seems impossible to imagine, but there was a time, I know, that you were not, that you were not as famous as you are now. You started publishing these cookbooks, and you were hesitant about doing a television show. I mean, you got offers, I think more than once before you decided to go forward with it. What was your hesitation? I didn't think anybody would want to watch me cook on TV, actually.

Food Network kindly made me an offer, and I kept saying no, and they kept coming back. And there was someone there, Aline Opatut, who just kept saying, make me a better offer. And I kept saying to her, no, I just don't want to do this. and she just kept coming back. And finally, I had heard about a show that somebody said was a really good cooking show. And it was Nigella Lawson show. Right. And unbeknownst to me, they went to London, found her producer, told me that they were coming to East Hampton, like, in two weeks.

And I was like, whoa, whoa. I said I wasn't going to do this. And Eileen said, just to, you know, 13 shows thinking, like, how hard could that be? And they arrived on my doorstep, and I thought, okay, let's see what we can do. And, you know, one of the things I think about in life is you've got to jump in the pond. Right. You say no to things without really understanding. Like I said, no to Instagram before I understood what it was.

And I kept saying no about TV. I was just like, I love writing cookbooks. I want to keep doing that. And I can't imagine being on TV. It always seemed to me that the most successful ones, there was some character involved. No, Julia Child was a big character. She had personality traits that we could easily list. Graham Kerr did, all kinds of people who've done it.

How do you think about that in terms of the personality you put out there? Because I have to say, being lucky enough to know you, it seems like one and the same person. I am the same person you see on TV. I found a coach who would teach me how to be on TV. And I have no idea why I knew this, but after one session with her, I thought, that's just awful. Nothing she said made sense to me.

And I thought, I just need to be myself on TV. It's the only thing that works. And I don't know why I knew that. I just knew it. I have to say, though, I'm watching you cook, and there's a move that you do, all of a sudden the stick and a half of butter goes into the pan, and you look up both with mischief in your eyes and a little guiltily and say,

yeah, but it makes a lot of brownies. Okay. Go ahead. Do you know what I believe? I think we should eat real food. And if it's delicious, you'll eat, it's worth cooking for it. My favorite expression is if you eat low fat, a low fat diet, it's not that you live longer. It just seems longer.

Isn't that true? Now, we have some questions sent by email to you. This comes from Julie Wilson and Maureen tipping in Comer, Northern Ireland. And this question is from my neighbor, Maureen, and me, Julie, we're tuning in from Comer, which is a small village just outside of Belfast. During COVID, our neighborhood came together into a really lovely, supportive, and fun community. We went from being neighbors to being friends. This Christmas, we would like to co-host a party for our street.

our village is famous for potatoes, so we're really keen to know if Aina has any ideas on how to transform the humble spud into a delicious party food hors d'oeuvre. A potato hors d'oeuvre is interesting. And keep in mind, you're giving potato tips to Ireland. That's a tall order. Exactly. That's really daunting.

You know what I would do is I'd make potato lotcas. I think that would be great. Wow. And you have a great recipe for that, I should say. I do. And what you can do is you can prepare them in advance, put them on a sheet pan, and reheat them in the oven, warm them in the oven. Sounds delicious. Is that a good one? From Alex Lewin in Berkeley, California, Dear Miss Garden, about 10 years ago, I read a short story in Harper's, about which I remember nothing, not the title, the author of the plot, except for a scene in which a character fishes a bay leaf out of a bowl of soup and flicks it away. and he tells his dining companion,

Bay leaves are BS. Ever since then, I've been nagged by the question, are Bayleaves BS? Whenever I put them in anything, I can't tell what effect they have. Am I using them wrong? Also, is it true that they should be kept in the freezer? Okay.

I really don't know the answer to this, and I will say that I also wonder whether a Bayleaf makes a difference. And there are a couple of things that I use Bayleaves in, and I've always wanted to make them without the bay leaves to see if it made a difference and I never have. So I'm not sure. Can I just say this is called Making News?

Ina Garten calls bullshit on bay leaves. I'm with that. Now, these are questions from New York or Instagram. What to make for two people while still making it feel like a holiday and a special meal. This is from Teresa Nobri. You know what's really great is roast pork loins because they're very small, and you can marinate them and roast them really

simply, serve them with like a potato and apple and fennel puree and some shaved brussels sprouts. It would be a great holiday meal, and it's not like cooking a whole ham. I have a very important question I ask. When did Brussels sprouts go from being, as in my childhood, disgusting? I happen to know. Into my adulthood, it's like I can't wait to get more Brussels sprouts. What happened? What happened was, and I actually started this at the store in the 80s,

I started roasting Brussels sprouts instead of boiling them. And they were so good because they're like crispy and, you know, they're more like French fries. They're fantastic. So then I started, thought, well, if you can roast Brussels sprouts, maybe you can roast butternut squash. So we started roasting butternut squash and string beans. And I mean, we roasted everything.

And the best part is it's the easiest thing in the world. You put whatever vegetable it is on a sheet pan, olive oil, salt and pepper, and into the oven. So on asparagus, too, you're pro roasting rather than steaming or boiling. A hundred percent. I think it brings out the flavor. It caramelizes the sugars in it, and it's much more delicious. Perfect. Now, this is not exactly a food question.

How many scarves do you own? You always have one on. Sue Palmer. A lot. I have drawers and drawers of scarves. She's absolutely right. I have them everywhere. I just love having a scarf around my neck.

I just think it feels good. David, I was just thinking to myself, can we just do this again tomorrow? We can do it all day. So much fun. Thank you. Ina Garten, thank you so much. So much fun to talk to you, as always, David.

Thank you. I spoke with Ina Garten in 2022. Her recent book is a memoir called Be Ready When the Luck Happens. Be my guest with Ina Garten on the Food Network is in its fifth season. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. More to come. I'm David Remnick, and this is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

The movie Baby Girl opened on Christmas Day, a pretty bold choice because elf, this is not. It's a movie about an affair between a CEO, played by Nicole Kidman, and a much younger man at her company. And it's steamy. That might be the euphemism of choice. And the New Yorkers, Alex Barish, just profiled the director of Baby Girl, Alina Rain. and he spent some time educating himself as one must in the great tradition of erotic thrillers. Welcome, Alex.

Thank you, David. Now, Alice, what made you want to talk to Alina Ray? Well, I'd actually read about Baby Girl when it was just entering production, and the premise sort of grabbed me immediately. I feel like there's been all of this conversation in recent years about the state of sex on screen, concerns about power differentials and the workplace and age gap relationships. And here was someone who was sort of throwing herself directly

onto the third rail of all of that. Right. And what's the basic premise beyond the age difference is... The basic premise is that Nicole Kidman is playing this CEO of a robotics company, this woman called Romy. And Samuel,

played by Harris Dickinson, a young British actor, is an intern at the company. But looks to kill. Looks to kill. Right. So it's an affair between the CEO and an intern?

Yes, that's right. It is the most extreme. HR departments everywhere. The HR department nightmare, yes. I wanted to automate repetitive tasks and give people their time back by limiting. Power-hungry personalities? You think that's what I am? No. No.

I think the opposite. You think I don't like power? I think you like to be told what it is. And, you know, the idea is that she is in this happy marriage, but she has these desires that she does not even name to her husband. and this young man proves to be the outlet for that. And initially there's the kind of flotation in the office and they're easing into it,

and then he sort of tempts her into this kinky affair. Possibly the most famous cinematic orgasm of the last five years. Oh, yes. It is a three-minute-long close-up on Nicole Kidman's face. It's pretty remarkable. They take their time. Congratulations.

Yes, that scene is very intense, and deliberately so. It was actually the last day of shooting. they saved it for the end. And when I talked to Helena, she wanted to wait until everyone trusted each other, they knew what they were about. The scene itself is kind of funny

and awkward, deliberately. They're defining this dynamic. They're figuring out what the other person likes. They're testing these boundaries. And then something clicks. And the take is unflinching. It is three minutes long. And originally, she wanted it to be even longer.

She had hoped for an 18-minute orgasm scene, although she was quickly called back to reality. Nicole Kidman's expected to get an Oscar nomination for Baby Girl, am I right? How unusual is it for an erotic thriller to get an award, big, you know, an Oscar? Very. I mean, you know, Glenn Close was nominated for fatal attraction back in the day, but she didn't win, and that was sort of at the peak of the genre's power and popularity. So, but as you said, this role really is a showcase for Nicole Kidman's range,

and she won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival. She has some momentum behind her, so we'll see if voters are ready for it now. Now, what makes an erotic thriller as opposed to a movie that just has a sex scene or two? I mean, if you look at the ones that came out in the 80s, 90s, early 2000s, I feel like the hallmarks are these very baroque, over-the-top plots, mostly to justify the sex. And also the idea that the danger and the sex are inextricable from each other. You know, the erotic and the thriller have to go hand in hand. The point is that that's why it's exciting until it decidedly is not. It's anything but domestic sex.

Yes, exactly. I mean, Michael Douglas, you had the kind of erotic thriller hat trick of disclosure. Focal attraction and basic instinct. He was the man for the job, they decided. And he said at the time that the ideal audience reaction is, I laughed, I got turned on by the sex scenes, and I got scared. All right, so in the pick three sweepstakes, your contemporary pick is Baby Girl for Erotic Thrillies.

What's your next pick? Basic instinct. We have to go there. It's sort of the apex of the genre. It was released in 1992. It's directed by Paul Verhoeven, who's really the master at this, and he has Sharon Stone and Michael Douglas,

so great cast. She plays a novelist whose boyfriend is stabbed to death with an ice pick in circumstances that are very similar to a novel she herself has written, and he's the detective on the case who wisely decides to fall in love with her. And it was the leg crossing that launched a thousand ships. Indeed, yes. Very polarizing for a reason. You like playing games, don't you? I have a degree in psychology. It goes with the turf. Games are fun. You think it's a good movie?

I think it's a great movie. I think it holds up. It is absurd. It is over the top, but it knows what it's doing. I think it's playing with the tropes in a fun way. I'm with you there. Now, your third pick is one of controversy. What is it? Eyes Wide Shut.

The Stanley Kubrick film. Right. Starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, once again, back in the erotic sort of space. Now, for those unlucky enough not to have seen eyes wide shot 25 years ago, what was it about? Because it's about a lot. It is about a lot.

And, you know, I think audiences at the time didn't quite know what to do with it because it was marketed as a conventional erotic thriller, and it will not shock you to learn that Stanley Kubrick's take on this genre is a little more esoteric. But Tom Cruise is playing this doctor, Bill Hoford, whose wife, Nicole Kidman, confesses to fantasies about another man, and he spirals as a result of this information, I think it's fair to say.

And a friend of his tells him about a secret party. He sneaks in and finds out that it's an ogy with dangerous consequences for those involved. May I have the password, please? Fidelio. That's right, sir. That is the password for admittance. But may I ask what is the password for the house?

For the record, you and our esteemed colleague Richard Brody are aligned on this film. It's a rare occurrence, and I think it means something. What does it mean, do you suppose? You know, if two divergent critical sensibilities can find something to admire in this film, then maybe it should be vindicated by history. Nicole Kidman starred in a nice white shot 25 years ago, and now here she is in Baby Girl.

What keeps bringing her to these films? I mean, Nicole Kidman is a very prolific actress, and... Did you ask her about this? I did, yes. What she said. She said that Ryan had given her something that no one's given me.

And I don't know that it's the genre, herself, I think in this case it was Helena. You know, she's obsessed with Adrian Lyon. She's obsessed with Paul Verhoeven. You know, she was in a Verhoven film herself. She has an idea of what it takes to be in these roles, but she also realized that those films had a lot of sexism in them, and there were these problems. And she wanted something that played with all of those tropes, but was also true in its depiction of sexuality. And a little more aware of the roles and responsibilities and the archetypes that women are expected to fulfill, it's taking this stuff and it's twisting it

and making it a little more modern. So with all the attention that's being given to baby girl, are we in for a Renaissance, God willing, of erotic thrillers? I hope so. I mean, I think, you know, we, those movies were ridiculous at times,

you know, often. No. But they also, in their willingness to really go for broke, I think they had the chance to show us something fun and something real, and it'd be nice if people took a few more risks

in their filmmaking. Alex, thanks a lot. Thanks, David. Alex Barish is an editor for the New Yorker and Baby Girl starring Nicole Kidman just open. You can find Alex's profile of the director Alina Rain at New Yorker.com.

I'm David Remnick. That's our program for today. Hope you had a great holiday. We'll see you in the new year, whatever that may bring. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards

with additional music by Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer, with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Gwan, and Alejandra Deccan. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.