As Delish's resident Ina Garten editor, I pride myself on the ability to keep you updated on all current Ina events, future Ina happenings, and necessary evaluation of and commentary on Ina activities of past. Today we're here to discuss the latter, for no other reason than...I think I've exhausted the former. More specifically, we're here to discuss something I noticed recently whilst pouring through all 11 of Ina's cookbooks in preparation for a dinner party: that she repeats her recipes through ingredient and prep pretty often.
Before you @ me, know that none of this is a criticism. It's just an observation on the work of a woman who's done what she does so well for so long. So. You ready?
She goes through lovefests with different produce and flavor.
That lends to a whole lot of mustard sauce and butternut squash recipes pumped into a cookbook and then again in another one a few years later. Take the goat cheese hallmarks of Parties! for example—she not only bangs out a Salad with Warm Goat Cheese and Herbed Goat Cheese Sandwiches (among others) within pages of each other, but she also follows it up with a "salad with warm goat cheese" in her next cookbook Barefoot in Paris. Similarly, Cook Like a Pro saw an influx of carrot recipes and maple notes, and Cooking for Jeffrey was jam-packed with butternut squash and seafood. Oh. And mustard-based sauces. So many mustard-based sauces.
She sticks with a preferred method of preparation.
If you take a quick flip through each veg section of your Ina books, you'll notice she's partial to one veggie-making method: roasting. More specifically, Ina encourages you to take a bunch of vegetables, cut them into bite-sized portions, put them on a sheet tray, and douse them with a tablespoon of olive oil, some salt, and a bit of pepper. You'll then put the whole thing in the oven for anywhere from 25-45 minutes, yielding perfectly roasted veggies. Seriously! Almost every one of Ina's veggie recipes—acorn squash, butternut squash, cauliflower, zucchini, carrots, sweet potatoes, white potatoes, and more—follows the same formula. Again, it's a very delicious formula. But it's a formula. That leads me to...
She'll sometimes just straight-up repeat a recipe.
See that aforementioned [Salads] With Warm Goat Cheese, for example. Or Make It Ahead's Parmesan Chive Smashed Potatoes vs. Barefoot Contessa's Parmesan Smashed Potatoes. Or the Couscous With Peas & Mint, Couscous With Pine Nuts & Mint, and Couscous With Pine Nuts in Foolproof, Cooking for Jeffrey, and How Easy Is That? respectively.
Again—all love. All mustard sauces. All Ina.
