In our weekly series, One Special Thing, the Globe arts staff highlights something timeless — movies, books, TV shows, albums, paintings, plays, symphonies, dishes — that we return to in good times and bad. Something we’re just dying to tell you about. The only parameter is passion.
Before Ina Garten, the only Barefoot Contessa I knew was the 1954 Ava Gardner movie by Joseph L. Mankiewicz that occasionally showed up on my TV as a kid. But thanks to the food specialty store she once ran in Long Island’s town of Westhampton Beach, the “Barefoot Contessa” moniker will forever be associated with Garten. It was also the title of her long-running show on Food Network, which is where I first encountered her and her husband, Jeffrey. Immediately, I was hooked on all things Ina.
I was riveted because, if I remember correctly, the first thing I saw Ina make was a drink with an impressive amount of booze in it. She pulled out the biggest glass measuring cup I’d ever seen — it made my little 1-cup Pyrex seem beyond inferior — and filled it with vodka. Granted, she was making drinks for a party she was hosting later, but I’d never seen a cooking show where the host implicitly suggested her guests were going to get blotto after the closing credits ran. Julia Child always said “bon appetit” at the end of her show; it looked like Ina was saying “laissez le bon temps rouler!”
I’m being a bit facetious here. I’ve always loved cooking shows, going back to my childhood when “The French Chef” was on PBS. Child, whose voice drove my mother crazy, made such fancy food on that program, so vastly different from what I ate. But she never made it seem like these were difficult dishes to recreate (though some were), nor did she seem like a stern taskmaster. Child believed you could do it, and so does Ina. There’s a warmth that radiates through the television that transcends any bougie notions about food and hosting a nice party.
My bookshelf has an entire row dedicated to cookbooks. It’s right under the row devoted to movie-related books — two of my biggest passions are represented in close proximity to each other. Ina’s books, including “Modern Comfort Food” and “Go-to Dinners,” the two I use most often, have a prominent spot on the shelf. Like her shows, her cookbooks are full of humor and broken into easy categories like entrees, breakfast, vegetables and sides, desserts, and of course, cocktails.
It was Brooklyn native Ina who gave me the recipe for black and white cookies, my favorite childhood treat. As a kid, I wondered how they were made. Her recipe came so close to those cookies my Mom bought me that the labor-intense effort was worth the trouble. Ina also taught me how to make arrabbiata sauce (I make it spicier), homemade chicken stock (what a worthwhile pain in the butt that is), and a true French omelette (I still stink at it).
Lest I forget, she also taught me how to make a bourbon Arnold Palmer. You need a cup of Makers Mark for that one. Good luck playing golf after that!
Ina Garten’s famous trademarks are what make her so much fun. She appears on camera in her oversize blue shirts and an occasional scarf, her familiar bangs hanging over her forehead. Her manner of speaking is loose but measured, and often punctuated with a giggle that always feels genuine. “How great is that?” she’d ask after describing a step or idea that was, well, great. And she always championed “good ingredients,” especially “good olive oil.”
“Good” always seemed to imply “expensive.” Plus, Ina often used some ingredient that sounded impossible to find. Pomegranate molasses, gold leaf, truffle oil (which is disgusting, folks), yams that were grown on the dark side of Mars during a solar eclipse and irrigated with the tears of a Venusian princess, and so on. She also championed making things from scratch, a notion I also support. But if you didn’t want to spend five hours making homemade chicken stock from, like, 507 ingredients, Ina would tell you that you didn’t have to do so.
“Store bought is fine,” she’d tell us. It’s become her catch phrase.
I never believed her! She said that line like a beloved auntie who’d gently shame you for not taking her advice. I interpreted it as “well, if you REALLY want to do it THAT way, I’ll accept that.” (In stage whisper) “But you’re breaking my heart.” I wanted to yell “I promise I’ll go get those Martian yams, Ina! And I’ll make the damn sauce from scratch, too!”
In her recent memoir, “Be Ready When the Luck Happens,” Ina discusses how she fell into cooking, catering, and entertaining after a career in the White House and a job as an analyst for NASDAQ. She also talks about the high school science fairs she won, her fierce competitive nature, and her undying love for Jeffrey Garten, the husband she often sent to the store on her Food Network shows. She’s proof that you can change careers and do what you truly love.
During the pandemic, Ina went viral with a video where she made a cocktail large enough to knock out Godzilla. Her recipes helped me get through that rough time as well: My dear friend Michał, who has shared many hours of Ina-watching with me, suggested that we share 2020’s Thanksgiving dinner over Zoom. For one entree, we made the same Ina recipe, Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas, and ate together as if we weren’t trapped in separate COVID bubbles.
Ina Garten is also a gay icon. There’s a guy on Instagram who does a killer imitation of her in drag, with her familiar theme song playing in the background. A few years ago, I attended an evening conversation with Ina promoting her latest book. People lined up in an aisle of the theater to ask her questions. Every single speaker began with “I’m a gay man and…” to the point where Ina asked “Are there any straight men in the audience?” No one raised their hands!
One guy earnestly asked “What do you do when you [expletive] up on TV?” “I NEVER [expletive] up!” Ina replied, which got an enormous round of applause. No one was surprised that the Barefoot Contessa dropped the F-bomb — she’s from Brooklyn! — but it showed that she knew how to endear herself to audiences.
I can’t guarantee you’ll get Def Comedy Ina at her Oct. 28-29 appearances at the Emerson Colonial Theater in Boston, but I can assure you that it’ll be worth attending. I’ll be at her Brooklyn show the day before, and yes, I got a copy of “Simply Ina,” her upcoming cookbook. That title says it all.
Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.