Barefoot Contessa Foolproof

Ina Garten, host of the long-running Barefoot Contessa television show, has a gift for recipes that look impressive but are simple to make. In this book she goes a step further and asks what makes a recipe truly foolproof: clear instructions, reliable ingredients, careful testing and a plan for the order in which everything gets done.

The recipes are organized in the familiar way, with cocktails and starters, soups and salads, dinners, vegetables and sides, and desserts. Among them are crowd-pleasing main dishes, simple roasted vegetables and generous desserts such as a chocolate cassis cake and raspberry crumble bars. Throughout the book, short notes flag the places where a recipe is most likely to go wrong and how to avoid it, and many dishes include advice on what can be prepared a day or a few hours ahead. A section on planning shows how to schedule a whole dinner party, so the oven and the cook are never overloaded. Around one hundred fifty color photographs show the finished dishes, so you know exactly what you are aiming for.

Inviting and dependable. About 272 pages in hardcover.