It’s hard to believe, but even Ina Garten got tired of cooking in quarantine. The “Barefoot Contessa” ate “breakfast, lunch and dinner” with Jeffrey, her husband of 51 years, and while she cherished the time together, it wasn’t the same. To break the routine, she recently enjoyed a pizza delivery dinner with friends in her Hamptons' home garden.
“I lost the reason why I cook. I mean it’s nice to cook for Jeffrey–I’m not saying I don’t like to– but I would never cook for myself,” she said in a Zoom interview with her husband on the Today show. “I cook because I love to take care of people.”
Still, Ina, managed to spend hours in the kitchen, self-filming a new season of her show at home in East Hampton, (“Barefoot Contessa” starts Oct 25), Instagramming, and writing her 12th cookbook, “Modern Comfort Food,” which came out this week.
Luckily, the cookbook was “easy” to write. Ina knew it would come out before the presidential election, a stressful time “no matter what side of the aisle you’re on,” so she focused on comfort.
With over 85 recipes, Ina devotes plenty of pages to Italian food and one of her favorite traditions: cocktail hour. Some highlights include a Spring Green Spaghetti Carbonara made with seasonal vegetables, like asparagus and English peas, and a baked Rigatoni with lamb ragù.
Everything the Contessa makes her husband loves. Although she can’t only rely on Jeffrey for criticism and recipe testing, the happy couple admitted that their marriage has flourished during these past few months.
“We’re just having a ball,” she said.